Must be somewhere in all those disks

It's the 1990s, and the hospital where this pilot fish works uses an application that comes on floppy disks -- lots of floppy disks.

"It was a vendor's database remote connection application, and it filled about 20 floppies," says fish. "The actual number used was determined by the features to be installed."

One day, fish draws the task of taking the stack of disks to an offsite office to reinstall the application because it isn't printing.

And the work order is clear: No matter what, fish is not to touch the printer.

He spends a sizable chunk of the day making the trip to the remote site and reinstalling and configuring the application. But no matter how he configures it, the app still won't print.

Fish looks at the printer -- without touching it -- and calls his boss. I think maybe a setting was changed on the printer, he says.

Boss is furious. Get back here now, she demands -- and when he arrives back at the IT department, she berates him for not finishing the job.

"She decided that we would stay late and go over to the other office in the evening, and she would teach me how to properly install the app," fish says.

"After several unsuccessful tries, she finally looked at the printer and reset one switch -- and, glory be, it started printing.

"The next day she was telling anybody that would listen how incompetent I was and that she had to go over and solve the problem herself. I don't think she ever did learn the true root cause of the problem."

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