A Diverting Festive Story

Stephen works for a very big and important company which has its base Somewhere in Europe and has three branches in England: one in Yorkshire: one in, let’s say Birmingham and one in, let’s say Hastings. (Most names have been changed to protect the stupid).

It was very quiet at work today, even quieter than expected, so Stephen, being Supertechie, was asked to investigate (“and why was this my job?” he commented mildly later. And the answer is "You don't get to be Supertechie without doing a lot of explaining of How To Plug Things In and similar")

A swift investigation demonstrated that the reason it was very quiet was that the phone wasn’t ringing. At all.

A bit more investigation and he discovered that this was because somebody called Tracy had diverted all phone calls to the Birmingham branch.

What she was supposed to do was divert all calls FOR RECEPTION to the Birmingham branch, to give the Yorkshire receptionists a festive afternoon off. What she had actually done was asked BT to divert all calls meant for anyone at all in the Yorkshire Branch, to Birmingham. And BT, bless ‘em, - for here’s a story where they’re not at fault (though I can hear you shouting “for once”) - had done exactly that.

So what it meant was that anyone ringing Yorkshire would immediately be diverted to Birmingham, where a polite receptionist would say “oh, you need to speak to Mr Boggins in Yorkshire, I’ll put you through.” And she’d put the call through to Yorkshire, where it would immediately be diverted back to Birmingham. Customers’ calls would ricochet back and forth for ever, in a kind of perpetual motion, until they finally hung up in a sobbing heap.

Finally, Birmingham’s reception, exhausted by listening to a morning’s raging and sobbing, shut up shop and went home early. They tried to put the answerphone on but failed in this tricky manoeuvre. Instead they diverted all calls. To Hastings.

Stephen sat Tracy down with a nice cup of tea and explained why what she had done wasn’t quite right, and how the customers (for whom, incidentally, the collective noun is “a wunch” so we won’t pity them too much) had not been too pleased.

He is not convinced that she understood the problem and is prepared for similar excitement tomorrow.

I draw your attention now to my post of yesterday. We don’t need sabotage to screw up. Incompetence and human error will triumph every time. Makes you proud to be British.