Russian oligarch's financial network crashed thanks to a crank and a cleaner

ON CALL Welcome to another installment of On Call, our weekly reader-contributed column that shares your stories of tech support jobs that tested your skill, sanity, and sensibilities.

This week,
meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Nathan” who told us that back in the mists of
time, he worked for a small investment company.

“Its
sole purpose was, and probably remains, managing the European investments of a
very rich Russian oligarch who shall remain nameless,” Nathan told On Call.

As befitted the oligarch’s wealth, the firm’s
premises featured an elaborate entrance foyer with a standout feature Nathan described
as “a magnificent chandelier suspended from the ceiling with a clockwork
mechanism to lower it down for cleaning.”

Chandeliers don’t need to be cleaned every day, but after
cleaners got around to the job, an entire floor of the firm lost all network
access – WAN and LAN were both deader than Lenin.

Nathan did the usual tests without finding the fault, so he decided to have a look at the clockwork mechanism.

“I finally found the access port, peered inside, and saw half
a dozen Ethernet cables tangled and shredded around the gears,” he told On
Call.

That mess left Nathan with another problem: who to blame?

“The idiot who thought leaving unprotected cables next to the
winch was a good idea, or the Muppet who turned the winch without a care in the
world about the cables they must have seen shredding?”

Nathan could never find the person who designed the winch. “But
the cleaners found out I can swear fluently in three languages,” he told On
Call.

What’s the weirdest place you’ve performed tech support? And
what happened while you were there? To share your story, click here to send us an email so On Call can run it on a future Friday. ®