In the late 90s I worked for a very small IT services company.
Apart from me there was Neil the director, Nick the telephone salesman, Lynn who did sales, Mike, the lead engineer, me and my friend Dave. Dave and I were engineers.
This was the time before social networks became popular, and the way to share funny pictures and videos was to send them via email.
A day like any other I received a few sillies (the word meme didn’t yet exist), one of which was a closeup of a woman sitting on a barstool, naked, legs open with the back end of fish protruding.
The name of the file was trout.jpg. I’ve genuinely tried to find the file so I could share it with you, but failed.
Dave and I were sitting at a desk, monitor in front of us, leaning in to get a good look, when Nick walked past.
Fuck I said, CLOSE IT, CLOSE IT!!! We both went a bit pale and tried to close the image on the screen but it just wouldn’t close. The computer had hung or something, no idea, but it just didn’t.
I could feel my heart in my mouth. I knew Nick was friends with Neil and I knew we’d get sacked for this, and we dearly hoped he wouldn’t notice.
The worst of all worst things happened and he did. He stopped, looked at the screen, frowned, then looked at us, looked disappointed, then looked at the screen again and said ‘that’s not a trout, it’s a mackerel’, then walked off.
That was it! Nothing more was said.
