Techie turned the tables on office bullies with remote access rumble

How on earth is it 2026 already? The Register will ponder that existential matter after first presenting a new instalment of “Who, Me?” – the reader-contributed column in which we share your stories of things you shouldn’t do at work, and how you escape them unscathed. This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Patrick” who …

[UCAP]

Happy New Year ...

... and may your screw-ups be ever covered up.

[Pascal Monett]

Well Done

I can only approve anything that makes a bully sit down and reevaluate his position.

Unfortunately, that is not what happened here, but kudos for making the bullies bully their own kind.

[werdsmith]

Re: Well Done

Yes, unfortunately bullies won’t relate the shutdown as a consequence of their behaviour towards the support staff.

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Neat trick

Risky, but well executed. Very mild revenge by BOFH standards, so one could consider this a lucky escape for both the bullies and Patrick.

[Dave K]

Re: Neat trick

Yeah, the only way "Shut down" could have been involved with the full-blown BOFH version would have been "Shut"ting the lift doors after lobbing the aforementioned PC "down" the lift shaft. But only after making sure that a couple of trailing cables from it have unfortunately snagged on the clothing of the two office bullies first of course.

Try finding that in the system logs!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Neat trick

TBH, that's why I stopped reading it.

While the earlier issues might have involved discomfort such as tripping over some cables (perhaps repeatedly), the latest (last four years) have been outright killing. In every episode.

Sorry, nope.

[imanidiot]

Re: Neat trick

You stopped reading BOFH because of the killing? Honestly I think you missed a lot of earlier stories or you're just misremembering but the BOFH has always been a homicidal maniac. That's not something of "the last for years". I'd say the reactions have become LESS murderous with time in fact.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Neat trick

"I'd say the reactions have become LESS murderous with time in fact."

Disappointingly so.

OP should avoid reading Agatha Christie novels.

[Hawkuletz]

Re: Neat trick

From way back when (sometime in the past millennium; I actually have this actual book) when he was interviewing applicants for the Operator position (having moved up the ladder to Bastard System Manager from Hell)

"Excellent. What is a killfile?"

"Uh. It's a list of usernames/topics/news items etc that you wish the news- reader to automatically skip so you don't have to wade through rubbish"

"Uh No. Remember I said pertaining to Operations. A killfile is in fact a file with a list of names of people you are going to kill."

"Oh. Of course."

[...]

"Excellent. You passed the final test. You start tommorrow. Please leave by that door so as not to disturb the other applicants."

BZZZZZEEEERETTT!

Electrified Door Handle. Gets them every time. I think it's the "Complaints Dept" sign that draws them to it like moths to a globe...

I push the body out onto the fire escape.

"NEXT!"

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Neat trick

If anything, BOFH killings have been mild over the last few years. T'was a time Simon would have you in a rolled up carpet for just having the last cup of tea without making a new one, or asking for something minor on a Friday afternoon.

[TheWeetabix]

Re: Neat trick

Exactly… I’ve been making “lime and carpet roll” jokes since I was in my 20s and I’m in my 40s now… Heck,

Death of BOFH was so long ago Ive spent part of my career making “how do you turn a riser into a faller?” jokes onsite.

Funny thing, I’ve never met somebody else in my industry that reads Simon’s writing, unless I’ve introduced them to it first. It’s a bit sad.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Neat trick

I did at GSK in the early 00's & in my local Canadian pub (2009).

[Yes Me]

Re: Neat trick

"Funny thing, I’ve never met somebody else in my industry that reads Simon’s writing"

Unless, of course, they were lying for some reason.

[that one in the corner]

Re: Neat trick

> Unless, of course, they were lying for some reason

Why admit, IRL, that you read BOFH? You are only alerting other people about where you get ideas from and that risks them becoming wary in your presence. No fun if they poke at the replacement mouse with a pencil...

[hedgie]

Re: Neat trick

I think that I first heard of the whole thing even before he went to El Reg, from folks who hung out in the monastery. I certainly remember reading the earlier ones either on Usenet or the Deja archive before then.

[Aglex]

Re: Neat trick

The Master Brewer at the establishment where I regularly drink grew up with Simon T! (Their mums were friends).

Apparently, AFAGK (As Far As Greig Knows), Simon's back at Wikato University, NZ....and still writing (as we all know!)

