back to article Don't lock the datacenter door, said the boss. The builders need access and what could possibly go wrong?

Welcome, dear reader, to On Call, The Register's regular column in which we share your stories of being asked to fix the ridiculous. This week meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Liam" who once worked as the sole desktop support officer at a large whitegoods company. One of Liam's users was a temporary accountant who often …

  1. oiseau
    Facepalm

    Not optimist, downright stupid

    Have your bosses been lethally optimistic about IT?

    In another life, I had a PHB/director who was a beancounter.

    And a very dumb one at that.

    I was in charge of maintenance of a couple of servers and ~60 desktop PCs.

    On one occasion, when presenting my yearly budget plan, he actually asked:

    Just why do you need so many of these expensive tapes for?

    After I explained (as simply as possible), he insisted:

    Wear out? Absurd. My tapes never wear out, I have been listening to them for years.

    O.

    1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

      Re: Not optimist, downright stupid

      > Wear out? Absurd.

      So the tires on his car never wear out as well.

      1. Mishak Silver badge

        So the tires on his car never wear out as well.

        Of course not - he has a new one every year!

        1. Orv Silver badge

          Re: So the tires on his car never wear out as well.

          When the Firestone tire recall happened one of my dad's coworkers asked him, "where would I go to buy tires?"

          She always traded in her car before the factory warranty ran out and had never worn out a set of tires.

          (To be fair this was during the era when American cars had abysmal quality but foreign cars were not culturally acceptable in our part of the US, so this was not an uncommon strategy.)

          1. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge
            Trollface

            Re: So the tires on his car never wear out as well.

            So what did change?

            Are the non-US cars now acceptable in your part of the US due to the still abysmal quality of US cars?

        2. Muscleguy

          Re: So the tires on his car never wear out as well.

          Last year I bought a very low mileage 2014 car. I had a sidewall blowout leaving work. I drove very slowly to the tyre chain place. The mechanic said it was a 2014 tyre, on the rear so not worn as much as the front ones.

      2. JimboSmith Silver badge

        Re: Not optimist, downright stupid

        Back in the 2G/WAP days I worked with a boss who lost his expensive (non company) mobile more often than I care to think about. He couldn’t see what the problem was because he had phone insurance and they gave him a new one each time. He also couldn’t understand our horror at the cost he was incurring at the mobile network/their insurers. He thought the upfront contract price for the phone was how much it actually cost to buy so £35 each in his case.

        He was a bit more careful after that because he’d realised something. He’d clocked that there would come a point where they wouldn’t cover him anymore for his lost phones and buying a replacement wasn’t going to be cheap.

        1. TDog

          Re: Not optimist, downright stupid

          In the very early days,phones were like a brick (you may find some of them visible in the walls of your house) and were more annoying since the users frequently used them to indicate "I've got a mobile phone". This was before apple iphones or generic phones and were severely irritating to those of us at the Trent Bridge test match.

          I have to admit I did not do this, but some chappie in front of me, after a few minutes requesting silence, grabbed the phone and threw it onto the outfield.

          'T rude bugger who was distressing all of us went off to find a local bobby. I can't remember who was fielding but the phone disappeared, but what I can remember very clearly was the young, highly competant copper coming into the stand and asking, loud and clearly, when the over was over, "did anyone see a man throwing something onto the field of play?" As the west indian supporters were in the adjacent stand, with whom we were exchanging our beers and their uncommon smoking substances we could reply "NO", quite honestly, we were too high and pissed and to busy laughing to notice the alledged perp.

          "T' copper, walked off with a big grin on his face, explaining without evidence he could do fuck all.

          Great 22 year old. And I know cos I bought him a beer in the Trent Bridge Tavern a bit later.

          1. WolfFan Silver badge

            Re: Not optimist, downright stupid

            Ah. Cricket, lovely cricket, at Lords… that is, Trent Bridge… where I saw it. I saw Hurricane Holding obliterate England at the Oval in 1976. The England batsmen badly needed something to buck them up before he was done, and the Windies weren’t the ones doing the groveling. (That remark remains the single stupidest thing ever said by an English captain before a match…) I also saw most of the rest of the Windies tour; England did better at other matches, but still got well and truly hammered. Memo to England captains: let your bats do the talking in future.

