Engineer held hostage by client who asked for the wrong fix

Friday has arrived, bringing a promise of fleeting freedom – and a new instalment of On Call, The Register's reader-contributed column that retells your tales of tech support incidents that became memorable for all the wrong reasons. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Kent" who told us he once worked as a field …

[Korev]

I'm pleased that Kent could escape and get back to his Folkstone

[Korev]

It sounds like Kent was pleased it was all Dover

[Phil O'Sophical]

And ferry happy to close the Deal.

[blu3b3rry]

At the very least he should have been owed a Sandwich after that.

[Korev]

They should be Maidstone to give him one

[Red Ted]

Could he have Ramsgate?

[Outski]

A Ham Sandwich, one would hope

Time & Tide brewery is very close--------->

[Sam not the Viking]

He could submit the Tale to Canterbury.

[Korev]

No Medway!

[Xalran]

since we are sleaving southern England.

He could have been sent to Coventry.

[C R Mudgeon]

I wonder if the "mantrap routine" involved a Tonbridge.

"Answer me these questions three -- and show yer pass -- 'ere the other side ye see."

Fall the tests and the eponymous weight falls on you and splats you into red goo.

[Pete 2]

A lucky escape

> inform me that I was banned from the site

It sounds more like the site should be banned by all future support engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A lucky escape

it's the reason a certain manufacturer of boxy cars in the Netherlands has on my permanent ban list for a good 3 decades now.

Not because they held me hostage, but my personal equipment used for a demo, just to force a software release.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A lucky escape

.. and I would shop this setup for unlawful detention. You can still do that post event as he had contacted his employer.

[flayman]

Re: A lucky escape

Agreed. They will hopefully have been charged emergency rate for that time. How long before it reaches the threshold of kidnapping?

[Anonymous Coward]

Outrageous

One hour and forty-five minutes later, Kent's supervisor called for a three-way chat with the client.

Absolutely outrageous / unacceptable behaviour on behalf of whoever was in charge, probably the client's data centre admin.

And an epic fail on behalf of the dispatcher who should have immediately escalated the issue after getting the call from his engineer.

ie: called the police.

I hope this chap bailed and got another job.

.

[Mishak]

Re: Outrageous

Yep, I would have had my phone out and made it clear I was calling the police.

[Will Godfrey]

Re: Outrageous

That was my first thought too.

I've been in situations with difficult production managers, but nothing like that.

[wolfetone]

Re: Outrageous

I think it's the first thought most experienced people would do. I mean for me I'd have marched back in to the gobshite who was dictating I was held and rip him a new one until I was let go. Or the fire alarm. Either or. I also know I'm a fairly confident kind of guy. I haven't always been, but you end up getting the raw deal from enough people you do learn to stick up for yourself. I think from this story, Kent was either still a bit green or the type who didn't like confrontation. There is nothing wrong with either of that, but I can understand why he waited.

Still, it's good that he was banned! Bet he was disappointed finding that out!

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

Re: Outrageous

Thing is the gobshite who ordered him to be held wasnt even present until later.

[AlbertH]

Re: Outrageous

I had something similar a few years ago. I took the fire alarm option, which released the Data Centre doors and dumped Halon into the Server Room. I legged it as the sprinklers started!

[ChrisBedford]

Re: Outrageous

"legged it as the sprinklers started"

Of all the things that never happened, this never happened the hardest. Sprinklers can never start by any means other than actual heat. And if a data centre has halon, it doesn't even HAVE sprinklers.

Also, halon fatally highly toxic and discharging it for any reason other than an actual fire was punishable by some pretty severe laws - actual non-optional prison time, usually.

[jake]

Re: Outrageous

"Sprinklers can never start by any means other than actual heat."

You've never seen a dry pipe deluge system, I take it ... Not my favorite, and becoming rare these days, but they still exist.

"And if a data centre has halon, it doesn't even HAVE sprinklers."

In the case I mentioned in this thread, the DC was about 13,000 square feet, protected by Halon 1301, and the office space (the rest of the building) was about 2,000 square feet protected by water.

"Also, halon fatally highly toxic and discharging it for any reason other than an actual fire was punishable by some pretty severe laws - actual non-optional prison time, usually."

