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back to article Hell desk thought PC fire report was a first-day-on-the-job prank

Welcome to another instalment of On-Call, The Register's last-day-of-the-week look at all the fun of fixing stuff. This week, we're going back to the first day on the job for reader “Jerome”, who like many readers got his start in IT on an in-house help hell desk. Jerome says he was properly trained and eased into the job by …

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  1. 45RPM Silver badge

    Yes, I have been involved in a PFY pranking. The PFY concerned was one of the suit, tie and briefcase type (opposed to the rest of us in jeans and t-shirt) and he was very proud of his company issue Rover 214 (which, in his mind, was very sporty). He'd turn up with a glint in his eye and a snap in his heel, the epitome of bright eyed and bushy tailed. Where the rest of us just grabbed a toolkit (necessary screwdrivers, install CDs, Floppys, spares and so forth), he'd carefully decant the bits he needed into his briefcase (a wholly unsuitable receptacle for the job). Had it been me, I'd have opened that case in a slovenly, can't be arsed, listery kind of fashion - but he always opened his case quickly and smartly like a door to door salesman.

    We thought it'd be a damn good idea to booby trap his case and then send him out on a job with a tame, and thoroughly briefed, client. The booby trapping consisted of strong elastic rigged to snap his case shut again just as quickly as he opened it, and the briefcase then filled with packing chips. Nice.

    A few hours later the client (Hello, Nige!) rang with a fit of the giggles. The plan had gone off without a hitch. PFY had turned up smartly, smarmed his way up to the supposedly ailing computer and (before checking to see if anything was really wrong with it - and nothing was) whipped open his briefcase- which snapped shut again in a blast of packing chips.

    We didn't see the briefcase very often afterwards.

    60 9 Reply
    1. sabroni Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Meh

      so..

      ...you bullied someone because you didn't like the way they dressed and behaved, eventually managing to make them buy a receptacle that you thought acceptable.

      That's one to boast about.

      22 37 Reply
      1. joshimitsu
        Reply Icon

        Re: so..

        suitable toolbags were probably available on request, if not already sitting in a cupboard. Like those zip up folders with pouches for CDs, screwdrivers, pliers, etc.

        9 2 Reply
      2. DropBear
        Reply Icon

        Re: so..

        "That's one to boast about."

        Respect in the tech sector isn't assumed - it's earned. If you make conspicuously zero effort to fit in somewhere, you really shouldn't be surprised when sooner or later this gets helpfully pointed out to you.

        39 4 Reply
        1. sabroni Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          @ DropBear Respect in the tech sector isn't assumed - it's earned.

          This had nothing to do with technical ability, it was about someone dressing too smartly for the cool kids and being a briefcase wanker.

          If I can write solid code and communicate effectively with the people I need to why the fuck should I have to dress like you?

          6 14 Reply
          1. 45RPM Silver badge
            Reply Icon

            Re: @ DropBear Respect in the tech sector isn't assumed - it's earned.

            @sabroni "This had nothing to do with technical ability, it was about someone dressing too smartly for the cool kids and being a briefcase wanker.”

            Cool kids? You flatter us.

            Briefcase wanker? Yes, that’s right - because taking the piss out of his technical ability would have been pointless. He did that all on his own through sheer ineptitude. This is, after all, a man who cattle-prodded himself by attempting to service a PSU (I’d have thrown it away and replaced it with a new one, as per the service manual) - with the computer still plugged in and, astonishingly, whilst wearing an anti-static strap (which, as any fule no, is for operating on low voltage transistorised / microelectronic circuits only).

            You seem to be taking this a bit too much to heart though - I wonder, are you really Willsy?

            20 3 Reply
            1. Phil W
              Reply Icon

              Re: @ DropBear Respect in the tech sector isn't assumed - it's earned.

              "the computer still plugged in and, astonishingly, whilst wearing an anti-static strap"

              Let me guess, on his left wrist to make absolutely sure that if he got electrocuted the current would go through his heart and down his left arm, killing him?