            1. TimMaher Silver badge
              Coat

              Re: “Hurricane Holding”

              The bowler’s Holding, the batsman’s Willey.

              1. Martin an gof Silver badge
                Unhappy

                Re: “Hurricane Holding”

                Apparently never actually happened - more's the shame.

                M.

      3. VeryRealHuman

        Re: Not optimist, downright stupid

        As smooth as they were when he bought them (for suspiciously little)!

  2. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

    And what about that inept accountant?

    Keep a statistic on how often that happens. Record all his calls - though that may be illegal in some environments and need an OK from above.

    And then present the collection to someone one level above his paygrade.

    If that does not work: Run!

    1. A.P. Veening Silver badge

      Re: And what about that inept accountant?

      Make that two levels, the one above him might be in on it.

    2. Gene Cash Silver badge

      Re: And what about that inept accountant?

      Record all his calls

      Well, I might not be so foolish to assume he has a proper ticketing system where he logs each and every such incident, but I would think he has some sort of log, even if it's just paper & pencil or an Excel spreadsheet.

      Not illegal.

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: And what about that inept accountant?

        "even if it's just paper & pencil or an Excel spreadsheet."

        Any records you aren't keeping yourself aren't yours so write things down. It can be very helpful to keep a work journal. Even a few scribbles at the end of the day is fine. You need to establish that you keep track of things so when you write down that you were ordered to do something by somebody you knew was bad, you have a record. Write down the date/time and how the order was transmitted (inter-office phone, landline, mobile, text, email). If you get the stupid suggestion in writing, make copies and put one in a safe, quick.

        Once the paper trail is established and your witnesses lined up, put on your PPE and pull the Big Red Lever then run like hell (or saunter to the nearest watering hole for a pint of something dark and creamy is my recommendation).

  3. chivo243 Silver badge
    Headmaster

    Datacenter door?

    I worked at a place that when summer vacation rolled around, every door was open, every office everything... Painters needed access, cleaners needed access, engineers from outside companies needed access... In over 20 years, we lost a bit of gear due to that policy. Half a dozen laptops or so, a couple of iMacs and a projector. There was also one non-IT item, but it escapes me at the moment, I guess they chalked it up to the cost of doing business?

    1. Flightmode

      Re: Datacenter door?

      At a previous job I visited the NOC of an affiliate company, monitoring and managing Internet services for a large number of business and residential customers in a decent-sized European country. From reception, their management took great pride that it took you six or seven card swipes (a couple with PIN entry) to access the NOC room itself - very secure, they said!

      Except that there was a back door - glass-panelled, of course - in the room itself, leading into the car park that the NOC staff left propped open 24/7 so that they could go outside to smoke without having to swipe their cards a gazillion times to get back in.

      1. ColinPa

        Re: Datacenter door?

        We had something similar - we were visiting a customer, and had meetings in an "escorted area" where we had to be escorted every where.

        We arrived earlier than usual one day. Firstly the external "secure badge lock door" was unlocked, and then we found the inner high security door blocked open for the cleaners to clean the floor - so we went in, sat down and started work. Half an hour the locals arrived and were amazed we had got in.

        They checked - and at 0730 they had a power glitch and all of the external doors went "green" and opened. They had words with the cleaners, about blocking the doors open. The cleaners said there were no power sockets in the secure area - so they had to use the one outside.

        1. DS999 Silver badge

          Re: Datacenter door?

          The cleaners said there were no power sockets in the secure area - so they had to use the one outside

          Now there's an example of something that isn't likely to be considered when designing a building with secured access.

        2. WolfFan Silver badge

          Re: Datacenter door?

          Cleaners who _didn’t_ unplug one of the racks so that they could use it? A miracle.

          1. TimMaher Silver badge
            Happy

            Re: Datacenter door?

            Especially those new Dyson cleaners with the 32amp commando plugs.

      2. Stevie

        Re: Datacenter door?

