I work as a tech support guy in an elementary school. One day, I was asked by an older female teacher (probably fifty-five or older) why her projector wasn’t working and if I could come take a look.

I arrived and found that it wasn’t even plugged in.

Me: “Where is the plug?”

Teacher: “I don’t have it.”

Me: “Oh, that’s okay. I can probably get you a new plug, but I need to find one. I’ll be back in about ten minutes.”

But she wasn’t having any of it. She insisted that I make the projector work wirelessly and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Me: “That simply isn’t possible. Wireless electricity hasn’t been invented yet.”

She refused to listen. Then, she took out her phone.

Teacher: “If my phone can connect to the Wi-Fi wirelessly, why can’t the projector?”

I had to explain that Wi-Fi and electricity are different things, but she became angry and started threatening to report me to the principal.

I tried to remain calm and explained the situation to her again, but she refused to listen and accused me of being incompetent.

Eventually, I had to leave the classroom without solving her problem. It was a frustrating experience, but sometimes there’s just no way to make things work the way people want them to.

I later spoke to the principal and explained the situation to her, and luckily, she understood that the teacher’s request was unreasonable.

A few years ago, I received a phone call from a Human Resources person from a staffing agency I almost worked for at one point. I got through the greetings and small talk and got down to business.

HR: “I have a person you know applying for a job with one of our customers.”

Me: “I’m confused; no one gave me a heads up. Who are we talking about?”

HR: “Your friend, [Person’s First Name].”

Me: “Who?”

HR: “[Person’s Full Name] — he said he worked with you at [Email Company].”

Me: “Ohhh, okay. I remember him. But I’m not sure why he’d put my name down. We didn’t work all that closely. I interacted with his team only peripherally because we had equipment in his office. I don’t really feel comfortable providing a reference.”

HR: “That’s sort of our fault; we sort of pressured him to cough up references on the fly.”

Me: “I don’t feel comfortable providing a reference.”

HR: “Come on, [My Name]. We know each other. Help me out.”

Me: “Well, not being his manager, I can’t discuss his performance.”

HR: “Okay. Can I ask you about his technical skills? Can you comment on those?”

Me: “Fine, ask away.”

HR: “How is [Person] with [Software Package]?”

Me: “Okay, I guess. Maybe 2.5 out of five.”

A five out of five is extremely rare for this software. I might be at 4.7, and I’ve used the software for over twenty years, and I’ve even flown to the vendor’s headquarters to work on technology issues and help design future versions of products with them.

HR: “Great! How is he with [Hardware Platform]?”

Me: “Well, in the time he was at [Email Company], he never touched the platform. If he gained knowledge from elsewhere, I can’t comment.”

HR: “Wait, that can’t be right. He said he led the [Hardware Platform] refresh project.”

Me: “That’s not true.”

HR: “[Email Company] is huge. Is it possible you weren’t aware of the project?”

Me: “No. I’m very aware of the project, and he wasn’t leading it.”

HR: “How can you be so sure?”

Me: “Because I led that project.”

HR: *Very uncomfortably* “Oh.”

Me: “I think it’s best for everyone that we end the call here. I think you have a phone call to make.”

HR: “Yeah, that’s probably best.”

I didn’t necessarily bash him but just set the record straight.

I work as a tech engineer for primary schools. Here I am, about three years ago, just promoted to Network Engineer from a service desk position, sent out to set up new Wi-Fi access points (APs) for a customer. The ticket states that their alarm system is fickle and I should steer clear of it.

No biggie: five APs. That’s about an hour of work, including configuring SSIDs and checking if they are placed conform to Sitesurvey. I send commands into one and… no connection. I check the IP I got from the DHCP server and it’s off.

Off to the patch cabinet, and lo and behold: in a world where 90% of all primary school devices use Wi-Fi, and 10/100 switches are a thing of the past, I find a 1000mbit fiber switch, functioning as a core switch to a stack of 10/100 UTP switches. Our firewall can be found here, as well, but no devices I can think of that could produce a second DHCP server.

So, I set a static IP in the subnet I got from this rogue DHCP server, and I manage to find a Gigaset VoIP box. I log in with the default credentials, and to my shock, it’s actually running a DHCP server and functions as a PPPoE modem toward an Internet connection no one heard of.

