Contractor quaffed his way through Y2K compliance while the client scowled

Discovered once last bug, and that briefcases can hold more beer than you might imagine
To mark the occasion, The Register has revisited our mailbag of holiday-adjacent stories to tell the tale of a reader we'll Regomize as "Marcus," who told us he worked as a contractor for a "very large, very blue, blue-chip company" in the Netherlands and helped it prepare for Y2K.

"By special request, I was going to watch over my flock of Y2K changes on New Year's Eve," Marcus told On Call.

Marcus was confident he'd done the job right, so brought some beers to work.

"As I sat at my 3278 green screen terminal watching the logs for problems, I sipped my bottle of Grolsch," he told On Call, before admitting that bottle was "One of a few in my suspiciously large briefcase."
Y2K passed without notable incident.

"One thing ran overnight with the wrong files," he confessed.

"So I gave it the right files from the right year and the right century."
He also spotted a typo that would have broken the company, but fixed that up too.

"I whooped and finished my last beer," Marcus told On Call, actions that saw a project manager who was also working the Y2K shift accuse him of being drunk.

A comedy sketch Marcus once watched flashed into his mind.

"For once in my entire life I had the right answer," Marcus wrote.

"I replied: 'Well, why the hell not?

I've been drinking all day!'"
A little later, when Marcus checked his bank account to see if he'd been paid for working Y2K he noticed the transaction identifier mixed the usual collection of seemingly random numbers and the string "Grolsch."
"Coincidence?

I guess so," he told On Call.

Have you worked a holiday and decided to combine business with liquid pleasure?

If so, indulge yourself again by clicking here to send On Call an email.

We'd love to celebrate your story by featuring it in The Register on a future holiday weekend.

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