        I worked in a place where there were four or five security checkpoints with wire cages and closed circuit tv between the front gate and the shop floor. Then an ordinary door to the computer staff office. Then an ordinary door to the mainframe room, which turned out to be in a wooden extension to the main building (ie a big shed). Then a hole in the wall gnawed by rats to the carpark.

  4. bofh1961

    Even accountants can surprise us occasionally

    This chap showed unusual thinking in gaining access to the machine room and then followed it up with unusual common sense by following instructions and not pressing the big red button. Frankly, he doesn't sound ideally suited to the profession, I imagine he didn't progress very far in that career.

    1. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: Even accountants can surprise us occasionally

      "This chap showed unusual thinking in gaining access to the machine room and then followed it up with unusual common sense by following instructions and not pressing the big red button."

      And all of this after being asked by support people if they tried turning it off, waiting a minute and turning it back on. Unusual thinking, certainly, and never letting previous learning sink in.

    2. Lil Endian Silver badge
      Stop

      Re: Even accountants can surprise us occasionally

      I surmise that the accountant was indeed not a Father Dougal or Douglas Fargo! He must have seen some 'IT Crowd' though.

      [Don't press this button FFS! --->]

  5. b0llchit Silver badge
    Facepalm

    The real result

    He saved the boss' bonus and got nothing in return. He probably was off worse because a boss does not like to be corrected.

    The boss has now learned not to tell the underling decisions that can be used to nag about.

  6. doublelayer Silver badge

    rebooting the system

    I would say we should do something about people who don't know what technical terms mean but try to use them anyway, but only the BOFH's methods would work at this point and most of them are illegal. Just as this accountant thought the emergency shutdown was a reboot the system button, I've had far too many discussions with nontechnical friends asking for help who string together terms in a way that means nothing.

    The most recent one I remember is "disable the WiFi system", which could mean about five different things but could not mean what they wanted to say, which was "disconnect this USB-C cable which connects to a dock which has an ethernet cable connected to it". I have also recently informed someone that their "tape backup system" uses disks and isn't turned on and that "the email server was erased" is not an acceptable phrasing of "I can't find the message I want in my trash folder because I've never used the advanced search feature". These are just recent examples. I've heard stupider and I'm guessing those reading this have heard much worse, especially those who work in IT (I'm a software developer, programmer, or software engineer, but none of these terms is properly understood by my acquaintances either).

    1. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: rebooting the system

      Quote

      These are just recent examples. I've heard stupider and I'm guessing those reading this have heard much worse, especially those who work in IT (I'm a software developer, programmer, or software engineer, but none of these terms is properly understood by my acquaintances either).

      Then you have not learned the mantra of every highly skilled technical staff member : "Never ever tell your friends/acquaintances/passers by exactly what you do"

      Good luck fixing Auntie Flo's broadband connection on christmas day.......

      1. Graham Dawson Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: rebooting the system

        Aunty Flo has a keen ability to turn up at the most inopportune moments, if my wife is to be believed.

        1. Lil Endian Silver badge
          Coffee/keyboard

          Re: rebooting the system

          I thought it was Aunt Irma?

          Moss : What time of the month? The weekend?

          [Icon: you got me!]

      2. Giles C Silver badge

        Re: rebooting the system

        Most of the people who know me (outside of work) don’t have a clue what I do. If they do ask a rambling explanation of a firewall problem causes them to lose interest very quickly.

        I never say I work in IT always network security as it stops the “can you fix my pc” questions

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: rebooting the system

          Whenever someone asks me that question, I tell them to fuck off and they never ask me to fix their PC. It works every time.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: rebooting the system

            You must be happily married.

        2. Stevie

          Re: rebooting the system

          “What do you do for a living?”

          “I work with computers. Doesn’t everyone these days?”

          “Can you fix my computer?”

          “No. I work with them, not on them.”

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: rebooting the system

        Slightly off-topic, but when someone in my family is asked what they do for a living they say "I work in child care'

        This pre-empts the interrogation they might get if it was known that they were a fully qualified Paediatric Doctor.