Again in my case, it was Halon 1301 which is not all that toxic. It's frowned upon because it eats the ozone layer, though. I haven't spec'ed it since they stopped making it ... but it is still allowed to use it, if you can find a source of recycled material and you want it bad enough. The military uses it quite a bit, as do airlines. I believe that NASA still flys with it. I can point out seven or eight Mainframe houses that still have it installed.

[SonofRojBlake]

Re: Outrageous

Is there a special word for when someone pops up to INcorrect someone?

Pretty much the entire point of Halon generally is how NOT toxic it is. It's an ozone depleter, yes, but one source I found described it as, quote: "remarkably safe for human exposure".

[Sparkypatrick]

Re: Outrageous

Toxicity is only relevant in case of passing exposure while exiting. Flooding a room with Halon suppresses a fire by depriving it of oxygen. It will have the same effect on a person, which is why it should not be deployed until the room is clear of people. Unless you consider the hardware more important than the wetware.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Outrageous

While old school Halon worked by displacing oxygen, newer gas suppression systems work by interrupting the chemical reactions. Instead of taking away one side of the fire triangle, they take away one side of the fire tetrahedron.

At least some early systems were supposedly designed to drop the O2 levels low enough to suppress fire, but not kill any humans in the room. I don't know how much overlap there is between "low enough O2 to stop fire" and "high enough to not die"

I asked our installer about the gas's safety on an Intergen system one time, and any concerns if we were in the room when it discharged. He said that our ears would be ringing from the noise. The gas wouldn't kill us. Granted, it probably wasn't good for us, but it would be much less harmful than the smoke from whatever triggered the system.

[John Robson]

Re: Outrageous

At which point the halon system should have an additional test, more than the "someone tripped and broke the glass on the alarm"

The sprinklers in the rest of the facility might well be activated by the alarm, but again - it really should take something other than the activation of the fire alarm to deploy any automated suppression system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Outrageous

I would've suddenly been desperate for the loo and asking which server they'd like me to use.

Or just reaching for the EPO button/fire alarm.

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Re: Outrageous

Bear in mind that pulling a false fire alarm is probably a criminal offense, often punishable by a fine and jail time, at least in the US.¹

Pretty much the same in the UK, as far as I'm able to tell.²

It woudn't look good on the old resume.

Besides, a fire alarm would probably precipitate a fire suppression dump of some sort, something for which I'd not wish to be held responsible, since there would most likely be lawsuits and even if you got lucky and won and held not liable, the costs would likely be ruinous.

____________________

¹ Fines for False Fire Alarms by U.S. State

² Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004

[NetMage]

Re: Outrageous

In the company going to hold you responsible while admitting kidnapping to the police?

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Re: Outrageous

Since we're dealing in hypotheticals here and the number of readers who are likely to face a similar situation is vanishingly small, by all means, be my guest.

Personally, I like to stay as far away from semi-trained security cops, police officers, prison cells, and DAs as possible.

To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man; but to counterfeit dying when a man thereby liveth is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed. The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life.¹

_______________

¹ Wm. Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 1, Act 5, Scene 4. (And, yes, I know that Sir John Falstaff is no hero.)

[jake]

Re: Outrageous

"Bear in mind that pulling a false fire alarm is probably a criminal offense, often punishable by a fine and jail time, at least in the US.1"

It's NOT a false alarm if you are being held against your will and seeking help from the authorities. You might be detained on-site for an hour or two while the cops sort it out, but you'll be free pretty quickly.

Whatever the affect of pulling the alarm happens to be belongs to your captor, not to you.

In my case, I pulled the alarm in a brand new building that had only been occupied for a couple weeks. The halon dumped in the DC, and water sprinklers damaged everything else. The asshole who had tried to hold me against my will went to jail that night. I spent a very comfy night in my own bed. He went on to do 15 years at the then new California State Prison, Solano (it wasn't his first offense). The only time I spent in court was testifying at his trial (one day, for a couple hours). Their insurance company never even contacted me, for the damages or anything else. My insurance company contacted theirs, for lost wages, the loss of my tools, my illegal detention and "mental anguish" (whatever that was). It was settled out of court, my cut was in the high six figures (real money in 1985).

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Re: Outrageous

Early in my working life I was a sometime stringer (basically a freelance journalist) in a small market for one of the US news services and, as part of the gig, I got/had to sit through a few trials, civil and criminal.

Based upon that experience as well being a long time court watcher with a more than average interest in the legal system for reasons I won't detail here, I've observed that what you might think is a just outcome and the outcome itself are not as positively correlated as one might hope.

