The Panda That Deleted a Web-page

“If you do that again, I quit,” he said.

Everyone who heard it laughed. I did too, sheepishly. I was both amazed and embarrassed at my superpower. Amazed because I had no idea how I had managed to achieve what I just did. Embarrassed because everyone bore witness to it.

Honestly, part of me was also proud in a weird way – like I had been blessed by some tech gods with the ability to find bugs that no one would. And delete websites. With no delete buttons.

Just one hour earlier, we sat there at the developer’s office ready to spend the whole day testing out the new website (hello Drupal, we meet again), feeling like we arrived at some top secret meeting.

The set-up gave an Ocean’s Eleven feel, and I was about to rob them of a web-page – right after I got done playing with the exercise ball, in my overalls while on a phone call.

Damn. I could be a rapper with those rhyme “skillz.” And yes, I could wear overalls to work.

He walked us through the initial process, explaining the layout, where to lodge our feedback and the life-saving, “Undo” button, which was made for people like me. “I’ll be downstairs, in case anyone needs me,” he explained.

And with that, we jumped into our Ocean’s Eleven mission without George Clooney and friends. At first, everything was great and things were progressing smoothly. Then, it happened. I remember trying to upload an image of a panda, only to realise the previous page wouldn’t appear.

*clicks refresh*

Nothing.

*refresh again*

Still nothing.

*Tries to navigate to the page through the main menu*

The page doesn’t exist.

If I was Spiderman, this is the point my spider-sense would start tingling. “Oh wait, I’ll just use the Undo button,” my na?ve-self thought. Alas, what I feared had already happened.

It was déjà vu. Very early in my career, I had done something similar and deleted an important page while trying to upload an image. Let’s just say I’ve never run to IT so fast in my life. As I sat there reminiscing my 100 metre hurdles to IT, I heard someone say, “Hey guys, I’m having trouble finding the XYZ page.”

“Yeah me too,” someone responded.

As the opinion diffused its way into the rest of the team, it felt like that moment when your parents begin to find out that you never showed them the note your teacher wrote. Since honesty is the best policy, I used it and owned up, which eventually led to the frustrated developer wanting to quit after his confusion over my magical abilities.

Did we get the page back? Yes.

Did he figure out how it happened? No.

Regardless, we clearly found a big tech bug – or that’s usually what I tell myself to feel better. Thankfully, my team at the time went along with it and we eventually had ourselves a snazzy new (yes, bug-free and functional!) website.

So, two lessons learned – the faster we own up to our mistakes, the faster we can solve them. Pandas are great, but sometimes servers cannot handle the cuteness – upload at your own risk.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another website waiting.

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My articles stem from my own opinions and are in no way affiliated with the organisations I am a part of.