"Got amazing or amusing IT tales, lessons learned the hard way, or war stories from the tech trenches?"
These are the questions we ask to get InfoWorld readers thinking about their personal adventures in IT. We then publish those stories in our Off the Record blog, keeping the writer anonymous. In the Comments section, readers react to the "been there, done that" aspect of the stories, and often weigh in with further insights.
[ Also on InfoWorld: Read memorable Off the Record stories from 2009 in "Tall tales of tech -- that happen to be true." | Send your IT Off the Record story to offtherecord@infoworld.com -- if we publish it, we'll send you a $50 American Express gift cheque. ]
In February, the collection included a story of a South American call center in trouble and the bureaucratic red tape the tech team had to take on, and a tale of how a fix to an embarrassing data input error unearthed an employee's dishonesty.
* In the story "A call center in crisis and the bureaucracy that botched it," the tech team discovers why their request for monitors was denied -- and where the money really went.
* A data entry error and the "overkill" fix demanded by top brass unearths a surprising secret in "A tale of a database-turned-detective."
* "Finding a lost laptop, saving one's dignity": An IT tale of how on a hectic day with a misplaced laptop and six groups of IT customers in the building, technology actually saved the day.
* In "A tale of a troublesome printer and the low-tech solution," the tech team troubleshoots a remote printer -- and finds the problem to be surprisingly simple.
This story, "Tales from the tech trenches," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the continuing craziness of the life in tech in InfoWorld's Off the Record blog.