Based upon that experience, unless my life was literally on the line (weapons brandished, bodily harm threatened, etc.), I'd settle for inconvenience over expediency.

But that's obviously just me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Outrageous

I pulled the alarm... The halon dumped in the DC, and water sprinklers damaged everything else

In none of the fire systems I have ever come across (outside a Hollywood blockbuster) would a simple alarm activation automatically set off the sprinklers. Sprinklers are activated by local sensors because there is no point pumping water all over the east wing if the fire is 300 yards away in the west wing. Waste of water which would be better spent suppressing the actual fire, always assuming there actually is a fire. Also impedes evacuation.

A typical domestic or small business sprinker system, in the UK at least, is totally dumb. Each sprinkler head is shut off with a bulb filled with gas. In the event of a fire in the immediate vicinity, the gas in that head expands and shatters the bulb and just that head starts dispensing water, until such time as the fire spreads and other heads are activated.

I'm not saying it couldn't be done, and I dare say there are certain very limited use cases where flooding a building and causing massive amounts of water damage is acceptable when the furniture removers accidentally hit a break-glass call point, but I have never come across them.

I've only met one computer room with Halon and I'm pretty certain that required an actual sensor to sense an actual fire before it would release. It might have had a manual override too, it was too many years ago to remember and I was merely a "user" in those days, fascinated to gaze through the window at the farm of VAXen. Current place of work has rack-top powder dispensers and I know for a fact that they only dispense if they sense a fire in their immediate vicinity. Again seems stupid to ruin a whole row of racks if dumping powder in one keeps the flames from spreading.

[jake]

Re: Outrageous

"In none of the fire systems I have ever come across would a simple alarm activation automatically set off the sprinklers."

I guess you have never come across a deluge type fire suppression system.

I said "pulled the alarm", which is colloquial, what I actually did was activate the two systems from the fire suppression panel. I activated both the halon and the water because I had no idea if either or both would actually call the fire department. Remember, the guy I was supposedly contracted to was fairly shady, and had already decided to hold me against my will. I had absolutely no compunction whatsoever about ruining the entire building, if needs be.

[John Robson]

Re: Outrageous

That's not just tripping the alarm though is it, that's explicitly manually activating two suppression systems.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Outrageous

Very close. The dumb sprinkler heads' bulb actually contains a calibrated liquid (different colours signify different breaking temperatures)

But there are also wet or dry systems. What you describe is a wet system (pipes charged with water permanently) whereas a dry system doesn't require the glass bulbs in the heads because the pipes don't have water in them unless triggered. Dry is deemed safer in these environments because you don't risk a leak damaging your kit.

If there's a fire in that room, all of the kit is written off (smoke damage) whether it's drenched or not, so you send a deluge of water to prevent the fire spreading to the next room.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Outrageous

Yes, in that room, not in the entire building...

[ChrisBedford]

Re: Outrageous

It must be nice to fantasise like this.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Outrageous

"Besides, a fire alarm would probably precipitate a fire suppression dump of some sort"

That was the essence of the threat implied in the two options.

[PeeTee]

Re: Outrageous

Freon ain't nice to breathe either - I always made sure I knew exactly where the exit was...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Outrageous

And because of that, the suppression system activation automatically releases the doors so that you can make good your escape.

That's why it's such a viable option if you're ever detained in one of these places.

[Martin an gof]

Re: Outrageous

Often just setting off the alarm (no water, gas or powder dispensing required) will release maglocks, except in extremely secure environments.

M.

[TonyJ]

Banned from the site?

Good! Sounds like future bullets dodged, if you ask me.

I once did an upgrade from Exchange 2000 to 2003 for a company in London. They head of IT has explicitly banned my colleague from going, and I was the only one with experience of clustered Exchange at that time.

Imagine my surprise when I walked in on him, on a call to said banned colleague, complaining he didn't think I was as good as him and questioning what I was doing.

Worthwhile explaining that I'd trained said colleague on Exchange.

Anyway I laid down the law with the customer - either trust me to get this done, or I will back out, pack up and leave, and he can have my colleague back but either way, stop going behind my back. Have a problem with me or anything I am doing, tell me to my face. Funny how he relented.

