Our school’s MFL (Modern Foreign Languages) department has signed up to [Website], which has lots of puzzles and vocabulary testing. [Website] is not particularly well made, and soon, people are finding bugs.

[Classmate #1] finishes a test and clicks “Submit.” The website buffers, and [Classmate #1] clicks repeatedly, at speed.

Website: “You have gained 1,000 out of 100 points on this test!”

This, of course, is shared loudly and excitedly with other students. For that entire lesson, nobody does any work, and instead, everyone utilises the easiest game on the website to gain hundreds of points in seconds.

My friend meanwhile does Computer Science for A-Level. Having recently completed a unit about websites and security, he decides to take a look at the code behind the website. He identifies how, at the end of the puzzle, the authentication key stops changing, letting the website send the points several times. He also identifies the exact request being sent to the website’s database, and writes a line in cURL, which sends a request to the website.

Website: “You now have 1,000 more points than before!”

My friend now sets up a while: True loop repeating the request. (A while loop repeats something while a condition is true, and True is always true, so it does it infinitely.) It runs overnight.

Teacher: “Wow, everyone, I’m impressed! You’ve all clearly done lots of homework; the school has over a million points!”

This would have taken rather longer than we had, but several other schools have several million points. Therefore, my friend declares his intention to reach a BILLION points!

Me: “I don’t think that’s wise. Ms. [Teacher] will notice your absurd score.”

Friend #1: “It’s fine. Everyone else has really high scores from that previous glitch. Besides, the scores reset every month [in about a week].”

Me: “Still, you might get in trouble with the [Website] technicians.”

Friend #1: “The whole website is bad; they probably don’t have much to do. And it isn’t as if I will hurt the server; they will have [technical stuff] in place to stop my requests from overloading the server.”

The program runs fine overnight, but the next day he is disappointed that he “only” earned several million points. Trusting in [Website]’s ability to withstand his onslaught, despite the fact that it has up until this point been coded mostly with Swiss cheese, he sets up a loop that will open his program in new windows. Within a few seconds, he has several thousand windows open and his program almost overloads his own computer, though he stops his program pretty quickly.

Friend #1: *Via text* “I’ve just DOSed [Website]. The police will come to my house now.”

Spoiler: they don’t.

After confirming that I am unable to do my own homework on the website:

Me: “I warned you about loops, bro. I told you about loops.”

However, about half an hour later, the server is back up again, and [Friend]’s own Wi-Fi is immediately destroyed by the server, which sends a reply to every packet [Friend] sent to it. In the meantime, however, he has shared the original loop, which did not crash the program, with a friend of ours with a better connection. It is at this point that a technician notices. Encoded in the replies to the packets the program sends is this message:

Technician: “Oi, matey, I see you. Stop that.”

The technician changes the authentication key which is being used by the program [Friend #1] wrote. Of course, [Friend #2] now knows what to look for and manages to get it running again.

The next morning, [Friend #1] and [Friend #2] find that the entire school has zero points on the accounts. During a lesson that day:

Teacher: “I’ve just received an email from [Website]. It says that several students have been messing with [Website] and that the school’s score has been reset to zero! It also says that [Friend #1] and [Friend #2] are clearly very clever and that they would like to talk to them?!”

[Website] corresponded with the school and my friends for a while; they seemed more impressed than annoyed. They managed to fix many of the bugs, and eventually, [Friend #1] was offered work experience with [Website]!

I have a three-year-old daughter who is obsessed with “Moana,” specifically the song “You’re Welcome.” At any given moment she is likely to be belting it out. Unfortunately, she has also picked up a line from the film where Maui says, “What can I say except, ‘You’re dead soon.’”

After an uneventful shop, punctuated by out-of-tune verses from “Moana,” we are being checked out by an older woman who is trying to get my daughter to talk to her.

She hands a chocolate to my daughter.

Cashier: “And what do we say now?”

Without missing a beat, my daughter takes the treat and says:

Daughter: “You’re dead soon!” 

The cashier looked terrified and mortified, and I prayed for the ground to swallow me! Thankfully, the cashier saw the funny side, and now when we see her, she waves and says, “I’m still here!”

Parent and child spaces are vital; baby seats just cannot fit through the gap in a normal space. Even with older children, having a safe space for them to stand getting out of the car, reducing that risk of being hit by a parking car, makes so much sense.

I’m pulling into an outlet store car park. We drive down one of the car park aisles when a work van going the wrong way cuts us up and takes the last parent and child space. He gets out of the van alone, sees us, laughs, and flips us off. A real piece of work.

