rSlash - r/Talesfromtechsupport Don't Mess with the IT Guy on a US Navy Battleship

Episode Date: December 23, 2021

r/Talesfromtechsupport In today's episode, a low-ranking naval officer goes on an ego trip and decides that he deserves extra long hot showers. He goes on a rampage, stomping down to the ship's IT department where he starts screaming at the IT people to create more hot water. What he doesn't realize is that he's going on his little rampage in front of one of the highest ranking officers on the entire ship, so things do NOT go the way he expected to. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to our slash tales from tech support, where people mess with the IT guy. Our next Reddit post is from Rarity. So early Tuesday morning, I'm sitting with a few workmates who are in remote and are daily stand up before the actual stand up, and suddenly I get bombarded with team messages by a user. Urging me to come upstairs to check on her computer because it was acting up again. I told her I'd be there in 15 minutes after my stand-up, but that would simply not do. She has a very important meeting to attend. I just sigh, excuse myself from my colleagues, drink the remainder of my coffee, and head

up. She's already standing at the doorway of her office, gesturing me to hurry up. None of the programs respond. Everything is acting weird, nothing works. Have you tried restarting the laptop? No, I can't do that, it won't let me. I then tried to restart the computer, and indeed it was acting weird. I opened the start menu, which immediately opened the search query, and then showed

a constant space being input. At this point I looked down and see that her headset is resting on top of the space bar of her external keyboard, which I remove. Hey, look, your headset was resting against the space bar. A look of mild panic settles in on her face as she angrily explains that this can't be the case because she just set them down before I came over. I asked her to describe one of the issues she was having. When I opened out look, it kept scrolling through the mails on its own. I asked her to open out look, and then I held down the space bar, and to nobody's surprise,

the error that she reported replicated. Huh, that's weird, it's doing the same thing now. She's trying her hardest to look surprised. Yeah, that's crazy. Anyway, whatever caused it, it's gone now. If you've got any other problems, let me know. As I left, she was opening teams to join her extremely important meeting. It was her daily stand-up. Our next reddit posted from J-Bane Law. Despite almost doubling my rates for new clients, the work just keeps coming in. I know this wave

isn't going to last forever, so I'm taking full advantage of the shortage in the labor market while I can. This means an average work week for me is about 70 to 80 hours. But again, I'm getting paid by the hour, so I don't really care. It's pretty much sleep, eat, work, repeat. I'm starting to feel like Scrooge McDuck and his money been with the good times rolling. I just need to make sure to put enough away so that when the bottom falls out of this labor market and the leads dry up, I've got enough to lean on for a while. Anyway, here's the scene. Hey, IT Guy, when can you get to that new server we were talking about?

The manager screamed over at me while I was tending to a new network issue across the cubicle farm. Yeah, I'll get to it sometime, I say, looking at him annoyed. Well, I needed up by this weekend if possible. Feel free to do any of the work at night if that helps. Actually, it does. I might have some time this weekend, who's my technical contact after hours.

Great, we really need that up by Monday. If you have any hang-ups, just ping the on-call tech. They're usually around on the weekends anyhow. So Saturday night. I remember when I used to have a social life, and I hated when a job made me work on the weekends. But that seems like ancient history now that we're approaching year two of the pandemic. Now, a Saturday night is just like any other evening. On this one, though, I was about four cups of coffee in and I knew that sleep was not in the cards. So, over to my client's office I go to finally tackle that server that I've been promising him. It should just be a 4-5 hour job to get

it up and running. Nothing special here. Just decommission the old one, restore it back up, optimize some stuff, and boom, I should be done. Home by midnight. The client will be happy, and I'll get a few more hours to build this week. First things first, I show up and go to the location where the server was supposed to be. The old server is just gone. I look around in all the usual places, nothing. I check the not-so-typical places where some of the in-house guys will put stuff, nothing. Hmm, I'm stumped,

