I was interviewing for an IT position. I had waited fifteen minutes past the start time and was getting antsy.

Me: *To the receptionist* “Is something wrong?”

Receptionist: “Sorry, [Interviewer] is struggling with a computer problem.”

Well, I was interviewing for an IT position, so I figured, hey, maybe I could try to fix the computer problem for the interviewer and see if that helps?

So, the receptionist called the interviewer and got the okay for me to go to her office and try to fix it with her.

It turned out that she was stuck in VIM, which is a text editor for UNIX-based systems. She was struggling to get out of it.

I instructed her how to type “Ctrl+[” and then “:wq” and hit “Enter”, and I got her out of the program.

I wasn’t exactly hired on the spot, but I got the job, and I was told that the way I had walked the interviewer through fixing the problem was a major part of that.

A customer comes in with a laptop infested with malware and illicit third-party software that have essentially turned his computer into a slow paperweight.

Me: “You’ll need to delete all the software that’s causing the issues, sir.”

Customer: “No! You need to replace it or fix it! I have a lifetime warranty!”

Me: “Sir, that warranty doesn’t cover these types of issues.”

Customer: “Get me your manager!”

My manager comes over and the same complaint is made. My manager refuses to replace the laptop.

Customer: “No! I have a lifetime warranty!”

Manager: “That only covers hardware issues. This is a software issue — and a third-party one at that.”

The customer slams his fist down on the keyboard, breaking a surprisingly large amount of it.

Customer: “What about now?”

Manager: “Congratulations! You just converted your lifetime warranty into a lifetime ban! Get out!”

I had a woman from the Midwest call us on a Monday morning. Over the weekend, her church, which had a 100-plus-system computer lab, had voted to make her the new administrator.

She had never touched a computer before.

Caller: “How do I use this Windows thing?”

Me: “Ma’am, we just made the antivirus software. Teaching you how to use Windows is not in the support agreement.”

Caller: *Angry and demanding* “I want to speak with your manager!”

There was an hour-long back-and-forth between my manager and the customer.

We were never sure how it ended. For years, I would ask him occasionally, and he’d give me a different answer every time. My favorite was:

Manager: “I picked up a Windows For Dummies book and shipped it to her.”

I was working for a temp agency in the 1990s, and they sent me to a “business center”. It was a small mall in the 1980s and had now been turned into four or five businesses in the same space, sharing the general facilities — lunch room, copy machines, etc. I was brought on as a tech as these businesses really weren’t big enough to have their own IT departments. I was told that the previous guy in the position, “Joe”, had left for a more stable job, and everyone in the place was sorry to see him go.

The first week I was there, I started finding problems with the guy. I came into one place and was told a computer was acting up. The business owner looked like she was about to burst into tears.

Owner: “When the last computer did this, Joe said it was broken and I had to get a new computer.”

I fixed the problem in five minutes with a free antivirus program and set up the rest of the computers in that office, as well.

Me: “What did Joe do with the old computer?”

Owner: “Oh, he took it home for parts since it wouldn’t work anymore.”

And all that week, I kept running into things that were really simple fixes, but good ol’ Joe had either taken all frickin’ day fixing them or announced that the machine was borked and had to be replaced. And Joe was apparently the designated recycler.

One owner said Joe was always in the office, working on the system; he’d be all day working on that computer. It turned out that before he’d left, he’d tried really hard to convince the owner to turn that tower over to Joe, and Joe would replace it “for free”. But the owner decided not to do that; he told me he just didn’t trust Joe all that much.

After taking a look at the computer, I could see why Joe wanted to take it with him; it was full of adult material grabbed from the Internet. After I showed this to the owner, Joe became persona non grata at that place.

It gets better.

It turned out that Joe couldn’t hack it in the real world and ended up going back to the temp agency. He asked for his old job back, but no, I had that position. So, he came to the facility and tried to bug me into quitting. I reported him to the agency, and he was written up and told not to return to the facility for any reason.

And when he did return to the facility, I informed building management, who called the police. Upon seeing the po-po, Joe took off like a cheetah, trying to exit the building through the back door — but failing because it now had a lock on it due to a break-in a few months previous.

After he tried (and failed) to resist arrest, the cops called in a request for his records and found out that Joe was wanted for suspicion of dealing. I had been talking to the cops at the time, and upon hearing this, I had my own suspicions. I went to check that computer that Joe had spent so much time on.

Sure enough, hidden in the files was a partial record of Joe’s activities back when he’d worked there. I printed out the file, handed it to the cops, and told them I’d send them anything else I found on the computer.

