Contractor quaffed his way through Y2K compliance while the client scowled

Easter means today is a holiday in much of the Reg-reading world, but that won't stop us from delivering another instalment of On Call – the reader contributed column that shares your tech support stories. To mark the occasion, The Register has revisited our mailbag of holiday-adjacent stories to tell the tale of a reader we' …

[Empire of the Pussycat]

Bolly2k

For Y2K I had several of my team on-site, and the rest on-call.

In solidarity, I was monitoring things from home as I worked my way through two bottles of Bolly.

Nothing went wrong, though I may have become a bit squiffy.

[blu3b3rry]

Several years back

Work had decided that they were going to throw a bit of a "do" after the firm won a few business awards. Bosses didn't seem to need much encouragement to go out on a piss-up anyway, it seemed.

The company had a polymer production lab downstairs, using chemicals that in some cases needed to be kept refrigerated. As a result there was a large walk-in fridge next to the lab, about 20 metres square and lined with racking. The work do was horse racing, so a large quantity of food and booze was procured by the company and stored in the fridge for loading onto the coach that evening after work finished.

Some of the production staff asked their boss if they could grab a tin after work before the coach arrived and head outside for a smoke. He let them do so "Just don't make it obvious" was the instruction. They all went and hid down the side of the building, technically on the public highway and by now off the clock.

The ops director (who was a total prick) happened to see them and threatened them with an almighty bollocking awaiting on Monday. As he headed upstairs back to his office, he passed the sales office - who had also helped themselves to the booze and were all sat at their desks!

Unsurprisingly nothing ever came of his threats to the production guys after a few others had commented on the sales team drinking at their desks....

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: Several years back

Storing food or drink in a laboratory refrigerator that stores chemicals (or anything) gives me nightmares; gives laboratory managers and WH&S the horrors.

Don't Do It !

As a kid more than five decades ago in subtropical Australia I heards a tragic news item on the work radio just before Christmas where a small firm had prepared their grounds for the Christmas party by clearing the grass etc.

The employee delegated to do this when finished, had decanted the remaining Paraquat herbicide into an empty Cola bottle and left it in the canteen fridge.

Later another employee working outside came in from the tropical heat and grabbed a cold bottle of coke and quaffed it.

Took three horrific days to die and left a young family.

Don't Do It !

[blu3b3rry]

Re: Several years back

I was a little numb to such activities, having been there for around three years at that point it was all rather commonplace. Never looked back when I finally left.

The owner of the firm was in his 70s and mostly ran things as if it was still the late 1980s...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Several years back

That would have been too far to walk. We kept our beer under the raised floor since it was always cold, and had more space than any commercial refrigerator ever made...

[andy the pessimist]

the site was opened

The company had opened a new site and a company celebration was organised. The site was described as "a high tech victorian prison".

During the party the production supervisor came out and asked for help. I couldn't go into the building drunk. I went into the security centre and spoke to the staff by phone. I gave them some suggestions and said i'd be in the following day if the problems continued.

I think things worked....

In europe (france and germany) drinking on site is allowed. A glass or two but not getting drunk.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: the site was opened

Our French offices had a very strict "no drinking at work" rule.

Holding a wine tasting in the cafeteria during the afternoon was fine, though.

[andy the pessimist]

Re: the site was opened

While contracting in france. The beaujoulais nouveau came out. Glasses were on sale in the canteen. There was a general discussion about sending crap wine to uk.

In germany the food hall had a fridge full of beer. Payment was on an honour system. When you finished you paid for the beer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: the site was opened

We did that in a British company at least once a year to pick the Birthday Present wine options. There were a range of present options but a lot of people chose the wine, hence it was vital to know it was drinkable and not plonk.

[tiggity]

Re: the site was opened

Yeah - used to work for a German company (I was UK based but occasionally had to go to one of the German offices).

On my first visit to the German offices I was surprised to spot various alcoholic drinks as an option in the canteen (& the cold drinks vending machines dotted around* had beer in addition to soft drinks)

* Canteen was not open all day, so a few snack & drink vending machines around the offices.

