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Times you accidentally destroyed valuable crap

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me and my cousin were moving his parents marble coffee table and we picked it up and the top just slid off and split in half. I didn't know that shit wasn't connected together.
 
Hang on one sec.

Just to be clear... destroyed, not damaged right? Even badly damaged but repairable. It sounds like there is a fair amount of 'damaged items' posts and less about full on destruction.

I'd MUCH rather talk about damage I've done to expensive items - but as for destroying, it is totaling an S-10 Blazer the 4th day I had my liscence goes a long way. The reason? An angry hornet on my neck. I just didn't know what to do, and it was crawling down my shirt. I hit a telephone pole. TOTALLED. Day 4. I know those things are junky now, but in 91 or so, they were bad-ass! Early entries into the SUV just for kicks trend (though we did use it as intended and towed a tournament ski boat around to competitions with it... well we did till I smashed it up banged it up.

Afraid of bees, hornets, wasps or not, dealing with them in a closed truck while they are angry, it's just a rotten mix.
 
I drove my grandpa's car through the garage wall when I was six. We were leaving to get my hair trimmed, and he had gotten out to put the trash cans back into the garage when I slid over into the driver's seat and started fucking around. Luckily the garage wasn't connected to the house so there was no extensive damage, and the car was shockingly alright, all things considered. I got beat pretty good by my mom and dad later, but my grandpa and I were still cool, which was the only thing I was really worried about.
 
I destroyed a really expensive prop boat when my best Viper pilot committed suicide by flying her ship into an atmospheric storm.
 
My dad's pc. There was a weird switch on the back that I though would make the pc go faster (needless to say I was young), it did not go faster, instead it went kaboom.
 
I can't really remember exactly what it was, but I knocked over some sort of rock or stone at a museum.

Yes, it broke too. It was flat.

edit: now that I think about it, it wasn't completely my fault, two others were involved >_>
 
CF_Fighter said:
I destroyed a really expensive prop boat when my best Viper pilot committed suicide by flying her ship into an atmospheric storm.

i really think this is, but really hope its not some shitty game reference


i thankfully havent destroyed much shit. wasted thousands on useless education, but thats about it. destroyed a bunch of 80-100$ bicycle rims but thats part of the adventure
 
I took a friend to his brother's house where he OD'd on some fucking awful prescription drug he got there, after being warned not to. I hate myself.

i'm very drunk
 
I accidentally drank a 2500 euro bottle of red wine from my dad.
Even worse: I made Calimocho(red wine mixed with coke) out of it for me and my friends.

It tasted so horrible that I poured the rest of the bottle(half full) into the toilet.
 
A guy at work was supposed to cut a piece of tape to a certain length in order to splice some stuff together but "forgot" to cut the end off at the dispenser which caused almost $500,000 worth of down time.
 
The worst I've done as a kid was to tip my parents' Bang & Olufsen TV worth around 4000€. :) It was totalled, and I could almost smell the rage emanating from my dad, like burnt coal.
 
iamaustrian said:
I accidentally drank a 2500 euro bottle of red wine from my dad.
Even worse: I made Calimocho(red wine mixed with coke) out of it for me and my friends.

It tasted so horrible that I poured the rest of the bottle(half full) into the toilet.

haha.
 
Javaman said:
A guy at work was supposed to cut a piece of tape to a certain length in order to splice some stuff together but "forgot" to cut the end off at the dispenser which caused almost $500,000 worth of down time.

Oh man,I got a ton of work stuff. So many dropped pallets, broken merchandise.
 
I onced poked a large hole in the high frequency driver of a very VERY expensive B&W speaker in some store.

:( was and accident
 
Javaman said:
A guy at work was supposed to cut a piece of tape to a certain length in order to splice some stuff together but "forgot" to cut the end off at the dispenser which caused almost $500,000 worth of down time.

this is interesting, how did that happen? seems excessive, why all the downtime
 
Ramped my buddy's motorcycle into the side of an H.H. Gregg.

Don't drive a motorcycle for the first time when you're drunk. Shit hurts.
 