        1. Mark 85

          Re: rebooting the system

          Slightly off-topic, but when someone in my family is asked what they do for a living they say "I work in child care'

          I think that might be a suitable response for anyone doing IT work of any sort. Users and manglement all seem to fit into that category. Most dreaded words in the IT world... "what's that button do? are usually spoken with their eyes filled with wonderment and malice.

          1. WolfFan Silver badge

            Re: rebooting the system

            “What’s that button do?”

            “It’s an idiot detector. It gets them fired.”

        2. Bluecube

          Re: rebooting the system

          Moving further off topic, I tell enquirees that I’m a window cleaner. It’s usefully filters the snobby arseholes you don’t want to talk to anyway from the far more interesting people.

    2. bpfh
      Angel

      Re: rebooting the system

      > but only the BOFH's methods would work at this point and most of them are illegal

      But the bean counter was in a protected area, the opposite side of the campus behind a protected door, in a room with a UPS providing BIG CHUNKY AMPS to the whole building. I claim the poor guy's air-frying was caused by malicious misadventure your honour. No the cameras were offline for maintenance. My boss has all the paperwork about that renovation work and my reserves about the lack of security there.

      Am I free to go?

    3. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      Re: rebooting the system

      string together terms in a way that means nothing

      The same ones who are incapable of reading an error message word-for-word from their screen, no matter how many times you ask?

      e.g. "It says the WiFi isn't working", when the message actually read "License server connection failure".

      1. doublelayer Silver badge

        Re: rebooting the system

        Yes, this is the other side of the coin. I've had occasions where I've said something along the lines of "If you don't start reading that word for word, I'm going to make you spell every word in the message". That usually gets them to read exactly what it says, although in a particularly angry tone. Of course, by the point I have to say that, I'm annoyed even if my tone doesn't reflect that, and on every occasion when that's happened, the error message contains important details. There will come a time where the error message is one of those vague ones and I've needlessly accused the user of summarizing it unnecessarily, but that hasn't happened yet so I'm happy to apologize when it eventually comes up.

        1. Flightmode

          Re: rebooting the system

          Many jobs ago when I regularly manned a helpdesk phone, we had one poor user who regularly called us because "her computer told her to". This was back in the early days of ubiquitous Internet access, when Netscape Navigator would say something like "Try again later, or contact the server's administrator" when a site was down or unreachable.

          She must have called us twenty times over the course of a year and never understood when we told her that we don't manage Altavista, or whatever sites she was trying to reach...

          1. Lil Endian Silver badge
            Facepalm

            "her computer told her to"

            My favourite case of this was a client calling up reporting a 5.25" FDD failure. She had followed the DOS instructions "Cannot read disk. Please try another disk" a few times, with no luck, before calling. The engineer turned up on site to find three floppies crammed into the drive!

      2. Arthur the cat Silver badge

        Re: rebooting the system

        The same ones who are incapable of reading an error message word-for-word from their screen, no matter how many times you ask?

        I remember far too many conversations along the lines of

        "What does the error message say?"

        "I don't remember, I just rebooted the machine."

        1. stiine Silver badge

          Re: rebooting the system

          Well, some of us techies know all of the error messages, and what it takes to generate most of them (since we haven't actually caused all of them ourselves yet). We don't actually need you to read the entire message, we can ususally figure it out from the first 5-6 words, provided that you read them aloud correctly...

      3. bpfh
        Facepalm

        Re: rebooting the system

        Sounds like my wife has been making support calls. Thank you for your service. I'm hiding in the cellar. After a day of serving clients who just say they have a problem on $companyName (and not one of $companyName's 6 specific products) and cannot explain any part of their problem in a way to identify what product they have let alone where they are having problems, I get home and my wife is angry clicking her CRM tool, clicking the error message away faster than I can read it apart from the red exclamation mark. I have to admire her hand-eye coordination - it would put a pro gamer to shame....

        Error was "you must fill in field xyz" which was clearly not filled. It's the first one on the form....

