Three quick stories to relate, both events happened at CSI.  I have changed some of the details (names and such) to avoid putting any one individual on the spot.  The first two are related in that they both happened while working on one project and, quite literally, within minutes of each other.  The third was much more recent.  All three demonstrate . . . well, I'll let you decide what they demonstrate.  Comments have been disabled for this entry as I have no desire to deal any more with any of the three situations, I simply need to put this on paper as it were.

I had been called out to deal with a network outage in one office.  On investigating the situation, I discovered that the network cable had been severed and by severed, I mean that someone had pulled on the thing hard enough to actually tear it in two pieces.  Doing that to a cat5 network cable is actually quite impressive and just about the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life.  As I tracked down where the break was, I found a fishing tape that had been cut off in the conduit.  I retrieved the cut fishing tape—you can often unstick fishing tape by shoving it back into the conduit about three inches and rotating it 180 degrees—and found the break in the line.  Someone had been pulling more cable into the conduit, snagged the network cable, broke it and then cut off the end of the fishing tape to cover their tracks.  Sheldon and Harold, both of whom worked in the office where the cable was torn, informed me that they were to blame collectively but that it was clearly the other fellow's fault.  I was ready to kill, figuratively speaking, both of them, said I should leave before I said something I would regret and headed back to my office.  At different times later that day, each approached me to say that they didn't blame me for being so angry with the other one, all the while remaining clueless that I was equally angry at both of them.

About 20 minutes after I had left the two fellows mentioned above, I returned to the building to pull in a repalcement cable.  While doing this, Grant approached me while I was working in the ceiling.  He told me that working through my lunch could get me hurt if we were a union shop.  I wouldn't have thought twice about it except that some of Grant's loyal customers had started coming to me for computer work, Grant was trying hard to unionize the plant and the way he gave the ladder a little shake to get my attention just didn't come across as friendly.  I continued pulling cable and said That sounds like a threat, Grant.  Besides, just because you eat at noon doesn't mean I do.  When I looked back down, he had left.  I don't think he said anything more to me over the next six years.

I was recently accused of passing the buck rather loudly by another employee.  That accusation, however, is not the crux of the story.  First, a little background:  Victor has done a bit of department hoping over the years but when I started here, Vic was director of plant communications.  It didn't matter if it was building to building or remote site communications, Vic was the man to see and he could fix such issues in a snap.  In the course of his department hoping, someone else was hired to dealing with plant communications but proved so inept that the building to building communication side was shifted into my department.  The remote site communications stayed where they were originally because dealing with those problems simply meant making a phone call to our contractor.  Eventually, Vic returned to his former position as director of communications but the responsibilites for communications didn't shift, building to building is still in my department and remote is still in Vic's.  I got a phone call the other day from one of the mechanics saying he couldn't contact remote site 3.  I was fairly sure that I was the wrong person to be calling but started to track down what needed to be done.  As soon as Victor saw me, he relayed the same information:  Remote communications were down.  At the request of my supervisor, I returned to my office to see what I could find on Relco, our remote site contractor.

I called Victor and asked him if Relco was still our remote site contractor.  When he answered yes, I said my department hadn't ever had any interaction with Relco and wasn't that his area?  You see, the last time we—my coworker actually—tried to make arrangements that fell within Victor's purview, he accused us of trying to take over his job.  Besides, I knew that Vic had always handled these situations without even breaking a sweat.  Imagine my surprise when his response was an accusation that I was just passing the buck and that he, Vic, couldn't possibly deal with the issue for another two hours at the earliest—is it passing the buck when A) it isn't my job and B) the person I'm calling is actually the one responsible?  Without waiting for me to say anything, Vic hung up on me.  I called him back, explained I was not trying to pass the buck and found out where I could find the information to deal with the problem myself.  While I was upstairs gathering the information, I could hear Vic loudly berating me to someone else.  The desire to light into Vic was unreal but I kept my calm, as best I could, and headed back down to my office.  I spent about four minutes on the phone with three very helpful individuals and 20 minutes later communications had been restored.  While I waited for the communications to come back online, my supervisor came to look in on me.  He was surprised to learn that the problem was already solved except for the waiting.  I explained the situation with Vic and then we decided to see what was keeping Vic so busy:  As I had suspected, he was commenting on a blog or web forum and reading another forum.  If you're going to tell someone that you are too busy to do something, make sure that they have no way of taking a screen shot for verification.  The upshot of this?  If Vic had just said, Tyran, I'm swamped right now.  Could you call Relco for me? I would have said yes in a heart beat.