This is another tale from many years ago when I was an indie IT guy in southeastern UK…
Amongst my many and varied customers there is a firm of solicitors that have a higher moron-content than most Government departments and who have provided me with several of my more ludicrous stories. This time they’re going for the record….
They’ve just opened a new office about 200m away from their head office and I got the contract to completely equip it. One of the requirements was to provide remote access to the PC running their accounts in the head office so that they could interrogate the client accounts system without having to cough up the exorbitant amount of wedge for a multi-user system. No problem – set it up, got it working and instructed the remote user in the remote access procedure, which included phoning the head office and asking the accounts PC user to log out so that she could remote in.
Now, this particular firm is pretty good at paying it’s bills (over here, if a Solicitor defaults on paying up he’s in SERIOUS shit anyway) so ‘twas with some surprise that I found that the bill was still unpaid some six weeks hence. On chasing them up I was summoned to a meeting, at which I was bombarded with complaints, neeps and whinges that the remote system didn’t work. (OH REALLY?) I asked them why no-one had thought to call me and they looked at each other, the walls, the ceiling and their respective navels until someone said sheepishly “Oh, haven’t we?”.
Grrrr…..
Ten acrimonious minutes later I was in the remote office, testing the remote access having first logged the accounts PC out before going over there. No problem. I tried again – no problem. I checked the router logs in both offices – no problems reported. I went outside, had a smoke, scratched my head, neck and scrotum for inspiration, went back in, tried again – NO BLEEDIN’ PROBLEM. Eventually I went back to the main office, having first instructed the remote operator to give it 10 minutes and try again, doing EXACTLY what she would normally do, while I watched the Accounts PC.
Accordingly, 10 minutes later, I was beside the accounts operator when the call came in from the remote office to log out, and watched the operator closely.
The light dawned…..
Without taking any further action I went back into the meeting and asked them – as politely as I could as I was now alternating between seething rage and hysterical laughter – how the fucking hell they expected ANYONE to gain remote access to a PC that was fucking SWITCHED OFF!
We will now draw a discreet veil over the proceedings of the next few minutes….
Suffice it to say that Gromit left the building holding onto a large cheque, the treasured memory of a horribly embarrassed group of managers and an agreement to charge double my normal rate for ID10T-related cock-ups not promptly reported to me.
Tossers.