I was sent back three weeks later because the server had stopped delivering email and no one could even connect Outlook to it. I walked in and on the screen of one of the nodes, the mail cleaner software (I forget which one now - it's over two decades ago) was showing a message that said something like "Upgrade on this node is completed, now move to the second node <name> to complete the installation. NOTE that Exchange services cannot be started on either node until this step is completed". I pointed at it and and he admitted that he had part installed an upgrade then left it in that state. He then stated that felt it was our fault it hadn't been finished and I needed to finish it. Of course it smelled fishy to me (thinking he'd tried and it wasn't installing so he was hoping for some free extra support) so I turned around and walked out.

He tried to block the lift to stop me until I gave him the option of stepping aside or the police would be called. What I really felt like was saying was "or I'd move him aside", but he was exactly the kind of person who would then himself call the police and it would have been career limiting.

I self-banned myself from that site for any future work that came up.

[trindflo]

Re: Banned from the site?

He was banned because he embarrased the supervisor that committed false imprisonment. Good! Who would want to encounter that supervisor again?

[Sherrie Ludwig]

Re: Banned from the site?

Good! Who would want to encounter that supervisor again?

Yes, don't threaten me with my fondest wish.

[Anonymous Coward]

In a former life I worked for a company who provided and commissioned customised software for airport operational systems around the world.

One particularly problematic client in a less developed country was having difficulty with the new system we'd installed, and they managed to get it to catastrophically fall over when the commissioning engineer was about to leave site after several difficult weeks.

The airport's head of operations marched down the jetbridge with local police to the commissioning engineer's flight, and removed him from the aircraft to get him to go and fix the issue, delaying his return to his family by several days.

The next account management meeting and discussions about transition to service were somewhat interesting, and eventually included an apology from the client and a promise not to use such heavy-handed tactics in the future, backed up by a contract modification.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, sounds familiar. Not a Lxxxx install in Kenya by any chance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not me but a struggling colleague

who, after several hours without getting any closer to a fix, called our team manager to ask if someone with more experience on the gear in question could be sent to lending a helping hand and impart some wisdom. Citing our outstanding workload, our manager's counter-offer was that my colleague should leave site and the more-experienced body would arrive shortly.

The customer was not having this, and barred my colleague from leaving until the problem was sorted. Cue another call to our manager explaining the situation, which turned into our manager and the customer in a telephonic standoff, with neither prepared to budge, and apparently got a bit loud and sweary before it was abruptly ended, with my poor colleague still incarcerated.

The next thing the customer knows is our manager arriving on site, striding across the room, grabbing him by the throat and shoving him up against the wall, which had the desired outcome of freeing both my erstwhile (and now petrified) colleague and my manager to go about their day.

How this never resulted in a formal complaint, criminal proceedings or a terminated contract is a mystery to this day…

[ComicalEngineer]

Didn't like the result

Early 2000s my day job was doing some complex gas dispersion modelling for a thing called the (UK) Control of Major Accident Hazards regulations. We were called in by a property developer to look at some housing they wanted to build near a site containing large quantities of toxic gas. A development boundary had already been set by the HSE but the developer wanted to build a housing estate within the safety distance.

The developer wanted me to prove that the HSE's calculations were wrong! I accordingly ran the calculations using the same software that the HSE use and my conclusion was that the HSE calculations were correct to within a few meters (if you've ever done gas dispersion modelling the concentration / distance contours are affected by numerous factors).

At this point the client had a hissy fit with me and screamed that that was not the answer they were looking for and I must do it again.

He was then politely informed that my work had simply confirmed that the HSE calculations were correct and that they would not get permission to build in this location and that the HSE would not make any change to their decision.

Another screaming fit and I was told to leave the site. The client refused to pay as I hadn't got the right answer! (That's another story).

He then decided to go to a judicial review with a well known QC who earned in a day what I earned in a month.

They were kicked out of court by HSE,

We passed their name and reputation across to everyone we knew in the area and I personally put a block on our company working for them ever again.

[GlenP]

Re: Didn't like the result

One of the reasons I decided to stick to IT rather than pursue a career in statistics (which I could have done) was the realisation that you'd have to provide the required answer not the correct one.

A former employer had a report done, at an investor's insistence, by one of the major consultancies on marketing and strategy. They'd clearly cherry picked data and facts to support their arguments about what we should be doing when they clearly didn't have a clue about our business. It was things like, "in the four years 19xx - 19xx the business trends matched the global demand for electronics therefore we can use the forecast for the global demand as a predictor for the business." This totally ignored the fact that we were on the edge of the electronics business (making machines for low volume production) and the trends completely failed to match in the years before and after the 4 they'd selected.

