One week. No breaks. All chaos.
Monday – Post-Holiday Hangover
Only Minh showed up on Monday after the Fourth.
Everyone else?
- Yusuf: stuck at the airport.
- Josh: claimed “hot dog poisoning.”
- Frank: unreachable. Possibly hiding.
- Drew: on a client site since Friday.
- James: shouting into a dead phone.
The ticket board looked like this:
🔥 28 open tickets
🚨 5 flagged URGENT
💀 3 say “client threatening legal action”
Minh closed five before 10 AM. Never spoke. Just nodded and worked.
James screamed:
“THIS IS IT. THIS IS HOW I DIE. NOT FROM LIGHTNING—FROM SCHEDULING CONFLICTS.”
Tuesday – Phones Ring. And Ring. And Ring.
The full crew finally arrived. Within five minutes, they regretted it.
The phones rang non-stop.
Clients from everywhere:
- “Our modem exploded.”
- “Lightning hit our flagpole and now the doorbell won’t stop ringing.”
- “Our invoice printer just printed your ticket log.”
Drew stared at the wall and muttered, “I dream of call queues now.”
James, dual-wielding headsets, hollered:
“STOP CALLING US TO TELL US YOU CALLED US.”
Josh rewired a client’s switch wrong and created a loop that caused DHCP chaos across two towns.
Yusuf fixed it using copper wire, an old iPod, and a rosemary sprig.
Frank just whispered: “Never left my truck. Fixed four sites from the parking lot.”
Legend.
Wednesday – The Lightning Round
The weather turned again. Kansas skies went full apocalyptic.
Lightning struck a cell tower—three clients went down at once.
One client reported their scanner began speaking German.
Another said:
“Our lights flicker every time someone prints. Is that… normal?”
Minh deployed three Surge Kits in 90 minutes and left one client with backup power and a watermelon.
James tried to give a weather safety update over Teams and somehow disabled the office camera system.
Mike texted Drew:
“Is that a tornado behind our sign?”
Drew:
“Yes. It’s scheduled between firewall resets.”
Thursday – ISP Ghosts and Gremlins
Clients flooded the lines:
“Our internet’s still out!”
“The ISP said to call you.”
“Do you have ‘internet in a box’ you can give us?”
James tried to call the ISP. The hold music broke him.
He stood on a chair yelling,
“WE SHOULD JUST BECOME AN ISP. HOW HARD COULD IT BE?”
Yusuf slid him a Post-it note that just said, “Don’t.”
Josh suggested building a failover using old office routers and duct tape. Drew threatened to revoke his keyboard.
Minh added “ISP Avoidance Guide” to the wiki.
Friday – Utter Breakdown (Or Breakthrough?)
Everything went down at once:
- Phones glitched
- Email bounced
- Remote software license expired
- One client’s backup literally caught on fire
James screamed:
“WE ARE LIVING IN THE END TIMES.”
Frank, calmly rebooting a server in the rain: “Nope. Just Friday.”
Yusuf brewed espresso on a battery backup.
Josh was found in the breakroom Googling “How to disappear into the woods with dignity.”
Drew got five tickets escalated, four resolved, and one compliment from a client who said:
“Thank you for staying calm while my server smoked.”
Epilogue – Barbecue-Scented Victory
At 4:59 PM, the sky cleared.
The phones stopped.
Minh returned with a hard drive and a sandwich.
James was horizontal on a desk, clutching a surge protector.
Mike walked out of his office, looked around, and said:
“So… quiet now.”
Drew whispered:
“Don’t jinx it.”
The storm passed.
The techs lived.
And somewhere, a printer beeped its thanks.