Sigh. When I was in university, I worked at a computer store one summer that provided IT services to local offices. One of the clients was the Mexican consula

Sigh. When I was in university, I worked at a computer store one summer that provided IT services to local offices. One of the clients was the Mexican consulate. We were hired to do various things, including installing a tape backup system. I was installing some service packs at about 5pm. Windows NT4. 5pm, everyone's gone home, safe, right? Server asks if I want to restart, I say yes. Then a guy walks into the server room, asks if I had restarted the server. I say yes. Whoops, OK, I guess someone was working. Next day, the database was dead. Seemingly because I had restarted the server while someone was using it. It was a custom database job, and the contractor who had made it was on vacation in some other country. Here's the kicker. Usually tape backups have rolling tapes, right? But we hadn't started rolling tapes yet. So the good backup from 2 days prior was overwritten the night before with the crashed database. Ugh. And I was due to go back to school in 2 weeks in another city. Ouch. I still feel bad about that to this day. No idea how my boss ended up. Never ever let someone who doesn't know what they're doing mess around with your mission critical systems where the consequences are not recoverable. Always guide them. Although in my case, it seems I may have known more than my boss at the time, so maybe wasn't possible for me....