              I think the important difference with your prank compared to say the one described above with soft cheese on a briefcase handle, is that there is no lasting effect from polysterene packing bursting out at you, where as soft cheese makes a mess of your hands and could stain your clothes and the leather of the briefcase. I think that is an important differentiation between pranks that are a light hearted joke and those that go to far, do they cause any unpleasant or lasting side effects?

              14 0 Reply
              1. 45RPM Silver badge
                Reply Icon

                Re: @ DropBear Respect in the tech sector isn't assumed - it's earned.

                @Phil W

                I can't remember which wrist and, judging by the fact that he wasn't hospitalised (just shocked) I guess he tickled something at somewhat less than 230V / 3A.

                As to the lasting effects, I'd say that the client bore those - which is why we cleared it with him first. I imagine that he was probably still finding dispersed packing chips for a while afterward, but he didn't hold it against us.

                10 2 Reply
                1. twsm
                  Reply Icon

                  Re: @ DropBear Respect in the tech sector isn't assumed - it's earned.

                  Volts jolt mAs' kill, an old saying so well less than 3A.

                  5 0 Reply
                  1. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
                    Reply Icon

                    Re: Volts jolt mAs' kill

                    That's true, but 230 volts falling on the 1M resistance of a wrist strap yields 230 microamps. Even skin damage does not make that life-threatening.

                    "One of the "rules of thumb" that the Navy teaches is the 1-10-100 rule of current. This rule states that 1mA of current through the human body can be felt, 10mA of current is sufficient to make muscles contract to the point where you cannot let go of a power source, and 100mA is sufficient to stop the heart."

                    www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1999-50.html

                    2 0 Reply
              2. twsm
                Reply Icon

                Re: @ DropBear Respect in the tech sector isn't assumed - it's earned.

                An anti-static wrist strap has a resistance of between 1 an 10 M ohms, so hardly likely to assist in him electrocuting himself.

                4 1 Reply
                1. Kiwi
                  Reply Icon
                  Flame

                  Re: @ DropBear Respect in the tech sector isn't assumed - it's earned.

                  An anti-static wrist strap has a resistance of between 1 an 10 M ohms, so hardly likely to assist in him electrocuting himself.

                  Don't bet your life on it.

                  4 0 Reply
            2. Kiwi
              Reply Icon
              Alert

              Re: @ DropBear Respect in the tech sector isn't assumed - it's earned.

              ...and, astonishingly, whilst wearing an anti-static strap (which, as any fule no, is for operating on low voltage transistorised / microelectronic circuits only).

              Ah.. the only time I ever hit someone at work (at least that I can recall). He wanted to run some tests on mains-powered stuff, and had the strap on his left wrist while holding probes etc in his right. Told him it was a serious risk, he told me his tutor showed him it was important for the safety of the devices as static can reach 10's of thousands of volts. Took a bit of swearing and a punch to the arm to get him to stop. He went off to complain to the boss, who told him I probably saved his life...

              For those uninitiated, the anti-static strap would've provided an excellent earth return should he accidentally touch anything live - a path that would lead the current across his chest (and therefore his heart) - ie the strap greatly increased his chances of a fatal electric shock. The rest of us worked with our left-hand (or right hand for lefty) in a pocket, lessening the chance of any return-path and certainly reducing the across-chest path. Don't know how well it would've worked as I only had one accident, EHT but negligible current. But boy did it shape how I play with electrics since!

              5 0 Reply
          2. 45RPM Silver badge
            Reply Icon

            Re: @ DropBear Respect in the tech sector isn't assumed - it's earned.

            @sabroni

            If I can write solid code and communicate effectively with the people I need to why the fuck should I have to dress like you?

            You shouldn’t. I don’t. But, equally, you should be able to take a bit of ribbing without having a hissy fit. But, in PFY’s case, he:

            couldn’t write solid code (no biggie - we were paid to install and service, not code)

            couldn’t service and could barely install properly

            couldn’t communicate without boasting about his prowess in his many fields of expertise

            …and, after all that, really was most deserving of a piss-taking. Frankly, he was lucky not to lose his job.

