I Don’t Think They Sell Those At Staples…

I’m not actually tech support at work but de facto support because I can plug a USB in on the first try (okay, I’m lying; no one can do that) and because I know enough to get myself into trouble and some fancy Google search terms to get myself out of trouble.

I don’t actually have a budget for IT equipment, but I can pretty much buy what I need (and occasionally want) if I have reasonable justification for it. I just need the owner of the company to sign off on it, and to be fair, he rarely says no because he knows I do things at as small a cost as possible.

Every day, I need to print just over a hundred pages on a printer at the other end of the office (only a handful of meters away), but as the printer has a maximum of a hundred-fifty pages, I need to check that it’s got paper each time. The young lady who works right next to the printer tells me to just ask her to check the paper level.

Asking her to check the paper level each day gets boring, so I rename the printer “Kraken”. Now, instead of asking her to check the paper level, I can ask her to “ready the Kraken”. (We’re weird and it makes us smile.)

The owner overhears one day as I yell, “Ready the Kraken!” He has a good sense of humour and sends me an email.

Owner: “I don’t remember signing off on a Kraken. Please can you send me the initial outlay, running costs, and justification for a Kraken? Please also remember to submit the VAT receipt for a Kraken.”