Halloween IT Horror Stories: Users
Ok, they can't help it, but IT users provide most of the fodder for the jokes that we tell around coffee, or with our incredulous friends.
People can not be that weird, but the sad reality is that not only can users disrupt and otherwise smooth running IT Shop, but they will, they can and they do. Users are the bane of IT folks everywhere, yet the sad reality is that without users, we would not have the job security that we currently enjoy. InfoWorld reader SEnright relates a tearful tale: A mobile user called to say that his laptop was no longer functioning. After a lengthy phone conversation, during which the user initially denied anything unusual had happened, he disclosed that he had spilled an entire can of Coke on the keyboard. "He continued by telling me that he had tried to dry it with a hair dryer, but that it still would not boot. I asked him to send it back to me, and that I would have it repaired." But when SEnright opened the laptop's shipping box the very next day, he had a bit of a shock. "The gentleman had not used a ‘hair dryer,' but must have borrowed a heat gun at one of our locations, because all that was left of the keyboard was a cooled pool of molten black plastic." Ouch. Source: Infoworld We have all seen stories like the one above, or the classic "Cup Holder doubles as CD Player", the mouse with an added bonus of being a foot pedal, and the whole host of other stupid human tricks when it comes down to IT.
The best source of IT Stupid Human Tricks is "Shark Tank" and if you don't read it, but need a laugh, trot on over to here to read it. Some of the classics are: We had a recently hired Assistant CIO who proved to be embarrassingly incompetent. (You'll notice that I said "had", as her repeated screw-ups finally got her...ah..."retired".) One of her more widely known gaffs was an email she sent to the entire IT staff. It had an attachment which turned out to be huge enough to over-fill half the mailboxes in the department, rendering them useless until this missive could be deleted. The subject of the attachment - "Proper Email etiquette", which included a section on the wisdom of sending a link to large documents rather than attaching them to multiple emails. Source: Shark Tank We can't live with them, and we can't live without them, but users provide the backbone of job security, amusement over drink of choice at dive of choice, and fodder for some of the best stories to come out of IT ever.
Have to love Users, and have to laugh, and when the pressure is on, lets face it, this is another place that we have been far too many times not to call it the "IT Treehouse of Horror".
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About the Author:
Dan Morrill has been in the information security field for 18 years, both
civilian and military, and is currently working on his Doctor of Management.
Dan shares his insights on the important security issues of today through
his blog, Managing
Intellectual Property & IT Security, and is an active participant in the
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