Ok so you think you are having a hard time at the moment, let me take you back to the worst week of my life...
Sometime about 12 year ago
I was working in RAF and while I was at work my wife got a phone call.
Caller - "Hello is your husband there"
Wife - "No he's at work, who is this"
Caller - "This is the CSA, can you get your husband to call us on this number when he gets home"
So I arrive back home at the end of the day with my wife giving me a funny look, she explains who it was and I duly ring them up.
It turns out that an ex girlfriend from 10 year previously has told the CSA that I am the dad of her kid and I am going to have to give her all my cash. I told them that I couldn't be me but they were adamant. I managed to persuade them to go down the DNA route but even then they wanted me to pay for the test at £450 for the pleasure.
The next day I go into work early as our squadron are doing the weather checks in the area so our weather check aircraft has to take off first and find somewhere decent to fly for the day.
I did the morning servicing of the hawk aircraft and signed up the documentation. I then went out to the aircraft and along with another person we strapped the pilot in and saw him off to the run way.
I stood and watched as he took off from the runway about 400 metres from me. He got asbout 150 feet in the air before the aircraft flipped over and the pilot ejected into the ground killing him instantly and then the aircraft turned into a ball of flame as it crashed back down into the runway. I felt the heat from the fireball and then fell over with shock.
Later that day the RAF police interviewd me and wanted to know why I had fallen over and was it because I felt guilty about something!
About 4 days later we found out that a flying control had been disconnected and not reconnected after the work had been completed. So the fleet were aloud to fly again. I went to see an aircaft off again from the ground and found that the same rod was disconnected on this aircraft. I quickly told my boss and he reconnected it but I was never to tell anyon about it.
That was the worst week of my life.
I got the CSA results back about 4 months later giving me the all clear without an apology.
It took 2 years for the RAF police to finally stop arresting me every few months to question me even though Somebody admitted to disconnecting the aircraft controls rods, as a favour to an overweight technician who couldn't access an area he needed to inspect, but he didn't tell anyone about disconnecting them and then went off shift.
All the hassle made me give up on my RAF career and investigate the world of I.T.
So in the end something good came of it.
Now when I get a teacher moaning about their computer running slowly I am not that concerned about the work pressure and in another life I had a really stressful job!
