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Flashback Friday: You’re welcome

opinion
Sep 25, 20203 mins
IT Leadership

There’s no winning this one.

Computerworld  |  Shark Tank
Credit: Computerworld / IDG

It’s sometime around the turn of the millennium, and this pilot fish is part of the small corporate IT staff for a regional engineering firm.

“Part of our job was general user support for the marketing and sales staff, most of whom were issued laptops to use,” says fish. “Of course, there was no training on how to use them.

“So one Sunday morning around 8 a.m., I get a phone call at home from one of our VP of sales gurus. He was sitting in a hotel room a good distance away, trying to access his email. Nothing worked, and he needed help now — never mind that we were not supposed to provide support from home or work overtime.”

But the VP doesn’t want to hear it, so fish starts troubleshooting, and soon determines that the VP’s hotel room has digital phones and his laptop has an analog modem.

Fish is working on a quick fix, which will involve getting the hotel engineer to work some magic with an adapter. But in the meantime, VP starts complaining about something new: all the noise in the background on fish’s end of the line. Fish’s young daughter is watching cartoons on TV.

“The VP told me to order my daughter to turn down or turn off the TV, as it was obviously distracting me from solving his problem.” fish says. “And I had a lot of nerve (on a Sunday morning, at home) letting a TV get turned on when I should be working on his problem.”

The following week, fish is called into his boss’s office. The VP is upset that he had to look up fish’s home phone number. He’s upset that the hotel’s system was incompatible with the modem. And he’s upset because of a 3-year-old’s choice of Sunday morning entertainment.

So the VP has written fish up and wants him fired.

Fish is also in hot water with his boss for answering the call from the VP, and then trying to solve the problem.

“I did point out that I was in a no-win situation, since the VP would be equally upset if I had refused to assist him,” says fish.

“The upshot? The VP was told that, in the future, he was not to call us at home. My next performance review told me that I was too helpful. And as soon as it became available in the area, I got Caller ID!”

Don’t call Sharky. I’m heading out to deep waters for a spell, so this is the last Shark Tank, at least for a while. Thanks to all my pilot fish and faithful readers who have made it a pleasure to produce the Shark Tank. I hope to catch up with you all sometime in the future.

sharky

Questions that Sharky gets a lot

Q: What's a pilot fish?

A: There are two answers to that question. One is the Mother Nature version: Pilot fish are small fish that swim just ahead of sharks. When the shark changes direction, so do the pilot fish. When you watch underwater video of it, it looks like the idea to change direction occurred simultaneously to shark and pilot fish.

Thing is, sharks go pretty much anywhere they want, eating pretty much whatever they want. They lunge and tear and snatch, but in so doing, leave plenty of smorgasbord for the nimble pilot fish.

The IT version: A pilot fish is someone who swims with the sharks of enterprise IT -- and lives to tell the tale. Just like in nature, a moment's inattention could end the pilot fish's career. That's life at the reef.

Q: Are all the Sharky stories true?

A: Yes, as best we can determine.

Q: Where do the Sharky tales come from?

A: From readers. Sharky just reads and rewrites and basks in the reflected glory of you, our readers. It is as that famous fish-friendly philosopher Spinoza said, "He that can carp in the most eloquent or acute manner at the weakness of the human mind is held by his fellows as almost divine."

Q: Do I have to write my story in Sharky-ese?

A: No. Not at all. Just be sure to give us details. What happened, to whom, what he said, what she said, how it all worked out. If Sharky likes your tale of perfidy, heroism or just plain weirdness at your IT shop, he will supply his particular brand of Shark snark.

Q: I've got a really funny story, but I could get fired if my old trout of a boss found out I told you. How confidential is what I send to Sharky?

A: We don't publish names: yours, your boss's, your trout's, your company's. We try to file off the serial numbers, though there's no absolute guarantee that someone who lived through the incident won't recognize himself. Our aim is to share the outrageous, knee-slapping, milk-squirting-out-your-nose funny tales that abound in the IT world, not to get you fired. That would not be funny.

Q: How do I get each new Shark Tank tale emailed to me?

Easy. Subscribe to the newsletter.

Q: Where are the Sharkives?

Tales of old can be found in Sharky's archive.

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