Mike Donʼt Pass the Buck

by William Jackson on 2004-06-14

I am amused, but that doesnʼt take much. While working at the lab today, I experienced a problem. Every once in a while, we will lose access to any Internet sites outside of the utexas.edu domain. It just wonʼt connect.

When I first noticed that I was having problems accessing sites, I called “ITS Main” to see if they knew of an outage. They said they didnʼt see anything wrong, then transferred me to “the Operators” for more information.

“The Operators” told me that they didnʼt see any problems on the network, but also that I should talk to “OTS Operations” for Internet access questions. Transferred I was.

“OTS Operations” told me that there were no problems at the time, but then suggested that I might want to talk to someone else. My call was transferred again. At this point I tried to access another website, and it came up, so I assumed there was just a hiccough on the network, and all was well now. However, I wanted to be polite so I stayed on the line while my call was transferred.

The next voice I heard was a bit gruff, and said, “This is Mike.” Thatʼs all he said. From his tone and brevity I could tell he was the man I wanted to talk to at the beginning.

“My name is William, and I am a proctor at one of the ITS labs on campus. We were having some problems connecting to the web outside the utexas.edu domain, but everything seems to be fine now.”

“Yes, there was a short outage but the network is running smoothly now.” Thatʼs the kind of answer I like.

So hereʼs to you, Mike. I donʼt know where your office is. I donʼt know your phone number, and it probably remains unlisted because if anyone knew about you, youʼd get no peace and quiet But you made the transferred calls worth it. I raise my mouse to you.