We drive around the car park and find a space on the far end. As we walk toward the store and pass the van, I get an idea. I take the baby back to the car and send my wife into the store ahead. I join her a few minutes later and we walk back to the car together.

Wife: “Oh, did the guy with the van drive off? He was in this spot before, wasn’t he?”

Me: “Yeah, he rushed off shortly after I got back to the car.”

Wife: “Hmm, how did you manage that?”

Me: “I don’t know what you mean. He probably had some urgent job on the other side of the city.”

Wife: “You didn’t?!”

Me: “Hey, if some elderly person calls you up and asks you to put ‘winter roof tiles’ on your house and you take advantage of them, you deserve it.”

Wife: “He is going to be annoyed at you.”

Me: “Yeah, especially when he gets there and realises there isn’t a house with that number on it.”

I got a lot of angry voicemails after that, but I blocked his number. It was childish, but maybe the lesson here is not to park like an idiot in your company van, especially when you have your work phone number on the side.

A customer has come in and asked for a gluten-free option that isn’t offered on the menu. Luckily for the customer, a private party came in yesterday and preordered all kinds of gluten-free variants of our menu and we have stock left over. The manager lamented that the stock would go to waste if it wasn’t used soon.

Because of this, I know that I can offer my coeliac customer more gluten-free options than usual (as a one-off) but I just have to check with the kitchen to confirm what stock they have leftover.

This story takes place just as service is opening and the kitchen does not have any orders yet. 

Me: “Hi, [Chef]. Do we have any stock left of the gluten-free options from last night’s private party? We have someone with a severe allergy and I wanted to check for her.”

Chef: “Oh. Well. Yes. But you have to be very clear that this was because we preordered for a private party. We don’t normally have all these options unless someone preorders.”

Me: “Got it. I did let her know that was the case, but if you could let me know what options I can offer, that would be great.”

Chef: “You have to let her know that we don’t usually do this. Tell her that she has to preorder for next time.”

Me: “I did mention that to her. Now, we usually offer the gluten-free fish and chips, but do we have any of the gluten-free pies left from yesterday?”

Chef: *Raises voice* “Listen to me. F***** listen to me. She has to preorder next time.”

Me: “Yes. [Chef]. I understand. I do. But she doesn’t have to preorder this time, and I would like to know what gluten-free options I can offer my customer.”

Chef: “You aren’t listening to me.”

Me: “Okay, [Chef]. I’m listening.”

Chef: “This is a one-off. Tell the customer that this is a one-off and that we don’t usually offer gluten-free versions of [Dish #1] and [Dish #2]. She has to preorder if she wants these things.”

Me: “Yes. I understand. She has to preorder next time. But [Manager] mentioned that we were going to throw away a large amount of food unless the gluten-free overstock was cleared. Can you please tell me what gluten-free options we have leftover from the party, so I know what to offer her right now?”

Chef: “For f***’s sake!”

He threw down his hat and stormed away. Confused, I left the kitchen and found the restaurant manager, who was able to confirm which dishes that I could offer. It turned out to be nearly all of them, which led to one happy customer.

Even though it had a happy ending, this interaction is one of the many reasons that I no longer work at that establishment.

My office is very strict about getting personal items delivered to the office. I think there was some theft or something in the past and issues with insurance etc. Whatever the reason, it is made clear that it doesn’t happen unless you have the permission of the senior director, a man who is never here and is a very stern person.

I normally never work on reception, but today I’m covering the receptionist who had to be sent home sick. A courier drops off a load of parcels and I email each owner in turn to let them know. I get to a name I don’t recognise, so I head to the office, but they don’t know either. They send me to Human Resources, and the HR director says they will keep the package safe.

I get back to the desk and find a guy standing there.

Me: “Can I help you?”

Guy: “Where’s [Receptionist]?”

Me: “She’s out sick. Can I help?”

Guy: “No! Well… it’s just, I saw the courier and wondered if there was a parcel for me?”

Me: “What’s your name?”

He gives me his name and yes, it is the one on the mystery parcel.

Me: “Because I didn’t have your name on the approved delivery list, I had to place it upstairs for safekeeping.”

That’s a lie, but I guess that this isn’t a business-related delivery and he is going to act out if he finds out I am the one that got him into trouble.

Guy: “S***, where is it?”

Me: “Upstairs. You can ask [HR Manager] for it.”

He thought about it for a while and then went upstairs. I went on my lunch and didn’t think any more about it.

Weeks later, I heard that there is a vacancy for a new receptionist. Apparently, the guy was running some sort of bootlegger operation using the company mail, and the receptionist was being paid to look the other way. They were both fired, and I’m not sure how they thought anything else would happen.