It is not quite the same but in the last few weeks of working for a company I had to go and do some maintenance work on the network for the only office that ran 24x7 (it was an out of hours claims line).

It had been arranged that I would do the work in sections starting at 2300 to avoid disruption.

I got there and prepped the work and then at 2230 all the machines powered up (if not already on) installed patches and shutdown again.!

But this is a 24 hour operation? I got told that they do this every night…. This is because the machines were set to install patches at the same time as the other call centres which shut down at 2200.

So then the question came haven’t you reported this to the service desk to which I was told no it gives us a break…..

On my return to the office I mentioned this to the person in charge of patching to be told that nobody in the 6 months of the site being running had bothered to raise this issue - for all I know it could be the same 5 years later….

For that user it was more like a minute, but who has not messed up like this, being undercaffeinated in the morning.

(" .... and her reply was simply ‘Oh!’ ")

Do Not Attempt to Re-boot This System – then rebooted the machine by pulling out its power cord.

To be fair it may not be clear to someone that pulling out power cord would be sort of equivalent to a re-boot.

This is actually a very poor message, especially for people on a spectrum.

From a dictionary: attempt - make an effort to achieve or complete (something difficult).

Is pulling a plug something difficult? does it require an effort worthy of calling it an attempt?

It also doesn't have any information why it shouldn't be rebooted, so the user may not know how important it is.

Final point - if the message looked like an advert, someone might genuinely not see it or think the message is just another scam.

I think this story is set before the mass proliferation of adverts and scams .

I agree its badly written though. "Reboot" is not a term you would count on your users understanding.

"switch off" would be more clear , and indeed is the term used by mswindow's current upgrade routine.

You're right, the message wasn't explicit enough for IT-illiterate. I would suggest rather using "Do not touch this computer" with [1]skulls and bones in ascii art .

[1] https://ascii.co.uk/art/skulls

That seems contrived. If I left a sign that read 'do not attempt to switch off lights' it would be perfectly reasonable to expect that no one capable of working in an office, no matter how "on a spectrum" would smash the bulbs to achieve their desired darkness.

Pulling out the power was simply the result of not seeking further information when encountering a problem.

I used to run back office for a now defunct high street white goods retailer. Most of the updates and patched ran overnight, but sometimes we had to manually dial in, which required one of the shop staff to press a few buttons. On a few occasions I ran the update while the staff member rebooted the machine as required. The shop tills were just PCs with the EPOS software running on them, so when I asked the staff person what they could see on the screen towards the end of the patch, expecting something like a C prompt or a yes/no popup message, they said "nothing". I assumed it had al gone titsup and restarted the process (it took around 15 minutes each time), at the same point I got the same answer. I asked if the screen was on. "yes". Is there anything on the screen at all? "yes, there are some numbers and writing but not what I usually see"...

So basically, don't assume anyone to have the slightest clue what "reboot" means, or anything else that you take for granted.

If it happens to one person it's no big deal. When you're dealing with even a small to medium sized organisation you'll get multiple people doing this. Anything larger and you need a procedure for dealing with them.

Yes, most people either don't read emails from IT or don't take them in, and a clear message on the screen isn't enough for some too.

you need a procedure for dealing with them

It's called a LART, and its dimensions are often 2 by 4....

I remember working in Japan with my UK issued laptop - in the days of dial up, when you used to have to plug your hotel telephone cable into your lapt op; and use a local free phone number.

At midnight (UK time) (getting up time in Japan) it started to download the weekly system updates; and displayed a message saying "do not disconnect - or power off". I had to go to work, so I had to disconnect and go to work with the customer.

I sent an email to the support people who told me how to disable these updates for a week. I manually did the updates one weekend - and it took over 12 hours down the slow phone line.

The download package got smarter - it detected your connectivity type, and what time zone you were in, and if they were not good - it did not do the updates.

it detected your connectivity type, and what time zone you were in..

Nice job by the I.T. !

I really thought that story was going to have an unhappy ending.

I was involved in a PC roll out.

This would involve changing the login screen which can be a bit confusing, so we did what any reasonable IT person would do...

Thought they were all idiots so we made it as easy as possible for them.

We emailed documents with instructions for the new login prior the the weekend roll out, we chatted with people where possible to informally let them know what was happening and what they needed to do.

We even printed out (with screenshots) a simple guide and placed it neatly on everyone's keyboard so it was impossible to miss. I think it even had something like "READ THIS FIRST " on it.

I guess about 50% of the people removed the annoying bit of paper covering the keyboard and threw it away.

They then saw the screen was different, panicked and called the helpdesk to ask what to do....

And these were allegedly intelligent people with degrees and stuff ( I don't want to say what in y'honour because of reasons)

I wonder if adding "Read the paper instructions you just discarded" to the screen messgae would help .

Probly not , they didnt read that either no doubt , just straight to the helpdesk ...

You're not alone.

Around the turn of the century, I was involved in a system upgrade. Because of the nature of the environment, we had an air gapped network, so it had to be done on premises (though the bulk of the activity was from a local server, but some final tweaking on each machine was needed).

For 3 days before, we had messages on the screen backdrop; we posted notices up everywhere (and I mean everywhere - including above urinals and the back of cubicle doors in the toilets on the basis that everyone must go there sometime during the day); we even [in breach of H&S regs no doubt] had a poster sized message taped to a trolley in the entrance lobby which people had to see and walk around.

Come the day, we STILL had people turning off machines when they went home, thus stopping the upgrade. We also had one individual staying to well past 23:00 who refused to go and have a coffee while his machine was upgraded as "he had important stuff to do" -- in his case we got him to sign a statement that he was offered the upgrade and refused it.

My manager, who had an interesting attitude to authority, sent a message to HR and the directors asking about the recruitment processes as they clearly had employed people who could not read. In the case of the awkward guy, who raised a call saying "his machine would no longer work properly"; it was put at the bottom of the priority pile; his manager came in fuming (demanding an immediate fix and an investigation into the incompetence of IT support) and was then shown the signed statement, re-shown the notices, reminded of the importance of the upgrade and asked whether many hundreds of people should be prevented from working for this one 'special case' -- fuming entrance / sheepish exit. Again my manager had a sarcastic question to add**.

I suspect that there's no way to get round those who WILL not listen (BOFH style cattle-prods connected to chairs are apparently not permitted).

** If I recall; correctly it was along the lines of calendars being used in the days of ancient Sumeria and well established thousands of years ago by the Babylonians, so why is such a shock/surprise when the end of month/quarter comes round? Couldn't some form of planning be done to avoid the last minute rush and panic?

Does anyone else find the words More Context shoved into the middle of the story accompanied by a bunch of links to past 'on call' stories that give no context whatsoever a little jarring?

Its just like another in-page ad, easily passed over or otherwise ignored.

You'll get used to it.

It said do not reboot and she didn't reboot....

Can't reboot if it's powered off!

"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." ― Douglas Adams