5 WTF Work Screw-Ups That Were So Bad, They Made The News
by Pauli Poisuo
We here at The Modern Rogue are no strangers to trying and failing, as evidenced by ... uh, pretty much every video Brian and Jason have ever made. To make ourselves feel better about our own shortcomings, we occasionally search for other people failing in spectacular ways ... "professionals" who miffed it so badly that we can’t help but be impressed by the sheer, cartoonish magnitude of it.
Trucker Overturns His Vehicle And Releases Millions Of Bees
What’s the stupidest, most hilariously wrong thing you can accidentally unleash on the unwary world? A particularly nasty stomach bug at your office? An awful meme? Millions of bees? It’s almost certainly not that last one. No one unleashes “millions of bees” over anything, unless they’re a cartoon character. That’s such an unbelievably ridiculous mishap, the odds for it ever happening outside fiction are slim to none.
That is, unless you’re a particularly unfortunate trucker near Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, circa 2015.
YouTube / CBS
It's against the law for the news to create headlines without puns.
A semi carrying 400 beehives to help with pollination on nearby farms overturned on the eastbound I-90. This put 2 miles’ worth of traffic at a complete standstill, but more importantly, it unleashed a massive swarm of bees (estimated to be somewhere in the millions) in the unassuming area. This sucked beyond belief for the trucker, first responders, everyone else stuck on the road and, of course, the bees themselves. The unleashed horde vented their anger by stinging everyone from cops to bystanders to reporters trying to cover the incident. Because they're bees. That's what they do.
Because the universe wasn’t done with Coeur D’Alene yet, there was one extra problem the authorities had to deal with: At the time of the accident, the town was hosting a large Ironman event ... and the race route was just 200 yards away from the crash. To prevent the triathlon from acquiring a fourth event in the form of an impromptu stampede, the local fire department had to try and keep the bees from heading in the race’s direction with water hoses.
If the previous paragraph makes it seem like Idaho authorities are suspiciously adept at dealing with Looney Tunes disasters that should never happen, well, they’ve had practice. This wasn’t the first time that a truck full of bees has tipped over in the area that year, or even that week. Just two days before, another bee-truck crashed on the nearby State Highway 33. That one was carrying 20 million bees.
A Sports Ceremony Plays A Song From Borat Instead Of The National Theme Of Kazakhstan
In 2012, Maria Dmitrienko had just won the gold medal at a shooting championship tournament in Kuwait. At the medal ceremony, she took to the podium, anticipating one of the finest moments of her life. What she got instead was a heaping helping of WTF, as the speakers started blasting a song specifically designed to mock her homeland. Because Maria Dmitrienko was from Kazakhstan, and someone just pushed play on the fake anthem from the infamous Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
If you've never heard it, it's kind of important that you know the lyrics, because ... well:
Kazakhstan, greatest country in the world
All other countries are run by little girls
Kazakhstan, number one exporter of potassium
All other countries have inferior potassium
Kazakhstan, home of Tinshein swimming pool
It's length thirty meter, width six meter
Filtration system a marvel to behold
It remove 80% of human solid waste
Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan, you very nice place
From plains of Tarashek to northern fence of Jewtown
Kazakhstan friend of all except Uzbekistan
They very nosey people, with bone in their brain
Kazakhstan, industry best in world
We invented toffee and trouser belt
Kazakhstan's prostitutes, cleanest in the region
Except of course for Turkmenistan's
Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan, you very nice place
From plains of Tarashek to northern fence of Jewtown
Come grasp mighty penis of our leader
From junction with the testes to tip of its face!
NZ Herald
Note from layout: We outright refuse to put his catch phrase here.
It turned out that the Kuwaiti organizers had accidentally downloaded the wrong anthem from the internet, not realizing what it actually was, because the Borat movie is banned in the country. Still, it seems like a ridiculous rookie mistake. While the song does sound a little like the actual National Anthem of Kazakhstan, the fact that it’s in English should be a dead giveaway even before you notice the lyrics that paint Kazakhs as ridiculous bigots while musing on swimming pool filtration systems.
