In the late 1990′s Flat Screens were completely unheard of other than on laptop PCs. Old CRT monitors were everywhere – and they weren’t necessarily very reliable. At Be CRT Monitors that died would usually end up in a pile in a cube or hallway and be labeled ‘roof disposal’.

Then a few times a year the actual act of ‘roof disposal’ would take place :

Or for an alternative view :

And yes – we knew that monitors contain a lot of pretty nasty chemicals, and yes we were careful to sweep up throughly afterwards.Also these events took place on the weekends when the Charles Schwab office on the ground floor was closed – and lookouts were posted. Not that it prevented JLG from coming out of the building and seeing the cleanup effort and saying “So that’s what Roof Disposal means”.

I’d been looking for these videos for a long time (even trying to resurrect an old BeOS installation to recover them – they were included on the BeOS R5 release CDs) – my thanks to a colleague at VMware who found them on YouTube and sent me the link.