but I don't want to go home. Then I remember there's an on-call tech. I look through my email to see the announcement about who it is this weekend and give the number a call. It rings through to voicemail. It sounds like a personal phone number, so I leave a message. Call back time says one hour or less in the protocol, so I hunkered down doing some odd task waiting for the return call. On hour later, I don't have a call, so I ring the number again, once more through to voicemail. I leave another message saying that if this is not the right person to please let me know,

but I have a job that needs finish tonight, so give me a callback ASAP. I went to the bathroom and left my cell phone on a desk. When I came back, there were five missed calls. Thinking something was wrong. I paid through the call log to see it's the same number five times in a row in about seven minutes. So I give it a call back thinking it might be the on-call tech. The first thing out of the mouth of the guy who answers is, how did you get this number? Uhhh, you called me five times in a row just now. No I didn't, put me on your do not call list. Hey look, you called me, I figured it might be a return call from such and such company.

I'm a contractor doing some work tonight. You can't just go calling people in the middle of the night because you want to work. Uhhh, according to the office email, you're the on call tech. I told my boss that I won't work on call anymore. Well, tell that to the office admin who put down your name. This guy is clearly really annoyed, and this is a new client. I don't want to get a bad reputation, so I just try to make nice, but he was having none of it.

You contractors are all the same. Blah blah blah, as he dumped on contractors for five minutes. Look guy, I just need to know where the server might be. Someone moved it today and I would really like to just get it up tonight. This isn't why we have an on-call person on the weekends. It's for emergencies only and you wanting to work on godly hours on a Saturday night is not my emergency. At this point,

I just want an exit strategy. Okay, got it. I'll just let my contact know that we couldn't locate the machine and see what he wants to do on Monday. Got that right, bud? Don't call me again unless there's an actual emergency. Click. As a consultant, I know that it's best to keep everything in writing if it all possible. So I write an email to my contact who's a site manager. Hey, manager guy, I was at such and such company just now to get that server deployed, and the physical machine is missing. I contacted the on-call tech. If you remember, you told me to reach out to them with any problems, to see if they

had any insight into its location. Unfortunately, the interaction I had with him was less than positive, and I don't think that I'll be able to locate the server to get it up by this weekend. Let's talk on Monday. Sincerely, the IT guy. I figured this was about as diplomatic as I could have put it, even though I was mildly annoyed to have wasted at least 2-3 hours at night with a whole drama. I didn't hear back for the rest of the weekend, but I figured he might just be waiting until he saw me on Monday morning.

Monday, bloody Monday. It turns out the site manager didn't email me because he was livid at the on-call tech. He and that guy had a history of duking it out over on-call assignments and other office-related politics. So the manager was taking full advantage of the situation and set up the tech to be fired Monday morning. Apparently, it was fireworks galore, but unfortunately, I got there about 15 minutes after a few tables had been flipped and the police had to be called.

And also, apparently everyone hated this guy for a long time. Word got out that the tech guy was sacked mostly because I complained about him. Now I have people coming up to me thinking me profusely for getting rid of the guy like I was the one who actually fired him. It was an odd way to curry favor with the new client, but hey, if it gets me more work, I'll take it. Also, the random people treating me like I'm some sort of hero, seeking me out to say, thank you IT guy, is icing on the cake. Our next red appost is from Sarsh. Back in the dark ages, around 1993, I worked for a medical transcription firm as their system admin. I was the only system admin in the city,

so I was on call 24-7-365, and I was averaging 3 hours of sleep per night. I would go home and try to catch little catnaps here and there when I could. Anytime something would go wrong on the hospital side, I would have to go to the hospital and fix it. A few months after I started, two of the VPs from my company relocated to my city, since we were the most productive city with the highest profits. The first thing they did was come up with an excuse to fire the current director, then they took over operations themselves. Then my job went from taking care of our system to taking care of the doctor's computers

