One patch cycle. Unlimited suffering.
Monday – The Calm Before the Updates
The week started deceptively quiet. Phones rang at a manageable pace. Drew even dared to sip his coffee slowly.
Then Microsoft announced: “Critical Security Rollup for All the Things.”
James froze mid-sip.
Josh whispered: “What if… we just don’t patch?”
Minh silently downloaded all updates, stacked them in neat queues, and said nothing.
By noon:
- 6 machines patched fine.
- 4 blue-screened.
- 1 server looped on “Installing update 1 of 312.”
Frank texted from his truck: “Don’t touch Exchange. Learned that in ‘09.”
Tuesday – Chaos on Reboot
At 8:12 AM, the phones screamed. Every client who hit Restart after updates found a new flavor of doom.
Client 1: “It says ‘preparing updates.’ It’s been 19 hours. Should I wait?”
Client 2: “Our payroll app now launches Minesweeper.”
Client 3: “Did Outlook always look this… sideways?”
Josh tried to fix a failed patch with sheer optimism. Ended up reinstalling Solitaire across a law firm.
Yusuf rolled back updates using a bootable Linux stick, chewing gum, and a 2006 Dell charger.
James slammed the desk: “PATCH TUESDAY IS PATCH DOOMSDAY.”
By close of business:
🔥 Ticket count: 47
💀 Josh’s error count: incalculable
Wednesday – Printer Fallout
Side effect of the patches? Printers revolted.
One client reported: “The printer refuses PDFs. It prints the word NO.”
Another: “It spits out blank pages unless we lie and say it’s Tuesday.”
James tried explaining spooler service resets over the phone. Lost his voice after shouting:
“IT’S NOT YOUR PRINTER DRIVERS. IT’S YOUR CHOICES.”
Meanwhile Minh ghost-patched 12 systems in silence.
Frank texted: “Printers never break in my truck.”
Thursday – The Patch That Ate the Firewall
Drew deployed an update on a firewall. Instantly: whole clinic offline.
Nurse: “We can’t pull patient charts.”
Doctor: “We can’t run X-rays.”
Receptionist: “Even the fishtank stopped bubbling.”
Josh tried to “temporarily bypass” the firewall. Accidentally created a loop that let every workstation see each other’s desktop wallpapers.
Yusuf fixed it with a firmware rollback. The fishtank bubbled again.
James just sat on the floor muttering: “This is why we can’t have infrastructure.”
Friday – Burnout Bonanza
Phones lit up like fireworks. Updates still breaking things.
Client: “Our login screen is upside down.”
Another: “Teams now speaks Italian. None of us do.”
Josh disappeared into the server room with a Monster energy drink and a screwdriver. Re-emerged three hours later, covered in dust, holding a motherboard: “It’s fixed.”
Nobody asked how.
Minh closed 20 tickets by noon, ate a quiet sandwich, and disappeared.
Frank rebooted a medical office router — from his truck.
James screamed into a headset until it cracked.
Epilogue – Silence After the Storm
At 5:07 PM, the last reboot held. The phones stopped. For once, the ticket board hit zero.
The team slumped in silence.
James: face-down on his desk.
Drew: sipping cold coffee, muttering, “It’s never really done.”
Yusuf: sketching a diagram labeled “Patch Containment Unit.”
Josh: asleep, upright, holding an unplugged ethernet cable.
Frank: drove by the office slowly, gave a nod, and vanished into the evening.
Somewhere in the distance, a Windows update notification chimed.
No one spoke.