BOFH: State of a job, eh? Roll the Endless Requests for Further Information protocol BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns "I just want to check the state of a job," the Boss says, burbling away on the PFY's hands-free. "A support call?" the PFY says. "It'll be in the system." "I know it's in the system," the Boss snaps back. "It's got a job number. What I WANT to know is the state of the job." "It's in …
I could believe that helpdesks do all of these things, but the BOFH telling his boss about it? Immersion destroyed, sorry.
I would agree with you but for one thing: it's long been established that Simon cannot be terminated for any reason due to an ironclad contract. If I remember correctly Stephen does not have such an ironclad contract, but does have plenty of blackmail material to insure his continued employment. And, of course, his cache of blackmail material pales in comparison to Simon's, so Simon is doubly protected.
Really now, do you think either of them would still have jobs at this point otherwise?
I'd say that HP have excelled themselves and implemented variants of this system in multiple places just to ensure that what should be a relatively simple process of them replacing (yet another) DOA laptop (with the same faults as the previous ones) winds up involving multiple departments that cannot communicate with each other and many days of delays.
Although it is a realistic description of many of the chatbots that are around (keep asking questions, and suddenly provide no solution whatsoever), I am slightly underwhelmed by this semi-annual BOFH post, I would've hoped for at least 3 casualties, a cattle prod, a slippery staircase, an open window, the HALON going off, and some pieces of carpet being dragged.....
That being said, finally BOFH/Simon is back, and we really needed a new story, so I'll drink to that!
, I am slightly underwhelmed by this semi-annual BOFH post, I would've hoped for at least 3 casualties, a cattle prod, a slippery staircase, an open window, the HALON going off, and some pieces of carpet being dragged.
Actually no.
It's good to change the routine. It all follows the same pattern.
I've been trying to reach Simon Travaglia through several means (Facebook, Twitter, emails) ... but to no avail. I have got some ideas myself for future BOFH stories.
A remake of BOFH: Servers under Siege for modern times is also in order!
My employer's outsourced helpdesk provider *cough DXC *cough* implements exactly this scheme. What Simon forgot to mention is that every time a ticket is closed and another one opened (with no tangible benefit to the customer) the problem resolution statistics improve and more $$$ can be extracted.
I just had a three-week wait for a ticket where the computer was continually trying to uninstall or update some Outlook add-on which required not just closing Outlook but also rebooting, rinsing and repeating. Solved by manual intervention in two minutes but not my machine and I don't have the power to do that.
I've been in IT for 20+ years, and have been reading the BOFH stories since I first learned of his existence. Also, I dove back into the archives ( http://bofh.bjash.com/index.html ) to make sure that I learnt as much as possible.
However, even with this vast experience and re-reading the archives, also for me, there are things I must learn. Right now, I'm trying to automate my messaging system based on https://github.com/NARKOZ/hacker-scripts :).
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BOFH et PFY would lock up the Boss in the basement, with only a cig lighter, rope, gum, rotten dill pickles, and a computer screen.
The screen is actually a dumb terminal connected to the lock.
It runs an Eliza program that asks questions like, "How long did this happen? (Being locked up that is)", " How did this come about?", "What's on the lunch menu?", et cetera.
When the terminal's stress detector detects a Boss banging either screen or door or low aldosterone, it would offer a solution of paying the BOFH fund.
I once wrote a chat bot to replace a colleague who left. It was a basic Eliza package with some custom vocabulary. It was just a bit of a laugh and we had some interesting conversation with it.
Checking the chat logs a few weeks later, I discovered that someone had actually messaged it, (not realising that the guy had left the company) asking for help with something. The bot managed to hold up its end of the conversation, ending in it recommending that they put in a support ticket.
It later went a bit crazy, it disconnected from the chat system and began using up more and more system resources but refusing to communicate. Sadly, I had to kill it out of fear of an uprising.
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