A guest post on a blog I follow reminded me this morning of one of the funniest moment’s in my tech career. Lots of serious things happened over the years.
A server farm crashing enough disks that an entire 3 year research project was gone. (I got it back from tape.)
The CFO who asked me if I enjoyed spending my time on my knees under people’s desks. (yes, full ick factor there)
Collecting technology from their desks, while a 600 person division was finding out they were laid off. (that day needed a very long trip to happy hour)
But early on in my career when I was just a little baby tech geek….
I got a call early one morning from my boss. The CEO had just called him ranting about the Internet being down, again. (eyeroll)
Apparently the VP of Sales couldn’t get on-line for the third morning in a row. Why this woman couldn’t have just called me, I don’t know. I guess she needed to feel important, so she called the CEO at home. Should I throw in his wife had just had a new baby? LOL. So you can imagine what the CEO said to my boss….
To give Jason, my boss, his full credit, he was very restrained on the phone with me. He did not shout, scream, swear, or otherwise vent his frustration. This was the third day in a row and we had done everything under the sun. Including running fresh cable to her desk the day before and I don’t just mean giving her a fresh cable to plug into the wall. As in: up the wall over the ceiling, to the switch, from the switch to the server room, FRESH CABLE.
I walk to her office. She is steaming and ranting and all but throwing things. I take a look at her desk. Pick up the network cable and plug it into her laptop.
There is instant silence and then she starts to bribe me with things “Just don’t tell (CEO).”
ROFL.
T.A. Henry 
My brother did on site troubleshooting for copy machines for a while. His most common ‘repair’ was plugging it into the electrical outlet – even when that’s the first thing the phone rep troubleshooter asked the clients to do. People! LOL The under the desk one, not so amusing. Bleh!
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ROFL
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Sounds just like the olden days when I was a Junior IT Consultant. I didn’t have the patience for that profession so I moved into Accountancy. Then I discovered the people there were just the sort who’d complain something didn’t work when it wasn’t plugged in, except that they’d analyse it with statistics, “35% of my day has been spent trying to get the photocopier to work, another 15% waiting for Tech Support to come and plug it in, and now, finally I can do some work. Does anyone know why my computer screen is blank?”
Soon after, I jumped ship and moved into Education. These people definitely wouldn’t exist in Academia… would they?
I now have a face–palm moment every day, sometimes every hour of the day. I’ve stopped letting on that I know anything about computers, for my own sanity. I’m yet to unplug my computer and call Tech Support for help though, but I’m on a slippery slope!!
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laughing. I rarely tell people who know me I used to work tech. They want you to do all sorts of crap for them. I feel like saying, “oh, you’re a doctor, fab – can you do a quick tummy tuck for me this weekend?”
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Yes! So true 🙂
You’ve reminded me of the time my next door neighbour came to my house saying, “The man from Microsoft called to tell me I’ve got an issue with my computer. He’s still on the phone but after turning on the computer, I don’t know how to do what he wants. Can you talk to him?” I just laughed and said, “No, go home, hang up and turn off your computer. It’s a scam, as long as you didn’t do anything he wanted, there’s nothing wrong with your computer.”
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sigh.
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