            15 3 Reply
      3. Phil W
        Reply Icon

        Re: so..

        "...you bullied someone because you didn't like the way they dressed and behaved, eventually managing to make them buy a receptacle that you thought acceptable."

        While I see your point, only in our modern overly politically correct world would this been seen as bullying.

        In reality this team member dressing and behaving differently, even if that difference is smarter, actually makes the company look bad, rather than the opposite as you might expect. Jeans and t-shirts and an ordinary tool bag might not be an official uniform but if that is the normal practice in the business, rather than suit and tie and briefcase, some new guy turning up and dressing that way actually makes it look like the rest of the team are lazy and/or under dressed to an outsider.

        It's important to try and fit in, not just for you and your teammates but for the business to.

        Before anyone points out that if there's no uniform, some people may feel uncomfortable dressing so informally for work. There's always a middle ground, if not jeans and t-shirt, some smart trousers and a plain work shirt with no tie (frankly no one who is opening up electronic equipment routinely should wear a tie for work anyway, it's a danger unless you take it off all the time). Jacket optional.

        40 5 Reply
        1. David Roberts
          Reply Icon

          Re: so..

          Old enough to remember the time when we were advised to "dress down" from corporate style suit and tie to "smart casual" because tech contacts in industry weren't really taking us seriously as techies.

          Always a good idea to fit in and make your contacts feel you are "one of them" if you want peer respect.

          25 1 Reply
        2. Robert Carnegie Silver badge
          Reply Icon
          WTF?

          This is a man's army with no room for cissies (or women or the ethnic persuasion).

          Wait, you mean it isn't? Not in any way? And we've been doing it wrong all this time? Oops.

          Awareness training? I suppose so then.

          4 0 Reply
          1. 45RPM Silver badge
            Reply Icon

            Re: This is a man's army with no room for cissies (or women or the ethnic persuasion).

            @Robert Carnegie “This is a man's army with no room for cissies (or women or the ethnic persuasion).”

            Remarkably, for the nineties, we had several women doing support and repair work - and they were amongst the best in the business. One was into extreme sports, and so definitely not a cissie, and another floored a bloke for pinching her bottom (so ditto). I sometimes wonder what they’re up to now - whatever it is they’ll be doing it hugely successfully.

            I don’t remember any ethic minorities, unfortunately, unless you count the scouser and the pole.

            14 1 Reply
        3. Brangdon
          Reply Icon

          Re: so..

          If the business has a problem with the way he dresses, it should communicate that to him through channels. Not humiliate him in front of a client.

          7 18 Reply
          1. Kiwi
            Reply Icon
            Flame

            Re: so..

            If the business has a problem with the way he dresses, it should communicate that to him through channels. Not humiliate him in front of a client.

            When you have a young apprentice, fresh out of training, full of shit the confidence that only comes from having been to the best training provider money can buy and being right up on the absolute best and latest practices and methods, and just oh so much better than the old hats, then a bit of public humiliation can be the best thing for you. And in many cases, for the sake of the team/company, it's that or the DOLE queue.

            Have been there myself. Freshly trained and knew so much more than those who had been doing it for years. Also got a couple of "fun" (but minor, no scars) electrical burns because I did a job in the "safety-standard" way, not the way my experienced boss insisted I do it. Sometimes you can't tell people, you have to let them suffer embarrassment.

            In today's world the little lass would be off crying to their lawyers seeking millions in compensation for their humiliation and life-long psychological scars. Back then we took it in our stride, if necessary went home and changed pants/other clothing items, and thought about how we could do a revenge prank on others.. My best I think was a brake-line clamp on his fuel line when his wife rang about some serious emergency (she was in on it of course!), and the poor bugger spent a few hours trying to work out what was wrong on the side of the road on a wet afternoon with the knowledge his wife had threatened "true wifely nastiness" if he wasn't home soon... That or the snap,crackle&smoke generator fitted inside someone's very expensive just-paid-off-last-payday rear projection TV.. No damage to the unit, but the owner's pants didn't fare so well..

