"Their problems are always minor enough that I can dial in and fix them remotely," fish says. "This call seemed to be just as simple: They wanted to restore a file from backup, but they didn't know which tape to use."
Fish dials in and has the on-site IT guy watch the monitor as fish starts up the backup program, selects the file to restore and starts the restore job.
"Sure enough, a window popped up asking for the correct tape. I'm thinking: Problem solved, just find the tape and stick it in," says fish.
"Their IT guy tells me he got that far already, but he doesn't know which tape to use."
I've got a minimum on-site service charge, fish reminds IT guy. But if you want, I can drive over and help you find the tape.
Half an hour later fish is standing in the server closet as the IT guy is unlocking the storage safe. That's odd, fish thinks. Why wouldn't he at least have opened it to look for the right tape?
"I pull out the box of tapes and open the cover," fish says, "only to find 24 tapes with no labels, and a pile of sticky notes at the bottom of the box.
"It seems they were labeling their tapes with sticky notes, which fell off the loosely stacked tapes over time. There was no way to identify the tapes except loading them in the drive, one by one, and inventorying them until we found the right one.
"After an hour and 15 minutes loading tapes in and out of their oh-so-slow tape drive, we had the right tape. "I ordered some adhesive labels and a Sharpie for them to use in the future."