• (nodebb) in reply to urkerab

    You mean the ones that are used by kettles? When the cleaners want a cup of tea, kiss your server goodbye…

  • Tom M (unregistered)

    I have a similar experience - a client who had upgraded from typewriters to a word-processor system (just two PCs and a printer) was complaining of random crashes - and after the usual diagnostics (including replacing both PCs) we had an engineer sit there and wait for it to happen...

    The PC's both froze simultaneously, and there was then a very loud rumbling noise...

    Engineer: "What's that noise?" Users: "Oh, that's just the overhead gantry crane in the workshop moving"

    As with other stories, a couple of UPS's were installed to clean the power and all was well...

  • Huckleberry Finn (unregistered) in reply to A Finn

    A Finn wrote: "How did you manage to come up with fake names that don't sound Finnish at all?"

    You should see what they do to me.

  • James (unregistered)

    Not cleaning staff but contractors hired to come in and drill a 4" diameter hole through the concrete floor for a new large cable run in the smallish data center. They were informed multiple times, DO NOT PLUG INTO THESE POWER STRIPS ON THE SERVER RACKS! Run an extension cord out the door and there are outlets right here with enough amperage for your enormous impact drill. Nope, they plugged right into the rack and blew the breakers then drained the UPS and shutdown 8 Exchange email servers! Alarms going off in Operations and the tech's came running. Fortunately nothing damaged but still had to reboot everything after resetting the breakers and the Email Engineers were not pleased with the downtime. A data center tech was then required to supervise any contractors working in the data center at all times, if you had to use the restroom or pickup dinner you had to get someone to cover you.

    Another time a new security guard entered the data center and couldn't figure out how to open the sliding reenforced Star Trek style door so he hits the giant red Emergency Stop button on the wall. That's an electrical kill switch for the data center. A different data center had a large glass bullet proof rotary door with a man trap. You swipe your badge, step in it swivels half way locking you in then you swipe again and enter a code. Some poor developer came in on a three day weekend and got locked in the man trap. Normally there would have been security in a booth nearby 24/7 but due to budget cuts they were now offsite with remote cameras. Their cameras were down. This poor guy was stuck in that man trap for 20 hours! His cell phone had no signal. Suffice to say they installed an emergency speaker phone panel with a camera and staffed the booth until it was working and guaranteed redundant and on a different system than the main closed circuit cameras.

  • Dark-Star (unregistered)

    A fellow techie, at his first 'real' IT job, had to deal with an unfirable (uncle/brother of someone important giving a hand-out job to their loser relative) Hispanic janitor who supposedly didn't understand English in addition to being a habitual drunkard. It was just accepted that you would occasionally have to deal with your carpet area smelling like booze because he spilled some or repair a minor issue because he unplugged the wrong thing and crashed a job.

    After losing almost 20 hours of sleep a week dealing with his screwups one way or another 'Jason' had a fairly good idea of anonymously tipping ICE and the cops at the same time, figuring he'd be guilty of something or another. And indeed, dear uncle was not only found roundly soused but had left home without his wallet...or any identification. When the dust settled, an higher executive who did not work onsite and was thus immune to pink-slip blackmail ordered him gone and a licensed cleaning firm hired.

  • (nodebb) in reply to The Original Fritz

    <quote>I super-glued some outlet covers shut on the other side of my office wall because idiots kept plugging forklift chargers in them and tripping my fuses. So they just broke the plastic and kept plugging them in.</quote>

    So it was a mexican standoff between the dicks who want to use the power for recharging, and the dick who wants to stop them. The issue can't be resolved by a simple assessment of priority. I SMELL UNION!

  • Someone (unregistered)

    You don't need to hire dedicated cleaning stuff. You just get in touch with some cleaning company to make them send over someone once a week or so.

    As for the old story: My example is from some time in the naughties. The place my friend worked at was building a cryo storage facility. Big room full of fancy freezers, all in all enough to store a few million cell samples.

    Then one weekend they had a power outage. They checked the security footage to find a true gem: Cleaning lady gets into the room. Sees plugs near some of the cryo units, plugs in her big, heavy duty vacuum. This blows a fuse, as the setup isn't meant for the sort of cleaning equipment Stephen King would write about. Cleaning lady unplugs vac and hightails it out of there. Of course she didn't bother telling anyone.

    Luckily the facility wasn't actually in operation yet, or a lot of expensive bio samples would have been destroyed.

    Moral of the story: Naked outlets are a bad thing. Don't be stingy with the fuses, don't put too much shit on the same fuse. Yada yada yada.

    Real moral: If you contract out to the cheapest offer no matter what, bad things might happen.

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