Pilot fish is the non-IT IT guy for about 30 fellow cubicle farmers — the person the others turn to before calling IT with a problem. Comes one morning when fish is late, and one of his neighbors with a flickering CRT monitor can’t wait to ask for fish’s help. So when fish does arrive, he sees three guys from IT gathered around that flickering monitor, stumped. They have changed the monitor, the graphics card, the refresh rate, all to no avail.

Fish enters his neighbor’s cubicle, moves his new desk fan one foot to the right, and — voilà! — the flicker is gone.

The three IT guys all leave without comment.

Sharky is a big fan of true tales of IT life. Send me yours at sharky@computerworld.com. You can also subscribe to the Daily Shark Newsletter and read some great old tales in the Sharkives.