        1. I could be a dog really Bronze badge
          Facepalm

          Re: rebooting the system

          Ah yes, the "I had an error message", "what did it say ?", "I don't know, I just clicked OK" users. My mother used to be one of those before her eyesight got too bad to carry on using the computer. Mind you, one of her favourites was telling me that the printer wasn't working, but it started after she'd fiddled with the wires round the back - during which time, the just switched on laser printer had booted and was now able to accept the job from the computer.

          I used to work with a chap - this was a computer dealer/support outfit - who would dismiss the "This document is setup for US letter, you are printing on A4" (or could have been the other way round*) by just hitting return. The default button was "cancel" so hitting return cancelled printing. And then he'd moan like hell that the ****ing stupid system hadn't printed the invoice he'd just told it not to. As for suggesting that he tried actually reading the message, and then telling it to print rather than cancel was met with a certain amount of disdain - of the sort he kept for stupid users that did stupid things with the computers we sold.

          * This was back in the day when it was common to have a mix of lasers with A4, and dot matrix with US Letter (11" x 8.5") fanfold.

          1. bpfh
            Mushroom

            Re: rebooting the system

            HP Load Letter. The bane of any (European) printer tech's life...

        2. Muscleguy

          Re: rebooting the system

          I work as a school science tech. I was given a multimeter by Chemistry to get working. Someone had pressed the Hold button. That it was holding was displayed on the screen. I checked the battery and contacts while I was at it mind.

          Had a light gate control box which wasn’t recognising the light gates. Nowt wrong with the gate or the cable. The input socket contacts were dodgy mind. Cleaned them with magic spray and problem solved.

          The amount of crud you find in things in schools has to be seen to be believed.

          1. rototype

            Re: rebooting the system

            I remember cleaning the rollers on the mice in one of the English departments computer rooms one day (this was back in the day when they still had balls, ands many of the balll accesse had been superglued up to stop the little sods nicking the balls out of malice - I saved all of the crud and presented it to the Head of Department (who prided herself on how clean everything was kept) - apparently all of the kids were made to wash their for the next month or two (until the rest of the staff got sick of enforcing this) before touching the computers.

            1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

              Re: rebooting the system

              Did it help in those two month, or did you end up with soap instead of the usual crud in the mice?

      4. Nick Ryan Silver badge

        Re: rebooting the system

        I had an assistant who was struggling with getting a server service working properly for him and no matter what he did he couldn't connect to it. He restarted the service, the server and all kinds of business disruptive things. Eventually he asked for assistance on this and I sat and watched the process...

        As he connected a popup window was shown and he immediately closed it before I could read it. He was unable to connect.

        I had him try again, and was able to briefly read the message before he closed it. I asked him to go slowly but he still pigeon pecked the popup window closed.

        Getting annoyed with him by now, I told him to not close the effing popup window this time. He left it open briefly before closing it. I got to read the message this time: "Access denied, check security configuration", or similar.

        His user account wasn't a member of the appropriate security group to access the service. Add appropriate group membership to his account and he was working fine. FFS

        1. Montreal Sean

          Re: rebooting the system

          @Nick Ryan

          I don't think I would have added his account to the security group needed to access the server, he sounds like someone who will break things by not reading warnings...

          1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

            Re: rebooting the system

            He was... it was rather frustrating.

    4. Gene Cash Silver badge

      Re: rebooting the system

      My favorite quote from a mentor is "Please stop rolling your Jargon Dice and explain the problem you are having to me in plain English, using small words."

      Unfortunately, I've found opportunity to use that quite often.

    5. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: rebooting the system

      The most recent one I remember is "disable the WiFi system", which could mean about five different things but could not mean what they wanted to say, which was "disconnect this USB-C cable which connects to a dock which has an ethernet cable connected to it"

      "Users" seem to be regressing in their understanding of technical terms. "WiFi" means any and all forms of network connection to so many these days, be that Ethernet, actual WiFi or a mobile phone data connection on 3/4/5G :-/

      1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

        Re: rebooting the system

        I get that all the time... "My WiFi is not working".

        Do you mean your WiFi or your Internet connection?

        WiFI connected fine. Red light on the Internet connection on the router flashing to show lack of Internet connection.

        1. VicMortimer Silver badge
          Facepalm

          Re: rebooting the system

          I even get that from my girlfriend. "The WiFi's not working!" shouted across the house.