The next day, the feds showed up and took the computer. Joe went to prison for five years.

This story happened when I first joined my current company, and while I was not the one who actually had to deal with the problem, I was a bystander and heard the juicy parts from my mentor himself.

Exactly two days before a major festive celebration, we got a call from a user who was panicking because one of his equipment had failed and production had come to a screeching halt. Now, I work in a company that services critical process equipment in a country with a distinct west half and east half, separated by the sea (important as we are based in the western half). The client was a major refining plant for the petroleum industry.

As we normally do, we went through the usual troubleshooting steps — did you turn this on, is this connection active, etc. — but the only answer coming from [User] was, “Yes, yes, yes,” with nothing seemingly wrong. This went on for about half an hour.

Then, suddenly, our boss came in. The client’s head of production had just called him and was apparently livid. It turns out the machine hadn’t been working for more than an hour, and the production was severely interrupted until the problem was fixed.

Now, everyone was in a panic, as every hour the production was interrupted, the client was losing money in the tens of thousands of dollars, and the client had the right to sue us for any damages that occurred as a result of equipment downtime. [Head Of Production] was not happy that their internal team was not able to fix the problem, and [User] was not making any headway in fixing the problem via phone.

To resolve the issue, [Head Of Production] demanded that support be performed immediately onsite. Coming back to my earlier points: one, it’s the festive season, and two, they were across the sea, and traveling was a bit of a problem. But [Head Of Production] said money was not an issue and they would pay anything for immediate onsite support.

Cue my mentor, who was handed the unsavory task of handling the emergency. Immediately, he grabbed his tools and sped off to the airport to grab the next available flight. At the same time, his wife had to pack some clothes for him from home and rushed to pass them to him at the airport. Due to the festive season, [Mentor] didn’t have choices for flights, so in the end, he had to take a 1,000 USD business class flight. Normally, flights to where the client is located cost around 80 USD; we’re a developing country.

Upon arriving, [Mentor] was whisked from the airport with a driver, sent immediately to the refinery, and granted immediate security clearance to enter the plant. (Anyone working in petroleum knows how big a deal this is.) By this time, a good six hours or so had passed since we received the call, and it was well into the night. Greeting him in front of the equipment were [Head Of Production], [User], and various other senior management personnel, all anxious to see what the problem was.

[Mentor] is a guy with no chill, and he was also the one originally speaking to [User] on the phone. He recounted this part, so I’m paraphrasing him.

Head Of Production: “So, what is the problem?”

Mentor: “Wait, let me take a look.”

He started to go through the normal troubleshooting checklists but stopped almost immediately.

Mentor: “[User], are you sure you checked everything I asked you to?”

User: “Yes! Everything, word for word!”

Mentor: “Are you absolutely sure?”

User: “Yes!”

Mentor: “Do you remember what the third thing was that I asked you to check over the phone?”

User: “Why does it matter? Just fix the g**d*** problem!”

Mentor: “The first thing we normally check is to make sure the PC is turned on.” *Points at the CPU LED indicator* “The second thing we check is to make sure the equipment is on.” *Points to the machine LED* “The third thing…”

He brought his hand to a gas control valve and rotated it, a loud hiss was heard as the gas line pressurized, and the equipment beeped.

Mentor: “…is to make sure the gas is on.”

User: “…”

Head Of Production: “…”

Everyone Else In The Room: “…”

Mentor: “I would like to go have dinner now.”

After more awkward silence, [Head Of Production] thanked [Mentor] for his effort and asked the driver to take [Mentor] somewhere for dinner.

You’d think the story ends here, but there’s more!

By the time [Mentor] had finished his dinner, it was well past midnight, so he checked himself into a hotel for the night. The next day, he went back to the airport and found out that all flights were completely sold out for the next four days due to the festive traveling. He called my boss to inform him that he was basically stranded, and my boss just coolly said:

Boss: “Well, [Mentor], consider this as having a free holiday paid for by [Client].”

So, [Mentor] checked into the most luxurious hotel in the area and spent the next four days basically on vacation before coming back to work.

In total, we billed the client for around 10,000 USD for the flights, hotel, emergency arrangements, allowances, etc., all for ten seconds to check LEDs and turn a valve. This didn’t include the losses from halting the production. It’s still one of our most memorable stories that we recount to new hires or clients in our industry. Sometimes we wonder what happened to [User], but he was transferred out of his role not too long after this incident.