[David Haworth 1]

Re: the site was opened

Flüssiges Brot

[JimboSmith]

Re: the site was opened

I worked for a firm where with the permission of your line manager you could have a drink at lunchtime. The unwritten rule was that you did not come back drunk to work and that you were capable of completing the rest of the day. Then one day at lunchtime we had a fire alarm activated by a smoke sensor, which turned out to be something smouldering but easily put out. However the rules stated that we all had to evacuate until the Fire Brigade had checked everywhere and given the all clear.

Unfortunately 90% of those staff who were designated and had been trained as Fire Marshals were in one of the local pubs having lunch. So other sensible people were hastily designated as Temporary Fire Wardens and the building was cleared. Given the number of people who did not want to leave meeting rooms, new rules were drafted about following instructions if the evacuation alarm is sounding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Drunk while migrating a network

Many moons ago, a company I supported through the MSP I worked for got a new person responsible for IT and as they were only used to running Netware decided that the fully functioning doing exactly network of 4 Windows NT Servers were was required to be migrated to Netware 4.11 (the exact opposite direction that world + Dog was going)

The weekend of the chosen to carry out the migrations co-incided with the birthday of the company.

So me and my colleagues were migrating servers all day and most of the night Friday and all day and all night saturday and doing the final steps on the sunday whilst migrating the client PCs on the sunday into the Monday with users going live on the Tuesday AM.

Great you think, but the company had a large party on the Saturday, family even with performers bouncy castles hog roasts etc. then chjild free in the evening.

All day the MD of the company kept giving us all beer and telling us we deserved it, despite declining it multiple times he even went so far as to say if I bring you drink into the server room and you dont drink it your companies contract renewal wont go well.

Migrating AD to Novells Directory services and exchnage to groupwise after many many beers was a fun experience.

The sunday was also a bit of a trial with eveyone have next to no sleep and skirting hangovers.

But the users came in on Tuesday and all logged in and got on with their work.

the contract renewal went through without a hiccup

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Drunk while migrating a network

Were you drinking when you made this post ;-)

[TeeCee]

Many years ago...

...a centralised IT operation noticed that not all the entities they served celebrated Christmas and not all their staff did either. So, win-win, get a head start on the end of the year and look like they're respecting other cultures too.

Snag: As things inevitably ground to a halt as little things went wrong in various systems, getting any sensible answers out of the software and hardware support people became ever more difficult as the festive period wore on.

[IGotOut]

I remember one Christmas....

...at one of our engineering site (low level pc repair back then) that also held the contact centre, pretty much the whole place went to the local pub at lunchtime over a few hours so to keep the place manned. However loads of the staff and managers went to the off licence after and bought cases of beer. By 3pm pretty much the entire contact centre staff were utterly shitfaced so they had to go home early become they were incapable of answering the phones. So the management asked if I could close the phone system down. No problem I thought in my semi sober state....And promptly fucked up the master script on the Nortel Symposium system... something that multiple people told me afterwards (and beforehand) was impossible. 3 fucking hours it took me to get it back online! Didn't get a bollocking, because the management that turned the place into one giant piss up could hardly say anything could they?

[Already?]

Late Night Updates

Pretty sure this has been mentioned on here before but it was fun…

Myself as Snr Dev and top server admin colleague and good mate based remotely were set for a late Saturday shift implementing major updates to our client facing service - code updates and associated db changes, an all-done or complete rollback scenario. Once MoTD was done we messaged each other and agreed we were good to go. M'colleague politely asked if I had a drink - obviously yes, a glass of red. How about you? I enquired. Small whiskey came the reply. I should add this was about 15 years ago, we had our phones on chatting to each other, Messenger for confirming specifics and a hop skip & a jump to pass any configs that were likely to lose something being copied at one end or the other due to it not being possible to copy text from my Windows session to one of the servers.