Suffice to say the ongoing consultancy contract was terminated with immediate effect but of course the original fee was never refunded.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Didn't like the result

We were being TUPEd some time ago. I generated some reports from one of our systems but they were not good and our boss wanted "US" (me and my immediate line manager) to change them. LM was going to....

I blankly refused and said, "I give you these, what you do before you give them to ABC is down to you. If ABC then come to me in the future and ask me to run another report I will and it will be accurate. I will send them your way to explain any differences. I do not want to be here, get some data and then have someone from ABC watch me FUDGE them to look good"

[Anonymous Coward]

HSE calculations were correct to within a few meters

Presumably these were gas meters?

[Inventor of the Marmite Laser]

Re: HSE calculations were correct to within a few meters

With calculations performed in the cloud.

(Don't flame me for the pun)

[Xalran]

Re: HSE calculations were correct to within a few meters

At least the calculations weren't performed by some vaporware.

[Korev]

Re: HSE calculations were correct to within a few meters

That was a butaneable pun

[Sam not the Viking]

Delegate.

Before my time, my employer had some issues on a contract in the Middle East. It wasn't thought to be the fault of the company but in the interests of good relations, one of the Directors flew out to discuss the matter with the customer. On arrival at the airport, he was promptly arrested. It was explained to him that until the company sorted the problem he would be kept imprisoned.

He was released quite quickly after instructing that the necessary work be done.

Not renown for treating employees with compassion, I'm not sure what the response would have been if it had been a lowly engineer sent instead.

[Rivalroger]

locked in rooms

More than 2 decades ago I was a newbie desktop type. One of the areas I supported was finance and one of the people there was interesting. She had a third party install some software on her PC and for some reason took it into her head that things weren't working properly despite the support guy insisting it was. Her response was to lock the guy in the room until he "fixed" it. I never heard the outcome but was very nervous when it was my turn to upgrade her personal workstation to Win NT but I managed to avoid being held against my will.

[Chloe Cresswell]

Did some work for APC (now part of FedEX UK).

Network wasn't working right.

Machine had been supplied with 10/100 10baseT networking.

Found fault PC with a 10baseT/2 PCI card installed, and a 20 cm cable looping it into the network (50cm is the minimum distance)

Examined the machine, the PCI card had been installed while the machine was running.

I got banned from the site as I told my boss not to honour the warranty as the machine was damaged by the client's IT staff being an idiot.

[NXM]

idiots

If being an idiot gets you sacked, I'd have to sack myself at least once a week. Yesterday I made a capacitator emit the magic smoke because I'd soldered it in the wrong way round.

(Incidentally autocorrect changed 'emit' to 'emote' just now, which might actually have been better)

[Contrex]

Re: idiots

... but it missed 'capacitator'.

[Anonymous Anti-ANC South African Coward]

Re: idiots

New word for the week : capacitator.

It will be fun seeing how many people will pick it up.

Perfect.

Ship it.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: idiots

Is that the US spelling or the UK one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: idiots

Capacitator.

Is that the opposite of incapacitant?

[FeRDNYC]

Re: idiots

It's a perfectly dictionariable terminologum.

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

Re: idiots

Obviously it's a component that turns other components into capacitors. Self-explanatory!

[NXM]

Re: idiots

@Contrex - I added that to the spell checker but can't claim to have invented it.

"Charge capacitators!"

Captain of War Rocket Ajax, Flash Gordon (1980)

Well spotted though!

[HXO]

Re: idiots

I read that in the voice of Mr Burns (Simpsons).

[C R Mudgeon]

Re: idiots

"capacitator"

Actually "capacitater".

It's an organic energy storage device (mostly in the form of starch). Like some electrical capacitors, it charges slowly but releases quickly (though orders of magnitude more slowly, in both directions, than the electrical kind).

I'm especially fond of the baked form of said device, but French fries are also yummy.

[Wzrd1]

Re: idiots

Well, the similarities with an edible sort are present. Reverse the electrolytic and light it up, you get foil and popcorn.

And thankfully, I have no sense of smell to be offended.

[C R Mudgeon]

Re: idiots

Brilliant!