Several red-faced apologies and a minor scandal later, Dmitrienko finally got her proper gold medalist experience when the medal ceremony was rerun with the correct anthem. This time, things went significantly less viral.
A Cop Embarks On A High Speed Chase (Of Himself)
There’s a series of cunning burglaries in Sussex, England. It’s up to you, a new officer in the Sussex Police, to prove yourself by putting a stop to these criminal masterminds. You start patrolling the area in plain clothes after your shift, figuring that you might luck out and catch the crooks red-handed. One day, a CCTV operator scanning the area finally has some welcome news: There’s a suspicious-looking person stalking the area. They describe the person and give his location. You start moving toward him. They tell you that the suspicious person is moving faster. You break into a run. So does the unseen suspect. So you chase the mystery guy that you can never quite see, aided by the CCTV officer who assures you you’re going to catch the suspect any time now. He’s just around the corner.
And then, a seemingly endless game of cat-and-mouse later, the hectic commands of the CCTV officer turn into another person’s laughter. Puzzled, you cease the chase. Out of the corner of your eye, you see your reflection from a window and notice that you’re wearing a very similar outfit as the guy they told you were running after.
Pixabay
"Oh, no, his accomplice is trying to hack the cameras!"
This actual scenario happened in 2012. A CCTV operator mistook the plain clothes cop for a person who was “acting suspiciously," which led to a full 20 minutes of the dumbnut chase scene described above. At no point did either party realize that the CCTV guy couldn’t see the officer on his screens, or that it was pretty weird that the officer could never catch even a glimpse of the person he was chasing.
Still, we suspect that neither of them is going to forget their little mistake in a hurry. The laughter that interrupted them belonged to a sergeant, who happened to walk into the CCTV control room and lost it upon seeing the slapstick scene. We’re not saying that the sergeant made sure that the entire police station and all of their friends would hear the story and never, ever let them forget about it. We don’t need to, seeing as the incident actually made the news.
George H.W. Bush Flips Off Australia
Out of the two George Bushes, the older one is generally considered the more level-headed. This doesn’t mean that George H.W. Bush was completely without his flubs and flukes, though. Japan (and anyone who watched Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s) still remembers the time he visited them in early 1992 and promptly threw up on their prime minister during an official banquet. Let’s not hold that against the man, though. Stomach flu can get to anyone. Besides, a previous destination of his foreign tour could have warned Japan that shenanigans were a-coming: After all, the Australian leg of the President’s tour saw Bush the Elder flipping off an entire continent.
Slate
Although the old palm-inward V-sign might not seem like much to the people of the New Continent, it’s a well-known flip-off gesture in the countries of the old British Commonwealth, of which Australia very much is one. Two guesses as to whether anyone ever bothered to mention that to President Bush.
And he didn't just do it in this one picture. He was actually riding the streets of Australia’s capital in his motorcade, flashing the public what he thought were peace signs. So he was basically a one-man parade of "eff-off" to every Australian within effing-distance.
A Restaurant Throws Out A Blind Man Because They Think That His Guide Dog Is Gay
This one is so gloriously stupid that we're not even going to ease you into the chaos: An Australian restaurant once threw out a blind man because a waiter misheard that his guide dog was a "gay dog".
Yes, seriously. They just up and told him to take his business elsewhere, because the blind guy’s friend asked if it was OK that they have a guide dog with them. The staff somehow took this to mean that the gay canine revolution was knocking on their door.
Pixabay
"But they will never take ... our ... FREEDOM!"
There’s so much stupidity to digest here. How do you see a blind person enter a restaurant and not intuitively understand that the dog accompanying him on a harness is a guide dog? What misunderstanding of the context, what giant leap of logic, leads you to mishear “guide” as “gay” and not connect the dots? Besides, this happened in freaking 2010. At that day and age, why in the name of Air Bud would you take offense even if the dog was gay? It’s a dog!
Australia may never get to know just what was going on in the collective minds of the cyno-homophobic restaurant, but to be fair, it also didn’t particularly care. The country was too busy mocking the place, making their staff attend an Equal Opportunity education course, and making sure that they pay $1,500 to the blind guy for his troubles.
