Take a leaf from The DailyWTF - for better or worse you get the rest of the story.

Sometimes, rarely, sanity prevails and that luser with the stapler would have had their comeuppance. Most of the time, it's the CFO or their nephew and Phil now has a new job - making twice as much money.

We need such tales to preserve what remains of our sanity, all of us after a life-time career in IT.

And if it's just "and Phil was publicly berated by the CEO and then fired" as most of us expect, it's at least a good reason to start Friday drinks early.

One has to hope that what happened next involved quicklime, a roll of carpet and a shovel. But perhaps I've been reading BOFH for too long.

You forgot the company van and an expenses form for meal, fuel and overtime...

For a moment I thought your comment said 'QuickTIME', which I suspect might have been a even worse fate.

I once worked for a small aerospace firm, where the owner was in a wheelchair. He liked to go on to the machine floor, but as there were a couple of stairs between the offices and the machine floor, he would then have to go outside and around to the side entrance, and that was obviously too long for such an important person .

The Chief Engineer came to me and demanded that I design a removable ramp for the couple of stairs, to which I refused, pointing out that a) we could buy one from a standard safety equipment store for a good price, b) to design one internally would cost a lot more, c) we were already under water with so much paying work, and d) I'm not a safety engineer, so I absolutely would not certify any ramp we built for human rating.

I got one hell of a telling off, but I didnt particularly care as I had already handed in my 3 months notice a couple of weeks before. In the end they got one of the older engineers who was used to this Owner's foibles to do it. It cost 20 times what I had found at the safety equipment store, weighed 4 times as much, and caused a deadline to be missed (at a cost to the company), but the owner got his ramp.

I was glad to be out of that firm, I can tell you that. And I've been wary of working for small firms ever since....

I worked for a firm that made PCB processing machines out of welded plastic sheet. All sorts of items were fabricated in-house including bookshelves and the like. Typically the cost would be several times higher than it would have been to buy the items but of course the costs were "lost" rather than requiring approval.

On the other hand when I worked for a metal framing company we had a whole room full of bolted together bookcases that needed clearing - I'm still building racking for sheds, etc. out of the stuff having brought it home in small batches on the roof of the car.

Yup - thats me.

Theatre Tech - The hall amp and mixer plug into the wall and there is a PC attached - by a phono connecting lead, I hasten to add; it's an entirely manual desk...Becasue I am obviously the Theatre Tech microphones etc. are also my parish apparently.

Shredder Fixer - Yup definitely plugs into the wall and lusers are always force feeding it so much paper that the machine locks solid and, yes, reverse feed is also jammed

Franking machine - that's electrical and connects to the network (in a bizarre sort of way that in no way works for normal corporate networks - so this is a bit of a fringe case)

Resetting boilers - Oh you are here! the caretaker isn't available and you did something with boilers in a previous existence didn't you?

WindowsXP based tills - They are definitely my pigeon even though they are supplied and maintained by a completely different company

Air Con - well that electrical isn't it? It's for your server room anyway.

I think that covers it for this job...

An old-school fireman once logged a ticket asking for more standard issue socks.

This was back in the late 90's when the concept of a centralised help desk was quite new. They guy needed some help, so he rang the Help desk. You can't argue with the logic, really.

(Sadly I wasn't able to help. I wasn't even able to point him towards the right team. Luckily we both saw the funny side.)

Just because it has a plug on it doesn't mean that it's in our remit.

This became increasingly irritating as more devices gained USB (or similar) ports. We do not support iPods ...

I do support iPods. "Ah, I see the problem. It's a non-company device. Allow me to secure that for you to bring you into compliance with policy, so that we don't have to go the messy HR misconduct route."

...The local shop ensured the stapler was repaired and the assistant executive was subsequently nailed to the wall, BOFH style, of course.

Stapled to the wall, surely?! :)

As already said in this section, "In IT, no good deed ever goes unpunished".

== Bring us Dabbsy back! ==

This so amply demonstrates my repeated assertion that "IT" is the 21st century version of filling inkwells and sharpening pencils, and that the OP was *not* working "in IT". YOYOYOY people would spend tens of thousands of $CURRENCY and three years getting a degree to change people's passwords and replace printer cartridges is madness.

But it permeates the entire sector. It's like recruiting a teacher to clean school toilets and responding to their complaints "What? But you say you want to work in education. You're cleaning toilets *in* *a* *school*!"

You may be joking but this actually happened to me but kind of in reverse.

Found out my boss at the time (head of mainframe computing) used to be a security guard that got the job 'because he knew spreadsheets and put together a spreadsheet that did rotas'.

Now don't get me wrong, I have no issues with people wanting to better themselves, but this really made things difficult....

A Swingline 747 in red is under thirty quid from Amazon.

And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they've moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were merry, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take my stapler then I'll set the building on fire...

> Phil's response was to suggest the user contact their facilities department and order a new stapler.

... check if it had run out of staples?

There are plenty of stupid's out there. A friend worked for a car immobiliser company in the 90's (before they were built in by the manufacturers) and got called out on a Sunday to a customers car that the irate and demanding customer could not start. So, he drove to South Mimms services where the customer was stuck to investigate the problem, but it being Sunday he took his 12 year old son with him. On arrival he found that there was nothing wrong with the immobiliser system but that the customer had the cars gearbox in Drive. So he moved the lever to Park and hey presto the car started. As he walked back to his own car his son VERY LOUDLY and easily in earshot of the customer said, "Daddy, did we just drive 60 miles to put that mans car in Drive?" He did get a glowing email from said customer about his professionalism though.

Confession time, I've come close to the same!

Once not really my fault, just the over-convoluted starting procedure for a manual BMW that required you to press the brake and the clutch, and have it in neutral, before pressing Start. Thank Google for getting me out of that one. It wasn't anything to do with me anyway but the ladies in the office were too nervous to drive the blooming thing so I was asked to move it for them.

The other, I felt a right prat! I bought a new-to-me campervan which, typically, had a nearly empty tank. Headed off to the nearest filling station with the mate who'd given me a lift following just in case. Filled up no problem, but the blooming thing wouldn't start again. I was on the point of phoning the dealer when I went back to basics and pressed the clutch before trying again, vroom, vroom (or as much vroom as a small Daihatsu can manage). Not only had I started the thing several times previously and not had an issue but I *always* leave the vehicle in gear (I've had Citroens with front disc handbrakes and Land Rovers with dodgy transmission brakes both of which are prone to roll away) so I *always* depress the clutch, except once, in a filling station, for about 5 minutes!