Teen Interns Brute-forced A Disk Install, With Predictable Results

Who, Me? Welcome to Monday and another instalment of Who, Me? It’s The Register’s reader-contributed column in which you admit to mistakes and reveal if they derailed your career.

This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Kerry” who way back in 1996, when he was still in High School, scored an internship at what he described as “a large tech company.”

Kerry and another intern were put to work in a “build lab” where the company created one of its software products.

As Kerry watched and learned how the software sausage is made, a new hard drive arrived in the lab for testing. Kerry and his junior colleague got the job.

“The hard drive had enormous capacity for the time, maybe two whole gigabytes,” Kerry told Who, Me? All he knew was that it must be very, very expensive.

To test the disk, Kerry needed to install it in a rack alongside other drives.

“We placed the rack on a table and observed it had slots that were open on both ends,” he wrote, going on to explain that he applied teenage logic and tried to shove it into place.

When that didn’t work – the disk got stuck – he summoned the other intern so they could both apply brute force. “He also couldn't get the drive inserted [either].”

“Eventually, we were trying to get it in with one of us pushing on one side and the other pulling on the other side,” Kerry admitted to Who, Me?

• Pay attention, class: Today you’ll learn the wrong way to turn things off
• Tech bro denied dev's hard-earned bonus for bug that overcharged a little old lady
• Intern did exactly what he was told and turned off the wrong server
• Under-qualified sysadmin crashed Amazon.com for 3 hours with a typo

This method, of course, ended badly.

“All of a sudden, the hard drive overcame whatever friction point it was stuck on, shot out the other end of the rack, dropped straight down about 20 inches, and landed perfectly square onto the table with an enormous THUNK.”

Kerry and his colleague did at least learn from the experience, and soon figured out the correct way to install the disk.

It was dead, probably due to their exertions. Given their expectation that this drive was vastly expensive, this was not good news for the interns.

“We had to report to our boss that the drive didn't work,” Kerry explained. “He replied ‘It just... doesn't work? OK, just order another one."

And that was the end of the matter, leaving Kerry with a lesson in how little some businesses care about minor expenses … and training interns!

What have you broken without consequences? Let us know by clicking here to send an email to Who, Me? ®