Boss is right - by showing there is a business case for 24/7 infrastructure call out support, Derek has destroyed the factory's shaky bottom line and maybe the whole company.... or even worse, denied the Boss's mates in infrastructure a nice call-out fee in a few days' time!

I've told this before, did not get a stern talking but also could not correct the problem.

During the Y2K project I was in, my team was correcting an application consisting of almost a 100 programs chained together (just as COBOL likes) and we were made aware that that particular batch chain would break every single night, meaning an hefty on-call bill. And is had been going like that for years.

So I analysed the failure point and it was seemingly simple to correct - IIRC there were numeric conversions that would fail under certain conditions, conditions that would almost certainly be met once or twice per run.

That correction was deemed out-of-scope by our client rep, who, curiously, was also that application's IT boss.

I was possibly standing outside when the story teller was getting the dressing down (it certainly sounds very similar to the story I could hear through the door!)

I was awaiting my turn for fixing the "application error" by putting paper in the printer - again not our job! I was told the unions would be up in arms, but I heard nothing more.

I had a bollocking once for changing a 13A plug:- "you're not an electrician, the unions will not be happy if they find out". Ah the 1970s....

I was tech support manager for a County Council. When the legislation on working on electrical equipment changed I had to organise a course on how to fit a plug on a mains lead for my comms team. The same team who literally built the x.25 switches for each site at the time from the chassis up :(.

Our site electrician was actually embarrassed to have to do this for us but we needed the sign off of the H&SE ream were going to ban us from working on any electrical equipment. The Desktop team didn't have to have the training as all their mains leads came with molded plugs and were never re-wired.

By the nature of the role members of both teams would regularly be working on hot devices with the case removed when performing testing.

... was point out to his Boss, that he could perform an internal charge at Callout rates (plus plus plus...) to the Infrastructure Team for fixing their Failure. If the Infrastructure Team objected, pointing out to the CEO that had the failure not been corrected when it was, the loss of production would have cost $X (almost certainly multiple factors of 10 higher than the Charge on the Infrastructure Team). Of course the Boss could also then request additional resources for his department as reward for keeping the wheels spinning when other teams where letting the company down...

Solidarity in management only extends to the point where one's own department could get a leg up...

Some days you're the pigeon, some days the statue.

And good deeds never go unpunished...

I usually use "some days you're the dog, other days you're the fire hydrant", but I like yours too.

So Derek has managed to shift the SEP field from "cabling is SEP" to "the boss is SEP" .

That is a very commendable way of dealing with a boss.

Obviously not in the same league, but I once spent a couple of hours trying to get my laptop plugged into the big meeting room screen. But my HDMI cable seemed dodgy (which was odd, because I'd used it elsewhere without issue). Tried another, and another (by this point I'm "borrowing" them from vacant screens in the office outside). Some just don't work, others drop the connection every few seconds.

Eventually, I realised that the HDMI cable between my laptop and the wall socket was not the only one, and checked behind the screen to find one of the plugs of the other cable wasn't fully seated.

Then I just had to return all the borrowed cables...

Around the turn of the millennium I did a contract stint for a local authority on a project to hook up all their schools to the internet. The job was split into phases – the comms crew would hit site to install the CPE, a week or so later the cabling guys would arrive to CAT5 the building and then my team would turn up to install the (singular) Cisco switch and get some lights blinking. Another crew would follow in our wake to install the (singular) school server and back office PCs.

On one occasion me and my (staff) partner arrived at one site to find that the cabling crew hadn’t plugged network cables into the patch panel in the comms rack, where we were installing the switch. Instead, they’d just left a box of unopened cables in the corner of the room. My sidekick immediately pulled out his phone to talk to his manager about “the problem”. I literally could not believe what I was hearing. I pointed to the box of cables and mimed opening a zip-lock bag, uncoiling the cable and plugging it into the patch panel and switch. Still in deep conversation with the boss, he ignored me. So I went over to the box, picked out a cable and pulled the bag open. At this point he bellowed STOP!!!! at the top of his lungs, muttered something into his phone and thrust it into may hand. At which point I got told in no uncertain terms that I was not, under any circumstances, to plug in the patch cable, as it “was not our job” and that the cabling crew would be scheduled to go back and plug the missing cords into the patch panel.

We then had to explain the problem to the school secretary and apologise that it would be another 4 – 6 weeks before their school would be connected.

I vowed to never take another public sector contract again.

Strangely, I've never been able to identify the boundaries of the SEP field and obviously I'd never knowingly circumvent the system ...

I always exist in the IBFI (Its Broken Fix It) aether ... "You're a computer tech - fix my computer chair ...", "You're the technician, fix my glasses", or even "You're the technician you can fix my intimate hair trimmer"

Working for smallish companies over the years I've found that. If it has a switch it's probably IT's problem!

As I'm also the person who tends to have hammers, screwdrivers, etc. so minor repairs also fall to IT.

