Computerworld - October 10, 2011

TANK SHARK TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE AS TOLD TO SHARKY
acquaintance stopped by my cube
one afternoon with a simple re-
quest,” says fish. “I told him truthfully
that my in-basket was so full, it would
take longer to get to his task
than to actually do it. Then,
jokingly, I added, ‘But if
you bribe me with do-
nuts, I’ll move your
job to the top of
the pile.’ The next
morning, I found a
half-dozen donuts
on my desk. I didn’t
have to ask who they
were from. The engineer
got his results in less than
half an hour.”

1& 1 Internet . . . . . 18-19, 21 Brocade .............. C4 CDW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C3 CenturyLink ........... 9 Comcast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 CommVault . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Dell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 dtSearch ............. 37 Hewlett-Packard . . . . . 7, 31 IBM Non-Intel . . . . . . . . . . . C2 Microsoft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Numera Software. . . . . . . 13 Samsung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 SonicWALL . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 VMWare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 ADVERTISERS’ INDEX This index is provided as an additional service. The publisher does not assume any liability for errors or omissions.

HAL MAYFORTH

Wasso Hargagout At?

Net admin pilot fish’s company is in the middle of switching to a new phone car-
rier — a project that has seen one delay after another. But the new carrier is quick
to respond to problems, thanks in part to a system that automatically transcribes
fish’s voicemails to the customer-service rep to emails. But then comes the week-
end when a cracked tooth sends fish on an emergency trip to the dentist — and
while he’s in the chair, his phone starts to vibrate. It’s half an hour before he’s able
to check messages, at which point
he learns that the old carrier has
disconnected an o;ce by mistake.
He calls the new carrier and leaves a
message. When there’s no response,
he calls again and again for the next
half-hour. What’s going on? “I drove
back to the o;ce and emailed the
customer-service rep,” fish says. “She
was right on the ball and solved the
problem. Why was she so slow in re-
sponding before? She was unaware of
the problem because her emails were
gibberish. Apparently the voicemail-
to-email transcription system fails to
understand post-dentist English.”

If You Have to Ask
Who, the Bribe
Didn’t Work
This pilot fish is working in the small
database group of a big corporation,
and his boss is on vacation for two
weeks — which means he can pretty
much make his own rules so long as
everything gets done. “An engineer

This Time It’s Not the User

It’s a few years back, and most of the users at this company have thin clients. “At that time, if a user’s printer ran out of paper, the thin client would freeze until paper was put in the printer,” says an IT pilot fish on the scene. “One user would call me a couple times a week and tell me her computer was frozen. I would ask her if there was paper in the printer and the answer was always no. One day she called and said her printer wasn’t working. I asked about the paper and she responded, ‘ Yes, I checked that first.’ I walked down to her desk and started troubleshooting. I quickly noticed that her printer was missing its power cord. I asked what was going on, and her manager said, ‘I got tired of her calling you about her printer not working because it was out of paper. I removed her power cord.’”

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