It’s a Monday morning a few years ago when this network admin pilot fish gets a phone call from the manager of one of the company’s Midwestern offices. Not a nice call, mind you; the manager starts right off hollering: “Where’s our network connection so we can get our LAN connected to the corporate backbone?”

Fish doesn’t know the answer to that question, or really even how this could have become an issue.

Could you explain? he asks.

Manager: “All of our office furniture made it to our new office except for the backbone connection!”

Fish: “You mean you moved offices over the weekend?”

Manager: “Yes, we moved offices, and we need that backbone connection!”

Fish: “Of course you do, but it doesn’t seem the networking department had any news about this move until now. Did someone on your end reach out to coordinate with us?”

Well, no. The assumption seemed to have been that the network jack would automatically be moved with the rest of the furniture.

Fish tries to sound sympathetic when he tells the manager that it will take at least three weeks for the local telco to engineer and move the office’s data circuit. Tries, but apparently his sympathy doesn’t carry across the wire, because the manager’s ire only grows.

In the end, fish is able to tide the off-network office over by overnighting a (painfully slow) dial-up modem.

Sharky is sympathetic when he reads your true tales of IT life. Send them to me at sharky@computerworld.com. You can also subscribe to the Daily Shark Newsletter.