[hedgie]

Re: Neat trick

I wouldn't call him a maniac. He seems to be calm, rational, and collected when doing all the killing. Or at least had to helplessly witness users getting sealed in a server room when the halon system kicked in.

[cosmodrome]

Re: Neat trick

Right. He's basically a saint. Even if he sort of killed some people, maybe, it was just for their own best.

[Korev]

Re: Neat trick

Remember Halon is only one letter away from Halo

[hedgie]

Re: Neat trick

Exactly. And every admin could stand to have the intervention of one when they prey. Or at least have a name to use so they can blaspheme.

[doublelayer]

Re: Neat trick

There is no need for you to continue reading it, but you may be overestimating the murder rate. There are many episodes without any murders in them to many complaints from the comments from people who want the rate to be higher. Comments about the BOFH often show a lack of originality with the insistence on killings and basically only two accepted methods, but the articles themselves show more variation.

[goblinski]

Re: Neat trick

Ditto.

Been reading BOFH since 2002 - I won't put my hand to the fire on whether there were killings back then, but what I remember is BOFH having people purchase floppies to back up gigabites of data because floppies are safe, and stuff like that. Never the overly nasty stuff that happens in every episode now.

Even if the violence has always been the same (not my words) - the finesse it used to come with is long gone.

BOFH is a dick nowadays, to be very honest. Even if he has always been Stalin, he went from Stalin thumbing his nose to Stalin signing killlists.

[herman]

Re: Neat trick

I have actually been to the Stalin museum and have a picture standing with his statue. The people in town don’t like it, but they run the museum for the tourist income.

[Boris the Cockroach]

Re: Neat trick

The BoFH is a fictional character.

What he represents is the collective feelings of us tech types who have to put up with just how dumb some users are, combined with the moronic optimism of the manglement.(for proof of this, just read the on-call section of el-reg)

And it swhat we'd love to do to those 2 classes of co-workers.

Sadly if we did any of it in reality we'd be in jail

But as a work of fiction its gives us some merry relief that yes there are fictional characters like the BOFHs previous boss and he got us come uppance (or should it be downance) in that lift shaft.

After all.... we've all put in a hard weeks work only for the boss to go 'nope... I had the schedule wrong...'

[goblinski]

Re: Neat trick

...

What he represents is the collective feelings of us tech types who have to put up with just how dumb some users are, combined with the moronic optimism of the manglement....'

I know what he represents. I used to print all his stories on paper and read them in bed.

He was able, back then, to bring comedic relief to all of us, but applying punishments that were both funny, mostly light, and creative, to said characters.

He was advising idiots to rub Ram chips against their hair to make them faster, or to rub them against their polyester hoodies before inserting them in the Ram slot, at a time when static electricity was killer. He was locking people in elevators, abusing unscrupulous vendors, while actually doing some work. The worst I remember him doing was empty a rude customer's share and deleting everything to recover some space for them.

It was elegant jabs from a smart guy who was doing actual work while fighting the system. He was fighting idiots while helping the users.

Nowadays, he has full omnipotent control, everyone is an idiot in his eyes, and he's too godlike powerful to bother with creativity. He's basically one of the bosses, except he's not incompetent. He has become a nastier than life Terry Childs that has an ageing PFY (who should long ago have become just the PF) that is just as blasé by now.

He's way past Fonz jumping sharks.

[RobDog]

Re: Neat trick

I stopped reading BOFH years ago because it’s rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Neat trick

I stopped reading when technical errors started being common. Suspension of disbelief and all that.

[Evil Auditor]

That reminded me of the innocent fun I used to have with loosely (lousily?) protected Linux boxen at university. Remote logon to a fellow students machine and initiate shutdown with a ten second delay (or was it five, or three?) and watch and hear their reactions... No real damage done as all that was going on was students torturing C++ or vice versa. And it took an astonishing long time before someone figured to check the log...

[Bebu sa Ware]

"students torturing C++ or vice versa."

Substituting Rust for C++ you could remove one of the disjuncts and save an 'or.'

I would not presume to suggest which disjunct might be omitted. ;)

_{Linux (and Unix) boxen within Universities only have crap security when the institution has dispensed with the services of a (competent) system administrator or have never availed themselves of the same. A remote login shutting down a Linux host would normally require root from sudo etc or a dodgy auth/policy configuration. An unprivileged user logged in to the console is normally and reasonably permitted to shutdown but care has to be taken with remote session software like Nomachine on a shared multiuser box . [Don't ask.]}

[Doctor Syntax]

"And it took an astonishing long time before someone figured to check the log..."

