Tech Support

One of Southern Man's monitors is slowly dying so he called campus tech support to arrange for a replacement. The nice young student worker called back today and says that they have no spare monitors (on a campus with thousands of more or less identical Dell systems) and since my PC is slated for replacement in May they can't get me a new monitor.

Southern Man isn't one to fuss and he knows that there is a system in an empty office down the hall that has sat unused for over a year. Can he swap monitors?

The answer was "no." And the reason was - because it would mess up our inventory.

Reminds me of a story Southern Father told about his stint in the Army. He was assigned to go to the supply sargeant to get a generator. The sargeant had one in stock, but wouldn't release it.

The reason? If I give you this generator, then I won't have one.

Our previous lord of bits and bytes held himself as absolute soverign over all matters IT and cared little for the reason that the university has a tech support department in the first place. Looks like his successor is walking down the same path.