BOFH: You drive me crazy... and I can't help myself
- Reference: 1636708505
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/11/12/bofh_2021_episode_20/
- Source link:
"Come in."
"Hey there," I say. "I'm just here to fix your desktop machine."
[1]
"My desktop machine?"
[2]
[3]
"Yeah, just here to sort out the problems you were having with it."
"I'm not having problems with it."
[4]
"Sure you are."
"No I'm not."
"You are – I was talking to you on the phone about... 83 minutes ago and you said you were having a little problem with your desktop machine."
[5]
"I... don't think I did."
"Shannon, right?"
"Ah.. yes," Shannon says.
"Yeah, so we were talking and you said you couldn't help me because your desktop was playing up."
"I... don't... Which department are you from?" he asks.
"I.T." I say.
"I... don't think... I've ever met you," Shannon says.
"Well I'm not from your I.T. department."
"Sorry?" Shannon asks, even more confused than before.
"I'm one of your clients. I was asking you for information on the warranty on some hardware of ours because no one had turned up inside the contracted service period. I gave our reception a call on the way up in the lift and they told me there's still no sign of anyone."
"I.."
"And when I called you yesterday you said you'd call me back within the hour – but you didn't – so I thought it was probably that same desktop problem that you were talking about this morning."
"We have our own in-house people," Shannon says. "We're a service provider." "Might I suggest you just truncate that to 'service' and drop the whole 'provider' bit - just to keep you safe from some sort of false advertising scenario."
"I don't see..."
"Anyway," I continue, "as I said I thought I'd pop over and take a look at your desktop because if we're not seeing your engineers (and we have a guaranteed service window contract), then you – probably with no contract at all, being an internal user – are probably even less likely to get your desktop issue sorted out."
"I don't have a desktop issue," Shannon repeats again.
"You must do, because this morning when I rang to complain you said you couldn't bring up our contract details because you had a desktop issue. Then you said that you couldn't give me a timeframe for the repair because you couldn't open a new job without my client code. And not our actual client code, but an internal client code which we wouldn't have – because it's internal."
Shannon has decided that silence may be his best option.
"So I thought it's probably quickest for us both if I come over and take a look."
"I don't think..."
"Don't worry – I'll be at least as professional as your engineers. And by as professional as your engineers I mean the guy who showed up three days ago to swap out a failed drive, put the replacement drive in the tray the wrong way around and then rammed it repeatedly into the slot to try and get it installed – smashing the connector and shorting some of the connector pins together." "I... wasn't aware of..."
"Sure you were. I talked to you about this yesterday because your engineer said he'd be back yesterday with a replacement cable loom – only..."
"Look," Shannon says, trying to wrest control of this conversation from me. "I'm sure that there's a reasonable explanation for all this – a supply-chain issue, or.."
[6]BOFH : You. Wouldn't. Put. A. Test. Machine. Into. Production. Without. Telling. Us.
[7]BOFH : Pass the sugar, Asmodeus, and let the meeting of the Fellowship of Bastards … commence
[8]BOFH : Are you a druid? Legally, you have to tell me if you're a druid
[9]BOFH : Switch off the building? Great idea, Boss
[10]BOFH : Rome, I have been thy soldier 40 years... give me a staff of honour for mine age
[11]BOFH : 'Twas the night before Christmas, and the ransomware struck
"But you said this morning that it was a desktop issue."
"Well I'm sure at the time I was having some sort of issue, but my desktop is working fine now."
"Are you sure? Only I've got three different-sized hammers here..." I say, pointing at toolbox. "I also have a 1/2 gallon jar of petrol – which probably has a street value higher than your desktop machine at the moment – also a tin of homemade thermite as well as a reciprocating saw with some sort of organic staining splashed all over it."
"I.."
"Does this carpet pull up?" I ask.
"LOOK" Shannon says. "There's nothing wrong with my machine. If there was I'd definitely be having one of our in house people take a look at it, simply to protect information we'd consider commercially sensitive."
