Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention. Boredom Is The Mother Of… This.

I work in IT for a government-run building that houses many contractors. In this building, most programmer gets four monitors, which are attached to special mounts to make a two-by-two grid of monitors. I often get rather bland tickets requesting help with these monitors, but one ticket stood out as just a bit more memorable.

Ticket: “I have two functional monitors and one that appears to have misplaced all its cables. (It’s such a forgetful monitor, always leaving its cables everywhere.) I’d like to get AC and I/O cables to hook up my third monitor, as well as a fourth monitor because I’m a greedy, decadent b*****d who wants ALL THE MONITORS! Gimmie, gimmie, gimmie, gimmie, gimmie! :) Thank you in advance for enabling my monitor addiction!”

I went to help him, but unfortunately, once we hooked up his third monitor, it turned out that it wasn’t functional. I also had to inform him that I couldn’t provide new monitors; he had to ask the organization he worked for to provide them. He was understanding and thanked me for my attempt to help him.

Two days later, I got a new ticket from him.

Title: “Help me pilfer two monitors like a real pirate! ARRRR, matey!”

Subject: “I have gotten permission from [Person who handles their hardware] (as far as you know…) to steal two monitors from a non-functional desk. Sadly, I lack the appropriate hardware to detach and move monitors. Hey, that’s a hardware problem; we programmers only do software problems!

“Thus, I’m begging any kind IT folks to come on down here with a giant wrench to help me to reappropriate some monitors when no one is looking.  

“They say that a real friend will help you bury the bodies, but this isn’t murder, just a snatch-and-grab burglary, so I figure all you really need is a good acquaintance for that, right? Come on, oh buddy, oh pal! Help me out, and I’ll look the other way if any other monitors go missing…

“For those boring people who want to document things, I’m looking to loot [technical details about where the monitors were that I need before doing a move].

“…I suppose someone might also want to check to see if there is a ticket in to fix the computer at that desk? I would put one in, but I don’t want to risk creating a duplicate. Besides, I’m far less interested in fixing things than I am in looting the corpses of those less fortunate for my personal gain. I blame all the Fallout games I played as a kid.”

After getting the appropriate sign-off on looting, I helped with moving the monitors. When asked about his interesting ticketing approach, the guy explained that he was still waiting for the government’s bureaucracy to get around to getting him all the accounts and permissions he needed to work, so he had nothing better to do than to get creative with the few tasks he could complete.