Cause and effect
User calls support pilot fish with an improbable story — she says she dropped her mouse and her PC shut down.
Fish makes the trip to her desk. No question, her computer is off. And when fish punches the PC's power switch to restart it, nothing happens.
"I asked her where she dropped her mouse," says fish. "She replied, 'Behind the desk.'
"Sure enough, she had managed to hit the on/off switch on the power strip.
"I told her, 'Good shot.'"
Exposing licensing abuse
Pilot fish who works for a big software vendor is hunting for one of the company's sales reps, and tracks him down outside a conference room — in the middle of an argument.
It turns out that the sales rep is at a breakfast event being held for a major client who hasn't bought much new software lately.
"I found him outside the conference room, engaged in a heated discussion with a product manager," fish recalls.
Once they separate, fish asks the sales rep his IT-related question. Then, he asks the rep what he and the product manager were arguing about.
It turns out that an executive at the customer company had sent an email to everyone on his staff, telling them about the breakfast meeting and asking for any problems or suggestions anyone had about the software.
At the breakfast meeting, the executive announced that he had received responses from 100 product users.
The problem? The customer organisation only had 50 licences for the software.
"The executive had just confessed to owing us quite a large sum of money," says fish. "Which the product manager was arguing should be brought to their attention, while the sales rep countered it should be mentioned only if the customer didn't want to buy additional new product.
"I never did learn if we ever got new business or the licence revenue we were owed."
In a jam
Pilot fish's job is as in helpdesk support, so naturally he also ends up providing tech support for his friends and family.
One day a friend calls fish at work. Something is wrong with her printer, she says. The power is on, but it won't print, and the display is asking for "printer jam."
Deciding to play a joke on the friend, fish instructs her to go to a nearby hardware store and ask for some "printer jam" for her model of printer.