          I'd test WiFi, reset a few access points for the fun of it, verify that yes, it's functional. She insists it's not working. I look at her phone, verify it's working, and ask for a more detailed description of the problem.

          Yep, it's an internet connectivity issue. "Why didn't you say the internet wasn't working?"

          I've finally learned to test, then just say "WiFi's fine, the internet connection is down." - which of course annoys her, but I'm already annoyed anyway, so we're mostly even.

          Of course, then I have to deal with Comcrap, so I get even more annoyed.

      2. doublelayer Silver badge

        Re: rebooting the system

        The other thing about that particular exchange is that the laptop concerned was connected to the office's WiFi network anyway, so pulling that cable would disconnect the screens and keyboard connected to it, but would not take the laptop offline because it would switch from a wired connection to real WiFi. I don't know whether they knew any of those facts and whether they even expected that disconnecting the cable would have an effect on their internet connection.

  7. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

    Just for clarity... *not* this Liam. :-D

    Although I do have some suitable stories...

    1. DJV Silver badge

      Re: *not* this Liam

      No, if it had been you, you would have been regomised as something other than "Liam" such as "Venial Romp"!

      1. The commentard formerly known as Mister_C Silver badge

        Re: *not* this Liam

        Shirley "IP lover man"

    2. Gene Cash Silver badge

      Although I do have some suitable stories...

      Well, what's holdin' ya up, man? The statute of limitations hasn't expired?

    3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      "Although I do have some suitable stories..."

      Well, don't forget to click the mailto: link and let El Reg know :-)

    4. Lil Endian Silver badge
      Coat

      Just for clarity... *not* this Liam. :-D

      Yeah, but has that been Proven?

      [I'm even groaning at that myself! I'll just --->]

      Hope you had a good few days Liam :)

  8. Mike 137 Silver badge

    Been there...

    Way back in the modem days, an electrician working in a cyber cafe ripped out the mains wiring that fed the modem bank. As soon as its internal battery died, the entire subscriber base lost connectivity. I was there (on the help desk) and took the flak - the sparky was long gone.

  9. Orv Silver badge

    The main Netware file server at a local bank I once worked at was down for an entire weekend. Investigation showed the cleaners had pushed a chair against it, and the chair had kept the reset button depressed. A Molly guard was quickly fabricated for the switch.

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      It's always the cleaners.

      Why doesn't anyone consider the cleaners when designing these spaces?

      1. J.G.Harston Silver badge

        Design? What is this word "design"? I did the IT refresh for my local bank branch a year ago, the "design" is "stuff the equipment in the partially unused store room in the roof space of this Victorian building", along with two generations of telephone switchgear that has never been removed, just had an axe put through the cabling.

        Freshly after being refreshed, the branch is on the list for closure. I replaced the WiFi points at one branch last month, one week before it was listed for closure!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Its usually the lack of involving the I.T people that leads to those sorts of errors.

        Designers are great at, designing. But not always using.

        If in doubt, get an engineer, not a 'fitter' , but someone with some proper troubleshooting training and follows the logical steps to solve a problem.

        Not just turning it off and on again.

        Although recently on a friends samsung s21, we did exactly that to fix a rather puzzling loss of wi-fi connectivity.

        And yes, every other step was tried before the off/on routine.

        Oh how we both laughed.

        My friend is over 80, but has been part of IT since they had a computer building. It was one machine, probably back in the heady days that it was a nifty payroll machine and had no graphical interface, just some punch cards.

        But thats another story...

        1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

          In a past company the sales department decided that they, alone out of everyone in a sweltering warehouse with offices attached, needed air conditioning. Nobody else was permitted air conditioning because they were not sales and therefore not important.

          The air conditioning unit was placed above the server rack, which was in a caged off area of the warehouse. I immediately raised this as a potentially serious risk but was told to STFU because I was not in sales and therefore I was just being petty and jealous.

          A month later the cheaply fitted air conditioning unit emptied water into the server rack. I was not quiet with my "told you so".

