BASTARD SYSTEM MANAGER FROM HELL #5 - The BSMFH Meets The IBM SM
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I'm in a bad mood; it's Backup Day.  That means I've got to go into the machine
room and rearrange the tapes, so that users think we're actually doing backups. 
It's bloody cold in there.  System Managers, especially if they come from warm
climates (and let's face it, where's warmer than Hell?), shouldn't have to go
into cold computer rooms.

Luckily, I've a solution; the UPS feeding the air conditioning system blows a
fuse every week on the night before Backup Day.  The computers warm up the room
nicely and about midday I stroll in to rearrange the tapes and call an engineer
to fix the air conditioning.  He can't work out why we keep blowing the fuses.

All this hassle upsets me though.  The lusers are learning this.  They've got
to be *really* desperate to call me on Backup Day.  Ever since that episode
when the head of EXTC pressured me for more disk space and found our that his
login.com deleted all his projects files and sent a rude message to the Big
Boss.  His project was set back six months and he became a homeless bankrupt
living under the railway bridge.  The new H/EXTC is much more reasonable.

Backup Day is the one day my phone is never off of the hook.  I just dare
people to ring.

<ring, ring>

Someone's playing Russian Roulette, with six loaded chambers.

"Hello," I answer, sweet as a tonne of sugar drowned in a sea of honey.  If
that doesn't scare him off nothing will.

"What oh, Old Bean, it's Cruthers, IBM systems here."

Don't you just hate those tacky, out-of-date IBM boys.

"'Fraid I'm a bit busy today; it's Backup Day" I reply.  I hate this geek.

"Know what you mean, Old Boy.  What with all those cards to load, the paper
tape always getting caught and the dashed valves continually blowing.  I tell
you it's a nightmare.  If I didn't have thirty four operators to deal with it,
I don't know what I'd do."

"Quite." Shit he's in story telling mode.

"Anyway, toodle pip, must dash, paper needs changing in my console again.  Oh,
nearly forgot, any chance of you moving your VAX thingy a little?  Only we had
an engineer chappie in our Old Girl last Wednesday, just before your new VAX
wotsit arrived.  Can't get the engineer chappie out.  Seems someone put your
VAX up against the door into our mainframe and the poor engineer is starting 
to complain; he's running low on valves in there."

Yes, and I know who told Digital to put the VAX there, thinks I with a smile.

"Will do, Old Fruit.  I'll get a man in on Monday."

"Knew I could rely on you.  We systems chaps must stick together."

"Quite.  Good bye."

What's this?  The BSMFH being nice to an-almost-up-to-sub-human-moron? 
On Backup Day? 

Run with me a little on this one.