Follow along We all know that users can be disgusting. However, not all of us have to stand up and get close to their filth.Welcome to the dirtier side Follow along.
Our story takes us back to the quiet days of the 1980s and the antics of the apprentice John who worked in the factory.
“I spent a long time in the electronics maintenance department, responsible for everything on the factory floor, but also the management of the computers in the office area.”
An eclectic kit combination is used. Apple II, the strange Commodore PET, some novel IBM XT computers, and the inevitable PDP11 are filled with dozens of ancient peripherals.
This is an era of “make-and-fix”, not a one-off culture imposed on IT by irreparable hardware.
So John is a busy person. As an apprentice, he was a frontline support staff and was sent to solve problems around the scene. However, the department he was most afraid of going to was the place where the beans counter lurked.
“Everyone in Accounts is smoking,” he explained. “We just went there to get the countersignature of the purchase order.” This is the fog in the air, “You really need a gas mask.”
Oops.
Therefore, it is inevitable that young John is called into the dirty room to deal with a monitor that seems to be malfunctioning. The text is very dark, the brightness knob does not seem to have any effect, unless it is quickly repaired or replaced, no invoice or payment will be made. Holding his breath, John retrieved the device and brought it back to his workbench.
Sure enough, the screen was hard to see. “When I touched the screen, I was removing the back to see things like cathode current and anode voltage,” he told us, “it feels weird.”
His fingers… no longer the original color. He looked at the screen carefully and was surprised to find, “There is a layer of tobacco tar about 1/4 inch on it.”
joy.
So our hero rolled up his sleeves, put on a mask, grabbed a spatula, poured out ethanol and detergent, and scrubbed.
“I made it spotless,” he told us proudly, “and there is a lot of extra brightness.”
It was late in the afternoon, but he returned the screen to the user anyway. Same day service and so on. People are very happy with the readable numbers now.
I was ecstatic, until the next morning it was clear and sunny. John’s boss walked over and said, “John – you are really upset. They think you have stolen the anti-glare cover on the monitor you repaired. They say that the screen is completely unreadable now.
“Where is it? You must fight back now!”
John was stumped. What anti-glare screen?
Then he understood what was going on. And the bean counter thinks what their filth is.
“So we filled out a purchase order for Viking screen protectors, with the accounting’s own cost center on it.”
His boss ignored John’s lungs and trot over, “Suggesting that it not only solves the glare problem, but if they change it frequently, it will also absorb most of the tar.”
charming.
Have you ever lived a dirty life during On Call and cleverly explained to users that the artificial coating on their hardware might be the cause of at least one failure? Tell us about On Call via email. ®
