Bernie deployed the code to one guinea-pig store, and tested it there. It worked. Sigh of relief. "Intending to deploy to the wider network the next day*," Bernie went home.

"The next day*," Bernie found unhappy faces all around. Red flags were popping up all over the system since the prior night's update, and questions were being asked: What did you update? Did you test the code? Was it compiled correctly?

Am I missing something obvious? It happens.

Presumably they knew that the guinea-pig store had been given the update.

I'm guessing the red flags were mostly "this entire store dropped off the system" and second-order impacts from that (batches failing instead of skipping the store, maybe).

They took one look and figured he'd Bernied the store the ground...

It doesn't really matter.

As we all know, as soon as you've touched a piece of code, whatever happens next is your fault.

> the guinea-pig store to which Bernie had deployed the code burned to the ground last night

But what happened to all the guinea pigs?

"We have a one-day special on fried guinea pigs"

This reminded me of "School's Out" - a type-in adventure game for the 48k ZX Spectrum.

One of the objects was a guinea pig, which you have to feed beer in order for it to get drunk and stagger into a laser beam... and you'd have a hole in the wall and a fried guinea pig.

Very popular - and from recent observation, not inexpensive - in Cusco and other Peruvian tourist centres.

It's a delicacy all around Peru, not just in tourist traps

And where is the playmobil incident picture? Surely playmobil have guinea pig figures?

Might be Budgens in Holt (Norfolk) a couple years ago - electrical fire in the roof burned the place to the ground (no flare gun required :P) .

"burned the place to the ground"

Thanks, now I have that stuck in my head :)

Might be Budgens in Holt (Norfolk) a couple years ago - electrical fire in the roof

Nah, they haven't got "that electrickery" in Norfolk yet...

I worked on cheque processors years ago and one of the machines had a device fitted that, if given the wrong value in its command string, would engage all it's solenoids and bust into flames.

It never happened with released code but did a couple of times with beta.

I never really found out why it was beyond the abilities of the writers of the controlware to screen out these problematic commands.

"if given the wrong value in its command string, would engage all it's solenoids and bust into flames."

Bring me the heads of all those who signed off on the clearly deficient hardware. No platter necessary, just the heads.

> I never really found out why it was beyond the abilities of the writers of the controlware to screen out these problematic commands.

Yeah, they should have chequed for this...

In various spheres of endeavor I've come across the logic:

"You did something, therefore your thing caused this completely unrelated problem"

My girlfriend particularly is good at these kinds of leaps.

The existence of the Latin phrase "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc" -- "after it, so because of it" -- would suggest that the tendency to blame people for any problem with anything they were the last to touch goes back at least to ancient Roman times.

I've had that kind of situation before, as a developer in a professional setting. Also working for a well-known shop chain, as it happens.

I'd updated one bit of code. Maybe five minutes later, something apparently unrelated fell over. My supervisor told me to go take a look at my code and find out how it had caused the issue. To start with, I agreed. It is a reasonable inference to make off the cuff.

An hour later, I reported back and said that I couldn't find any link. I was told to go back and look again.

A further hour later, I reported back with the same. Once more I was told to go back and continue looking, as my supervisor didn't believe in co-incidences. I pushed back, saying that if there was a link I can't find it, someone with better knowledge of the system needs to take a look.

He took a look. My change hadn't caused the issue - someone else had uploaded a change at the same time and had been keeping their head down the entire morning. Fair play to my supervisor, he did apologise.

We once had a vendor come out to upgrade the OS on an instrument controller PC, the hard disc chose that moment to die and the technician got full blame from the scientists...

I ended up going over there, explaining that it was bad luck[0] and digging out a spare disc which meant he survived the day...

[0] Of course the disc wouldn't have had much longer to live and OS upgrades are IO heavy

If you think its bad now, just wait until you get married.

You'll get blamed for doing something/not doing something before a problem even occurs. Sometimes weeks/months/years later.

The "I told you so" effect.

But a building burning down, never.

I suppose the upside of a deploying a bad update that burns down a building is that all the evidence that can prove it was your fault goes up in flames along with the building!

Are we on a time loop? I'm sure I've seen this story here before .....

Recycling comments?

I think the Regoniser did rather well with Bernie, a pint for Mr Powell -->