I throw phones. I'm Naomi Campbell to walls and floors. And I have to get past it. What is funny is that I always assume the phone will survive. Trying explaining THAT to Verizon.
Pickles
season 6 happy dance GIFGiphy"I was a cashier and was scanning items. Customer was buying a huge jar of pickles that fell on its side as I went to scan it, shattered instantly, and pickle juice immediately leaked deep within the scanner/register guts. It all shut down in a few seconds."
The Drop
"My tablet was sitting on the toilet tank. It slipped from my wet hand. It would have landed on my cushioned toilet seat cover but because of my lightning fast reflexes I spiked it at the edge of the shower and shattered it."
"A lot of the times you drop soft objects that you can kick back up and catch. Other times you take a penalty shot with your phone."
Be Clean
"As a child virtual pets/tamagotchis were all the rage and I loved them dearly. I had a beloved 12 in 1 that let you have a bunch of different pets instead of just 1. Well, the screen was dirty and I wanted to clean it. So, I ran it under tap water for like 5 minutes to make sure it got clean. Low and behold I learned the hard way water and electronics don't mix."
WASHING MY REPLACEMENT!!!
"When I was washing my sheets I had neglected to check to make sure I had my cell phone in my pocket so I accidentally washed it and it was pooched. That wasn't my stupidest time. The stupidest time was WASHING MY REPLACEMENT a couple months later after vowing to check every time. Now If my cell isn't in sight, I don't turn on the machine."
Nailed!!
mom + pop music hammer GIF by HindsGiphy"Sat down on a nail with my phone in my back pocket. Saved my butt, killed the phone."
I'm not alone. Thank God. We really expect a lot of our technology. I know we spent a ton of coin, but machines are only machines. Continue...
How much could a banana cost?
"Moving out of my apartment after graduating college. I'm loading up my car the night before leaving in the morning. My trunk light is out, so I put my phone on the edge of the trunk gate to use its flashlight to help organize everything. Finish up and close the trunk, and crunch. Phone looked like a banana."
- JuRoJa
Flushed
"Back in the smallest phone arms race circa 2005 I was playing Tetris while on the toilet, I pocket the phone before cleaning the scene, but not deep enough. I flushed and pulled up my pants, my phone flew out of my pocket, bullseyed the hole and went down with the last glug from the flush. For context, I was at work so it was one of those industrial flush public toilets."
- gharr87
Stupid Stunts
"As a kid I ran a magnet across my tv. At first I ran it a couple inches away from the screen and the picture would distort a little bit and go back to normal. Got ballsy and just swiped it glass to magnet and my tv just went black."
Oh Mother!
Cbs No GIF by HULUGiphy"Opened my laptop so I can clean it for it to speed up. Ended by damaging the motherboard."
- kiwiwar
Soniced
"I saved my allowance for 4 months until I had enough for the handheld version of Sonic the Hedgehog. Brought it to school on the 1st day and it needed to be reset, which required sticking a ballpoint pen or a safety pin into a tiny hole. We only had pencils, so I thought, "Pencil, pen, same difference." Not for that, it wasn't."
Damn Vodka
Drunk On One GIFGiphy"Microwaved a cell phone to dry it out. Alcohol may or may not have been a factor."
Viral Invasion
"I pirated a game and instead of mounting the image I ran "install.exe" that was packaged with it. All of the viruses. All of them."
"For anyone who has Windows Pro (or Enterprise), you should know about the "Windows Sandbox" feature. It lets you spin up a fresh Windows VM in just a few seconds, and closing the window cleans everything up."
"You can also create configuration files to adjust the memory, add Virtual GPU support, etc."
A Quick Death
"Spilled water on my laptop. I quickly unplugged it, pulled the battery, then opened the chassis and dried it out. 24 hours later I plugged it in and everything worked! Within minutes I spilled another glass of water right on it and it just died immediately."
- Xe1ex
"Dishonor"
"Ruined a $950 prototype circuit board at my job because I was in a rush, and didn't pay attention to which power supply on my bench I had grabbed, and I plugged 120V directly into it. Board immediately blew up, complete with sparks and smoke. I slammed my office door shut, and repeatedly called myself a freaking moron for about 10 minutes."
"Once I calmed down I went and talked to my boss, after a couple days we got another prototype sent out to us, and we proceeded with testing. That board is now framed and hangs on a wall above my computer screen with a note that says "dishonor". Yes, I still work for the same company."
Plop...
Matthew Phone GIFGiphy"Had my phone between my chin and chest while peeing. Looked up to flush...plop."
