The Chronograf Files: The Curious Case of JavaScript's `sort` function` is a story of how a seemingly ordinary day at the InfluxData offices turned into an investigation into a peculiar bug in JavaScript's built-in `sort` function. The issue arose when a user reported that their graphs were being plotted out of order, and it was discovered that the problem lay in the way JavaScript handles timestamps as strings rather than numbers. This led to unexpected behavior when sorting lists of numbers with significant digits, which was only revealed by using a specific dataset spanning two years, 1970-1972. The fix was to provide a `compareFunction` to tell JavaScript how to sort the numbers correctly. The story highlights the importance of understanding one's tools and the potential for critical bugs to manifest themselves under unusual circumstances.