How I.T. gets a bad name
I have this friend, I won’t use his real name, instead I’ll call him Mike.
He runs a motel with his wife, which has an electronic booking software. He gets this booking over the web, through this software system, for a Tom Jones. It’s automated, so it’s all good and all is well - until the day of check in. A woman shows up to the front desk saying she made a booking as part of the big wedding party, that’s come in. But the system says, no way, no booking. Motel is full up and he has to send this woman away - she is seriously not happy Jan!
End of the day rolls around and Tom Jones is a no show. Wondering where the heck he is, they ring his number because he’s a regular customer, asking him what’s the problem? Tom Jones is like - what the schnitzel - I never made a booking, what are you smoking?
Mike’s out $400 bucks for the stay, plus the woman’s out there telling all her friends what a loser he is and the wedding party are giving him sideways looks when they notice there’s an empty unit.
Being a calm sort of chap, Mike rings the web site guys who took the original booking, to have a full and frank discussion. They check their logs and confirm the details were correct at the web site. So he rings the local I.T. guys who maintain his booking software the web guys pass the bookings so they make into Mike’s local booking machine.
First this I.T. guys says, nah, we don’t have logs mate. Mike then proceeds to have this slightly bizarre conversation. The gist of which is; “Well you’re running an XP box so have you rebooted every week. No? Well in that case it’s all your fault - it’s a well known fact that you have to reboot an XP box every week or the memory gets a bit mucked up and it’s obviously swopped some old records around.” This guy has dial-in access to the XP box and says, “Well I’m dialed in here and I can see some registry errors on the box, so that clinches it, you’ve no one to blame but yourself.” Then he assures him Windows 7 is much better.
Mike’s going, “Hang on, how do I know this isn’t going to happen three more times this month, are you for real?”
I.T. guys basically says “cry me a river buddy, it’s not my problem.”
Mike rings me and asks me what do I think.
What do you say to something like that?
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