      3. Orv Silver badge

        The space was well designed for its original purpose, which was to hold a UNISYS mainframe, the accompanying Immortal Power Supply (itself the size of a small car), and enough air handlers to keep it at a constant 60F. When the UNISYS became a tiny rack mount thing and they started parking tower servers on the floor, things got a lot less organized.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          repurposing mainframe equipment

          When we started getting smaller disk arrays we freed up a huge amount of floor space in the DC. At the same time we moved from open reel tapes to cartridges and I had a large amount of very expensive racking going space, we used this as the first iteration of a 'server farm' hugely improving the space usage by getting the servers on shelves attached to KVM switches. This was before rack mount intel based servers were a thing, we managed to fit 20 or so servers in the space we had needed for 4 previously which was just as well as we were adding several a week. We had had the whole setup wired in by a qualified electrician and it did what we needed until Compaq and dell started producing true rack mount devices and we started to put them in proper cabinets. Even then there was no real management tools available for windows so every cabinet had a shelf mounted Laptop to connect to the servers and manage them. It all felt incredibly primitive at first, we could manage the whole x.25 network covering hundreds of node from one management console with proper alerting but the new windows servers needed manual attention far to often, and do'#t talk to me about back ups.

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Cleaning DC's isn't for cleaners

        After many years of having to fix issues caused by Cleaners I finally managed to get the DC ops role descriptions changed to include hoovering the DC floors as well as inside the printers and tape drives. The cleaners no longer needed access to the DC, hoovers were no longer plugged into clean circuits, temporary sited kit being built or soak tested stopped being unplugged and out overall system's availability showed a slight improvement.

  10. Mike Lewis

    Not all accountants are bad

    I worked at a small company with a clueless CIO. When we had network or computer problems, he would poke a few keys to confirm it wasn't working then ask our accountant to fix it. He was quite good. They made medical equipment.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Not all accountants are bad

      >He was quite good

      You could say you could count on him.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Not all accountants are bad

        a 'Quite goo' bean counter? this doesn't add up

  11. aerogems Silver badge
    Devil

    Just maybe...

    Part of me thinks that maybe... just maybe... "Liam" should have let the beancounter push the button to prove his point about the need to enforce security on certain parts of the building. Sometimes you just have to let the child burn their hand on the stove before it sinks in that it's a bad idea to touch it when hot. Unless, of course, his was one of the quarterly bonuses on the line, in which case I can understand the desire to avoid that outcome.

  12. an.other_tech

    When you give the big boss the one key to open them all, and they go right ahead and loose it.

    It does make you wonder why you had to in the first place.

    We laughed, only because our team wasnt responsible for said loss, nor were we the ones to change about 200 physical locks.

    The absolute kick came, when the big boss's boss, came in, opened the secure safe, in the secure office, and found the golden key, complete with the big boss's house keys !

    Funny thing, we had a new big boss less than 4 weeks later.

    1. MachDiamond Silver badge

      "When you give the big boss the one key to open them all, and they go right ahead and loose it."

      Or they hand it to somebody to use for the afternoon since it would be much more work to find the specific key that goes to the storeroom the outside contractor (me) is using. When we were done unloading the truck into that storeroom, the boss guy was nowhere to be found to return the key. No itch, I'll be in at the crack of dawn the next day to get to work and will likely beat this person in and I'll return the key then. That night............... I worked out what the initials stamped on the key might mean and had a couple of copies made. hehehehehehe. It opened the building, it opened the snack bar inside the building, it opened the locked coolers inside the snack bar. It opened a few other things that I can't mention or even decades later it might come back to haunt me. Ahh, memories and the complete lack of security that can surrounds priceless objects.

  13. MachDiamond Silver badge

    And another thing....

    Deviant Ollam has a great slide from one of his presentations where he shows a back/side door into a commercial building and points out it has a pretty good lock installed. All around the door are outside contractor's lock boxes that are really easy to bypass that contain the key to that door. Brian works as a physical security consultant and pen tester. His videos are epic and a great learning experience. <https://www.youtube.com/user/DeviantOllam/videos> Search on his nom de guerre as well as some of his talks are posted by others.

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