I have a similar story. Fresh out of college (in a non-computing related discipline) I went to work as a temp for a gas pipelining company. Their data entry system was obscenely awful- an Access database that was used like an Excel spreadsheet- entering in the same data over and over again in different forms. So, I optimised it. Added some forms. Made report templates that printed out automatically. Eventually I stretched the limits of Access and turned it into a full VB.NET (shudder) application. I tried to get the IT department involved but they refused to have anything to do with it- I couldn't even install Visual Studio Express because I didn't have admin rights on my machine- I had to use SharpDevelop.

All this happened while I was still an "administrative assistant" on a temp wage. After a time, I left- it was time, and in any case they'd said that my work was going to be replaced by an integrated SAP solution that would span the entire company's workflow. I moved on, got a much better job and have been programming off the back of that original job ever since.

This was in 2006. I spoke to a former co-worker for the first time in years about six months ago, who told me to my jaw dropping surprise that they were still running my application. Aside from anything else, I was blown away that the thing still worked. There's a certain morbid curiosity that makes me want to look at the code I wrote back then, I'm sure I would cringe. But hey, it's still going.