Shark Tank: It's all about communication

Yes, No, No ...

Pilot fish gets an opportunity for a week of training, room and board paid for by the training company. All he needs is money for travel and approval from his boss. "I sent an e-mail to the boss asking for his approval to apply," says fish. "I received a reply in the affirmative. Then I sent another e-mail asking how to go about getting travel to said training. Travel denied. I explained that the training was free and that the room and board was free -- I just needed to get there and back. I included the documentation, and I even offered to pay my own way if I could have an authorized absence for that week. Denied again. Result: Opportunity lost. Why am I leaving this job again?"

What Else?

It's way back when, and this engineer is working on programming some warning lights and buzzers for an unloading system in a manufacturing plant. "He worked late one night, and when we came in the next morning, the lights were flashing and the buzzer was going off," says a pilot fish on the scene. "When we tried to get into the system to reset it, he had programmed a password before you could get in. We called him to find out what the password was while his manager was looking for something to stuff in the buzzer to shut it up. We finally got hold of the engineer, who seemed surprised that we didn't know that the pass code was the hexadecimal value of the square root of the decimal value of the letter D. I guess it seemed quite simple to him."

Twofer Solution

Data entry worker regularly complains about being hot and says that her computer screen flickers when the mercury rises, too. "I respond while she's at lunch and can find no apparent problem," says a pilot fish. "CPU, hard disk, graphics card, CRT monitor -- everything checks out. That's until Ms. Hottie returns from lunch, hears the bad news and cranks up the 1960s vintage fan directly next to the monitor that causes her screen image to jump around like an aerobics instructor after a double espresso."

Rake Time

Pilot fish gets a second call from a remote user to restart her network printer after a jam. And this time, she's a little more forthcoming about what's wrong. "It seems the plant manager likes decorative plants in the office," fish reports. "In particular, there is a ficus tree that branches out above the printer. The printer jams were the result of leaves falling into the printer. The user has been unable to convince the PM to relocate the tree."

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