Sheesh.. I waddled into that one! :)

Dosser,

I would assume you are a woman. I have had similar experiences with women clients. Like ones that invite me out for drinks, or over to their place after I get off work. I must admit a few times I have taken them up on the free drinks. I mean how often does a guy get to be taken out by a girl? For me, not very often.

The worst part of all of this, is that 90% of them were married. People are people is all I can say I guess. Its our nature to not have good (or balanced) morals.

However, you should not take that crap at your work. If you were actually one of my female friends and I knew about it; I would put a stop to it.

Woo-Hoo... what a great thread!

So here's mine:
Some years ago I took over a busy print & repro studio. Three days in & the Quadra server suddenly stops working. It's the gateway to the RIP, therefore absolutely all work grinds to a halt. Power supply is ok, but the box doesn't even chime. Panicking, I try to call the previous manager but guess what - he's on holiday in Ireland. I call assorted Mac shops but it's obviously not an easy prob to fix, they're talking DAYS to sort it out. So now I'm tearing out big clumps of hair. Next day, I manage to get the previous manager's mobile number.

Me: Really sorry to bother you but the server's stopped working - any ideas?
Old Manager: oh, yeah, this used to happen quite often.
Me: sowhatcanIdo????
Old Manager: get a ruler, and measure six inches down from the left hand side of the case.
Me: ok....
Old Manager: now measure eight inches down from the top.
Me: ok....
Old Manager: where those lines cross
Me: YES?
Old Manager: give it a HUGE thump with your fist.
Me: Really?
Old Manager: yep.
BANG.

Quadra chimes and boots.

Self "Repair"
 

While this thread (really great) has focused on the idiocy of others, I thought I'd admit that I had met the enemy when it was me.

The scene: check e-mail on B&W G4 late one evening. Put full glass of beer on table next to me and next to an XP laptop, fortunately not running.
1. Wireless phone rings. I fumble handset and drop it in beer glass, which tips over on ThinkPad with lid up.
2. Snatching the cables from the back of the ThinkPad, I flip it over face down on the carpet so the beer won't run in. Same with Vtech phone.
3. I remove all removable back panels from ThinkPad, pull out battery, WiFi card, etc., clean out beer, and figure I can get the last of the beer out from under the keys with a shop vac.
4. Shop vac successfully removes last of beer but also removes at least ten key covers and deposits them in large quantity of sawdust in shop vac.
5. One hour later, I have found all the key caps and the little scissor mechanisms that go with them.
6. Three hours later, I have replaced all but one. With all others there was an edge free - I can't figure out how to get the last one in. To hell with it.

I am now the proud owner of a ThinkPad missing one key, and no one to blame (or laugh at) but myself. Still, not quite as bad as the time I knocked a running Tektronix portable oscilloscope off the deck of a boat into 25 feet of salt water (and later got it working again).

Hahaha thats a good one. I once saw an ibook that had cough syrup spilled all over the keyboard, that was gross.

Salt water ain't great either. The 'scope I mentioned was on and when it landed in the harbor it blew out the power supply. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I took the covers off the case and put the whole scope in a bathtub full of water for two days. Changed the water a couple of times, let it dry for a week, replaced the power supply chips and one filter cap, and voila: it worked! Of course to do that to a whole laptop you'd have to remove all the drives first, and maybe the screen too - they breathe. On some though, the keyboard is actually fairly easy to get off.

We used to get soft drinks out of sticky student lab keyboards by soaking them in water for a day or so then drying them in a low-humidity machine room for a couple more. Worked every time.