Source: Pexels/Reddit

Every once in awhile- tech support will get a customer who knows exactly when and where their operations are failing, but they insist on a very laissez-faire approach to fixing it. In most situations like this, ignorance becomes the operative strategy.

How would you handle a customer who just seemingly had no interest in addressing an obvious problem? One tech support guy shared a wild story about this with Reddit. Here’s what he said.

What’s your business continuity plan if this PC fails? Well, It’s never failed in the past, therefore it will never fail in the future.

Where I work, anything considered “business critical” is meant to be redundant, so if something fails or is otherwise unavailable, we always have another thing available.

“Business critical” is defined as anything that directly stops the business making money or cause reputation damage.

Feels straightforward enough.

At one site, they had a PC that was used to setup a specific medical device for patients.

For the sake of this story, let’s call that software Banana.

Although the devices connect via USB, so any computer can be used, the Banana software is proprietary.

Pretty simple concept even to the tech illiterate.

Banana is licensed per PC, and of note Banana relies on network connectivity to function.

Overnight one night some maintenance happens in the network rack and for whatever reason the port that the computer running Banana is disconnected.

The next morning, the helpdesk receives a call that the computer Banana is on doesn’t work with anything on the network, with it showing that the network cable is unplugged.

Well, that’s certainly not ideal.

Usual checks happen and the end user is informed that it will need an onsite visit, the earliest someone can be scheduled is the next day.

The end user says that it’s critical that this device is fixed immediately as it is needed to setup these medical devices for patients, who have been scheduled that morning and some are already in the waiting room.

It’s determined that there is no other PC running Banana, so this is indeed “business critical”, as it directly impacts us making money and potentially can cause reputation damage.

That could get very critical, very quickly.

The incident gets flagged as a critical, and a resource is immediately despatched to site, where they quickly identify and resolve the issue.

Now, “policy” is anything that gets flagged as critical and needs to go through a debrief.

The idea is not to assign blame, but to identify the root cause and contributing factors of the incident to prevent recurrence.

On paper, at least.

Whist the cause of the incident was clearly that the patch cable was disconnected, it did identify another issue.

The “business critical” Banana software was only installed on a single computer.

Had another computer been available with Banana installed, there would be no financial or reputation impact, and it would not need to be considered a critical incident.

Seems like a user error to put it mildly.

This is raised to the relevant manager for that area.

The conversation went like this:

“So, for the computer Banana is installed on, it’s only installed on the one PC”

Good for them for remaining calm.

“Yes”

“And what would happen if that PC were to fail”

“Well, it’s never happened before”

Uh…not exactly how that works dude.

“But it could?”

“Yes, but that has never happened”

“What would you do if you come in one morning, and it didn’t turn on?”

Maybe the hypotheticals will get through to him.

“We would call you, but that has never happened before. It’s always worked”

“OK, well what would happen if say someone was to steal that computer?”

“No one is going to steal the computer. But if that happened we would call you”

This guy is wildly presumptuous.

“Let’s say that someone steals the computer. We bring you a new one, but it doesn’t have Banana. You’re looking at least a day to get the replacement computer and Banana configured. What would you do in this situation?”

“We would have to send patients home and reschedule them”

“And this would cause a financial and/or reputation impact?”

These answers are becoming increasingly obvious.

“I guess it would”

“OK, well, what we would like to do is put Banana on a second computer, that way if a situation like this happens, you can use the second computer”

“Hmm, no, we can’t really do that”

It’s just not getting through to him…

“Why not?”

“The software costs $15,000 a PC. We don’t want to pay that”

“But as you agree, this is a business critical thing?”

Certainly seems worth the cost.

“Yes, but we don’t want to pay $15,000 for another licence. It’s so expensive”

What happened is we got an email confirmation from the director of the business unit understanding and accepting the risk.

That’s all they really can do here.

If that PC and by extension Banana is unavailable for any reason, it won’t be handled by IT as a critical incident again.

Any fallout, we will point out it was an understood and accepted risk by that business unit, and here is our proof.

That’s an unnerving anecdote to put it mildly. Let’s see how the tech heads of Reddit reacted.

The comments immediately pointed out the obvious.

Others were baffled by the response to the issue.

One person realized there wasn’t much to be done.

Another dreamt up some potential solutions.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who got back at slacking coworkers with fresh-baked treats.

But someone else did provide the benefit of the doubt.

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t fix its computer.