[Chloe Cresswell]

Re: idiots

But did you try to get the capacitor replaced under warranty after you smoked it?

If you went "my fault, arse, need a replacement part" you're not an idiot *nods*

If you say "it's the fault of the supplier, they owe me a new capacitor to replace the one I blew up", then yes, you'd be an idiot ;)

If you are an IT tech for a company, and don't know you need to power off the machine before installing expansion cards, I would still maintain you are an idiot.

If you then hook in a device using a cable that doesn't meet the spec, then I'd still say you're an idiot.

[Wzrd1]

Re: idiots

Ah, but now it's an incapacitator.

Of well defined incapacity.

I'll just get my coat on the way out...

[Rtbcomp]

Locked Out

Back in the 1970s I was a field service engineer working on banking terminals. A colleague was working on a machine, jacket off and hung on the back of his chair. He needed a part from his car but when he got back to the branch they asked for his ID, which was in said jacket. They knew perfectly well who he was.

Another branch of the same bank had a man-trap on the door between the back office and the banking hall. It was a bit like an airlock, you entered the space between two doors fitted with electrically operated locks and had to shut the 1st one behind you before you could open the 2nd one. Presumably the bank could lock you in that space if they wished. I've worked in dozens of bank branches and this was the only one with this set up. It was a small branch in a small town.

[Boris the Cockroach]

Re: Locked Out

We had instructions always to keep your government ID card with you on jobs.

Because theres always some moronic MOD plod who will watch you leave the site to goto your car, and after watching you all the way to the car and back will refuse you entry as you've no ID.

"secure site mate, no ID no entry"

"how the zark did I get in there in the first place?"

And you had to be nice to the MOD plod because some of them had guns... or worse yet... search your car on the way out......

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Locked Out

"how the zark did I get in there in the first place?"

I've been in the situation where my card was expired, but not noticed by the gate guard. It was noticed by another guard, who asked the above question, and was peeved about the failure by guard #1, who I assume got a thorough bollocking. Guard #2 did take the time to help me through the extremely bureaucratic process of getting things rectified, instead of taking the easy way out and tossing me out on my ear.

I consider my base pass to be as valuable as the door key, for it serves pretty much the same function.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Locked Out

It must have expired while I was on-site. I've been here for quite some time.

[Helcat]

Re: Locked Out

Not necessarily a moronic plod: It's normal procedure to ensure everyone entering a secure area has the correct ID. Even if they're known.

You will even find people testing this, just to make sure. So it's incumbent on the 'moronic plod' to follow procedure, because it really is their job on the line if they don't.

And the example I'd give here is from when I worked for the NHS: The Chief Exec himself went around without his ID on occasion and made a point of tailgating people through security doors, just to see if anyone would challenge him. Where he was challenged, he praised staff. Where he was not...

But no, it's not moronic: Consider if you'd walked out past one guard who had needed the loo, so another guard swapped with him while you were at your car: The new guard might not have seen you leave, so why would they let you back in without ID?

Hence why you should always make sure you have your ID on you when you're in a secured area. At best, and sorry for this but... you'd be the plonker for forgetting your ID. At worst, you would be the con artist trying to get through security by claiming you'd just 'stepped out to grab something and my ID is in my jacket, inside!'. There's an interesting series on how people get past security called 'The Inside Man': Maybe worth a watch: You'd see why challenging someone really is the right move.

[Contrex]

Re: Locked Out

My dad was a distribution engineer for the London Electricity Board in the 1960s, and had to visit South Africa House to advise on an upgrade to their 11 kV transformer in the basement. To get in the building he had to go through an airlock arrangement of that type, with then-unusual CCTV monitoring. At the time South Africa was a pariah nation for well-know reasons.

[heyrick]

Wasn't the manager that approved the repair required to sign off on it?

The guy is quite patient, isn't he?

Once having done the job I was there to do, the moment they refused to let me leave is the moment I would be on the phone to the police (and if phones had been confiscated because of security mumble, plan B, prod the red button marked "In case of fire"). You got a problem, you sort it out through the correct channels, you don't hold people hostage.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Wasn't the manager that approved the repair required to sign off on it?

Tempting, but I am not a lawyer, as the saying goes, so I'd be wondering whether plan B left me liable for damages caused by downtime or whether I could claim some kind of self-defence.