Unfortunately for me, my missus is one of those people who bug me with:

1) You're an engineer. the Internet isn't working. Why can't you fix it?

2) The smart TV isn't working. You're an engineer, why can't you fix it?

3) The washing machine isn't working. You're an engineer, why can't you fix it?

etc etc etc.

https://dilbert.com/search_results?terms=angel%20of%20competence

Yup. A company I worked for had developed a digital printing system for the foil that goes on the back of tablet/pill blister packs. It had stopped working after the pharmaceutical company it had been supplied to had moved the packaging machine it was attached to and they needed to get it working again. All the people who had worked at our end had moved departments so I - the relatively new guy - got sent to the US with a laptop, the source code and the old compiler that was needed.

Took me a while to hunt it down and, in the end, I had to resort to tracing every single wire from every single sensor and, yes, someone unknown had removed a panel which had a ribbon cable attached. Obviously the ribbon cable was too short, they'd half yanked it out of the IDC clip and then quietly put the panel back. So I carefully removed it, quietly took it to a vice, gave it a nice squeeze and then put it back. Everything now worked.

Not sure what the bill was (consulting rates, flights, hotels, car hire, etc.) but that was probably pretty expensive for just using a vice.

Or to be more accurate "for knowing which bit to squeeze in the vice"...

...when the SEP field requires a footnote to explain it's origins.

I tried following Hitchhiker's, both the BBC2 series and the film, but found them to be great cures for insomnia, so it has never received more than 10 minutes of my attention.

So... your SEP field has been very strong. It works!

Try the radio transmissions... they were the best. After that the A/V franchise went into a bit of a decline...

Not to the same standard as some of the other comments, but as a humble sys admin (who is part dinosaur/part furniture as I've been around a while) it seems I frequently have to point out to our devs how their applications work when they screw something up in the config. Usually it's copying something from one env to another without actually knowing what all the config does. Sometimes it's complaining that something suddenly doesn't work and it must be a system problem, even though it was working fine then they changed some config/jar or whatever and now it doesn't work. Or asking me why something doesn't work without doing something useful like looking in the application logs where there are obvious errors.

All SEP as in most cases I'm just responsible that there is a system, that Java is available and that there are JVMs for them to put stuff onto. As to what the JVMs actually do, well that's not my sphere of influence...

One day, I came into work to find we had no network in part of the building. It was a part of the building without many people in it, so we didn't get any complaints, and I only noticed a problem because I tried to log into a machine in that part. I went into the comms room, and found that the switch connecting that part to the network had hung. Quick as a flash, I thought I'll power it off and on again. So, I did. When it was plugged in again, the switch was still hung. So, I tried again. Still no difference. As it turns out, ​I had pulled the wrong plug.

In my defence, these switches had no mains switch on them, and the cabinet was tightly packed, so it was difficult to reach around the back for the mains connector. I could reach the power strip at the back of the rack though, and traced the power cable to what I thought was the right socket. A difficult job due to a combination of the fact that every mains cable was black cable with an IEC plug on one end, and a standard 3 pin mains plug on the other, and the fact that there was almost no light in the back of the cabinet. There were several identical switches in this cabinet.

Anyway, I digress. I had powered down the wrong switch twice now, so I powered it up, and left it to boot. As anyone who has dealt with them will tell you, Cisco enterprise switches do not boot quickly, and it seems even longer when you are anxiously awaiting the boot up.

I had good reason to be anxious. Instead of a switch that was lightly used, and not actually working, I'd accidentally powered down a working switch that was very heavily used (every port patched, with a light on). Thankfully, no one complained. Not even our networks guys, who have a system monitoring all the network infrastructure so were getting warnings.

I eventually did find the right switch, and rebooting it did cure the problem, so all was well.

Early finish Friday afternoon, last people to leave, and the burglar alarm can't be set: 'Fault'. We'd had some problems with intrusion attempts and with a deep sigh we called the 24-hour service company. Being the hero, or drawing the short straw, I stayed behind to await their arrival. To be fair, it was only an hour or so wait and the who guy turned up was also anxious to get the problem sorted and get on with his own end-of-week refreshments.

He quickly diagnosed a cable fault, which drew a groan as the cabling had been installed by an artisan better suited to serving spaghetti. Nevertheless, the fault was deemed to be 'between buildings' and he prepared to pull a new cable through; this was going to be a long job. I suggested that we inspect the access duct-covers first...... Well, the fault was obvious, something had chewed through the cable. The burglar-alarm detective said "That's a *very* big rat." He also advised he was not going to put his hands in any duct containing "that"..... We, meaning I, had to make some other sort of provision. His problem became mine.

I retrieved a pair of welding gauntlets and pulled sufficient free spaghetti/cable up to the surface for repairs to be effected. And a large board to place over the hole temporarily. The repairs worked, the alarm was set and the weekend started a bit later than usual.

The following Monday, I told the factory guys about the event and they said they had seen this rat and confirmed it was 'bigger than you'd like to meet'. Cue call to a well-known exterminator.