A reader nicknamed "Clay" has recounted to The Register's "Who, Me?" column how, as a junior manager on a 1980s Swedish construction site, he accidentally deleted a colleague's files after asking to try out a PC during his lunch break. The anecdote serves as a light-hearted cautionary tale about letting non-technical managers loose on computer systems, a recurring theme in the long-running weekly confessional column.

Clay explained that only two site engineers had computers at the time, and out of curiosity he asked to use one during a break. Having little choice but to agree, the junior engineer let him sit down, at which point Clay typed the only DOS command he knew, "DEL *.*", wiping everything in the accessible directory. His colleague reportedly forgave him and he kept his job, though he says the memory of the command still haunts him.