At least they weren't drinking on duty.

put a load of young people in a confined area with nothing to do and this is what you get!

Especially when you've got convenient places to cool your cans of beer - or at least so I've been told!

It seems strange now but at my first job we had an on-site bar and many people would have a drink or two at lunchtime.

Oblig. [1]XKCD

[1] https://xkcd.com/323/

Everything mankind does is much, much easier if you're ever so slightly drunk.

At the British Standards Institute there was an on-site bar for all staff and the IT Director had a plaque over his seat. That takes some dedication over years to achieve.

I was being shown round a non-secret Government data centre who were going to transfer some backup data from 300MB disc packs* to tape for us. They were very proud of their new auto-feed tape drive with a self closing door that would stop if it hit an obstruction (usually the lever to secure the tape reel) and demonstrated it with a packet of cigarettes*.

They then admitted that they often used to put their fingers in the way (especially if they were non-smokers) to demonstrate but the week before one of them had used his smokes and ended up with a very crushed packet after the stop sensor failed. They were a lot more cautious after that!

*This was a long time ago!

I remember when the mother company insisted in having a "cage" inside our data center. They proceeded to build one and made quite a few obvious mistakes in actually securing it. We had great fun trolling them and their CCTV system.

Once, on a Friday just after 5 pm, we went under the raised floor and placed a soccer ball inside, being careful to not open tiles that were covered by their CCTV cameras. We then called their emergency line and asked them to send someone over "so we could have our ball back". They refused to take us seriously and on Monday when one of their engineers needed access, they raised all sorts of alarms. We obviously knew nothing about how the ball would have appeared in their cage, but requested it back. We were not given back the ball.

After more cameras were placed, we decided to up the ante and placed a "skippy" ball inside one of their half empty racks, this time not asking for our ball back.

They found the ball, admitted defeat and asked us to tell them how it was possible that we gained entrance to their "secure facility". We gave them a full list of all methods we thought of, which resulted in the cage being extended above the ceiling and under the floor, as well as "proper" locks instead the ones that could only be bought with one key installed on their doors.

The one thing that requires experience to actually ensure.

Manuals are nice, but not good enough.

Experience and a truly twisted mind.

And of course, the former often induces the latter...

Back in the 1990s I worked for a group of companies that included a systems & network outfit, a PC assembler and a computer hardware and software mail order company.

We boarded up the back of the last row of shelving in our storage and shipping warehouse with old crate panels and had an air pistol / rifle range.

Did the ball hit the ground before hitting the alarm, or did it hit it directly? Enquiring minds need to know: The former is only 4 runs, whereas the latter should count as 6.

I had better be going: the one with Wisden Cricketers' Almanac in the pocket, please

https://www.bigcricket.com/community/threads/funny-cricket-explanation.17411/

[1]Compiling! What else are you going to do with yourself in the meantime?

[1] https://xkcd.com/303/

Especially when balls are involved.

I was just putting the finishing touches on a small cluster of vaxen at SLAC one fine Friday afternoon. The annual Big Game between Stanford & Berkeley was to be the following day. A couple of grad students started passing a football (American version) between themselves. In the glass room. Just as I was threatening mayhem if they didn't knock it off, the ball hit the Big Red Button. Needless to say, a bunch of very pissed off people couldn't attend the game the following day. The grad students' computer privileges were suspended for the rest of the academic year. Personally, I'd have hung them by the thumbs in the Quad as a warning ...

As an alum in good standing of both schools, all I can add to the above is "Go Bears!"

Something similar involving a frizbee hitting the red emergency power-off button on a PDU at the back of the machine room.

Amazing throw, it has to be said. But the 'clunk' and sound of loads of disks spinning down made our hearts sink!

Our other, less disaster prone game was to race around the aisles on chairs and shoot folder pieces of paper using elastic bands at each other. When the DC was decomissioned, we found quite a few of these pieces of folder up paper all over the place. Eyebrows were raised....

In one place I worked the office was a very long fairly narrow room with no partitions.

It was one of the senior partners of the firm that instigated the chair races (and took part).

The loser made the tea for everyone for that day.

Back in the days of working in the server room, we improvised a cricket bat made from layers of cardboard and balled up packing tape to create what turned out to be a dangerously hard cricket ball. Our server room was quite small so runs were achieved while remaining seated on the wheely office chairs while the bowler searched the server room for the ball, also while seated on their chair. Lots of crashing and banging ensued and questions were no doubt asked as to how the damage had occurred to the walls, printers, tape drives, etc. albeit only surface damage.

A few years later, IT had moved on and us out of the server room. We did a lot of wheely chair racing while working late while updating the Novell servers. One particularly exciting and aggressive race between me and my manager resulted in a tangled mess of chairs and humans as we crashed into the outside wall of the Chief Exec's office .. not realising he was working late that night. A face like thunder appeared around the door and we knew immediately without question that chair racing was no longer an acceptable form of entertainment for bored tech support officers.

Obligatory not me, but whilst conversing with a Honeywell engineer back in the early 90s, he recounted a tale of repeated call-outs to a certain customer. A litany of pack and head failures. No-one could work out why the drives/packs kept having so many issues. One day, he was on-site for an unrelated issue and was busy in the bowels of a printer and as many of you of a certain age will remember, printers were never simple desktop items. They were often large big beasts - as this one was. It was a large room and the printer was some way back and not easily visible.

Coincidently, this occurred over an operator shift change. As luck would have it, the outgoing shift didn't tell the incoming shift he was there and being hidden, it meant they didn't know he was in the room. Health & safety? Pah.

He busied away for a while until he heard a shout of: "Yeeessss!" and some mild applause. Curious, he peaked his head around the printer, until he could see the operators. He was just in time to see one of the operators throw a pack on to a disk drive from a few metres. This was apparently their thing. Seeing who could throw a pack on to the drive from the furthest distance. Not exactly the best way to treat the tech.

He obviously made himself immediately visible and proceeded to challenge the operators. Red faces all around.

After the engineer reported all this to his manager, the customer got a very large back-dated invoice given it was not "normal" wear & tear. The operator team got re-staffed.