Every man is divinity in disguise ...it is God playing the fool

A colleague writes:

"When the phone call starts “this is Andrew”, it is the start of what can only be a period of serious misery. (Andrew is affectionately referred to hereabouts as Ernst Stavro Blofeld.)

"Anyway, the left hand counter PC had somehow, and mysteriously, got itself in a state whereby it wouldn’t reboot. Quite how it had got there is a mystery which would baffle Mr. Morse, Mr. Homes and Mr. Fu Manchu, as Mr. Blofeld wasn’t for letting on as to how it had become so afflicted. He did say however that efforts to reboot had involved pressing F2s and F12s, which was somewhat worrying as messing around with such is a typical, nasty trick at this library.

"However having visited and rebooted, resaved stuff they may have F2 ed off, and F4 ed a couple of times things seem ok, well all except my temperate demeanour and stress levels. I suppose it could have been worse as Mr. Blofeld was elsewhere, probably plotting to take over the world beyond with Mr Scaramanga, and his faithful assistant was, hopefully, heading into the sea, not out of it. "

These days I don't think I'd have the patience for that sort of nonsense: if they've fucked the PC they can fix it would be my response. Stories like this from colleagues in other library services remind me how lucky I've been with most of our front-line staff over the years.