            5 0 Reply
        4. PyroBrit
          Reply Icon

          Re: so.. Back to briefcase

          Many years ago I used to take a briefcase to work, partly because it was a birthday present from my parents and partly because it really was useful to carry my lunch and magazines to read. I also had quite a craving for cream cheese that comes in toothpaste style tubes and TUC biscuits.

          One day I was rushing to get away from work to go to the pub only to find that a couple of my colleagues had squeezed cream cheese onto the handle of the briefcase and place the handle back down flat so you could not see the cheese. You can image the mess when I grabbed the handle to have cheese squeezing out between my fingers.

          I of course arrived late to the pub and to much smirking and laughter from people around me. I know who you are even if at the time I did not acknowledge that I had been pranked.

          12 0 Reply
          1. JimboSmith Silver badge
            Reply Icon

            Re: so.. Back to briefcase

            Oh I met someone who worked with a mate of mine doing sales and went off doing presentations to customers. He was Mr Clean and if you didn't look as smart as he though you could he would regularly chide people on their appearance. Not that anyone looked scruffy they just weren't up to his standards of perfection. He kept a pair of brushes a polishing cloth and shoe polish in the boot of his car, toothpaste toothbrush, bottled water and a towel in the glove box and in his desk.

            One April 1st the office decided to get him back for a year of comments that weren't always kind. Before he got in that morning they swapped out his normal toothpaste tube with one filled with Primula Cheese (http://www.primula.co.uk/our-range.html) waited for him to arrive. A few minutes after he'd started a coffee one of the comspirators came in and said they'd just seen the company's biggest client driving into the carpark. Mr Clean grabs his washbag and heads for the gents to clean his teeth and came out laughing as he'd worked out what day it was and what had happened.

            16 0 Reply
        5. sabroni Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: only in our modern overly politically correct world

          Expecting to be able to go to work in a shirt and trousers, with a briefcase!!! It's political correctness gone mad!!!!

          6 7 Reply
        6. G7mzh
          Reply Icon

          Re: so..

          If the customer is expecting a technician, they will not be happy with someone who turns up looking like a bank clerk. The reason being, he won't be wanting to do any "proper" work - such as scrabbling on the floor or rummaging in dusty cupboards - for fear of getting his suit dirty.

          The possible exception to this is where the company supplies overalls, but I haven't seen that for a long time.

          8 0 Reply
        7. Chris King
          Reply Icon

          Re: so..

          "Before anyone points out that if there's no uniform, some people may feel uncomfortable dressing so informally for work. There's always a middle ground, if not jeans and t-shirt, some smart trousers and a plain work shirt with no tie (frankly no one who is opening up electronic equipment routinely should wear a tie for work anyway, it's a danger unless you take it off all the time). Jacket optional".

          Smart trousers and a plain shirt works for me - I can roll up my sleeves if I need to work on hardware, but I can put on a tie and "scrub up" if I need to deal with externals or VIP's. I've even got a pair of safety shoes that look like normal brogues, but still pack steel toecaps and mid-soles.

          4 0 Reply
      4. 45RPM Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: so..

        @sabroni

        What is pranking if not taking the piss out of someone for something? If we’d beaten him up regularly, or picked on him endlessly then I’d see your point - but we didn’t, and so I think that you’re being rather oversensitive. Yes, he was (is) a bit of a tool in my opinion - but I’m sure that many think the same of me (and, equally, many hold me in rather higher regard).

        If you can’t find someone’s foible then you can’t take the piss out of them / prank them - luckily everyone has a foible to pick at. One of my foibles is my fondness for my classic cars (or, as my colleagues would have it, old bangers). This weakness of mine has been used to prank me, although none to any particularly great extent since I don’t mind having the piss taken* (on the contrary, I’d be worried if the piss wasn’t taken - I’d hate to have made so little impact that I was ignored). And since I’m not prone to throwing tantrums, or overreacting, I’m not a very entertaining target for a prank.

        * I went to boarding school. Can ya tell? You develop a thick skin quite quickly.

        22 5 Reply
      5. Adrian 4
        Reply Icon

        Re: so..