We set to it; steady, cautious, check, recheck, tick off the checklist as we went, confirm good, continue. It took longer than anticipated and the glass of red in front me wasn’t the first out of the bottle that night. By midnight the bottle was empty and we still had a way to go. I excused myself for a loo break and on returning got a suggestion to open another bottle - there was as I said a fair way still to go. So i did, and his whiskey consumption continued at its steady pace.

By 3 a.m. we were done - updates, 2nd bottle, scotch. Sanity checks showed all was well with the system and we agreed to reconvene at 11 to check and recheck to give us time to back it out by Monday if necessary. It was fine, although colleague and myself were a bit less so.

Monday morning came with plaudits from all sides - mgmt, clients & colleagues alike, for a job well done. Only one person became aware of the shenanigans a while after the event and she had the decency to keep schtum about it bless her. Happy days, but with hindsight it was a chuffing nuts idea.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

The Altalink Redemption, Alberta, Canada

In one utility providers building, every other Friday was a beer Friday, where a can\bottle of beer or a soft drink alternative was provided in the canteen, to socialise for about 30 minutes just before end of day.

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Longnecks

I have a vaguely related tale from years past.

It was apparently the tradition at a certain Texas university for the seminar room to be furnished with a cooler long Lone Star longnecks as a way of attracting audience for speakers.

A friend and colleague who got his PhD from said university was doing a postdoc at a US military affiliated institution of higher learning where I also worked as a general departmental CS roustabout.

As he was scheduled to give a talk he decided to attempt to bring the longneck tradition along with him and brought in a cooler stocked with beverages.

There was dead silence as he popped the top of of his brew and launched into his talk.

The military contingent was not amused¹ though the majority of the civilians in the audience, many of whom were also imbibing, were.

_______________

¹ Admittedly, this may have been the point of the exercise, since my colleague's relationship with the "brass" was somewhat fraught.

[Herby]

Beer Busts...

Back in my youth (MANY moons ago), the EE department at a certain "tree" university (where I worked) would hold weekly (or monthly, I really don't remember) beer busts for graduate students (over 21 types). At the time I was a somewhat tall 18-20 year old "worker" that everyone seemed to know, and I gladly accepted a paper cup of brew (it was cheap stuff, but tasted OK). Did anyone notice I was consuming evil liquid at such a young age? I don't remember anyone. Even after passing the "hump" of the age of 21 (drinking age in the USA), nobody cared. Graduate students came and went, but I stayed there for a chunk of the decade, happy to imbibe. Good times...

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Re: Beer Busts...

When I worked at a certain southern california univerisity, the oceanography department owned a little facility run by the grad students that had a nice deck overlooking the beach. Every Friday they'd roll out a keg of the finest cheapest and have a pleasant "happy hour" for grad students and faculty where we'd watch the sun go down.

I was lucky enough to be invited to join in by one of the scientists in my acquaintence with whom I'd worked off and on in one project or another.

Every once and a while the president of the university, a random chancellor, or the department head would show up and a good time was had by all.

The nominal cost of a cup of beer would be plowed back into the fund and every couple of months, if there as a surplus, it was free beer night.

Good times, indeed.

[Anonymous Coward]

You Can't Answer, You Can't Answer That...

After you'd drunk your bottles of Grolsch, did you attach the bottle caps to your shoes to signify your fandom of the popular beat combo Bros?

(Although admittedly you'd have had to be pretty pissed to have done that in 1999 as opposed to 1988.)

[chivo243]

Y2K yeah!

I worked at a school at that time, due to a few nervous Nellies, the school was closed an extra week, just in case everything went pear shaped, which we all know didn't. The benefit was that the extra week off was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone, and Christmas break would be 3 weeks instead of 2 as long as I worked there. And, the building was closed between X-mas and New Years, paid of course!

Y2K Yeah!

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Qualifications

One of the questions I've always wanted to throw into the interview mix is, "How do you handle unexpected crises while intoxicated?" While I suppose there's an odd sysadmin teetotaler out there somewhere, most of the ones I knew in my early days liked to party, so it seemed natural to ask how that would go during the on-call rotation. I never actually asked that sort of question out of a modicum of respect for professionalism, more's the pity.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Qualifications

Simple answer - if you're on call, you don't drink.