too. I did what I could, but I was also sending out resumes. Then I was told to go to the hospital to see why the printing stopped. I remember this day. I hadn't been home for two days and I'd been going non-stop for 18 hours. I get there and someone had unplugged the modem. I plug it back in and the printing starts back up again. This doctor walks over to me and tells me that VP number one told him that I would go

to his house to work on his home computer. I politely explain to the doctor that I can't do that and that I'm hitting to his house to work on his home computer. I politely explained to the doctor that I can't do that and that I'm hitting home to get some sleep. Then I head back to the office to pick up a few things before hitting home. As soon as I walk through the door, I get escorted straight to the VP's office. Both VP1, VP2 and the office manager are there. They proceed to start chewing me out. I just started laughing at them. I'm the only person in a thousand mile radius who knows anything about this system.

They lose their temper and tell me that I'm fired and that I have to leave immediately. I honestly said thank you and left. This happened on December 15th, my oldest son's birthday. On the way home, I stop by a mom and pop computer store where I know some of the people and drop off a resume. They tell me they have no openings right now, but they'll call me when they do. I talk to a couple of friends while I'm there and hit on home. The only thing I'm worried about is telling my girlfriend that I got fired. I walk through the door and she's at work. I see the answering machine blinking so I hit play. It's the mom and pop computer store. They say they're primary no-veh-engineer just quit and they ask if I'm still available. I call

them back and let them know I'll be there tomorrow. That began a much more peaceful career with more time off and better pay. By the way my old medical transcription company imploded. The VPs were fired. They floundered for about a year and they were bought up by a competing firm. It's honestly incredibly idiotic that your most profitable city was running just fine, and then the VP's come in and start firing people, and surprise, surprise, everything that was working well suddenly isn't working anymore and their company flounders. Haven't you ever heard of If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It?

Or even better, If It Ain't Broke, Don't fix it, or even better, if it ain't broke, don't fire the people who are making sure that it ain't broke. Our next word at Postage from Seisama. On a certain class of military worship, there's a place. The bridge may be in control of where the ship goes, but damage control central is in charge of how fast it's getting there and whether or not it arrives in one piece. It's run by a high-ranking officer from the reactor department and is two cronies. One that monitors the ship's water usage and one that monitors the ship's electrical usage. That's me.

These three people can bring 97,000 tons of steel and sadness to a halt. Behind them is a small pile of engineering folk. Literally the ship's tech support branch. People could call damage control center and report a problem. Anything from a busted light to a shipfire, and between all of us in there, we had the knowledge, skill, authority, and political clout to get a response team out. A lot of people didn't know what kind of authority we held, or exactly who they were talking to when they called down. This made for some

very entertaining conversations. One evening the engineering folk get a call. One of our female sailors picks it up, and naturally we all listen in because if it's a fire or something we all need to respond as rapidly as possible. From our point of view, this is how the conversation goes. Damage Control Central, engineer speaking. The heater doesn't work? Oh, yeah, that's normal. No, we can't turn it up. What?

No, we can't replace it. We're in the middle of the Persian Gulf. Where are we going to get another one? Look, it works fine. Just take shorter showers. Your division can put in a request for a bigger one once we get back to home port, but you're not getting one now. Yeah, no, I'm not ordering one.

Replacing those things is beyond the scope of what we're allowed to do when we're sailing. Because policy? Okay, you do that. We'll be waiting. Make sure your request permission to enter. With that, she hangs up, and naturally we're all staring at her.

She grins at us. Get your game faces on. This one is gonna be good. Sir, I'm sorry in advance. Our boss, the highest ranking officer in here says, Are you kidding? This stuff is what makes my job worthwhile. We sit back and put on our best.