        Thereby saving him from a career in which he's laughed about by every other client.

        2 0 Reply
      6. kiwimuso
        Reply Icon
        WTF?

        Re: so..

        @sabroni

        No mate, by any stretch of the imagination, this is definitely not bullying. It's a one off prank with a bit of tease thrown in.

        Have you never teased anybody in your life?

        Bullying, yet another word co-opted by the "offended on someone else's behalf" brigade for a different meaning, is repeated picking on someone. In other words harassment.

        So, that fact that you didn't like the way the correspondent behaved justifies you in criticizing him does it.

        1 0 Reply
    2. Chris King
      Reply Icon
      Mushroom

      What you really want are the tiny polystyrene balls that stick to everything with nothing more than a little static - not as evil as an envelope full of glitter, but you'll still be finding them for weeks afterwards.

      19 1 Reply
      1. 45RPM Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        @Chris King - we were pranking the PFY - not the client, who was a jolly good sport.

        14 2 Reply
        1. Chris King
          Reply Icon

          @45RPM - Don't worry, I got that. If the client was so sporting about it, I guess briefcase-boy must have annoyed them too ?

          1 0 Reply
      2. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Thumb Up

        Kids, nowadays...

        The annoying medium of choice is always chads. Not the hanging ones, only chads produced by the computer room card punch will do. We'll wait, while you go and check ...there should be a large, wastepaper basket size container full of them behind a panel in the machine.

        Got it? Good. The pointy edges make them impossible to sweep. They stick themseves into carpet very efficiently, and into clothing equally effectively. I know this, because we mixed them liberally into the contents of an annoying individual's dresser drawers at my university. He was still finding them the next year.

        10 1 Reply
    3. Putters
      Reply Icon

      Very similar effect can be obtained by filling the victim's umbrella with the contents of the hole punch base ...

      A fellow lodger in my student days worked in a paper factory. Came out after one night shift to find his car interior entirely filled with the trimmings.

      7 0 Reply
      1. Bodge99
        Reply Icon

        Please don't mess with these little bits of paper.. I know of someone who was pranked in this way... with a shower of hole punch "residue".

        He had to go to hospital to get one of the little paper circles removed from his eye.. It was stuck fast!!

        Not fun!

        5 0 Reply
      2. herman
        Reply Icon

        We filed a guy's entire cubicle with plastic popcorn packaging - put cling wrap over the 'door' to keep it in.

        3 0 Reply
        1. peter_dtm
          Reply Icon

          @herman

          cling wrap (cling film) is meant to go under the seat and over the toilet bowl.....

          1 0 Reply
    4. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      I bet the Rover 214 would be a better drive than most modern cars..

      0 2 Reply
    5. Mark 85
      Reply Icon

      Many years ago, we had an engineer who thought he was a god.. major deity variety not minor. After a year of putting up with his crap, the rest of our department (just one of many in engineering) decided to give something back. There's a group of fatty oils that can have dye added to produce interesting results. In chickens (what it was developed for) it colored the yolks of the eggs for tracking purposes in research. In humans, it gets urinated out in full color. So... we got the red, green, and the blue. Early one Monday, the red goes into the lad's coffee cup. A hour so later, a terrible scream is emitted from the restroom.. the lad is pissing red. A few weeks later, he pissed green and then later still blue. At some point in time, he got the point and became less of a jackass.

      12 0 Reply
    6. Florida1920
      Reply Icon

      I used to "over dress" for work, and got crap for it. Until the day they sacked the boss and I got the promotion. The rest of the department had a sudden change of attitude toward me then.

      10 1 Reply
  2. DJ Smiley

    Can I turn it on? It's under 6 inches of water....

    Working for a hell-desk for a medium sized pharmacy firm (street facing shops) and I have a call from a concerned pharmacist. Their store had flooded overnight and was still about 6 inches deep in water but they were some how operating by hand anyway.

    So they asked if they could turn on the pharmacy computer, as some of the electrics had survived. I pondered this for a moment, then asked 'well is the computer wet?'. The answer, from someone who had done a number of years at university and was qualified to give me enough drugs to kill answered honestly 'well, it's on the floor so it's in the 6 inches of water, but I thought it might just work anyway?'

