BOFH: How to survive a Boring Geek Alert

Episode 36 "So he says: 'You'd think Nicholas would have shown us his chopper last nig...' look out!" the PFY says dropping to the floor like a stone while pressing the lockout footpad under his desk.

Trusting the PFY's visual acuity, I hit the floor as well, looking at the CCTV screen to see what horrified him so.

Boring Geek Alert!!!

The helpdesk, in their infinite wisdom, have just employed Dull Dave, one of the blandest men in Britain - possibly the world. The man has the ability to leech any interest out of a subject so quickly it's uncanny.

One minute you're talking about how you really enjoyed some movie, then next minute he's telling you how it was shot on panachromatic 70mm stock as a base print with colour added in post production by a morphing process involving pixellated prediction of motion and .....

..and the next minute you're waking up in a hospital the moment they switch the life support machine off as you've been in a coma for seven years.

Well perhaps I'm exaggerating it a little, but the guy is a serial bore. No-one in the department is safe! Three of the cleaners have quit because the guy comes to work extra early to tell them how floor wax they use is a combination of beeswax, carnuba wax, linseed oil, damar varnish, with a 28 per cent petroleum-based solvent which is used to improve the malleability of the...

>click<

... beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I can't stand serial bores! I mean I know I work in computing, which has more than it's fair share of dullards and fanatics, but the enthusiasm of it all is just too much for me. I just want to come to work, do the geeky stuff, leave work, have a quick couple of lagers with the PFY then catch the 2am night bus home. Hopefully the right night bus and hopefully travelling in the right direction. Is that too much to ask?

"Hellooooooo?" the guy says, trying the door, which won't budge thanks to the PFY initiated lockout. "Anyone thereeeee?"

>knock< >knock<

The PFY and I are quieter than Sonny Bono's tree detector, waiting patiently for him to get bored and drift off.

. . .

. . .

. . .

Which just isn't going to happen...

It'd seem that as well as the ability to bore the life out of a cleaner, he also has an infinite capacity to keep himself entertained by simply staring at a section of wall and waiting...

"Let's just talk to him," the PFY whispers. "How bad can it be?"

"Bad!"

"Tell him we have some urgent network work on that can't wait. That we have to go and attend to."

"Yes, and listen to him tell us about the history ethernet, the advent of UTP cabling, the performance of collision-detect media as bandwidth usage increases, how the insulation in Cat-6 cabling actually contains tiny air pockets to try and reduce the effects of crosstalk in..."

>Clunk<

"Oh!" The PFY says, lifting his head up off the floor. "I see what you mean! What about a cattle prod?"

"His hide's so thick he doesn't notice people glazing over so I'm guessing he's impervious to conventional weapons."

"oh.."

. . . .

Some time later...

. . .

"What time is it?" the PFY whispers.

"3:45pm"

"It's only been fifteen minutes! I can't take much more of this!"

"Pull yourself together man!" I snap. "We need to think! Now, he's not going anywhere which means that we'll have to. Can you crawl over here without being seen?"

"No, he'll spot me between the desks."

"I've got an idea!" I say.

"What?"

"I'll crawl under this desk, swipe myself into the Computer room and leave the back way."

"How does that help me?"

"Oh. I stopped thinking about you when I realised that Dave's going to stay late and wait for us."

"So you're just going to abandon me?"

"Law of the Jungle I'm afraid."

"What?"

"Survival of the fittest!"

"That's Natural Selection!"

"Is it? Oh. What what's law of the Jungle then? OH!, That's right it's..."

>bip< >bip< >bip< >bip< >creak<

"What are you two doing down there?" the Boss asks, entering from the Computer Room side of the room.

"... human sacrifice," I finish.

"What's human sacrifice?" he asks.

"Law of the jungle," the PFY says. "We were just talking about it while we finished off the... uh... network patching."

"I thought you patched networks at the Comms room."

"Ordinarily, yes," I respond, "but this is an experiment we're trying out - terminating cables at the desktop, not at the data rack."

"Yes, it's something that came up in a conversation with Dave the other day," the PFY says.

"But don't you still need to patch them..."

"You'll have to ask Dave about the ins and outs of it al,l" the PFY says. "He's just outside..."

. . . Some time later . . .

>Clunk<

"Right lets sneak out the back way!"

"What about the boss?"

"We'll have a minute's silence for him at the pub!"

Dangerous place, the jungle... ®

• BOFH 2004: The whole shooting match
• BOFH 2003: Year Book
• BOFH 2002: A Reader's Digest
• 2001: A BOFH Odyssey
• BOFH 2K: The kit and caboodle
• BOFH: The whole shebang
• The Compleat BOFH Archives 95-99