Crunch!
"Had phone under car hood, near the edge. Worked on car. Closed hood. Crunch! Folded iPhone in half right between the board and battery. Was able to swap into another phone and save it, but original body and screen was folded."
"Lol I used a phone as a flashlight, dropped it, and it landed between the exhaust manifold and the block where I couldn't reach. That phone did not survive. Very hot in there."
The Brick Wall
"This isn't something that happened to me but happened to my brother. so my brother had just got his first phone and he was testing out the case for it... he would throw it up in the air and let it hit the ground, he threw it higher and higher each time. he eventually threw it as high as he could and it didn't break. he then told me to come and see how strong it was... he threw it as hard as it could at a brick wall and... yea..."
So, what happened?
"Well, this was not me but I suffered the consequences: I used to work at an art center, we had all the tech stuff we needed, sound, video, PC's. One day I am at my desk and all of a sudden all the power went down at the same time. Unusual I would say. We had recordings in one of our studio, a group was rehearsing they play that they were developing, and all the electricity failed. So, what happened?"
"The boss' secretary, bored of not doing anything at the moment decided to wash the walls with a hose, and watered the main electric board. So many things got destroyed. The light projectors, two PC's one video projector and all the 3 amplifiers we had in out back stage. Luckily we were ensured against stupidity, otherwise, she would have been even more screwed."
Crash
airijuana GIF by FUBAR AGE OF COMPUTERGiphy"I bought a cheap drone and crashed it into a tree on the very first flight."
There is no motherboard I will touch. I accept my tech limits and clearly so should the rest of us. Be kind to our technology, it's only trying to take over/I mean help!
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Car recalls always get me too. That is nightmare, suspense movie nonsense right there. That has to be a collective huge fear right? You're driving along and then SURPRISE... the brakes give out. And it's the manufacturer's fault. I smell a lawsuit.
Poke Bad
Kiss My Ass Pokemon GIFGiphy"I've a strange fascination with product recalls and I have yet to see anyone mention the Burger King pokeballs that could suffocate young children by getting suction-stuck over the mouth and nose. I think it occurred a bit before my time but is a famous case."
Dotted
"I think Aqua Dots were a kids toy that were covered in some chemical that would cause coma or seizures if swallowed."
- Njabachi
"Was it 1,4 BDO? That's the only chem I know of that metabolizes into GHB, besides GBL. Would be really odd to have that as a coating on a kids toy, I guess I could see it from the manufacturing process though since it is used as an industrial solvent."
Killing the Sick
"Therac 25 radiation therapy machine.
Several cancer patients died of radiation poisoning."
"Yep was about to comment I remembered that name from my ethics in tech class I took freshman year. Was crazy how many times people have lost their lives due to upper management not caring about techs complaints."
Lift Death
"How about the one where the elevators were made to go into the basement when a fault was determined and all human interaction locked out e.g. the elevator could not be moved or opened or anything.
Sounds reasonable, right? You don't want people opening the elevator and maybe letting in a hot rush of fire, or continuing to use the elevator when the building is on fire."
"Well, unless the fault is flooding. In the basement.
Then you're in a coffin, slowly filling up with water, trying furiously to do something, anything to avoid drowning.
And failing."
On the Inside
Jacki Weaver Dancing GIF by PomsGiphy"A friend of mine had his artificial hip recalled. He got hit by a drunk driver and spent a year recovering and learning how to walk again. Then, about six months after he was back to normal he had to start all over again, because the hip was releasing toxic metals into his body and had to be replaced."
I can't imagine a body part recalled. As if the surgery to replace what needed saving wasn't bad enough, now you have to do it again? And you may all ready be poisoned from the first round? Thank God for liquor.
The Pill
Season 8 Nbc GIF by The OfficeGiphy"That Tylenol/cyanide thing was kinda scary because they couldn't fully pinpoint where exactly the tampering had occurred until a bit later into the process."
"At least one (I think maybe even 3?) of the victims ended up being a "copycat" that thought they could get away with it"
"Wiki link which probably corrects almost all of what I've said, haha."
People Share The 'Dirty Secrets' That Their Bosses Don't Want Customers To Know
North American Delivery
"One of the scariest was actually something that wasn't recalled. The Federal Pacific electrical panels are breaker panels that where installed in houses for decades in North America and had a breaker failure rate of around 60%. That means 60% of the breakers they made wouldn't trip at the required currents or at all, causing massive fire hazards. If you have a Federal Pacific panel have it replaced before it burns down the property."
