'Take your kid to work day' results in NPR newscast shutting down for full minute

"Take your child to work day" is a wonderful day at the office for everyone not responsible for a small child.

For everyone else tasked with child tours, kid-friendly presentations or cleanup duty, it is the most stressful holiday of the calendar year. Case in point: the minute of dead air that happened on NPR's morning newscast today.

According to Gawker, a few calculated movements of an anonymous child's fingers somehow caused a broadcast of Morning Edition to go silent at 11:04 am for some west coast listeners.

A few fun seconds of playing on a control panel for a child; a minute of pure terror for the employee responsible.

NPR employee Gene Demby tweeted about the short outage.

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In an email sent to staffers, obtained by Gawker, an entertained and apologetic head of engineering at NPR explained what caused the dead air.

This error was caused by the head of Engineering Department.

As part of Take our Daughters to work day studio 42 demonstration. One of our junior journalists was some how able to press the exact sequence, and perfectly timed live insert panel to insert studio 42 into the stream 1. I kid you not. Although labor laws prevent me from actually hiring the kid (cause he does have a future-but I gave him my card) This resulted in studio 42 being inserted into the stream, causing a lengthy impairment.

This outage is totally and completely my fault. Besides the justifiable public shaming I rightly deserve for the next decade-my lack of oversite caused the outage. Feel free to giggle at will. Thank you to the MOPS crew for getting us back on track, and triggering rapid notification

Another tweet from Demby appears to reveal a room full of the suspects, perhaps standing next to the very control panel that led to the mistake.

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For the record, all that happened at Mashable's "Take your child or dog to work day" was a few tense moments between a Golden Retriever and a Bichon Frise.

H/T: Gawker

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