Certainly if I were on the jury that would be an easy question to answer, but not everyone on a jury is as smart as me. :)

[Sub 20 Pilot]

Re: Wasn't the manager that approved the repair required to sign off on it?

Personally, although not a violent person - I pretty much trained hard at it for decades and can be but usually choose not to- my view would have been to tell them to let me go immidiately, followed by folding the fucker who was stopping me like a deckchair. Then talk to the police.

There is no need for uppity arseholes in charge of security in most of the world.

[goblinski]

An application running on the server was malfunctioning," he told On Call. "The application vendor blamed the operating system. The operating system vendor suggested the hardware might be unstable. The hardware had just had a board replaced. Therefore, the man who replaced the board must be the problem.

So these two were contacted, queried, and provided relevant responses, in the time it took our guy to walk to the door to get out?

Me think the admin never intented to let him out one way or the other till all is up and running.

[TSM]

> So these two were contacted, queried, and provided relevant responses, in the time it took our guy to walk to the door to get out?

I don't get that impression from the story. It sounds like the sequence was:

* Client notices buggy behaviour of application and calls software vendor for support

* Software vendor blames OS

* Client calls OS vendor for support

* OS vendor blames hardware

* Client organises hardware replacement, which will not be accepted until the application works properly, because it has been determined that the hardware is the problem and no other cause is possible.

[Anonymous Coward]

Any attempt to keep me from leaving will incur an immediate phone call to the police. This is probably why I don't do IT support for the police.

[DS999]

Mantrap

I wasn't there for this but at a consulting gig I heard that one of the Sun hardware techs had become trapped inside the middle "mantrap" section. This datacenter didn't have a traditional mantrap, instead it had an access card to an unmarked door in a hallway, which took you down ~ 25 foot long hallway with no doors except at the end where you had another access card reader to get you through the glass door into the datacenter. Bit of a Lumon feel to that place now that I think about it...

Somehow the Sun tech's card stopped working between the first door and the second. It failed to open the datacenter door, so after a few attempts he tried to exit out the other door where his card ALSO failed. So he was trapped in the middle with no way to call anyone (this was in a basement level so cell phones didn't work and there wasn't a phone or call button anywhere in that hallway)

Fortunately for him this was during working hours and there were other people in the datacenter, so about 10-15 minutes of waving and pounding on the glass to get people's attention eventually worked.

I learned about this because they were installing an emergency call button inside the hallway the first time I entered that datacenter. No idea if the card (which was a simple prox card IIRC) somehow failed, or something caused him to be removed from the system during that brief window.

[john.w]

Could be worse

A colleague visiting a large South Korean brand was told he could not leave the site until the problem had been solved. After a few of days he called his local embassy and they turned up with the police to get him out. He was told never to return which was a relief to him.

[WardyW]

Customer Single Point of Failure

Something similar happened to me many years ago.

I was part of the company IT network team and had to replace an aging router and switch as part of our ongoing hardware refresh project.

The site was a small power station, some distance away, so I was going to get a free hotel stay along with dinner & breakfast (+ a couple of beers) out it and I liked working in power stations anyway so win win for me.

I did all the prep work, tested the old router & switch config on the new kit, did all the admin, raised change controls (which our change team loved to add everyone and his dog to), made sure everyone was aware of what’s occurring and when, so I was very confident that all would go smoothly and it was going to be a very nice jolly for me.

On arrival, the place was like a fortress, huge walls all around the site, massive gates, opened by a very beefy looking, very polite, ex-Gurkha, security guard who directed me to the main control room building and the site engineer showed me where the IT kit was.

At the appointed time, I tested everything was still working, took the old kit out, put the new kit in, and then tested everything was still working, which it was. Apart for one small PoE device which looked to be a Serial to IP convertor, it was flashing before and not flashing now, also showing down on the switch. So I wiggled it about to make sure it was seated correctly, plugged my laptop in to confirm the port was okay etc, still no joy.

At some point during my diagnostics, the phone rang, it was the main power station wanting to why they had lost the feed from the site which they used to monitor and/or control supervisory equipment. It was very important and they wanted it back ASAP.

I gave them the bad news that their Serial to IP convertor didn’t want to power back up after it was powered down, which they didn’t take too well and demanded that I take all the new kit out and put the old kit, like that was going to help.

Just to appease them I refitted all the old kit and, surprise surprise, it still wasn’t working, which didn’t go down very well, they then got very snotty. It didn’t help when I asked them to try replacing the Serial-IP converter, after all if it was such an important link then why didn’t they have a spare in a cupboard somewhere.