This isn't so much as something that was monetarily valuable but more emotionally and as I got older I realized just why my mother was soooooo pissed: as a kid, I accidentally recorded a few episodes of The Simpsons over some home videos on VHS ):
 
mcrae said:
this is interesting, how did that happen? seems excessive, why all the downtime

It took half a day to rethread everything and clean up the mess. Not surprisingly, he's no longer employed there.
 
Javaman said:
It took half a day to rethread everything and clean up the mess. Not surprisingly, he's no longer employed there.

would you mind explaining more? all i can picture is a 500x size roll of scotch tape, and dont understand why not cutting it once measured for length could break the machine. did he not push the stop button on the tape producing machine? what happened
 
Amir0x said:
Welp I don't think the comic was near mint - probably like 7.5 on CGC scale or some shit - but I know a few years back a near-mint version of it sold for over $150,000.

Edit: Scratch that, $210,000


Jesus Christ, that is blood feud type shit right there. You have my sympathies.
 
Data. Just the other day, too.

By protocol a computer had to be wiped due to multiple malware infections. I have no idea what she did, but all the tools clean it up, I'd make sure her software like Flash etc was up to date in case there was a security hole exploit in her current version (which I see happen a good bit). Within two weeks she would get something new. So, backup time came before the wipe. I went through her whole profile folder and got all of that. She also had one folder in the root of C: that had a decent bit of data. When I restored everything, it was looking good, but then she was looking for this one folder that wasn't there. At first she said I didn't get all the My Documents stuff, which I certainly did (kind of hard to miss that). Then she really didn't seem to know where the folder was, but then said she thinks it was somewhere in the C drive. I pointed her toward that one data folder I'd copied, but no that wasn't the one she wanted. So, some phantom folder somewhere, probably a subfolder of some other folder on the C drive (likely a system folder as the folder she mentioned was not there), is missing. She kept zero backups (nothing on a server, no local backups, either) which they are supposed to do. Now I'm running all sorts of tools trying to get these documents back. I haven't lost anyone's data in like three years, and before then there was no issue. I think to be safe in the future I'm just going to make a complete disk image of every single machine that is to be wiped and retain it for a while after the work is done...
 
mcrae said:
would you mind explaining more? all i can picture is a 500x size roll of scotch tape, and dont understand why not cutting it once measured for length could break the machine. did he not push the stop button on the tape producing machine? what happened


Sure. People in that department splice rolls of stuff together every once in a while to keep a constant flow of material running through the production line. One person has to pull a piece of tape across a drum, cut it, position it just right on the drum and get any wrinkles out before the machine automatically splices to the next roll of material. The footage after the fact showed him looking at the tape several times for wrinkles but he somehow he never noticed that he didn't even cut the tape to size (still connected to the dispenser). Once the machine tried to do the splice the tape wrapped all around the drum and material ripped itself to shreds.
 
Javaman said:
Sure. People in that department splice rolls of stuff together every once in a while to keep a constant flow of material running through the production line. One person has to pull a piece of tape across a drum, cut it, position it just right on the drum and get any wrinkles out before the machine automatically splices to the next roll of material. The footage after the fact showed him looking at the tape several times for wrinkles but he somehow he never noticed that he didn't even cut the tape to size (still connected to the dispenser). Once the machine tried to do the splice the tape wrapped all around the drum and material ripped itself to shreds.

ahhhhhhhhhhhh i get it now. thats one shitty mistake lol, thx for the explanation.
 
I once broke a 5.000 dollar vase I got from my grandpa's inheritance.

Last year I dropped my 600 dollar mobile phone in a bucket of puke, wich was standing next to my bed when I was sick. Phone was broken and forgot to insure it. Crap.

3 months ago I had a little accident with my employers car ( a 218.000 dollar mercedes )and the cost to fix it was over 10.000 dollar, luckily he was insured and he didn't seem to care much about it. Rich bastard ! :)
 
I was in a friend's house and we were playing fifa and everything was cool.
then one of my other friends grabs the owner's dr.dre beats headphone. the $200 ones
im like cool and wanted to try it out.
so i put it on, listen and when I wanted to take it off and out of nowhere it snapped in two.
I was fuking angry and so was him.
I brought him a new one and asked him to give me the ones i broke.
i still have them and they work...

every time i see them, it will remind me to not touch expensive shit that's not mine.
 
