User stops by this pilot fish’s desk and asks for the help desk number, complaining that all his printers are unavailable on the network.

“I gave the number to him and he walked away,” says fish. “A few minutes later, he was back and said that I should be getting a ticket for his problem.”

Fish checks the system and, sure enough, there’s a trouble ticket, but it’s not assigned to anyone yet. Since the user sits just a few feet away, fish decides to take a look at the problem while he’s waiting for it to be paged out to him.

And it doesn’t take long to diagnose: The network cable to the user’s desktop PC is unplugged. A few seconds’ worth of tracing shows that it’s plugged into a laptop docking station.

Embarrassed user realizes what the problem is and says he can fix it. Fish smiles, pats user on the arm and returns to his desk.

“Funny thing is, the problem never got assigned to me, but I noticed that the ticket was closed,” fish says.

“I spoke to my co-worker who got the ticket. The user never ’fessed up that I helped him. All he said was it was now printing fine.

“Too bad for him we talk to each other.”

Talk to Sharky. Send me your true tale of IT life at sharky@computerworld.com. You can also subscribe to the Daily Shark Newsletter and read some great old tales in the Sharkives.