Just cat from/dev/null to the relevant logs (use >, not >>), then shutdown.

[Evil Auditor]

Hey, I didn't know this at that time, mid 90s.

[herman]

You could also use the remark command. You know, rm -f /log, to recover some disk space before shutdown. The log files will be recreated automatically on restart.

[mirachu]

Three shall be the number of thy counting.

[Korev]

Looks like Patrick Excelled himself

[Craig 2]

The BBC Econet * commands were most fun at school. *remote *view etc etc Especially on half-competent teachers.

[Anonymous Custard]

I would certainly have to agree there.

Especially as I had a teacher who was mad enough to lend me the manual, so I could go on to code up my own versions with some *ahem* tweaks.

That said he was also mad enough to make me a privileged user in my upper 6th form year, at which point the fun really began (as I've recalled in these pages on occasion).

He should probably take part of the credit (or blame) for how I turned out...

[David 132]

Either of you - or indeed, anyone else - remember a program called The Gremlin that presented an idiot-proof menu of Econet japes and tricks?

"Type on remote keyboard", "clone remote screen", that sort of thing?

[Craig 2]

That must have come after my time, we had PET computers before the shiny new BBC micros arrived. I think we were learning how to use them at the same time as the teachers....

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

Decent...

Should be the Green Bastard though...

[K555]

We had a super irritating user at a client CAD department for quite a while. 'Tech Guru' know it all type that was constantly taking snipes at the IT, insisting he should be provided with a Macbook (despite 95% of his day job being on software that had no Mac support) and trying to ask pointed questions to make himself look superior (we worked out that these often came from an Arse Technica article published that day).

He actually moaned about having to change the backup tapes in an e-mail with "I don't see the point in this when we really should have RAID!".... to which I got to reply with "Pop on google, type 'RAID is not' and then tell me what the auto complete come up with".

Anyway, he also sat tucked in the corner during work hours beavering away on his personal photographic hobby. I full well knew he had a hooky Adobe Master Collection, complete with a modified hosts file to prevent it phoning home to Adobe and deactivating.

Whenever he'd particularly annoyed me, I'd browse across to his system drive and go 'clean' his hosts file out.

[Valeyard]

not a time for sneaky revenge

When a new kid who can't stand up for himself is subject to raised voices that's when one of the old guard (who knows too much about how the legacy stuff works to ever upset) traditionally steps in and calmly throws his weight around, liberally invoking manager names and HR meetings.

Preferably during the event so the kid can see this isn't acceptable before he jumps ship for a new job and the bullies are caught redhanded

Active bystander 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: not a time for sneaky revenge

Absolutely. The subject of the story was basically an AC who achieved nothing.

[Gmanton]

Re: not a time for sneaky revenge

This.

I appreciate the sentiment of the revenge. But bully's gonna bully till a real man / women steps in.

Be a man. Be a woman. And step in.

[doublelayer]

Re: not a time for sneaky revenge

This is true, but analyze it a little further. Why can't the person being bullied do what you're recommending themselves? There might be a good reason. That good reason might apply to the bystander too. For that matter, the correct response to a bullying situation would depend a lot on the form and topic of the bullying, because, especially in a workplace, someone can bully a person in a way that HR won't object to if they put their mind to it, in which case threatening them with HR is not a productive way to respond to it. By all means encourage people to take action when they can, but don't automatically assume that someone who doesn't take the action you recommend fails to do so because they can't be bothered; the situation might be more complex than you know.

[Valeyard]

Re: not a time for sneaky revenge

you're right, which is why Direct intervention is only one option of being an Active bystander which was mentioned in my post, you can take your pick among the rest, all of which are better and more productive options than "nothing"

[KittenHuffer]

This reminds me of an event .....

..... from a number of decades ago.

I was invited to a bleating with the Dept Manager, his number two (and he was), and the head IT techy. And the bleating turned out to be the DM & no. 2 rolling out a stream of tasks and issues for which the head IT techy was to blame and/or was responsible for. Being the junior techy it took about 5 minutes of this before the steam coming from my ears was too much for me to hold back.

