Y2K was 20 years ago, and we’re still laughing at people’s stupidity (18 GIFs)

1

I was managing the IT department in a state agency, and were under enormous pressure to prevent any Y2K problems. On NY day I went to work before dawn and tested everything before the Exec Director arrived. Relieved that everything was working ok, we went to IHOP For a celebratory breakfast. The IHOP bill was date/timed stamped 32Dec1999.
– u/PieSavant

2

My favorite thing was cemetery headstones that were not Y2K compliant. People had headstones made before they died with the 19 pre-engraved, planning on filling in the next two digits when the time came. Oops, they kept living.
– u/luckyluckyone

3

I lived overseas and was watching the news with family and friends on the armed forces network, the newscast did the countdown and then at 1 they cut the feed and it went to static. There were several gasps and then about five seconds later the feed came back and the newscast shouted “Just kidding! Happy New Year!”

I thought it was pretty clever.
– u/slutman_city

4

I

I was at a big NYE house party and the owner’s GF at the time threw the main breaker to the house at midnight. Since this was out of town and back in the woods a bit, this resulted in almost total darkness & quiet except for the stars & critters and everyone freaking out a little bit. She flipped it back on after about 5-10m.
Continued…

5

We all thought it was pretty funny, with the exception of the one guy that was on a little bit more of some substances than others there and lost his marbles for a while. He ended up running off in the woods for a few hours but eventually made it back to the house asking if the world was alright.

Good times…
– u/Starfire66

6

I got up at 3 am to check if the world had ended. It had not, so I went back to bed.
– u/toilet_tail

7

I think my favorite story I heard about actually happened before 2000, but it was basically the same idea. It was about someone in a northern European country who had turned 105 (born in like 1890) receiving a letter in the mail addressed to “Parents of” and his name.

The letter was telling his parents that he was supposed to start school now that he was 5 years old. Of course, this happened because the government used a 2 digit date in the computer system and sent a letter to everyone with a “90” birth year.
– u/eaglescout1984

8

My mother was one of those folks that was convinced that everything was going to implode for Y2K. She thought that it would be like a post apocalyptic nightmare – no food at the stores, banks shut down, people rioting – the whole nine yards.

She desperately tried to convince me, my two brothers, and all of our families to come to her place in the country and bunker down for the duration. Of course, none of us were going for that but we did keep in touch so that she didn’t worry too much.
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9

I will never forget the phone call where she explained that she had stock piled canned goods, bought a generator, and bought a MILK COW. The cow was so that the kids would have milk since there obviously wouldn’t be any at the store after all commerce broke down.

Shm. Her heart was in the right place but really mom?!? A milk cow?? None of the kids were even babies that would need milk.

She ended up selling the cow shortly after nothing happened. We still laugh about the Y2K milk cow.
– u/Sugar-n-Spice

10

GIF

I worked in IT at one of the Dow Industrial companies’ headquarters, and I spent a high percentage of 1999 doing “Y2K tests” on every single computer, server, printer, fax machine and, I’m pretty sure, coffee maker.

No problems, and no signs of problems. That year was a waste of my life.
– u/Clapperoth

11

I’m a firefighter and was working on the Y2K night. Right at midnight, all of our primary radio and CAD systems failed. It was a huge, system wide failure just like everybody predicted would happen. We were getting dispatched by backup radios and our dispatchers were writing down calls on pieces of paper. The suck is that my engine company had the first call of the year, but we didn’t get credit for it because of the confusion. When they put calls into the computer after it was fixed we ended up with call 00013.

F*ck you Engine 3, we were first. Sincerely, E12.
– u/gunmedic15

12

My dad had been paid quite a bit over the previous year, as he was a COBOL programmer 20-30 years before, and it was mostly COBOL programs that people worried about. The panic helped increase his wage. A lot of stuff did end up getting fixed, which is why things didn’t go as badly as predicted.

He didn’t work at all this century. Part of it was that he had made enough that he could stop working, but I think a large part was that he developed an inflated sense of what his skills were worth, over those few years, and has never been offered anything close since. Thinks he saved the world.
– u/allergic2Luxembourg

13

In October, my dad finished off the spam he purchased for Y2K. He bought 12 cases of it because it was super cheap leading up to y2k and he just really enjoys spam. I am honestly impressed at the dedication of someone to eat 288 cans of spam over 20 years.
– u/tritops2018

14

I was 8 during the Y2K craze, growing up in a small town (about 5,000 people) on the East Coast of the USA where most of the people were very religious and scared of technology. At that time only a few households in my neighborhood had a computer but only one or two had the Internet.

My parents and I spent NYE at our next door neighbors’ house. They had the Internet and were avid hunters who had gone through the hassle of getting extra food and supplies “just in case”.

My neighbors had 2 teenage boys.
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15

We were gathered in their basement to watch the ball drop on TV, and right at the stroke of midnight one of the teenage boys snuck over to the circuit breaker and cut the power for the house.

The next minute or so was just sheer panic from the adults. I just sat there not fully understanding what was going on.

Of course they had flashlights on hand and the teenager who cut the power was quickly found sitting underneath the circuit breaker giggling like a little girl. The giggles quickly turned to fear as his parents started shrieking at him and giving him a whupping.
– u/sinadis

16

I drank two bottles of red wine, got a nose bleed (I was working when fibre glass at the time and I used to get them a lot) and was sat on the doorstep vomiting when midnight struck.
– u/JamesJosiah

17

I used to work for a small business that was owned by two Evangelical Christians. They were quite pushy with their beliefs, and one of those beliefs was that 1/1/2000 was the day of The Rapture.

Daily, I would have to endure them loudly talking to each other about how everyone needs to be ready. Everyone. Then they would ask me what my plans were. I would do my best not to engage.

I noticed they stopped making the schedule past New Year’s Eve. The schedule was simply blank. When I asked why, they told me it was because they wouldn’t be there. They would be with Jesus, and I still had time to be saved.
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18

January 2nd was interesting. I had to call the shop to ask if I was supposed to work that day. The bosses were in a shitty mood. One was frantically setting the schedule for the month and the other was ordering business supplies. Yeah, we were out of a lot of our regular stuff because they felt there was no need to restock.

I wanted so badly to ask why they weren’t taken in The Rapture.
– u/SongLyricsHere