Thank you...
oh and you owe me a new monitor....again
BOFH: Stick this
"You've got to think of it in terms of sticks and carrots," I say to the PFY, "because users are complex - but stupid - stubborn animals, like donkeys." "Meaning?" "Meaning they respond to both rewards and punishment. So what you've got to do is find a balance between rewarding them for good behaviour - like not calling you …
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Friday 12th June 2009 12:24 GMT Dr. Mouse
Quality
Nicely done Simon!
Well, I guess it is a hard concept for a BOFH to understand, I can see the PFYs confusion. I mean, REWARDING the user for doing what he should? That's a sissie approach.
In this situation, the correct level of response would be to TELL the user to clear out his mailbox. If he didn't, delete it. Simple. The users must do as they are told, and they must learn this.
I think the company was careless anyway. They could be sued for the faulty fire extinguisher bracket!
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Friday 12th June 2009 12:24 GMT call me scruffy
I knew a user once.
He had 5Meg of storage to call his own, including mailspool.
He wanted to use pine, which the site didn't support, and systems staff were not happy about non cs students having executables in their home directory. His response was to get someone tro send him the pine binary, which he kept in his mail box, to be extracted with elm and run, of course by the time there was the pine in his mailspool, and the running copy as an existing file, he didn't have any space for more messages.
He was, it turned out, a jerk.
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Friday 12th June 2009 13:43 GMT Mark Rosher
A User Grins
But over here, if your mailbox is full the system sends you an email to tell you, and another, and another until you can't actually access the mailbox to delete your mail. Funnily enough this happens every time I take a couple of days off...
But there's no target icon for admitting to being a user...
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Friday 12th June 2009 13:49 GMT Andus McCoatover
@ Richard Morris
I knew I could find it...
<<So this rabbit walks into a butcher’s shop and says to the butcher, ‘Got any carrots?’
The butcher says, ‘No, we have only meat here. It’s a butcher’s shop.’
The rabbit comes in the next day and says, ‘Got any carrots?’
The butcher says, ‘No, we sell only meat in this butcher’s shop.’
On the third day, the rabbit comes in and says, ‘Got any carrots?’
The butcher politely says, ‘We have only meat. Meat.’
The next day, the rabbit comes in and says, ‘Got any carrots?’
‘Listen,’ the butcher says, ‘we have only meat here. If you come in one more time and ask if we’ve got any carrots, I will nail your ears to the floor. You hear me?’
The next morning the rabbit comes back to the shop and sees the butcher. ‘Got any nails?’ he asks.
‘No,’ the butcher replies.
‘Wicked,’ says the rabbit. ‘Got any carrots?’>>
Old as the hills...
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Friday 12th June 2009 14:51 GMT Il Midga di Macaroni
CARROTS?
Is anyone else trying to picture SimonT nibbling a carrot and saying "What's up Doc?" while a user tries to work out his beak has flown off and his face is covered with cordite smoke?
Come to think of it, we could draw several parallels between BOFH and Bugs. They both exhibit amazing amounts of planning ahead. They both hold the power of life and death over everyone they come across. And they both win. Always.
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Friday 12th June 2009 19:33 GMT Maty
It happens
Had a user once who insisted on storing his mp3 collection that way. Sadly his collection got so much larger than his file size allocation that it overwrote the buffers on the filestore and consequently the MBR was unable to locate where his files were on the hard disk.
Normally I'd be able to restore from backup, but sadly my last backup was made on the assumption that he'd reduced his mailbox size as I'd strongly suggested. Also, my recovery tools only work on text and pictures, because that's all that's meant to be stored on that server, so while I 'might' be able to get his emails back the MP3s were toast.
He believed it. Actually his taste in music was so crap that I didn't even bother keeping the MP3s for myself.
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Friday 12th June 2009 19:33 GMT DGRC
I need a new monitor and keyboard
When Simon is that funny, drinking coffee while reading is ill advised. The laughter forced the really hot coffee up my nose which further initiated a full coffee spew over monitor and keyboard.
Then the fire extinguisher fell off the bracket. When I woke up, the carrots from my lunch were missing.
Somehow I don't think it was all an accident. At least not the fire extinguisher part.
Because the fire extinguisher has gone missing.
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Friday 12th June 2009 19:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
Ok hold on
You mean I was supposed to be offering my (l)users FIGURATIVE carrots and beating them with FIGURATIVE sticks all this time???? Huh I had no idea, why did anyone explain that to me before now. Well hell that would explain a lot of things though, like so many of my (l)users suddenly expiring due to blunt force trauma to the head. ~shrugs~ Oh well I can't see where that whole figurative method is nearly as fun as the way I've been doing it so I think I'll stick with that one instead.
Cheers Simon, nice classic BOFH.
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Friday 12th June 2009 19:35 GMT John Dougherty
Carrots
Obviously the BOFH has not really explored the full coercive potential of a carrot - never been hit behind the ear with one for instance. Leather sap in your pocket, the police politely ask for your hands behind your back, fresh, hefty carrot, they just think you're strange. There isn't after all that much difference between a carrot and stick in terms of basic design.
Mine's the one with half a handcuff in the pocket.
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Friday 12th June 2009 19:35 GMT Woodgie
How Art Imitates Life.
I've been dealing with a luser this week with over 86,000 eMails in their INBOX (16GB or so). Not their whole account. THEIR INBOX. They're wondering why things were running slowly and their account keeps needing to be rebuilt...
If only I'd thought of the fire extinguisher myself, I could have used it on the poor bloody server to cool it down!
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Friday 12th June 2009 19:35 GMT John Uhercik
Right tool for the job.
A CO2 fire extinguisher makes the best LART. Blasting the luser with a shower of
dry ice particles will usually suffice. For the tough ones, CLONG!
As an added bonus, they can be used to get a 6 pack of warm beers down to
drinkable temperature in mere seconds.
LART = Luser attitude re-adjustment tool.
Flames, because someone emptied the fire extinguisher to cool all the beer.
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Monday 15th June 2009 08:43 GMT night shift
sticks through the phone anyone?
sadly my job as third shi(f)t requires me to deal with (l)users of less than capable abilities....cant find thier arses with a 1:1 map, torch, gps, mirror and supervisor guiding thier hand.... any idead on how on earth i can shove a sick through the phone to beat idiots around the head that are over 100miles away from me?
fire becuse i am about to find the exact location of the next moron who calls and introduce them to a propane blow-torch
<*RING*><*RING*>
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Monday 15th June 2009 16:23 GMT Phil 34
Yes!
Ah, back to basics. Great job Simon - a BOFH for the ages. Admins across the world will have carrots on their desks now. I must go rush out and buy some.
Although I must say, I wouldn't even talk to the user - their "funny" folder would be deleted and that would be the end of it. In fact, I personally would likely take it up a notch, write a little script, and every movie or song file on the email server would be deleted. (Besides my own a few other key people - those who I hit the bars with).
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