I happen to be one of the sysadmin teetotalers. I don't object to others having a glass/can/bottle, just please don't get drunk. And no working while intoxicated, that's a hard-and-fast company rule.

(I've tried very good quality wine and several other kinds of alcohol. To me, they all have an overwhelming taste of gasoline fumes.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the 1970s, it was audio and LSD. My first dose didn't seem to work, so I went down to the party. It hit on the way, the halls were 'breathing", sounds and colors were sharp. I get in the party and old friend Scott yelled "Hey! We need help with this speaker connection!" Which had always been "my thing", but I was so fukked-up the terminals were waving at me. I told Scott how it was supposed to go and I watched the ceiling a while. I actually was a good audio tech when straight, made a living at it until computers came down to my life, but I made a personal rule: when working, no beer, no dope, and certainly no more LSD.

[Anonymous Coward]

The other end of the stick

Not computer related but drink related.

In 1983 I worked for a large privately owned waste management company running an industrial waste treatment site. Last work day before Christmas I got a phone call at 1200 hrs from the Manglement at the Divisional Office.

"Can you just hang on at the site, we've got a driver running late coming back from London" (to Hampshire).

In the background the sound of much jollity going on - the office party.

At about 1430hrs I saw a plume of black smoke and heard the roar of a DAF 2300 being hammered within an inch of its' life up the hill to the site.

The driver was one of my regulars and had to get the truck discharged into the tanks as it could not be left with a full over the holiday (would have solidified).

Half an hour to discharge the tanker and then lock the gates and head for the office to drop off the paperwork and for the driver to park the truck. Arrival at the office and we found one very drunk transport manager with the rest of the depot locked up and everyone else gone home at 1400 after drinkies and nibbles provided free by the manglement. They had not even left us a single sandwich or sausage roll. Bastards.

Cue two very angry people and some unpleasant words - not that the drunk manager cared - he was about to drive home!

I lasted a further 3 months at the company until another suitable job came up.

[RobDog]

Lunchtime o’ booze

The company in the City I worked for had its own Brasserie, with fully stocked bar, and you could book private rooms with waited service for ‘clients’. My first day there with my new team, we went to lunch and got absolutely spannered in the Brasserie bar. Not the only time. It’s gone now. The City now just looks like any other town centre.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah Drinking at work

I am old enough to remember in the 1990s and even the early 2000s Friday lunch time drinks was normal. Just a pint or two was normal but sometime when I worked for an oil company the boss would join us and 4 pint minimum was the rule.

Then it was back to the office for a nap or some office chair jousting

I also worked for McKinsey in London and on a Friday their was free been with the free lunch. Local government offices with a social club and my first job at IBM in early 90s had a bar open every lunchtime and the executive floor had a drinks trolly and the whole floor smelt of cigars

[David Hicklin]

Re: Ah Drinking at work

I will raise you the late 1970's when I had just started work and was doing a 5 year apprenticeship which was part college work and going around all the departments in the company.

The first christmas I was on the factory floor and after a visit to the pub the afternoon was spend walking around chatting to people - you took your mug around with you as at each area something would be added to your mug! I cycled home that day in the snow and looking behind me saw a set of very wobbly tire tracks.

2nd year was in the offices in the drawing office and here food and drink were laid out for the staff, after which the MD and top managers retired to sample some bottles of something a lot stronger.

Those were the days, and if you were old enough you also drove home and never gave it a thought.....

[Cheshire Cat]

Place I used to work had not only a decent onsite restaurant (at hugely subsidised prices), but also an onsite staff off-license (at cost prices), and a Michelin-starred restaurant which staff could book at 50% off.

I was able to get amazing cooked lunch daily for a couple of quid, much cheap booze, and could take dates to (possibly) the best restaurant in the city.

Then we were outsourced to EDS and all the perks were gone, followed by most of the staff.