YOUR mistake is not MY emergency
Many years ago, I worked on a Helpdesk in an Insurance company. I received a phone call from a very frustrated and angry 'Customer' regarding their financial spreadsheets. I duly attended. This person had single-handedly managed to lose all of his business-critical financial data. Being deeply untrusting of the network and the people who administered it, 'charmless boffins' I believe we were collectively referred to as, he had decided to keep all of the spreadsheets off the network and on floppy discs instead. Bit dodgy, I thought. Apparently none of the discs could now be read on the PC. I listened to the ranting with a sense of growing horror, as I had spotted the cause straight away. There wasn't any point in trying them on another machine, that had been done and they still couldn't be read. I let the rant blow itself out, as I needed to get straight in my head how i was going to break the sad news. Around the inside of the cubicle was a small sea of discs, in date order and labelled nicely...................all lovingly held in place with novelty fridge magnets.............obviously procured by family members, which although nice, didn't help.
I then had to deliver the bad news and highlight the dangers of bringing discs into contact with magnets etc and that the data was gone......forever.
He went through all the stages; incredulity, panic, fear, anger and rage.
I've never seen a face turn that many different colours.
Obviously, this was my fault, so received the post bad news rant as well.
I still look back on this and laugh though.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
