Overheard on the site radio
Our school has a large site, so the grounds staff use licensed walkie-talkies to keep in touch. The IT office has one of these radios so we can be kept in the loop, which is particularly important during the holidays. On occasion, the overheard conversations can be hilarious:
Facilities: “Guys, we’ve had a problem reported, there’s a blockage in the visitor’s toilets, could someone take a look?”
Caretaker: “Yeah, no problem, I’ll stick my head in next time I’m passing”.
Facilities: “I wouldn’t stick your head in, I’d use drain rods if I were you.”
I’m too sceptical to accept that the reduction in frequency of your IT postings indicates a rise in quality within the IT industry. It can’t be so! You must have been promoted …
(Also, why do you Log In to WordPress dashboard, yet Sign Out again afterwards? And this text box right here wraps my text at 2/3 of its width …)
(The dashboard thing is because Firefox’s password saving doesn’t play nice with sites like WordPress and DeviantArt where the user has a subdomain (which is a nonsensical thing to do anyway); DeviantArt integrates the login into the user’s own page, so you can’t get out of this mess, but WordPress opens a new window and could easily put the master URL into it, and fails miserably in doing so. Sadly these are only minor WTFs for me right now … ;-) I guess it makes a change from cursing Adobe or getting Microshafted.)
The 2/3 width thing happens to me too. It upsets me so much I’ve had to cut down posting just to cope with the trauma.
…?
But then, I understand that feeling – IT really takes its toll, rather like madness.
At my last place, the mid day supervisors used radios on our frequency too. They never got on particularly well with technology of any sort and one exchange stands out particularly well:
“June! June! Where are you?”
“I’m here”
I was given a site radio as well. It was, however, switched off never to be switched on again after it was frequently misused to become the “technician hotline” by members of the SMT and Office staff and – the reason for the switch off – any other member of staff who phoned the SMT/Office asking me to go see them.