Mott555's TDWTF writer submission



  • Seems other users' e-peens can't stand submissions that weren't made public 😜 , so here is mine:


    Richie was an internal support tech for a large corporation in Lynn, Ohio, where he spent his days fixing computers for clueless office workers by rebooting them, moving stacks of paper off the keyboard, making sure headphones were plugged into the correct jack, and of course restoring systems to the company's baseline image when users decided to “CLICK ALL THE LINKZ!!!” in their email client's spam folder, all while getting yelled at by thankless users who wanted their PC fixed before lunch so they could play Candy Crush.

    But one event after the Thanksgiving holiday finally broke the monotony. Richie was the first one in early Monday morning, hoping to catch up on a few tasks before the office drones showed up, but someone was already waiting for him. Bruce, a graphic designer for another department, was standing with something wrapped in a plastic garbage bag.

    “Hey, do you work in IT and can you help me with something?”

    Richie fought the urge to point at the “Internal IT Support” sign right above the door he was about to enter. “Yeah, come on in.”

    At Richie's desk in cubeland, Bruce opened up the garbage bag and pulled out an iMac. Richie bit back a few expletives. The screen was massively deformed and melted. The aluminum frame was blackened and charred, coated in what looked liked melted plastic or rubber. “I borrowed one of the department's Macs so I could work on a personal project over the holiday, but the cat knocked over my beer into the lamp and started a fire! It still powers on but I can't get anything on the screen. Can you fix it?”

    Richie didn't even try to hide the horror from his face. “You actually turned it on? Like this?!” He looked at the power jack and saw a blackened hole with three oddly-spaced metal prongs poking out.

    “Can you get this fixed before the boss gets in? I had to pull a lot of chains to get them to let me take it home.”

    Richie shook his head but just then something struck him. “I have an idea, wait right here.”

    Richie made his way to a side office which had been converted into a hardware junkyard. Piles of broken PCs and other equipment silently waited to be taken to the recyclers. He looked around briefly and found exactly what he wanted. Another iMac, identical to the one Bruce had brought in. A user had brought it in a couple months ago with a failed motherboard, but since the user had upgraded the RAM himself Apple wouldn't do a warranty repair. It had been simpler to buy a new one and the old one was already marked “Recycled” in the inventory system.

    He brought it back to his desk and Bruce watched Richie open them up. Surprisingly, the burnt one was relatively intact inside. Most importantly, the motherboard and hard disk looked completely undamaged.

    An hour later, Richie was finished with the surgery and Bruce walked out with a working iMac after agreeing to buy Richie a bottle of something expensive for not mentioning the incident in the ticket or inventory systems. Somehow, no one ever asked about the burned-out iMac chassis in the graveyard.



  • @mott555 said:

    Seems other users' e-peens can't stand submissions that weren't made public

    O RLY

    Also... 7/10 would read again, needs slightly more snark and/or emphasis on TRWTF for 10/10.



  • @Arantor said:

    needs slightly more snark and/or emphasis on TRWTF

    Probably. My sense of humor tends to be a bit understated if I'm not relying on non-sequiturs.



  • Yep, it's okay, the writing is fairly decent, but not a lot of funny here.



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    Yep, it's okay, the writing is fairly decent, but not a lot of funny here.

    I find it interesting that pretty much all the submissions had a similar problem. I half wonder if the choice of source material was chosen deliberately with that in mind.



  • @mott555 said:

    Like a ninja in the night, Richie stalks across a large corporation in Lynn, Ohio, fixing computers for clueless office workers by rebooting them, moving stacks of paper off the keyboard, fixing the messes that others leave behind. These are his stories

    HTFY


  • Fake News

    @Arantor said:

    I find it interesting that pretty much all the submissions had a similar problem. I half wonder if the choice of source material was chosen deliberately with that in mind.
    Indeed, I believe they do it to see how far one can Erik-Gernify the Mac story, and then they can tell them to never do it again (or so I wish).



