Employees at a Southern design firm feel the urge to decorate for the holidays, but a network admin pilot fish tries gently to put on the brakes.

"I told them not to put a Christmas tree on the server," fish says. "But since it's in the accountant's office who thinks she owns the world, they thought it would 'be OK.' "

So the server gets topped with a fully decorated Christmas tree. And the inevitable happens.

"A few days before the Christmas break, some pieces of decorating tinsel got sucked into the server," says the fish, "which fried instantly, hard drives and all."

But it worked out well, the fish says: "We started Christmas early."

It's never too early to send Sharky your true tale of IT life at sharky@computerworld.com. I'm off quaffing a holiday nog, but I'll be back by New Year's Eve -- and in the meantime, you can comment on today's tale at Sharky's Google+ community, and read thousands of great old tales like this one from the Sharkives.

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