Question: What's the craziest thing that's ever happened at work?

Caroline Roche answered on 20 Nov 2025:

May not be the craziest, but the moment that has probably affected the most people, was while I was testing a control system at a customer’s site.
This was a very large building where all the mechanical equipment had been installed in modules for testing. There were other projects being worked on around the site and office areas where people were working, so lots of people not related to the testing I was helping with.
The testing involved moving all the equipment individually to ensure the control was working correctly. Everything was then tested as a process to match how it would work on site. This part took the longest and everyone else around us got used to hearing the machines move about.
But then we moved on to real-world testing which involved putting material through the system to mimic what would happen when it was installed.
The material chosen by the customer was various pieces of metal and swarf (something that would mimic the shape and weight of the material that could be going through the system). There was a part of the system where the material would be poured into the container, which was also metal.
It turned out that metal pieces being poured into a metal container is very loud and sounds like something collapsing!
So the first time we did it, everyone around us heard the machines moving as normal followed by what they thought was the equipment collapsing. After which every first responder and fire marshal ran to our location fearing the worst – only to find out it was just us testing and that they would have to listen to it for the next week. They did have a ‘lessons learned’ meeting to make sure future testing took into account how they testing might ‘sound’ to people not involved in the testing.