I worked with Paul from 1996 to 2002 and we got on straight away : despite being at opposite ends of the political spectrum, we both had a similar outlook on life, always looking for something humorous, and were both committed to straight-talking and honesty : in fact, it was nice for me to work with someone else who also spoke his mind whatever the consequences, meaning it was not only me getting the tellings-off! His affection for the wrong football team couldn't be helped ...
So, apologies for repeating a story first published in Computer Weekly about 15 years ago, but this remains the funniest thing that I have ever borne witness to!
Paul and I were working for an I.T. company called Integris, in Ipswich, and every Friday we liked to take a long lunch, from around mid-day till 2 pm, and have 'a swift half' at one of the nearby hostelries.
In our office we each had a PC on the desk, and, in addition to email, we could all communicate with each other by sending a pop-up message that would appear on the recipient's screen with a 'ping' : normally this was a 1 to 1 message, but it was possible to send the message to more than 1 person by selecting multiple names from a list.
On this particular day, it was approaching 12:00 and Paul, who was sitting at the group of desks behind mine where I could not see him, had already asked if I was ready for the pub : inexplicably, I was actually busy trying to finish a particular piece of work, and told him I'd be a few more minutes. 12 noon came and went and around 12:05 I heard a 'ping' at the computer on the desk next to mine : I glanced over and noticed a message had appeared from Paul ; I just had time to think "why would he send that to the person next to me?" when the whole office was swamped by the sound of messages ping-ing onto everyone else's screen.I turned round to look at Paul just as a ghastly expression of realisation came over his face : he'd intended to send me a message, but had somehow managed to send the message to everyone EXCEPT me! This would have been >100 staff, including people he didn't know in other sections, and our boss, and his boss, and his boss! And the message ? "Hurry up you bastard!".
Well ... myself and Paul and a couple of others immediately left the room and headed for the pub, with all eyes on Paul! As we walked down the road, there was a contrast in attitudes : Paul was in despair over what he had done and was convinced he would be sacked ; whereas I couldn't stop laughing (in fact I'm giggling again now as I think of it) : we came back early(ish) from the pub with Paul having decided he had to 'face the music' immediately, which he did.
The outcome? All was well, with Paul suffering just a minor rap of the knuckles and told to be more careful with the tone of his Instant Messages from that point on!
As I say, the funniest experience I ever had at work, or anywhere else (but maybe not so funny for Paul ...)
Paul : I already miss you - we hadn't finished !
Dale Rumbold, Ipswich.
15th July 2015