I hate everything faces and wait. Not 15 minutes later, the door thuds open. In walks with permission, the hero of this little story. A very low ranking punk who thinks that he's hot stuff because he does maintenance on airplanes instead of steam pipes. With him as his immediate supervisor,

a gentleman of my rank, and their divisional officer, a wee young lieutenant. The divisional officer is all fired up because how dare engineering not fix this guy's problem, and he makes a b-line for the engineering folk. This path will, briefly, place him in between our boss and a panel that, by the order of people with a rank that I could never hope to achieve in my life. Our boss is not allowed to be obscured from. My boss must be able to see that panel at all times. I wait until that merry little band is almost in front of our boss before I speak up.

Sir, please go around. Our boss needs to be able to see that panel. I will walk right damn well. He stops because someone of approximately double his rank. Four times his time in service and significantly crankier than him is staring him down. All of the fire in this divisional officer leaves in an instant, which honestly is exactly what I wanted.

When high ranking people get fired up, it's usually for a good reason. When baby divisional officers get fired up, everyone in their general vicinity is stupider for witnessing their temper tantrum. Baby divisional officers get much more done when they're calm. This guy realizes that a commander is sitting there and nearly wets himself.

The low ranking punk, however however is completely oblivious. They walk back around our desks, not nearly as grudgingly as they could have, and take the slightly longer route to the engineering folk. Who are having the time of their lives because this shit circus is well underway and they haven't even had to do anything yet? The engineer from before spins around, her hands on the arms of her chair, a very pleasant blank smile on her face. Are you the one that won't fix my guy's showers?

The showers aren't broken, sir. Did he tell you what the complaint was? That guy's supervisor nearly cringes out of his skin. Because no, obviously what happened is that the low ranking punk went and complained to him that those buttolls and engineering said they won't fix the broken showers. And then this guy immediately went to his office to find some backup and grab the divisional officer. By the way that we're all grinning at him, this officer knows that he's in for the ass-reaming of his life. The divisional officer, however, looks at the low-ranking punk-for-an-explanation.

This little nematode puffs up very pleased to have the floor and an audience to boot. At least two very important officers get to hear his sound reasoning for calling down to the tech line. I was just sitting there wishing that popcorn was allowed in damage control central. Well, the hot water heater in the head can't keep up with the entire division when we all shower in the morning. Does it put out hot water at all? Well, yeah, when we all get up it works just fine, but as everyone takes their showers it gets colder and colder. Does it ever go completely cold? No, but with a bigger heater we could all take as long of showers as we'd want it without it running out.

Our water control guy speaks up. Shower should be limited to 5 minutes. You're wasting water. Well yeah, morning showers are pretty short. Who wants to wake up early in shower? But when I take my second longer shower in the evening to relax after a long day of working, some teeny, tiny sense of selfervation kicks in and the low-rinking punk shuts up and looks around. He's in a room of people who play the food, shower, sleep,

pick two game on a daily basis. Every single person in this room, including his back up, is staring at him without right hostility. Except for our engineer. She's still smiling her blank polite. I've been in the retail trenches and I'm dead inside a smile. I may be in love. Sir, you can see why I denied his request. Officer, you may want to remind your guys that, despite being surrounded with water, there's a limit on how much fresh water we can make in a day, and that long shower should be safe when we're in port. Was there anything else I can help you all with?

The divisional officer says, No, I think I've heard enough. You two, my office, now, they leave. The low-ranking punk superior looks close to tears, or that he's going to shove the low-ranking punk out of a portal. The divisional officer is full of now justified wrath. The low-ranking punk still looks vaguely bemused as to why his excellent argument didn't sway us all to his side.

The door shuts. All of us immediately put our heads to our desk and cry with laughter. Someone hands the engineer an IOU for drinks at the next port. The engineer supervisor drafts an email to the ship's mid-tier leadership that not waking up early enough to get a hot shower is not a reason to request a new water heater and that water on board is limited. No details are provided and everyone eagerly looks forward to the rumor mill as people try to figure out what spawned that particular reminder. The engines turn and the ship chugs on. That was our slash tales from tech support and if you like this content be sure to follow

my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day.