This company replaces its desktop PCs on a three-year cycle, which means IT is constantly deploying new machines, reports a pilot fish working there.

“Recently, we’ve noticed a disturbing trend of more and more hardware not working right out of the box,” fish says.

“We've discussed internally what might be the cause of this trend and basically wrote it off to the law of averages, rougher-than-normal shipping or maybe lax quality control at the vendor.”

Because the DOA machines are new and from a major vendor, fish and his co-workers don’t bother to do any troubleshooting. They just call the vendor, which sends out a tech to fix or replace the PCs.

Fish happens to be nearby when a vendor tech is opening up one of the computers that has failed immediately.

After opening the box and taking a quick glance inside, tech looks up.

“I see the problem,” tech says. “There’s no CPU in here.”

Sighs fish, “Maybe in a cost-cutting move the vendor has removed the ‘verify the computer has a CPU’ step from the QC checklist.”

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