Where to start

I've been in the IT industry for many years now and have always said I should write a book about the funny, stupid, and weird things I have run into during my career. This afternoon I jokingly posted my status on Facebook as "I should start a blog about stupid user stunts." The more I thought about it, the more I thought what the hell. So here goes nothing.

Yesterday I was working with one of my users in Canada who was having some issues with his laptop. It seemed like a simple software issue that I had corrected many times over the past couple of years. All I needed to do was connect to his system remotely, take control, and install the fix. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get connected to his system and instructed him to ship it to me. This morning I received what looked like a wine bottle box from this particular user. I opened it to find a piece of bubble wrap just kind of hanging out in the box, not wrapped around anything, just folded and laying there. The partitions that originally held bottles were folded flat against the sides, and the laptop was lying loose inside.

This is what I saw when I opened the box:



This was actually shipped internationally. The funny part...it booted up perfectly and the only problem was the actual problem it was shipped in for. I was really tempted to return it to the user in the same box, but decided to send it back a little more secure along with a note suggesting he retain the box in case he needed to ship his system in the future. He must have had the luck of the Irish today :)

Happy St Patrick's Day!