Or: How One Guy, One Tutorial, and Unlimited Confidence Almost Fried the Breakroom
Monday – The Initiative
Following the Week 4 lightning disaster, Mike issued a simple command:
“Protect everything. I don’t want to smell melting plastic again.”
James translated this into a whiteboard decree:
“OPERATION SURGE THE EARTH!”
Drew, of course, had a calm, logical plan: evaluate each client site, standardize on surge strips and UPS deployment, document and phase the rollout.
Josh?
Josh opened YouTube.
“Guys, I found a tutorial from this guy in Georgia who built a solar-powered server room in a chicken coop. We can do this faster.”
Inner Thought (Drew): Oh no. It’s one of those weeks.
Tuesday – Phase 1: Chaos Unleashed
Josh announced, “I’m gonna rewire the office to be storm-hardened.”
Yusuf raised an eyebrow.
Minh quietly backed up the NAS to a flash drive.
Frank unplugged his machine and said nothing.
Josh unplugged every surge protector.
Then plugged all systems into a central power strip.
One. Single. Strip.
“Innovation,” he whispered.
The lights flickered.
James screamed from the hallway, “WHY IS THE COFFEE MACHINE MAKING THE DOOR BUZZ?!”
Drew walked into the server room and found his workstation sharing power with a mini-fridge, a laminator, and the Wi-Fi AP.
Inner Thought #2: If I touch that strip, I’m going to another plane of existence.
Wednesday – VLANpocalypse
Josh, drunk on confidence and still unpunched, decided to segregate power by department.
“I’m putting the breakroom on its own VLAN.”
Drew didn’t have the energy to explain why power and networking are not the same thing.
So he let it happen.
And thus, the Coffee VLAN was born.
And promptly knocked half the Wi-Fi offline.
Meanwhile, Yusuf walked into the breakroom, flicked the light switch, and triggered three desk monitors to reboot.
He just whispered, “Dark magic,” and left.
Minh quietly rerouted his station to a portable battery.
Frank wore rubber gloves all day.
James tripped over a yellow extension cord and screamed,
“WHO DESIGNED THIS TRAP?! IS THIS OSHA APPROVED?!”
Josh replied, “It’s compliant… in spirit.”
Thursday – The Surge Heard ‘Round the Office
Mid-morning, a mysterious POP.
Then the office filled with the faint, unmistakable scent of burnt ambition and fried USB hubs.
The culprit?
Josh had chained two surge protectors together, then plugged them into each other.
Yusuf walked by holding a box of tomatoes and murmured,
“You have created a loop. Nature abhors loops.”
The network dropped.
The printer screamed.
Mike stepped out of his office, looked around, and said:
“Drew. Why is the thermostat asking for a BIOS password?”
Drew closed his eyes.
“I’ll take care of it.”
Friday – Damage Control
Drew spent the entire morning:
- Unwiring the office
- Rebalancing the breaker load
- Replacing one scorched Ethernet switch
- Giving Josh a new job: labeling cables. That’s it.
Frank reinstalled his own station from scratch.
Minh installed a secret kill switch behind his desk.
Yusuf donated a proper UPS from his refurb stash—“For the coffee. It must survive.”
James was still yelling, but this time from a rolling chair because someone stole his desk outlet.
“EVERYTHING’S PLUGGED INTO A WALL BUT NOTHING WORKS. IT’S A METAPHOR FOR MY LIFE.”
Epilogue – The Postmortem
Mike emailed Drew:
“Thanks for fixing the… all of that. Also, Josh is no longer allowed to ‘improve’ power delivery.”
Josh replied-all with:
“I learned a lot! Next time we try solar!”
Drew didn’t reply.
He just quietly typed up a new policy:
“All infrastructure changes must be reviewed by someone who isn’t named Josh.”
And so, the office survived Josh’s electric uprising, one melted plug and ego at a time.