Mo
We used to have an IT guys in the office called Mohammed who was a nice enough chap, but it gradually because clear he had a unique approach to IT Support, and indeed life, and was possibly a little bit barking.

His approach to most problems was the traditional 'turn it off and on again', but when that didn't work, rather than try anything else, he'd normally just say 'OK, we'll just get you a new PC.' No attempt to sort the problem out - he just told you to save anything you wanted to keep on tan external drive then sent someone down with a new drive.

I asked him about this after getting through two new PCs in twelve months, and he just said 'most of the time, these problems don't go away - they just recur. I reckon for the amount it costs us in effort and time to sort it out, you might as well just have a new PC.' OK. not sure how the Finance Director would have felt about this....

Anyway, the true oddness only developed gradually.

It began to become clear that Mo wouldn't answer the phones and would only respond to certain people. If someone he didn't like phoned him, he'd just forward them to another IT guy. This annoyed the other IT guys, as Mo had decided he liked about 20 people out of 300 in the company. I was one of them, and when I phoned him he'd still not answer, but he would turn up at my desk with a cuppa for a long chat (whether or not we touched on my IT problem or not was entirely unpredictable, and I'd often just have to ring someone else afterwards anyway). Also, if he lost interest in a conversation, he'd just walk off mid-sentence, which was a tad un-nerving.

I gradually noticed during our chats that Mo was getting scruffier and a little smelly. I found out after a while that this was because he was living in the office, sleeping on the floor in the IT room in a sleeping bag each night. 'It's a bit inconvenient, yeah, but the savings you make on rent are amazing!'.

Then, one day, I went to phone him, and a different name came up on the phone -I think it might have been 'Mike Fish' - it was definitely Fish as surname:

'Oh, sorry, I was after Mo'
'Oh, hi Snowy, it's me.'
'Oh - it says Mike on my phone'
'Yeah - I got fed up of being Asian so I'm Mike Fish from now on.
'Eh?'
'Do you like it?'
'Ermm.. suppose so.'

He left the company soon after. Officially, it was apparently voluntary - nothing to do with him not doing any work for the last 6 months and gradually going off his rocker in full view of everyone in the office. Don't know what really happened as I've never heard from him since.

Apparently though, on his last day, he stole the 'mascots' and cuddly toys from everyone in IT's desks and took them to the pub for a drink, where they later needed to be 'liberated' from a drunk Mo/Mike by the Head of IT.

I quite miss him.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 24 Sep 2009, 13:27, 3 replies)

This bloke sounds like the type of fruitloop
I'd like to work with. Clicks for the tale, sir.
( SpankyHanky, Thu 24 Sep 2009, 13:42, closed)

.
Raises a glass to Mo/Mike, infact, I might try some of his ideas myself.
(Obi wanker nobi Its not a bug, its an unexpected feature, Thu 24 Sep 2009, 14:09, closed)

finally
we get a story of someone going mad and not the usual turn it off/on story
(Discreditor wants the dream to come true, Thu 24 Sep 2009, 23:31, closed)