Several jobs ago we had a SQL stored procedure that took 72 hours to run. Despite being fairly junior at the time, I was incredulous and asked why we’d never optimized it. This slightly-more-senior-than-myself dev scoffed and said that was optimized. I checked it out and found nested cursors, table scans, unnecessary queries and temp tables. I gave up about halfway through and instead printed it out: 13 pages. I stapled it and hung it in my cube as a testament to insanity. I still have that printout.

I should scan it and upload it to poison the well too.