-x.Red.x- said:
I was in a friend's house and we were playing fifa and everything was cool.
then one of my other friends grabs the owner's dr.dre beats headphone. the $200 ones
im like cool and wanted to try it out.
so i put it on, listen and when I wanted to take it off and out of nowhere it snapped in two.
I was fuking angry and so was him.
I brought him a new one and asked him to give me the ones i broke.
i still have them and they work...

every time i see them, it will remind me to not touch expensive shit that's not mine.

at least now you can get some good headphones
 
Shattered my iPhone screen once. I'm normally pretty good with preventing shit like that from happening.

I've also watched a needle skip endlessly along a record at times. Nothing will frighten you more than that sight and sound.
 
I just want to say. Go and backup you computer/netbook/laptop NOW. And if your can. Backup you backup. What are you waiting for. Go do it NOW.

/so many bitter tears through the years by myself and my family/friends :(

Oh and totalled my girlfriends brothers car. 'twas only in it 5 minutes. Don't drink and drive folks...
 
When I was 8 in 2000 I went to Wal-Mart. I had been saving up money for YEARS and almost had enough for the thing I wanted (I think it might have been a Dreamcast? Maybe an Xbox, if that had been announced yet). Left my wallet at the Wal-Mart... I was devestated for so long. I had saved up over 100 dollars. Do you know how much money that is at age 8? Needless to say I was stuck playing my N64 until like 2002 when my parents bought me an Xbox and Halo for Christmas.

I have never really destroyed anything. I always lose shit though. Most of the time I get it back...
 
When I was a kid my mom left me in the car with the engine running while she went in some store/building I forget as I was very young. I somehow kicked the parking break off and the car rolled backward down a hill into a tree. I was at least okay, but the back window got smashed. ~____~

Ruined two video cameras in two years of each other. The first I dropped off a boat while whale watching. I got too excited and pointed at a whale to one of my friends and the camera flew out of my hand into the water. ~___~

The second I was in Spain videotaping stuff at Park GĂĽell and was at the top of entrance when I tripped over myself and threw the camera down the stairs...

Parcguell.jpg


Watching it roll down the stairs was pretty magnificent as pieces came flying off in every direction. If I had had another camera on me I would have filmed it. ~____~

In college I fell for an online 'prank'. I was pretty new to the whole internet thing and I found this audio file about finding hidden games on your computer. Super dumb I know but I started listening to it and then following the instructions. I am not sure what happened, but I think I probably deleted the C drive or something. I was not very knowledgeable when it came to computers back then either. ~_____~

My next computer was a laptop that I was stupid enough to bring to a pool party. I was all; 'Hey we can watch some movies while we splash in the pool - fun times!' I set it up and ended up tripping over the power cord on my way into the pool. I fell in and drug the laptop with me. ~________~

Couple winters ago when the snow was a few feet high, I was trying to open the back door to my house to get out and shovel. The screen door was blocked with snow so I started pushing on it, but it was stuck. So I give it some brute force and ended up busting through the glass on the screen door, ripping bits of metal off of it; popping out some screws and half tore the door off the hinges. ~_____~

Was invited once to my friend's then boyfriend's parents house for some bbq one time. I went inside the house and sat down on this old sofa. Turned out it was some kind of vintage sofa and was not very stable and it ended up collapsing. In my defense who leaves a sofa like that out in the middle of their living room and expect people NOT to sit on it? At least leave a sign or rope it off. ~____~
 
thesoapster said:
Data. Just the other day, too.

