Shark Tank: Not the answer he expected

30.01.2006
It's the mid-1980s, and this company's engineering department has its own computer: a 20-year-old General Electric model with all of 16KB of donut core memory. "The maintenance agreement was up for its five-year renewal, and our manager was astounded by the figures he saw," says a pilot fish who was there. "He told the salesman, 'You're quoting US$150,000 a year, plus parts. For that kind of money, I can buy a new PDP-11!' The salesman replied, 'I wish you would.' The new computer was up and running two months later."

It Happens Every Spring

This company spends extra on redundant routers, redundant switches and redundant connections from separate providers. "Imagine our surprise when, early the first spring after installing all this, our connection goes down," groans a pilot fish on the scene. "Turns out that over certain stretches, one provider was leasing fiber from the other, and it ran under a farmer's field. Come spring, the farmer came out with his backhoe, and -- well, you know. Now every spring, we have at least a half-day of outage. They never tell us if it's the same farmer every time."

Some Help

Help desk pilot fish gets a call from an employee who says the number listed in the phone book for his government department is a porno hotline. "I immediately called the number," says fish, "and was greeted by a voice that said, 'Hi, stud!' I called the telephone company and they said they knew about the problem and it would be corrected in next year's directory." And when the new book arrives? "The porno number was gone," sighs fish. "It was replaced by the help desk number."

Well, Sort Of