Executives from partner companies were furious that such an unprofessional image could be included in the product, and I’m sure a good number assumed that Microsoft intended the rude gesture to be directed at them specifically.

It wasn’t long before some of these copies found their way into the hands of the media, and the rogue cursor reportedly nearly made it into a screen shot in an industry magazine.Īs you can imagine, this created quite an uproar, drawing the involvement of senior management. It so happens that the build in question was selected to be a beta release that went out to hundreds of hardware and software companies, as well as beta testers. He then ended his internship and took a two-week break before returning as a full-time employee. This was a very rude prank, but the test team would take it in the spirit it was intended. The perpetrator in question was completing an internship and committed code into the Windows 3.1 code base that was a little prank for the test team: Under a very specific error condition, it changed the index finger pointer to a middle finger. I learned the story of someone who got fired even before they started.

Middle finger cursor