Don't lift a finger

This incident dates back to 1998 when I was an employee of a very large IT company on the North Side of Dublin. My position there was as a junior member of the IT support team: a team supporting 650 users. One day one of the other guys on the team asked me to head down to one of the server rooms and shut down a particular server. It was a noncritical server, so there was no issue with doing this, at least I didn

I now felt like crying, but soon, a cunning plan entered my head. I proceeded to take my right shoe off and aimed it at the bottom of the stool, in the hope that it would cause the stool to fall toward me. A delicate operation considering I was still holding the button down with my left hand. Sadly I missed. I took off my second shoe, took careful aim and -- a hit! But it wobbled and failed to fall, the phone hanging over the edge as if to tease me.

Finally as my panic worsened, I realized I had now only one chance: my trousers. I dare any of you to remove your trousers with one hand while stretching the other arm to a fixed point from which it cannot move. Not easy.

After a few minutes of careful fumbling, I was holding one leg of my trousers in my hand, standing in the server room pressing a button in for dear life itself, trouserless, shoeless, shameless, and exposing my boxers to my surroundings.

My button-pressing arm was now in total agony. I started to swing my trousers at the stool in the hope of coaxing the stool/phone toward me. After about 20 total misses, and a very very near miss where I almost knocked the phone away from me, I managed to catch the phone and tug it forward crashing to the floor toward me.

I now managed to reach to the phone with my toes and slide it toward me. Once it got within range I picked it up, and found it had survived the crash to the floor. I dialed the IT dept and after about 15 minutes the IT dept got everyone to close their files. My job was safe!

Alas, all did not end there. I asked the person on the phone not to send anyone down to me for reasons I would explain to her later. Big mistake. I had an audience of about 40 people in those last 15 minutes. The sight of me standing there semi-nude no doubt haunted the nightmares of some spectators for years ... Laughs were had, concerns for my mental health were highlighted, insults were made and my self respect was decimated. A day in the life, I guess.

Moral of the story: Removing one's trousers should not be treated as a universal remedy to everyday problems.