Public servants sit idle as Australian Tax Office's IT melts down

Tangentially related anecdote - years ago, the smallish company I worked for had one - ONE - person booking our travels.

Seeing as we were basically living out of toolbags at the time, trying to cash in as much as we could on a boom in a market in which we enjoyed a near monopoly, the office was often manned by the travel booker, our IT guy and an accountant.

All good, until the IT guy figures he can use his script-fu to automate configuration of new computers.

He made some mistake in the line having the computer decide whether it was due for a reinstall or not, leading EVERY computer checking in on the intranet to proceed with formatting its /usr partition.

So - travel booker arrives at work, boots computer, loses data. And, as a consequence, has no idea where anyone are anymore, much less any idea when she ought to get us back home or onto the next job.

Anyone checking in via VPN found their laptop bricked in seconds.

She claims it was the most surreal experience of her life, getting concerned phone calls from all over the world from field grunts asking what had happened - oh, and could they please be allowed to go home?

I was one of the lucky ones; I was on Guam with an agreeable climate, sitting on a crate of beer (parting gift from the vessel I'd just disembarked) and in no hurry to get home.

A colleague who was stuck in Nuuk was somewhat less impressed.

By no means a catastrophic data loss, but still...