This is where the fun starts. I turn off the DHCP function and start configuring my APs. Halfway through, the alarm sets off. The customer is angry because I changed something. I’m flabbergasted.

I decide to go the “make the customer happy” way and go and fix it right this time. So, first things first: how is this alarm system configured? Luckily, VoIP and the alarm were installed by the same provider. Sadly, this provider sold all their alarm customers and all their VoIP customers to another third party. Both were unaware of what was actually installed due to a horrible handover.

The alarm company luckily can tell that they only have systems using IP to manage, and all they should need is a specific open port to the outer world. This goes against the interpretation of our customer, who is 100% sure the alarm uses a phone connection.

The VoIP company doesn’t have any information on the VoIP box I found and decides to just send someone to handle it and document everything to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Since the VoIP box isn’t in use, doesn’t contain any SIP information, and can’t be found, I decide to remove it from the network. These old switches, lacking proper ARP support, make this an old-school “let’s ping this and pull cables” search. But after eliminating this bugger and resetting the alarm and the actually used VoIP system, I’m finally ready to continue configuring the APs.

Done? No. The party that installed the APs neglected the request to remove the old ones from above the ceiling plates, probably due to a lack of documentation. (Note: we were not in charge of the old APs).

So, I track them down and remove these APs, which are covered in crusty mouse droppings. Never have I been so happy with a bar of soap and hand sanitizer.

When packing my stuff to leave, I hear the school head on the phone with one of our Relationship managers, complaining about the fact that I managed to set off the alarm and shouldn’t have touched it.

IT in primary schools is usually sub-par, but this school took the cake and complained about me after I fixed most of their issues, while not even being there for troubleshooting

This happened about thirty years ago. I was definitely the a**hole in this situation, but in my defense, I was five.

My family’s home phone number was one digit off from a sporting goods store in my town called Joe Jones. Naturally, we’d get a fair number of calls from people with the wrong number. We had caller ID, so my parents would see an unfamiliar number on the ringing phone and say, “Looks like it might be someone trying to call Joe Jones again.” They’d pick up and say, “Hello? I’m sorry, you have the wrong number,” and then just hang up and say, “Yep. Joe Jones again.”

Now, since I was five, I failed to realize two key things about this situation:

• “Joe Jones” was the name of a store, not a person an easy mistake to make.

• It was different people calling each time.

Since my parents could always tell when it was a call for Joe Jones, I thought it was always the same number that they kept recognizing. I had only ever used the speed dial to make an outgoing call, so I assumed some friend of Joe’s had just misprogrammed their phone to call us instead of him and was really lazy about fixing it. I was annoyed that this person kept bothering us.

Then came the day of the story. My dad was at work, and my mom was home with me. She was busy with something when the phone rang and asked me to answer it. I went over to the kitchen phone and reached up to pull it off the hook.

Me: “Hello?”

Caller: “Hi. Is this Joe Jones?”

I was finally talking to the person who had been bothering us! I summoned up all the righteous fury young me could muster.

Me: *VERY sternly* “No! He doesn’t live here! Stop calling us!”

My mom jumped up and snatched the phone from me to apologize to the caller and smooth things over.

After she hung up, she took the time to talk to me to make sure I understood what was actually going on and how to be polite over the phone. She wasn’t angry.

These days, I always try to be polite on the phone, regardless of the situation. I think back to this incident as being the day I learned that lesson.

Thanks, Mom. I miss you.

My brother used to work for a retail grocery store. One summer day, a child was spotted still in a vehicle in the store’s parking lot. The child was somewhere between five and seven.

The child wasn’t in distress or anything yet, but somebody in the parking lot saw and got the police involved. Just after the cop showed up, the mother arrived back at her vehicle.

My brother doesn’t know if the woman was charged or got a good talking to from the cops. But later on, she came into the store and demanded an apology from the store because her child was crying from that ordeal.

My brother said the store was not involved in the whole situation; they weren’t aware of what was going on until after the cops showed up. Everything was handled by the people out in the parking lot.

It’s a shame there are people like this who think it’s okay to do this to their children, and they think they’re the victim in the end.