I then interrupted, and went back over the list of complaints, pointing out that pretty much all of the items I was working not the head IT techy, and the exact progress of those items, the status of which for more than half was that they were blocked awaiting a decision from the DM or his no. 2.

After going through their complete gripe list shooting them down it had also seemed to shut them up, and the bleating just seemed to come to an end with no conclusion.

Afterward I fully expected to be given my marching orders as soon as they could come up with an excuse ..... but the head IT techy took a secondment in another department, from which he never returned. And I stayed there for about another year before I got so fed up I handed my notice in before I'd even found somewhere else to go to.

[Sarcastos]

No Intelligent, Mentally Mature, REAL Adult Can EVER Talk About "Bullying" As An Adult.

It's SCHOOL YARD CHILDISH! LO!L

As An "Adult" You Are Meant To Be Mature Enough To Stand Up For Yourself.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF NO ONE EVER MENTALLY LEAVING JUNIOR HIGH! LOL!

[TheWeetabix]

So you signed up

Just to make this victim-blaming post? I think we found the bully.

[K555]

Re: So you signed up

Judging by the style of writing, it was trained on posts from people that haven't even reached junior high.

[blu3b3rry]

Most of us are also mature enough to "Not Type Like This"

I often wondered how typing like this happens. It can't be attributed to laziness as surely it requires conscious thought, and therefore more effort to repeatedly press the shift key (or more likely toggle the capslock) for every damn word....?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's typing, but for cnuts.

[IGotOut]

Looks like Jake's made a new account.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't think so, it doesn't mention an IT anecdote from the 1980s followed by how computers suck now and it's better to make artisan calfs by hand guiding the bull's penis on a 500 acre ranch using lube you make yourself from the fish you catch that morning with a spear

[James Hughes 1]

Why does this have downvotes?

[the spectacularly refined chap]

NET SEND

It was always good for creating paranoia.

"I know who you are."

"Yes, I can see you..."

"You're wearing a blue shirt..."

[David 132]

Re: NET SEND

"THE HOUR OF MAN IS ENDING. THE TIME OF THE MACHINES IS NOW."

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: NET SEND

RETURN TO MONKE

[Ryan D]

Ah, the classics never go out of style

Way back in the early 90’s I worked for a telco that used OS/2. As admins, We used to telnet to each others PCs all the time and hit up the old shutdown -r now routine when we were heading out for coffee to let the each other know it was time to go on break.

We may have also done that to a few annoying users from time to time as well.

Ah the good old days.

[Medixstiff]

Funniest thing I remember seeing

Is the Sys Admin gliding up the steps with a panicked look on his face, because two techs were testing customer UPS units and for some reason they were connected to our network, so when they pulled the power plugs, a NET SEND about the power being cut and only having X minutes to go was sent out.

All I remember afterwards is the techs telling everyone how they wouldn't be doing that again.

[jfm]

Re: Funniest thing I remember seeing

> All I remember afterwards is the techs telling everyone how they wouldn't be doing that again

Presumably in slightly quavering voices, with the facial expressions of hostages reading a prepared statement about how well their captives are treating them…

[Stuart Castle]

When I was a green young support bod, I supported a lot of university researchers.

One had a fault with his pc and had likely lost data. Of course it wasn’t backed up and he was shouting at me. The university had a policy that because they provided network shared areas that were backed up, they didn’t back up individual workstations. Users were expected to either use the shared areas or back up their own data. This researcher had done neither.

The researcher was shouting at me when his boss heard. His boss came over to see what was happening and stopped him. The researcher explained and called me an “oily rag” while doing so.

His boss replied pointing out the university policy on backups, and explained calmly that “The person you called an oily rag knows more about computers than you ever will”. He also ordered the researcher to apologise.

[b1k3rdude]

Eh no,

Ive seen this in the work place and rather than submit to shenanigans I dealt with it head on. I stood in between the young member of staff and the bullies, asked the young staff member if they were alright and then pulled the reprobates to one side.

Its was then simple, I informed then I had reported their behaviour to HR and the IT director and if they ever speak to the other staff member that way again, there would be consequences for their actions. HR was as usual, a wet blanket. But said bullies were very careful with the rest of the IT dept. after that indecent.

And yes Im that kid that punched the school bully, and got punched right back. But the fat fcuk and his lackey left me alone after that. The above is the the mature version of that.