From: jwgh at earthlink.net (Jacob Haller) Subject: Scenes from a soon-to-be-blockbuster Date: 14 Dec 1998 Message-ID: <1dk1s07.nzxvjt11f7akaN@1cust86.tnt35.nyc3.da.uu.net> Newsgroups: alt.tech-support.recovery
I recently saw the movie Road House for the first time. It features Patrick Swayze as a world-famous bouncer who gets hired to clean up a bar whose patrons are so out of control, 'at the end of the night you have to sweep up the eyeballs off of the floor'. Like all classic heroes, he has a fatal flaw; his is that whenever someone points a gun at him he rips his assailant's throat out. Will he overcome this handicap? Will he end up with the girl in the tacked-on romantic subplot? Will the evil rich guy who wants to buy the roadhouse for some unexplained reason win? I won't give away the plot by answering these questions...
Anyways, it triggered something inside me and I thought I'd try writing some scenes from a similar movie based in the world of tech support. There are a fair number of inside jokes in here so I'm not sure how comprehensible it will be, but what the heck.
We open in a large AOL-like ISP; which is to say, a large organization that looks repectable and fancy, but with a fair number of pockets of sleazy activity going on. Our hero, JWGH, is surveying network activity in one window on his monitor and reading USENET on another. Suddenly, there's a disturbance in one of the chatrooms; jwgh TOSses the participants, but not before getting mailbombed. He's writing a little script to clean out his maibox when a nicely-dressed older guy named ROG enters his cubicle.
ROG: I run a website called road_house.com. It's the kind of place where, when you go in, half the employees are playing minesweeper or reading porn, and the rest are sending out make.money.fast messages or are harvesting email addresses from the web to sell to spammers. It's been like this for a while, but for some vague, unconvincing reason I now want to clean it up. I'm looking for someone to head up tech support, and word is you're the best.
JWGH: Of course, Scott Swanson knows more about the mainframe than I do...
ROG: I don't want him; I want you.
JWGH: There are two conditions. First, I run everything; I decide who's hired, who's fired, what disciplinary action to take, you name it. Second, lose the underscore in the domain. It doesn't comply with the relevent RFCs.
ROG: It's a deal. Here's a laptop with a modem. You can start telecommuting today.
JWGH: I don't telecommute.
jwgh's current EMPLOYER enters the room. He sees the mailbox-purging script running.
EMPLOYER: Are you all right?
JWGH: Yeah, no problem. By the way, I quit.
CUT TO:
Tech support orientation. A row of tech support bobs are in chairs. Rog and jwgh are standing behind podiums.
BOB1: [whispering to BOB2] Is that jwgh?
BOB2: Yeah!
BOB1: I thought he'd be smaller and more annoying.
BOB3: I heard he tore a guy's throat out in Oklahoma.
a beat
BOB2: Are you sure you're thinking about the same guy?
JWGH: There are three rules of tech support. First, never underestimate the stupidity of the lusers. Second, don't get any blood on the equipment. Third, never, ever, anthropomorphise lusers.
BOB1: Never anthropomorphise lusers? What if they bring you cookies?
JWGH: Don't think of the cookies as a gift; they're just an offering designed to elicit a certain response.
BOB3: What if one of them is my mother?
JWGH: Is she?
Pause while the bobs think that one over.
JWGH: One other thing; I run this show from now on. If you don't want to work under me, the time to leave is now. From now on, it's my way or the information superhighway.
All groan.
JWGH: Sorry about that.
CUT TO:
Monday morning at roadhouse.com. jwgh is keeping a casual watch on the employees from the door of his office. No-one's goofing off too obviously. Suddenly a GUY stands up in the middle of his cubicle.
GUY: Hey! Anyone want to see some naked Marina Sirtis GIFs?
Some people start to crowd around. jwgh nods to BOB3; he should deal with this. BOB3 walks over but is blocked by a large LUSER.
BOB3: Can I get through, please?
LUSER: [threateningly] I think you should let him finish dowloading.
BOB2 looks helplessly at jwgh. jwgh comes over and smacks the LUSER in the kneecap with a lead pipe. The LUSER howls in pain.
JWGH: [to BOB1 and BOB2] Could you help this gentleman to the door? [to BOB3] Even the largest luser will go down if you give them a good shot to the knee. [walks back to his office, whistling.]
And so on...
-jwgh