Featuring James the Over-Caffeinated Oracle and Josh the Digital Danger Zone
Monday – Printer Problems and Yelling About Yogurt
Drew was five sips into his morning coffee when it started.
James, the office manager, burst out of the supply closet like a caffeinated banshee.
“WHO ATE MY YOGURT?! I HAD A NAME ON IT—AND A NOTE THAT SAID, “JAMES WILL LOSE IT IF YOU TOUCH THIS.””
Drew didn’t even look up.
“Check the CCTV footage from the breakroom.”
James blinked. “We have that?”
“No,” Minh said quietly from behind his monitor.
The printer jammed at exactly 9:02 AM. Frank fixed it by 9:07 without a word.
Meanwhile, Josh, the go-getter who read half a blog once about DevOps, announced,
“I automated everyone’s desktop wallpapers to reflect the weather.”
“That… doesn’t sound necessary,” Yusuf said, spooning lentils into an old Mac Mini.
“It builds morale,” Josh explained proudly.
Two monitors turned completely blue.
Drew sighed. “You pushed it without testing, didn’t you?”
“Define testing,” Josh said.
Tuesday – The Ghost in the Router
James walked in yelling. Again.
“THE INTERNET IS BLINKING! I’M LOSING EMAILS IN REAL TIME!”
Frank slowly pointed to the blinking light on the router.
Minh, already logged into the firewall, muttered, “It’s not the internet. It’s you.”
Meanwhile, Josh decided it was time to “upgrade the DNS logic for performance.”
Thirty minutes later, no one could access Google.
Or email.
Or internal systems.
James screamed, “ARE WE UNDER ATTACK?! SHOULD I CALL THE FBI?!”
Drew calmly unplugged the switch and plugged it back in.
Everything worked again.
Josh whispered, “That’s not technically a fix…”
Drew looked him dead in the eye.
“It’s the only fix that matters.”
Wednesday – Yusuf’s Frankenputer
Yusuf brought in a Dell tower he’d rebuilt using parts from three different decades and what looked like a piece of kitchen equipment.
“I taught it to run Doom… and monitor temperature for my soup,” he said proudly.
James: “CAN IT MONITOR HOW CLOSE I AM TO A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN?”
Drew: “It doesn’t need to. We all can.”
Minh gave Yusuf a nod of approval, the first recorded nod since February.
Frank added an extra fan to the rig. “It’s going to need it. It’s sweating.”
Josh suggested they “block off the breakroom Wi-Fi to dedicate bandwidth to Yusuf’s soup rig.”
He was overruled. Hard.
Thursday – The Great Email Firestorm
Josh had a “brilliant” idea: auto-responders for everyone.
Unfortunately, he deployed them globally without filtering out internal addresses.
Everyone’s email began replying to everyone else.
It spiraled. Fast.
The loop started with Lisa in HR:
“Thank you for your email. I’ll get back to you soon.”
Then James:
“Received! Looking into it now!”
Then Josh’s own autoresponder:
“Hope you’re having a productive day!”
Multiplied by 200.
By 10 AM, the mail server was in meltdown.
By 10:05, Mike (the owner) stepped out of his office for the first time in weeks.
“Drew,” he said, voice flat. “Fix it.”
Drew nodded, already deleting the script.
Mike turned back. “Also… tell James to stop reading every alert email out loud.”
From across the room:
“WE HAVE A LOW TONER WARNING ON PRINTER 3!”
Mike closed his door.
Friday – Microwave Madness and Revenge
Yusuf was microwaving something delightful and unidentifiable when the breaker tripped.
Power blinked.
James: “WE’RE UNDER CYBER ATTACK!”
Minh: “The toaster and microwave were plugged into the same outlet.”
James: “So… an inside job.”
Drew rerouted the breaker. Josh tried to “optimize outlet usage using AI.”
Yusuf unplugged Josh. “No.”
Later that afternoon, Drew finally sat down, hopeful for a quiet hour.
Then Josh tapped him on the shoulder.
“I found a tutorial on building a Slack bot that monitors productivity using keystrokes.”
Drew didn’t respond.
He just handed Josh a second monitor.
“Here,” he said.
“You’re now responsible for watching your own mistakes in real time.”
Epilogue – One Week Down
Mike emailed Drew privately:
“No major fires. Minor injuries. Decent progress. That’s a win.”
Drew replied:
“Yeah. I only had to reboot reality once.”
Meanwhile, James yelled from the breakroom:
“WHO PUT THE PRINTER IN ‘SLEEP MODE’ AND NOT ME?!”
Yusuf offered him a lentil wrap.
Minh quietly rebuilt the DNS behind Josh’s back.
Frank left on time.
Josh renamed a file to “DefinitelyTested_FinalV2_FinalFinalThisOne.zip.”
And Drew?
He cracked open a soda, leaned back, and whispered:
“Bring on Week Two.”