Current place I'm in has a particular SUE who goes out of her way to make sure her IT doesn't work in order for her to not work - but blame IT for it.

One day she had another issue - she had forgotten her password although was adamant it was correct and it's the c0mPUteR's fault - and her manager fully believed it was a problem with the laptop. I was rather pissed off with her shenanigans so I said to her in ear shot "the only problem with that laptop is that it has a PICNIC error".

"How do we fix it?" he asked - short of saying sack her for being a lazy bastard I said "there isn't a fix, she'll just have to remember her password. If she's not done it in 15 minutes I'll unlock it".

The problem was during those 15 minutes, her mate asked her what the problem was and she said "It's a PICNIC error apparently, whatever that is". Another colleague then pipes up "Hang on, X has that on the mug he's drinking out of".

So the three of them have a look at this lad's mug which cheerfully breaks it down to "Problem In Chair, Not In Computer".

It's been 9 months, she's not spoken to me since but curiously hasn't had an issue with her laptop either.

It's been 9 months, she's not spoken to me since ...

I'd call that an added bonus.

It makes up for the lack of a pay rise, I will admit that.

But if the boss was cool, instead of "blaming Sue", the boss could have agreed to blaming some other names.........

"She was not happy with this. In fact she was pissed. My job lasted exactly another two weeks before I was summarily dismissed."

Maybe he should sue for illegal dismissal...

This is when you have to quickly invent what SUE stood for, and of course you write it SUE, what were my colleagues doing? System unjournaled environment, it was due to an image problem and cropped up several times because the patching program had to be run manually. As long as the person asking isn't technical, they'll accept it. After all, if you search the invented phrase, you get lots of technical articles so it must be a real thing.

I would have suggested it meant "Suspected User Error"

When I became manager of one IT department I discovered that many, many calls were recorded as 'picnic': problem in chair not in computer.

But unfortunately users would occasionally see the call notesand ask what a picnic was.

An edict had to be issued: no more picnics (or id 10 t errors). Just us TA, which means 'Technical Assistance' or 'Tedious Aresehoe' depending on who is listening.

On a system that used LU 6.2, a particular error message had the term "LU-LU communication error" and an error message number - that got reported as a "LULU" error

LU - Logical Unit, LU 6.2 being a peer-peer protocol

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_LU6.2

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_LU6.2

He should have told the new boss it meant "Sub-optimal User Experience" and he might have got away with it.

I just blame the pixies that come in overnight and unplug or break things... Did I mention that they are invisible as no one ever sees them....

is to invent backronyms. They can't be any more cringeworthy than human generated ones ....

Where does the second C come from?

Computer ?

Other C words are available...

Clearly the editing team have suffered a PEBCAK issue during the writing of this article! Nothing more than paying homage to the source material.

I've had the opposite scenario before.. worked for a great client who was understanding about issues, and always loved learning about PEBCAK, PICNIC and IBM issue acronyms to describe such things. So much so that if an issue was ever raised where people were unsure on the source, she would always start a call with "Is this a real issue or are we just having a PICNIC?". It was a breath of fresh air compared to the people who would escalate world-ending tickets for non-issues.

We have some names rather than acryonyms for people - some of which is part of peoples names but won't say here.

We have named (internally in the team) certain colleagues as

Mr Shouty

Sargent Major Shouty (SMS) - ex army who believes he can treat civvies the way he treated people in the army, doesn't work!

Captain Chaos - he actually knew about this one and accpted it was was quite funny.

There are more but not saying those ones and many I've forgotten!

We used the following shorthand when out at desks

VDU fault - very dumb user

EDU - extremely dum user

Internally we would refer to id10t and picnic. If these never went in the call logs for obvious reasons.

That way if we needed to call back to the office to get something done then saying there was a vdu problem didn’t matter if it was overheard.

Mind you I once told someone the problem was with the warp core they believed it and well…..

User based problems are referred to here as "Layer 8 problems"

When we were bought out by a bigger concern, a TLA. We had to use their systems for manufacturing, buying and accounting. This was a step-backwards to green-screen command-line procedures. The new bosses were very good at asking other people to provide information from this system but were unable to obtain it themselves. We called them AWDUTS: Ars***** Who Don't Use The System.

I've said before that we used our old and their new systems to show how everything they bought was over-expensive, thus exposing corruption. But no good deed goes unpunished and I was eventually made redundant..... In retrospect, a great outcome. So ---->

Not heard FUBAR for a while.

I always wonder what was being inhaled by the DEC coders who, when a VMS systems crashed, provided you with a FUBAR address / code.

FUBAR = Failed Uni-Bus Address Register.

I never knew FUBAR meant anything else until I was much less green.

Given the output of the Regomiser [ sic ] this week, I couldn't help reading Hal's half of the dialogue in Douglas Rain's calm, soothing voice.

People aren't Hardware or Software, so it must be a Meatware problem...

Presumably experienced by Lady Gaga?

The alternative is continuing to work with a direct boss who clearly has zero sense of humour or empathy for her staff.