In the Dark
"I don't think it was ever recalled because I think it took place in the early 1900s, but there were clocks that used radioactive paint (it had radium) in order to get it to glow in the dark. A lot of the workers (and who knows how many others) ended up getting really sick due to the continued exposure to the radium."
Faulty Latch
"Infant and child car seats can either be the pinnacle of safety or death traps. You only find out which after the recall."
"The latch keeping my baby sister buckled to her car seat completely unlatched when we got rear ended. Luckily she only suffered a cut on her ear that required stitches. Got a nice little settlement from that. Don't remember the brand, I was probably 6 at the time."
Bad Deploy
episode 12 airbags GIFGiphy"Airbags. I worked with a company that made these. Shrapnel from the exploded airbag would come flying at you while you are in an accident. Gruesome way to add insult to injury."
It's Everywhere!!
"Asbestos had some pretty big implications after they realized the health risks associated. It was used in EVERYTHING. Some places used it and the buildings couldn't be cleaned so they had to be leveled or demolished or left to rot if they couldn't afford it."
Kaboom!
"The exploding Pintos are still the classic case. Especially when the internal memos came to light saying that it would be cheaper to settle a few wrongful death lawsuits than to fix the defective gas tanks. The Ford Pinto was a small cheap automobile produced in the USA from 1971 to 1978."
"Pintos produced in Canada to higher safety standards did not have the same problem, of exploding into flames when hit from behind at speeds as slow as 5 mph.)"
"Twenty-seven people died in Pinto fires and countless others suffered serious burns."
Tragedy
"The 2008 baby formula recall in China. Some company officials tried to boost the protein level of a brand of baby formula by adding melamine. 6 babies died and over 50k were hospitalized. 2 of the perpetrators were executed but it ruined the public's trust in the authorities because they were too lax in their inspections. It was a huge tragic fiasco, just for greed. My wife is Chinese and she would ship baby formula from Canada over there regularly for years as her cousins had kids."
Big Beefs
"British Beef during the BSE crisis. I found out fairly recently I'm not allowed to donate blood outside of the UK because I may have been exposed to contaminated beef as a child."
"There is a very real possibility that I and many others my age will suddenly come down with vCJD (a neurological disease that starts with dementia and usually ends in death) at some point in the future as there is a genetic type that can remain asymptomatic for decades after exposure."
Don't Explore
Send It Top Gear GIF by MotorTrendGiphy"Not sure how many of you would remember, but the tires on old Ford Explorers would randomly explode after a certain number of miles."
"The thing is, because early SUV's had a super high center of gravity, when the tire exploded, the Explorer would immediately flip over. This typically happen at 60+ mph, and those things were not safe to begin with."
"The old new reports are wild."
The Helper
"Thalidomide."
"My mum had a brain tumour and after all other treatment was exhausted (surgery, chemo and radiotherapy) she was given thalidomide. It helped kill off the nerves feeding the tumour. It gave her a few extra months but she died about a year after her original diagnosis."
"There's a picture on the tablet of a pregnant woman with a line through it if I remember correctly. I don't know if they are still using it for treating brain tumours. This was just over ten years ago. Good that something so bad has gone on to actually help people."
Allergens
"Not a single recall, but how frequent recalls are for products containing food allergens. Every time it happens it means that enough people came near to a horrifying death of anaphylaxis in an emergency room that someone noticed and found the source of the allergen-contaminant."
Baby Wheels
"When they recalled my son's stroller but the company didn't bother to contact me even though I filled out the little postcard and mailed it. I only found out after he fell out of it (he wasn't seriously injured, thank God.)."
Save Timmy
fox sports 1 win GIFGiphy"Lawn darts. Out with the family trying to play a game have a good time next thing you know little Timmy is impaled."
Truth Sucks
"The Dalkon Shield. It wasn't even recalled, which is the scary part. It was an IUD introduced in the early 70s that was ineffective as hell, and caused many deaths and permanent health problems. The makers knew almost immediately that it had these issues, and fought it in court once they were revealed and over 250,000 people were suing them. The cases led to an overall distrust in IUDs in the US, and that industry still hasn't recovered."
"ETA: they tried to make long term plan once they knew they were ineffective by selling them to the US government to distribute in Third World nations for "population control", which is a whole nother level of messed up. The "Behind the B**tards" podcast just did an episode about it."
At this point I wouldn't be surprised if the air was recalled. It basically has been already. We are all really just surviving on a wing and a prayer. I'm gonna go grab some vodka and lettuce.