Giving back to the community is always a nice thing to do, and it’s no wonder that plenty of small businesses like to get involved with charitable initiatives.

Because when you have the know-how, it’s feels good to help others who might be struggling.

The person in this story once owned a computer shop, and was keen to help out local good causes.

But one charitable initiative was a step too far.

Read out how they ended up in hot water.

Bad mouse took down a network, and almost got us banned.

Previously, I owned a computer shop.

One time, we donated to a local county nature center by installing a network in the campus, which consisted of several one-story buildings elevated a few feet above the ground on pilings.

We ran the cables and installed the network drops (RJ ports) in the required locations, and installed and configured the routers.

We learned that it never works to give things for absolutely free because then there is no end to what people will ask for, so we asked them to pay the wholesale cost of the cable… that’s it. Everything else, including labor, was free.

Things went well with the new system – for a while, at least.

About a year later they started having random ports go intermittently bad, and the problem seemed to be getting worse. They asked us to troubleshoot.

We went out and found the problem was that rodents had bitten into some cables in multiple locations. Sometimes (but not always) this severed one of the wires at the point of the bite. If the severed wire was touched even after being severed, the connection would work, sometimes.

This intermittent fault took several hours to figure out. Since they had not actually bitten chunks out of the cables, just bitten into it, the cable appeared undamaged visually.

The way we found the problem was to run a hand down the cable looking for a kink or something and feeling the little nick. Close examination showed the bite. Once we knew the problem, it required rewiring a few runs and telling them they had a bad mouse problem, get an exterminator.

But their hard charity work ended up being quite problematic for them.

The diagnosis and repairs took 16 man-hours on-site (two people, all day). For this we charged only for our actual cost of the replacement wire itself.

But about thirty days later I get a call from the county accounts payable.

They said, “We have found conclusive evidence of fraudulent billing on invoice (the bill for the network diagnosis and repair) from your company. Since the amount is under $100 and this is the first instance of a problem from you, if you agree with the assessment and promise never to do this again, we will ban you from doing business with the county for one year. If you agree, we will send paperwork to that effect.”

I replied, “No way will I agree to that. This was a donation of our time, and we only charged for the wire so it wasn’t a freebie. We did nothing wrong. Why do you think we did?”

Let’s see what the caller said in response.

They replied, “We ran the diagnosis and bill by our IT department as a random check. They said there was no possible way your explanation of what was wrong and what you did to fix it could be true. You can dispute this, and we will have a hearing. But if we do this and it goes against you, you can be permanently banned from doing business and may even face charges of fraud.”

I replied, of course, “I want the hearing.”

At the hearing, before a county board of something or other, accounts payable said to their IT guy, “Look at this invoice. Do you remember us asking your opinion of this? What was that opinion?”

He replied, “Yes. It said the network was losing connectivity to specific drops, and the problem was due to a bad mouse. I said there was no way a bad mouse would have that effect, especially on other computers on other ports.”

Read on to find out how the IT store owner replied in the hearing.

The council guy asked me, “Do you disagree with this? Can you explain how a bad mouse could do that?” I replied, “Yes. It bites the wires.”

The IT guy was like “…What?” I said, “Look at the invoice. It does not say ‘a computer had a defective mouse.’ It says there was ‘a bad mouse problem.’ Rodents. Bit. The. Wires. We installed new wires. We donated our labor to do so, and provided the wire at cost.”

The IT conceded, “That… does make sense.”

Ultimately, the hearing concluded with accounts payable saying, “Well, OK. We’ll drop this one. But we’re going to be watching you!”

English is a funny language, and little quirks like this are always going to catch people out every once in a while.

But they needn’t be this serious.

If accounts payable had actually asked the company, treated them as innocent until proven guilty, they would’ve avoided quite a headache and considerable embarrassment for themselves.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person called out the company’s accounts team for their refusal to apologise.

While some Redditors backed up the mouse problem with their own.

Meanwhile, others pointed out that the IT company could have been clearer, to avoid such miscommunications in the future.

Clearly this was just a miscommunication – and sure, they could’ve used the word ‘rodent’ instead of ‘mouse’.

But it was an honest mistake, and it’s on the charity’s accounts team for jumping to conclusions.

In the wasted time and the pointless hearing, they got well and truly called out.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.