"During classroom instruction in the army, I broke a bit of electronic equipment worth £250k (back in the 90’s) by plugging it into a dock of sorts which had an undiagnosed fault. Immediate reaction from the instructor: “that’s odd, try this one”… the replacement bill is now £500k.

Instructor brings in the head instructor of the unit, who then proceeds to break another one in exactly the same way… £750k by this point.

By this time I’m somewhere between s@#tting bricks over breaking something so expensive, and trying not to laugh my @$$ off as my seniors proceed to break half a million worth of kit in front of me. It took the civilian instructor stepping in and saying that maybe we should stop breaking stuff and send everything in for repair. No repercussions for me as I was under instruction, but interesting to see the definition of insanity play out in front of me in real-time.

I guess that was a great insight into the military mentality."

Salty_Paroxysm