How silly can you get?

Here's a little story that a coworker just finished telling me…

So week before last, I was brought into a company on the spur of the moment, to fix an application they needed for a conference last week (it was part of the check-in process at the con).  I had three days to figure out the problem, test and push. I made it in time for some last minute tweaks, and then I was on my way to the R2Tweetup (my blog in anticipation of the R2Tweetup, Steve Jone's recap).

The app I fixed worked flawlessly at the conference, but the team ran into other issues. The network guy said they'd set everything up in the conference hotel the day before the event, tested, and all was well.  Then suddenly the laptops couldn't connect to the printers any more.  He troubleshot the issue for a couple of hours, then packed it up for the night.   Early next morning, he started in again. He reconfigured the router, and it worked!  For about five minutes, and the wireless died again. 

As it turns out, the conference hotel has a system set up to detect and shut down wireless networks, so that guests are forced to pay for the hotel wireless access.  Which costs $750.  And may I say, for $750, that wireless access better deliver unto me ACTUAL WEB SERVERS that run on pixie dust and dispense freshly cooked bacon.

The solution? The IT VP showed up with five 25' cables, and the day was saved.

Charging exhorbitant prices like that to a captive audience…that's not good customer service, and it'll bite you in the ass way, way more often than it makes you any money.

"How silly can you get, yeah, yeah…"

Happy days,
Jen McCown
http://www.MidnightDBA.com

P.S. In other news: