You couldn't make it up
As coincidences go, I have experienced quite a few. However, this is the single most cringe-worthy coincidence I've ever experienced.

Me and my mates (16-ish at the time) were on our way to Thorpe Park for much frivolity and fun. We had no car so we had to get the train from New Malden to Staines. The train we got to Staines had individual compartments like ye olde trains, so we spied a near empty carriage, save for one inconspicious man, and bundled in.

We reverted to the normal teenage boy talk of football, video games and hot chicks you saw on the TV last night when the topic of conversation turned to my computer after seeing an ad in a newspaper. I'd recently been having trouble with it, unsurprisingly because it was bought from Tiny.

If you don't know, Tiny are (were) a computer company that went bust due to the tremendously bad quality of their computers.

Cue us slagging off Tiny, mostly me though because I had first-hand experience of how bad my computer was.

The man in the corner then piped up and said to our astonishment: "I used to be a managing director of Tiny." We couldn't believe the huge coincidence, and I felt myself go bright red. We'd just slagged off a company in front of one of the most important people in the company. The carriage went quiet for a moment, until the man said:

"Yeah I resigned before I was pushed. The computers are a pile of shit". Or something to that likeness.
We then spent the rest of the train journey slagging off Tiny, with the help of the former MD.

As unlikely as this story sounds, it is absolutely true. Not the most cringeworthy as some of the entries so far, but almost certainly one of the biggest coincidences.
(Dazzorifik is bored of b3ta, Wed 3 Dec 2008, 14:55, 2 replies)

our first home pc
was a Tiny.
Pile of wank.
My stepfather went and bought it without telling me. And continues to do things on the technology side without consulting the only technically oriented one in the family.
I despair.
(tweebianmonkey Should be known as Widget, Wed 3 Dec 2008, 15:00, closed)

A relative of an ex
stated her intentions to buy a new PC.

I offered to go with her so she didn't get sold a lemon.

She politely told me that it wasn't necessary and that she'd be fine.

She returned from Dixons a few hours later with her 'new' PC.

This was in 2002 or 2003, so XP had been out for a while.

Something didn't look quite right with the laptop she'd bought.. kind of old fashioned...

"I got a good deal on it", she exclaimed

"It was the manger's special"

The manager's 'special' was an ex-display machine running Windows 98. Just.

It'd been upgraded from Windows 95, and judging from the specs even THAT was pudsing the machine to the limits of it's capabilities.

She paid £680 for it. SIX. HUNDRED. AND. EIGHTY. POUNDS.

Dixons, at the time, had a policy wherby if a product was returned with 2 different faults within 6 months they'd give a refund by way of vouchers.

It's amazing what you can do by applying a 9 volt battery to various laptop components...
(SarcasticBarSteward wants to be good at Photoshop when he grows up, Thu 4 Dec 2008, 2:49, closed)