By protocol a computer had to be wiped due to multiple malware infections. I have no idea what she did, but all the tools clean it up, I'd make sure her software like Flash etc was up to date in case there was a security hole exploit in her current version (which I see happen a good bit). Within two weeks she would get something new. So, backup time came before the wipe. I went through her whole profile folder and got all of that. She also had one folder in the root of C: that had a decent bit of data. When I restored everything, it was looking good, but then she was looking for this one folder that wasn't there. At first she said I didn't get all the My Documents stuff, which I certainly did (kind of hard to miss that). Then she really didn't seem to know where the folder was, but then said she thinks it was somewhere in the C drive. I pointed her toward that one data folder I'd copied, but no that wasn't the one she wanted. So, some phantom folder somewhere, probably a subfolder of some other folder on the C drive (likely a system folder as the folder she mentioned was not there), is missing. She kept zero backups (nothing on a server, no local backups, either) which they are supposed to do. Now I'm running all sorts of tools trying to get these documents back. I haven't lost anyone's data in like three years, and before then there was no issue. I think to be safe in the future I'm just going to make a complete disk image of every single machine that is to be wiped and retain it for a while after the work is done...
Been there. More than once. If you've got important stuff stored in an odd location you want backed up when I fix your computer, TELL ME. I try my best, but I don't always find it all.

(Or even better: Perform a backup yourself for once in your pitiful life. Especially if you're prone to getting malware.)

Now I just do a full backup before fixing a computer. It takes a few times longer, but I don't have to feel the horrible guilt of "Do you know what happened to my photos?"


Also, I once destroyed a TV with a single touch of my finger. The static shock just killed it, with quite a sound too.
 
I was into electronic appliances and mp3/mp4 players a few years ago so i bought a really swanky and expensive mp4 player which had a standard warranty of a year. After about 6 months it stopped working suddenly so i took it into the store and they said i could have a replacement. Now i should say that this was an Archos system and Archos tend to update their systems very very frequently, a few times a year and after they do they tend to cease all production of their prior devices. The cashier told me that they couldnt do a like for like replacement because they didnt stock, nor could order, a similar device so he gave me their new device, which was the same price as the original was when i bought it, so in effect i just got a better device. After a while i didnt like the current device, and since it was so easy to take back and they didnt ask me any questions (just asked for receipt) i put the device in water, completely totalled it, left it to dry and took it back, same thing happened, got an upgraded system.

I did this 6 more times over the space of a few years before i moved

Id say id detroyed around ÂŁ1500 worth of devices but never paid a dime (except the price of the very first)
 
Mr Cola said:
I was into electronic appliances and mp3/mp4 players a few years ago so i bought a really swanky and expensive mp4 player which had a standard warranty of a year. After about 6 months it stopped working suddenly so i took it into the store and they said i could have a replacement. Now i should say that this was an Archos system and Archos tend to update their systems very very frequently, a few times a year and after they do they tend to cease all production of their prior devices. The cashier told me that they couldnt do a like for like replacement because they didnt stock, nor could order, a similar device so he gave me their new device, which was the same price as the original was when i bought it, so in effect i just got a better device. After a while i didnt like the current device, and since it was so easy to take back and they didnt ask me any questions (just asked for receipt) i put the device in water, completely totalled it, left it to dry and took it back, same thing happened, got an upgraded system.

I did this 6 more times over the space of a few years before i moved

Id say id detroyed around ÂŁ1500 worth of devices but never paid a dime (except the price of the very first)

I'm not sure you know what accidentally means.
 
Bricked my PSP a few years back when i was trying to install a theme , i deleted the entire flash0 folder then replaced it with the flash0 folder with the theme.

Turned on the psp and then blank screen.

So i checked my funds , went on amazon and bought a new one (Didnt know the one click order thing was on) ended up clicking on buying two psps.

went through a fuck load of shit trying to sell that extra one on amazon (having to make a sellers acount ect, set my bank card to accept money)

all that trouble trying to install a basic gears of war psp theme.
 
DonMigs85 said:
Back in the early 90's I accidentally plugged my aunt's expensive treadmill into the wrong voltage and blew a fuse or something. That thing cost as much as a small car.

A fuse is there to protect the circuitry. It's a 5c part that's easy to replace. Don't tell me you threw it out??

It always amazes me that people throw out high-end audio products (speakers, headphones, MP3-players) when the in/output acts strange (the typical problem of sound crackling or hearing sound through the left or right channel only). It's nothing more than a loose contact you can solve by resoldering it (takes 5 minutes max).