"And by commercially sensitive information I'm assuming you're talking about a manila folder in your top drawer with the label 'How shit we are'?" I ask.
"Our commercial information," Shannon says angrily, "is none of your concern. If my desktop machine ever had a problem – which I doubt – then we would have taken care of it."
[12]
Who's that striding through your server room with a crash cart full of drives [13]whistling Bernard Herrmann's "Twisted Nerve"? He doesn't look familiar...
"So you think it might be a server issue?" I ask.
"It could have been."
"Well, I can't tell you how relieved I am to hear that."
"Why's that?" Shannon asks.
"Oh, because my assistant let himself into your server room about 10 minutes ago with a toolbox full of drives mounted the wrong way in their trays."
"Maybe you'll see an engineer quicker than we have?" I say, easing myself out the door. ®
[14]BOFH: The whole shebang
[15]The Compleat BOFH Archives 95-99
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/08/bofh_2021_episode_18/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/10/bofh_2021_episode_16/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/22/bofh_2021_episode_1/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/11/bofh_2020_episode_9/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/09/bofh_2020_episode_7/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2019/12/24/bofh_2019_episode_13/
[12] https://regmedia.co.uk/2021/11/08/shutterstock_bofh_drive_by.jpg
[13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMBOFqdyWsg
[14] https://www.theregister.com/data_centre/bofh/
[15] http://www.bofharchive.com/
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Genius
"reciprocating saw with some sort of organic staining"
"Does this carpet pull up?"
Classic BOFH :)
Hmmm.
All very good, hassling your supplier, but it did not seem like Simon got his problems sorted out.
I would have thought that he would have persisted until he got what he needed.
And, for some reason, I thought Shannon would be a woman.
A problem shared is a problem that's rapidly becoming someone else's problem.
A problem shared is a scapegoat found
the problem buck does not stop here
"Does this carpet pull up?" I ask.
Run Shannon, Run!!!!
That was novel
A bit wierd at first. It took me some time to grok that the BOFH was loose in the wild.
And yeah, Shannon was a woman for me too, right up until the text said different.
But hey, nothing like some originality in the BOFH stories.
Lime?
Where's the lime? Can't pull up a carpet with out the lime!
Been there and *redacted* that
Its the support people they hire, all a shower of Sh1T. The best was when I worked in a company that rented space from Avaya in their Guildford UK office called Avaya house and our Avaya phone system developed an issue, the Avaya engineer apparently could not find our building... That was many many years ago now, I am sure he found the building eventually.
Re: Been there and *redacted* that
I used to work for a company that Avaya acquired. This doesn't surprise me at all.
We also had the 0208 numbers where the corresponding 0207 ones were Scotland Yard Special Branch. I had some amazing wrong number confessions
Same energy
Reminded me of Naomi Wu rolling up at UMIDIGI asking for the Linux kernel source for their phones that they're contractually required to provide under the GPL, but have mysteriously failed to make available on prior requests. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj04MKykmnQ
Years ago I was having endless problems trying to get an engineer from some company or other to come to my house for something. Loads of phone calls to countless call centre drones led to an appointment being made for an engineer visit, and then them failing to turn up. The usual frustration of dealing with any large B2C company.
I phoned the call centre about this. They noted the missed appointment and assumed that I wanted to try booking another visit. They were a bit taken aback when I asked for the engineer's home address and the name of his next of kin.
"We don't give out personal details for our staff, and anyway why do you want them?"
"So far as I'm concerned the only acceptable reason for failing to attend an appointment is if he's dropped down dead. I'd like to know who and where to send some flowers to"
A Welcome Friday Treat
Personally, I lost it at:
"Does this carpet pull up?" I ask.
Though I'm admittedly surprised the BOFH was in such a hurry that he didn't bring his own.
Nice to see that Simon and the PHB are expand their scope outside of their company.
Hmmm ... wonder if I can get them to have a look at one or two of our suppliers.