Like a ninja in the night, Hanz M., AKA Hanzo, stalks across Hesse University’s Dresden campus. The go-to man in the IT department, he fixes the messes that others leave behind. This is one of his stories.

"This is why we can’t have nice things," Gertrude said. She and her subordinate, Hanzo, sat near the IT office phone, on speaker and on hold. "The administration picked the one manufacturer without on-site tech support."

Hanzo’s patience had been sorely tested lately. The administration had budgeted a new, coin-operated printer for a busy computer lab. However, they bought the printer and the coin-op assembly separately, from different manufacturers, to save cash. Since the coin-op company didn’t have tech support, they had to rely on the printer manufacturer, RadGaBa, for assistance.

RadGaBa’s tech support was infamously awful.

The hold music ended. "This is Celine with RadGaBa, how may I help you?"

Gertrude rattled off their client ID. "Our printer has failed to boot ever since your last tech installed the coin-op unit. We think they forgot to reset the printer ROM after installation."

"We’ll send a tech out right away," Celine replied.

Coin-Operated Trade Secrets

"Right away," Hanzo discovered, meant a week later. During that week, the IT office got hundreds of complaints, from students who needed term papers, professors who needed syllabi, and other departments who needed TPS reports.

Late one afternoon, the tech finally arrived. "No, I can’t show you how to reset the ROM," he said. "It’s forbidden under contract."

Hanzo sighed. "What if this happens again? We don’t want you to come back out here."

"No can do," the tech reiterated. He finished in a few minutes, said that RadGaBa would invoice them promptly, and left.

"Well, at least it works now," Gertrude said. "And we won’t have to worry about it breaking again for a couple years."

The next day, Hanzo took a call: the coin-op unit had jammed. They’d need to call out another tech to fix it.

Tech Reset

"Why does it take a week to get one of you out here?" Hanzo asked the second tech, who seemed a bit more amiable than the last, as he finished repairing the coin-op.

"Our sole German office is in Hamburg," the tech replied. "We service the entire country from there." The tech finished and collected his things.

Hanzo made it halfway back to the IT office when Gertrude called. "Did the tech reset the ROM?"

"I wasn’t paying attention. Why?"

"I just got off the phone with another student. The printer won’t boot again."

Hanzo felt his temper flare.

Acting the Part

"RadGaBa Electronics, this is Martin speaking, how may I help you?"

"Shut up and listen." Hanzo gave Martin their client ID and began his tirade. He had practiced his "irate customer" voice before he called the hotline, to Gertrude’s amusement, but Hanzo didn’t need to dig deep to find the anger he needed. "Every time you send someone out here, they always forget to reset the ROM on our printer. Now, I need you to send one out this afternoon, and they’re going to show us how to reset the ROM. We can’t wait a week for a tech when a whole campus depends on getting this printer working!" It wasn’t the only printer on campus, Hanzo knew, but Martin didn’t.

He thought he heard Martin cry. "I'll...send someone out right now."

ROM-Ridden Conscience

The third tech arrived in an hour. After a speech about voiding their warranty if they should ever attempt this, the tech showed the entire IT department, twenty people in all, how to do it.

"Was it really necessary to make poor Martin cry on the phone?" Gertrude asked later, over a beer. "You didn’t have to be so angry about it."

"No, I didn’t have to," Hanzo said. "The Book of Five Rings says this: ‘Many things can cause a loss of balance. One cause is danger, another is hardship, and another is surprise.’ I gave Martin a little of the last two, but I was feeling a lot of the first. If I hadn’t pushed RadGaBa to show us how to reset that ROM, when the printer breaks again it takes another week, we would lose our jobs."

"I know you like that book," Gertrude said, "but not everything’s a life-or-death situation. It’s just IT."

"Exactly," Hanzo said. "We’re in IT. Like the ninjas in feudal Japan, we fight our share of monsters. They just live in our servers, cables, and routers."

 

Photo credit: Zach Welty / Foter / CC BY-SA

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