Also, insurance covers more than most people think.
 
mcrae said:
i really think this is, but really hope its not some shitty game reference

The viper pilot is fictional, but the destruction was real: In a moment of improvisation in a Battlestar Galactica episode Edward James Olmos smashed a model ship on his desk. He didn't know it was actually a museum quality piece on loan, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Fortunately it was insured.
 
During the summer I worked at a moving company, worst thing I broke was a microwave but I saw other people fuck up big time.

When the furniture comes to a warehouse, they are put in these big wooden crates then stacked three high, each box being around eight to ten feet tall. We had a new manager one summer who started using the forklift a lot more, I think he ended up knocking over three crates throughout the summer. When those things hit the floor it's crazy loud and the box just collapses with the furniture inside. I remember picking up the broken box once and there were atleast 3 flat screen tv boxes and a shitload of dishpacks inside of it, which normally have glassware and whatnot inside of them.

Saw a bunch of truck drivers carelessy drive around. Some tractor trailer guy from another company was backing up and hit the front of some guy's new ram truck. Parked the tractor trailer like nothing happened, we had to go over to him and tell him the news. Heard stories of people tipping local trucks with furniture inside of it. When I was there someone drove a truck into a gas station roof thing over the gas pumps, guess there wasn't enough room.

Moving companies can really get boned on claims if dumbasses work there, people were dropping like flies by the end of the summer.
 
I once had this summer contract job to paint murals for my friend's rich brother's kids room.

The job took me almost two weeks, It was a huge room and they wanted cool "Tree and birds, and white picket fence " theme all over the walls...They used to go to work all day and I used to just sit there and paint... of course I like to paint while listening to music, I used to bring my Discman with me (that's right, the portable CD player by Sony, that Discman) and have my headphones on all day while I paint...

about a week into this project, I got sick and tired of listening to music through my headphones, it started to bother me while I was painting...( I wanted to move around more "freely")

No one's home, so I said fuck it!...The guy (my friend's bro) was filthy rich, He had an amazing entertainment center in the living room, So I took my "Mural Painting Custom Mix" CD and popped it in in his home entertainment.. I cranked up the volume ( So I could hear it in the bedroom while I painted) cranked up the bass (I was way into electronic and dance music at the time) ...about 7-8 minutes into painting the mural...I heard a loud crash and sound of glass shattering all over!...First I thought the living room's windows got blown out from the loud music... which it really didn't make sense, I ran into the living room... I noticed there was a vase chattered into million little bits and pieces...right next to the vibrating "thumping" huge subwoofer...

It took me a second to figure out what happened. But then I took the bottom broken part of the vase and re-set it on the top of the woofer and sure enough, slowly but surely it started to shift to the edge of the woofer box because of the vibration.
I cleaned up the mess with minimal damage to the dude's expensive shiny hardwood floor.

They came home, I came clean explaining exactly what happened and offered to replace the vase, or cover the cost. The wife was really pissed, because apparently the vase was an engagement present from the dude to her. Or it was the dude's first gift to her ever!?

...It was basically a very sentimental object to them... It was the most awkward couple of days after that, just wanted to finish the mural and get the fuck out of there.


That was years ago...and frankly I don't give the shit about it anymore, (nor do I keep in touch with my friend or her filthy rich douchey brother and his family) and now I think about it.. who the fuck puts fragile shit on top of a subwoofer anyway?
 
I was moving a $1,200 HDTV from one room to another and I set it down where it was going to be hooked up and went over to turn on the light and pulled the cord with me. It never came out of the back of the TV like those cords are now supposed to do and the whole thing came crashing down. It was my TV and I was moving it in my room because we got a new TV in the living room so I was finally going to be able to play my games in HD and watch HD movies in my room. I was close to tears.
 
funkmastergeneral said:
I'm not sure you know what accidentally means.
Speaking of intentionally destroying things tho; when I was a kid and got a present or toy I didn't like for birthday/christmas, I would disable it. Usually all it took was a screw driver to open it up, disconnect some wires; then put it back together. Then just return to the store and get something else I saw that I wanted more than the original gift.

Saved the gift giver (usually my parents) the sadness of me not liking the gift. Plus I got something I really wanted. Only person who really lost out was the store I guess.
 
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