Storms. Short week. Total meltdown.
Tuesday – Welcome Back, Now Everything Is On Fire
The crew strolled in, post-Memorial Day haze still thick in the air, expecting maybe a few backlog tickets and leftover grilled meats.
Instead, they walked into a scene of utter tech carnage.
James was on the phone and screaming.
“YES, MA’AM, LIGHTNING CAN GO THROUGH YOUR INTERNET IF IT HITS A TREE CLOSE ENOUGH!”
On the whiteboard:
🔥 “23 Storm Tickets Open – Priority: ELECTRIFIED” 🔥
Drew scanned the tickets.
- Fried modem.
- Server that won’t boot.
- “Our phones sound haunted.”
- “Something smells hot.”
- “My mouse is buzzing.”
Frank walked in, looked around, turned back to the door. “Nope.”
Yusuf peeked into his refurb stack. “Two PCs melted. One literally. I will honor their sacrifice.”
Josh said: “Should we check grounding at all client sites?”
Minh, already packing a UPS and a fire extinguisher, handed Drew a list of locations.
Drew just muttered, “No one tell Barry this is happening.”
Wednesday – Client Panic Olympics
By 9:30 AM, four clients had called screaming.
- One swore lightning had come through the wall and into their fax machine.
- Another demanded a replacement printer “certified against Thor.”
- One business lost their router… and their turtle.
- A fourth claimed their fridge display now showed error codes from their copier.
James lost his voice from yelling. He started using a whiteboard he carried around instead.
He wrote:
“PRIORITIZE THE LOUD CLIENTS.”
Josh volunteered to “rebuild one office’s system with a storm-proof layout.”
He installed everything on the top shelf in a room with a leaky ceiling.
Later that day, Drew found a note from the client:
“Our server is now on a puddle. Thank you?”
Thursday – Minh vs. The Lightning Ghost
A dentist office called. “Our machines won’t turn on, and when they do, they beep like ghosts.”
Minh went solo.
He returned two hours later, hair slightly singed, with a keyboard that had somehow fused itself to the desk.
He said one word:
“Fixed.”
He handed Drew a USB stick labeled “Evidence.”
Yusuf opened it. A 5-second clip played:
“CRACK. FLASH. Printer screams in Latin.”
No one spoke after that.
Minh took a tomato from Yusuf’s snack pile and disappeared into the back room.
James, now using a whiteboard AND a bell, rang frantically.
“ANOTHER CALL! THIS ONE IS JUST STATIC AND CRYING!”
Friday – Tired, Toasted, and Still Working
By Friday, the storms were gone.
The clients were not.
“Everything worked last night, but now my mouse smells like burnt toast.”
“Does Outlook get corrupted by humidity?”
“We plugged the surge protector into another surge protector, is that good?”
James was now communicating via a megaphone.
Mike popped his head out of the office. “Why is there a pile of exploded routers next to the Keurig?”
Yusuf: “They were blessed in fire.”
Josh: “I was going to make an art piece.”
Frank: “It’s a warning.”
Drew just stared at the list of still open tickets.
“Mel’s Bakery is down again.”
“Roofing company’s Wi-Fi is still under water.”
“Law office now convinced lightning stole their passwords.”
Drew wrote in bold on the board:
WE SURGE-PROTECT EVERYTHING MONDAY.
Epilogue – Long Weekend, Short Nerves
By the end of the short week:
- 23 tickets opened
- 15 half-closed
- 7 still marked “HOT”
- 1 just says “ghost printer?”
James passed out mid-sentence next to the copier.
Minh wrote “Still alive” in the ticket comments and clocked out.
Yusuf made a smoothie in a gutted PC case.
Josh started a “Storm Mode Protocol” document that somehow bricked a Google Doc.
Frank fixed two more tickets without telling anyone.
And Drew? Drew put his headphones in, queued up thunderstorm ambience, and whispered,
“Let it storm.”