It turned out they didn’t have any spares. I then tried to be helpful by sending them emails of where they could buy a spare online and, as it was so important, that they could maybe buy a few extra so they would have spares in the future, this just seemed to make matters worse for some reason.

After what seemed like forever, they eventually agreed that I could put the new kit back in, they would replace their faulty kit, I could leave site and get to my hotel. Yay.

I was expecting some kind of follow up or even an attempt to give me a bollocking but I heard nothing, I never went back to the site, I did check later and the Serial-IP device port was back up so I assume they sorted it themselves, as well as ordering a few spares.

[Anonymous Coward]

Held hostage by my own manager

Well, sort of. In the 1990s I was the entire IT department for a timeshare company with resorts in Spain and the Canary Islands and sales offices all over the world. I went out to install some updates to our sales system in our office in Riga (Latvia). I was only there 2 nights and on the second evening after a succeesful sales presentation the whole sales team (British sales manager and half a dozen local sales reps) went to a bar to celebrate. I joined them for a couple of drinks then went back to my hotel with the sales office laptop to work on.

Next morning I was woken early by a phonecall from the sales manager telling me not to leave my hotel room until he came to collect me and definitely not to come to the office with the laptop. Apparently after I left the bar, the rest of the team had had a visit from the Russian mafia, and at the point of a sawn off shotgun, the sales manager was informed his sales people were very good at their jobs so they would be going to work for a rival timeshare sales team. The Russians were planning on visiting the office to finalise things.

I was rescued from the hotel later that day and driven back to Tallinn (Estonia) to get my flight back to UK. Two days later we had closed the Riga office completely.

[FeRDNYC]

Re: Held hostage by my own manager

In the 1990s I was the entire IT department for a timeshare company with resorts in Spain and the Canary Islands and sales offices all over the world.

It's brave of you to admit that (well... to anonymously confess to that), particularly in light of... *vaguely gestures to entire rest of story*

[Nyle]

So if I'm locked inside the sensitive data center and you refused to release me. I bet after I trip over a few key power cords, I'll have been released from the area very promptly.I'm going to assume you're going to ban me or try to blame me for something bigger. Since you're in the wrong and I don't want to work with you again - ooops, there goes the SAN.

[Wzrd1]

I had one client abortively try similar

Complete with a site ban. Got back to the office, checked their service contract, got with the owner and together, we shit canned the contract.

And we were basically, the final option for problematic companies, they'd ran down the list and nobody else would accept their antics and business. They folded soon enough, as there was nobody around that would service their servers and client machines.

And had they not opened the doors, well there isn't a mantrap system around that can hold a crusty old SysAdmin/CET/former SF type. Especially given how many have incorrectly installed magnetic locks. Fee free to try to litigate over the bent door, unlawful imprisonment is a felony.

[technos]

They just forgot him.

He wasn't held hostage but he did have to call the police to leave.

Friend of mine worked for a company that serviced industrial control computers. His last job of the day was simple ISA card swap, no big deal, and afterwards he was asked to go wait in a conference room while they ran a couple checks because the manufacturer had supplied recycled interface boards in the past.

A half hour passed. Then an hour. It's not a big deal, he's got a laptop, and internet, plus there's free coffee and a bathroom right down the hall.

Oh, and the company is paying him overtime, so..

Just after two hours in he decides to let go of the last few cups of coffee and get a refill, only to find the rather beefy steel door locked from the other side.

He makes a bunch of calls, to everyone he can think of, and no one answers. He pounds, hoping someone hears him. He slams with his shoulder, hoping to pop the door loose. He punches the drywall next to the door, only to find it's been laid over concrete block when he hurts his hand.

In his head he was going through contingency plans about what corner to piss in versus saving it to drink later, and if his boss is going to actually pay for all the overtime he's about to get when it occurred to him that he could just call 911.

It wasn't actually police that got him out, it was a pair of firefighters with axes, but the police were right behind them demanding his ID and insinuating he'd broken into the building, resulting in another hour of overtime in handcuffs.

The police did at least let him use the bathroom, and the client was unbelievably apologetic.

[awol]

Hostage?

I don't know about hostage, but the CEO of my customer in Cyprus threatened to find me a good Cypriot wife so that I might stay and work for him permanently....