Text 4728, 139 rader
Skriven 2006-12-03 13:23:00 av Greg Sears
Ärende: Bofh
============
               THE BASTARD OPERATOR FROM HELL - GENESIS

                    (STRIPED IRREGULAR BUCKET #1)

   I'm really bored.  You know how bored you get when work's going on
   and on and on, and nothing interesting is happening, and you're
   listening to a radio that picks up ONE station on FM, and it's
   always the station with the least records in the city, about 5, and
   one of them is "You're so Vain" which wasn't too bad a song until
   you hear it about 3 times a day for a year,  and  *EVERY* time it
   plays,  the announcer tells you it's about Warren Beaty and who
   he's currently poking,  someone you'll never sniff the toe-jam of,
   let alone meet, let alone get amourous with.  And EVERY time
   someone mentions Warren Beaty, someone says that  he  used  to  go
   out with Madonna too, and have you seen "In Bed With.."

     AND THEN, someone ELSE will say "It wasn't really about Warren
   Beaty, it was James Taylor" and the first person will say "What,
   `In bed with Madonna?'", and they laugh and everyone else laughs,
   and I slip out the Magnum from under the desk where I keep it in
   case someone laughs at a joke that's so dry it's got a built in
   water-fountain, and blow the lot  of  them  away  as  a  community
   Service.  I figure that I'll get time off my sentence if I ever
   kill someone by accident who's got a life.

   So visitors are getting pretty thin at the moment, and the
   Quick-Lime Pits are filling up rapidly, and all I've got to do is
   the full backups and maybe I can go home.

   So, to relieve the boredom, I get some iron filings and pour them
   into the back  of  my Terminal until  it  fizzes out (Which doesn't
   take all that long, surprisingly enough), then call our maintenance
   contractors and log a fault on the device.  Sometimes they'll send
   someone who knows what they're doing, but it's a lot more fun when
   they don't - which is about 98% of the time.

   So they maintenance guy comes in, and I can tell he's NEW because
   the photo on his ID actually LOOKS like him, not like the head
   engineer, whose photo's a black and white tin-type (he's that old).

   Maintenance Contractors always dress up nice, with a tie and
   everything because they believe that a customer will trust a nicely
   dressed guy with their million dollar equipment *just* because he's
   got a nice tie..

   Because he's NEW and ALONE, he's what you call an appeasement
   engineer, the new guy they send so they respond within the 4 hour
   guaranteed response period.  (Things are getting better and better)
    Your average appeasement engineer is about as clued-up on
   computers as the average computer "hacker" is about B.O, and their
   main job is to make sure the power plug is in and switched on, then
   call back to the office for "PARTS".  The really keen ones will
   sometimes even take a cover off the equipment and pretend that they
   see this stuff all the time.  I wonder what sort today's is...

   "You got a dud terminal?" he asks pleasantly

   I tell him yeah, and bring him into the control room.

   "Which one is it?" he asks, confused by the fact that only one of
   them is smoking.

   "It's the Model Three" I say, giving NOTHING away.

   "Ah, the old model three!" he says knowingly, without a clue what a
   model three is, or which one of the three terminals it is, which
   isn't surprising, as I just made it up.

   "We get a lot of Model Three problems" he says nodding "So what
   actually happened?"

   Sneaky, but not good enough.  I'm not going to point it out to him.

   "It just went dead" I say, in luser mode.

   "I see.  Could you just recreate what you were doing so I can check
   the unit out when it's ready for operation?"

   Very Sneaky.  I decide to let him off the hook.

   "Look, I've got to go to the toilet, there it is over there" I say,
   pointing at our Waffle-Iron.

   "But that's a Wa..." He says, then stops.  He's a beginner, and
   it's just possible that the company has a line of terminals that
   look like waffle irons. He bites.

   "Sorry" he says, smiling again "for a minute there I thought it was
   a Model 2!"

   A reasonably good save, but it won't save him. "Huh, it's nothing
   like a model 2!  *THAT'S* the model 2" I say, pointing to the
   expresso machine.

   He nods and I leave, which means he's got to take the iron to bits,
   otherwise he knows I won't believe he's worked on it.  I give him a
   couple of minutes to get the element exposed then wander back in.

   "So how does it look?" I ask, concerned-like.

   "Well, I think we could have a processor problem.." he says
   concentrating on prying the element up.

   ..concentrating so much that he doesn't notice me plugging the iron
   in.

   "Shouldn't you be wearing an earthing strap?"  I ask innocently.

   When he thinks I can't see, he creeps his hand over to the wiring
   frame and says "Well, It's just as easy to hold onto earth like
   this"

   "But what about the risk of a cross-the-body shock with no resistor
   in series with you?" I ask ever-so-more-innocently

   "Oh, it's ok" he says "the unit's unplug..."

   >clickBZZZZZZZEEERRT!clunk! I ring the maintenance help-desk
   again...

   It's Rhonda

   "Hey Ronda!, Ah, I'm going to need another engineer and a new
   Waffle Iron over here; for some reason your engineer opened up my
   Waffle Iron without switching it off."  I say

   Rhonda knows me.  It's the third call and the third appeasement
   engineer this year.  You'd think they'd learn.

   "You're a real prick" she says, annoyed

   "Tell ya what Rhonda, why don't you come and fix it; it's a Model
   Three..."


-=- MultiMail/Win32 v0.47

--- SLMAIL v5.1  (#SLO409KEDG15G098)
 * Origin: The Trashcan - The BEST rubbish * bbs.thenet.gen.nz  (3:772/210)