On Call Techies are often beset by undeserving and despicable dolts who demand daunting feats of tech support. Which is why each Friday The Register brings you a fresh instalment of On Call - the reader-contributed column in which you share stories of defeating those dunderheads.

This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Norman" who is an electrical engineer by trade and during one phase of his career found himself doing a lot of office refit jobs, most of them in the financial district of the City of London.

On the first day of one such job - which took place on one floor of a building that was already occupied and very much in use for the wheeling and dealing that goes on in the City - Norman was asked to strip out old wiring, as the contractor he worked for had hired someone else to lay new stuff.

Norman got to work and before long had ripped out all the old wires, leaving just three white cables in place.

That trio survived because, in Norman's estimation, they were the main cables carrying voice and data to the wheeler-dealers on other floors.

Norman's boss didn't believe him.

"He was an arrogant and brash man," Norman told On Call, "and he commanded me to strip out those cables."

Norman pushed back - and his boss pushed back harder.

A couple more rounds of that fun game saw the boss start hurling F-bombs - not appropriate behavior in most professional settings. Seeing no hope for de-escalation in the circumstances, Norman did as he was told - he duly severed the cables and ripped them out.

"Within three minutes one of the traders in the floors above came down and asked: 'Has something happened to the telephone lines, we have lost all our connections in the floors above.'"

Norman doesn't know what happened next, although he assumes that wheeler-dealers could neither wheel nor deal, and a great deal of money was thereby forfeit.

The reason for his ignorance is that after he cut the cables, he left for the day. Which wasn't his normal behavior.

"I usually like to help out when things go awry, and could have repaired those connections," he told On Call. "But I felt no inclination to do so after being spoken to in that way."

Have you walked away from a rude or abusive boss? If so, click here to send On Call an email so we can drop another F-bomb - this time the F is for "fun" - on a future Friday. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/06/28/on_call/