  • @JBert said:

    Indeed, I believe they do it to see how far one can Erik-Gernify the Mac story, and then they can tell them to never do it again (or so I wish).

    +1 since I have no likes.

    I don't mind Erik's stories. If anything I love the reaction they get from the community. It pleases my inner troll.



  • Evil ideas thread is 💭 that way.



  • Slowly, carefully, silently, Hanzo glides through the shadows, stalking his unsuspecting pray like the ghosts of yesteryear. The pray halts, looks around, stares Hanzo in the face, but sees nothing. Such is the power of stealth. Powers that were applied to good use when a genin came in with a charred blade, which he had burned in an accident. Hanzo applied his ninjafu to replace the blade with a similar one, and weaved it with genjutsu to confuse the genin's sensei. Hanzo would be a kage soon. The Rings would be one.





  • @hungrier said:

    🙏


    Filed under: It looks more like a high five

    When you pray, you're high-fiving $deity!



  • Pyro guy is laid off a month later for unrelated reasons...sort of (he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed...I mean he did manage to melt a borrowed iMac). The computer was subsequently passed from person to person that replaced him, each one, unfortunately, more incompetent than the last.

    Though the unit was visually indistinguishable from the rest, there was always a barely detectable smoky scent that hung around in the current owner's cube.

    The continuous chain of lame new hires being assigned to this particular iMac lead to a "in" saying around the office: "Where there's smoke, someone's gonna be fired."

    Filed under: always go for the bad pun



  • @mark_bowytz said:

    Filed under: always go for the bad pun

    And this is why I didn't let go of the apple basting gag 😆


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @mott555 said:

    Somehow, no one ever asked about the burned-out iMac chassis in the graveyard.

    I worked at a place once that had a partially-melted Thinkpad in the IT catacombs. User had managed to overheat it by using it on his lap in a blanket or something, and I believe it actually caught fire before he realized he was using it wrong.



  • @FrostCat said:

    I believe it actually caught fire before he realized he was using it wrong.

    It caught fire before he realized he was using it wrong? For most people who aren't potential Darwin award nominees, the two usually occur at precisely the same time...


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    It caught fire before he realized he was using it wrong? For most people who aren't potential Darwin award nominees, the two usually occur at precisely the same time...

    I assume there's a tiny window of time between the onset of fire and the body being aware of same, so technically speaking...



  • @FrostCat said:

    I assume there's a tiny window of time between the onset of fire and the body being aware of same, so technically speaking...

    Not as tiny as you'd assume, remembering my high school welding class where a couple different students lit their clothing on fire and didn't notice for minutes....


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @mott555 said:

    Not as tiny as you'd assume, remembering my high school welding class where a couple different students lit their clothing on fire and didn't notice for minutes....

    And thus my original phrasing.



  • @FrostCat said:

    I worked at a place once that had a partially-melted Thinkpad in the IT catacombs. User had managed to overheat it by using it on his lap in a blanket or something, and I believe it actually caught fire before he realized he was using it wrong.

    I may have had the same model in a previous job. I never set it on fire, but it got HOT. It actually had a warning not to use it on your lap, because it could get hot enough to cause injury.



  • Did I mention that my old laptop ran at 95°C when playing rather new games?
    Yeeeah.


  • Fake News

    More like "Youwch!"



  • @aliceif said:

    Did I mention that my old laptop ran at 95°C when playing rather new games?
    Yeeeah.

    That's..........hot.



  • @chubertdev said:

    That's..........hot.

    I had one that had the GPU go up to 100-103 before kicking the bucket. It was one of the shitty NVidia laptop ones which were getting so hot they occasionally managed to unsolder themselves.



  • @HardwareGeek said:

    It actually had a warning not to use it on your lap

    Enjoy your new laptop!
    (Note: Please do not place laptop on top of lap, doing so WILL result in death)



  • That's why boards exist. They are like portable heatshields.


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