    Needless to say I told them not ot turn it on under any circumstances, and let us know once all the pluming was sorted so we could look at getting a tech out for the computers...

    36 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Can I turn it on? It's under 6 inches of water....

      After a flood at work I got tasked to ensure none of the electrical devices we are responsible for are on the floor. This has now had the effect that IT computers will work with 40cm of water, management PCs will work with 2cm of water and the "Professionals" allowed us to put their computers on stands, but insisted that we not move the 4-bars that they keep on the floor.

      Whatever.

      12 0 Reply
      1. Little Mouse
        Reply Icon

        Re: Can I turn it on? It's under 6 inches of water....

        Even with everything off the floor, I've seen the contents if a machine room written off after a flood from above, pouring through the ceiling.

        Nature will always find a way...

        19 0 Reply
        1. DropBear
          Reply Icon
          Joke

          Re: Can I turn it on? It's under 6 inches of water....

          "Nature will always find a way..."

          Oh, the water just answers the distant call of the silicon in the electronics remembering the time when it was still sand on a beach, pining for the once-gentle embrace of the waves...

          "Come out, come out, let's play once more...!"

          32 0 Reply
          1. PNGuinn
            Reply Icon
            Boffin

            Re: Can I turn it on? It's under 6 inches of water.... @ DropBear

            No, the silicon's just pinin' for the fiords.

            Nail it to its perch so it can't go for a swim and it'll be ok

            6 0 Reply
            1. J. Cook Silver badge
              Reply Icon
              Pint

              Re: Can I turn it on? It's under 6 inches of water.... @ DropBear

              Amusingly enough, one of the places I used to do service for was a commercial laundry. The computers on the inbound processing line where the cheapest machines we could get, and they were mounted on a 18 inch high stand, because they would have rusted to the floor otherwise when it was power-washed every night. (The machines still were nasty gross things that the techs hated to PM because odds were you'd need to change clothes afterwards. Ugh!)

              3 0 Reply
        2. Korev Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: Can I turn it on? It's under 6 inches of water....

          We used to have a crappy computer room which would leak sometimes; I tried to persuade my colleagues that we should "sell" the feature as a place to wash servers. Sadly my colleagues weren't up for the "rebrand".

          It all worked out nicely for me in the end though as the power & cooling capacity was transferred to our main room which meant I could massively expand "my" HPC cluster.

          4 0 Reply
    2. Putters
      Reply Icon

      Re: Can I turn it on? It's under 6 inches of water....

      Or in one of our (ex) offices, by the server room being three floors below where the fire broke out.

      A lot of water was involved in putting out this : http://www.highrisefirefighting.co.uk/cstelstar.html

      7 0 Reply
  3. Olivier2553

    Tossing water at electric fire

    Some years ago, our campus changed the outsourced company in charge of the logistics (gardening, security, maintenance, etc.)

    The new company deemed necessary to replace all the existing fire extinguishers (don't ask me why, the existing ones where still good, of the sealed type, so no leak).

    Anyway, we got nice and shinny new fire extinguisher, bright red and full of compressed water. I had quite a fight to get them replaced with ones that were computer compatible.

    16 0 Reply
    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Re: Tossing water at electric fire

      ...of the sealed type

      Well, there's your problem. The completely sealed units are not serviceable[1] and must be replaced when their time is up. I suspect that the previous outsourcers neglected to supply the purchase dates and inspection history of each unit to the new mob, forcing them to replace the lot.

      [1] Although they still have to be inspected annually. Presumably this is to keep someone in a job whose sole ability is being able to recognise a fire extinguisher.

      14 0 Reply
      1. Chris King
        Reply Icon

        Re: Tossing water at electric fire

        Surely they should have replaced like-for-like (assuming that the previous extinguishers at each location were of the correct type to begin with) ?

        This sounds more like "We've bought a job-lot of Class A extinguishers and we're too cheap to shell out for the other types".

        5 0 Reply

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