Friday, March 10, 2006
“Do not ask for whom the bell tolls—it tolls for thee”
Ring.
I looked at the clock. It said 5:53 pm. I leave the office (on Friday's) at 6:00 pm. I seriously debated whether I should answer the phone or not.
Ring.
I checked caller-id. One of our larger customers—servers, DSL connection, managed routers.
Ring.
Maybe it'll be a quick question, I thought, picking up the phone. “Hello, technical support,” I said.
“Yes, this is C from XXXXXXXX” said the voice at the other end of the phone line. “We need to change our IP address again. Like right now.”
My head hit the desk with an audible thump. I've got plans for tonight. I was planning on going out the door in another seven minutes. “Now?”
“Now. We need to cut over tonight.”
“You know,” I said, “it would be nice if we got a bit more lead time on these type of issues. I've got plans tonight, I was planning on leaving in another … six minutes.”
“I'm sorry, but this shouldn't take long, right?”
“You've got six minutes. Do you have the new IP address, netmask and gateway?”
“Yes,” said C. He gave them to me. Thankfully, the backup DSL connection was working so we wouldn't loose the connection. I reprogram the router and verify that the changes took. “Did we finish in time?” asked C.
I looked at the clock. “30 seconds over,” I said. “And next time?”
“Yes?”
“Don't ever do this on a Friday.”
