Pilot fish is disappointed to find that the Wi-Fi is down at his favorite Internet cafe.

“I spoke to a staffer who knew me as a regular, and offered to take a look at it,” fish says. “I found the problem quickly: The access point wasn’t plugged in. In fact, the power supply was missing.”

That pretty well guarantees there won’t be any Wi-Fi, so fish gives up.

But a few days later, the Wi-Fi is back, and fish asks his friend on the staff what the story is.

Reports fish, “It turned out that the night before the outage, the duty manager got tired of waiting for the stragglers to leave the cafe at closing time — and simply unplugged and stashed the power supply so the customers would go home."

Sharky loves an elegant solution — or any true tale 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.