My dad passed about ten years ago, and my mom just passed this year. When I was collecting my inheritance from my mom’s passing, I wanted to transfer her accounts from her advisor in her home state of New Mexico to my advisor closer to home.

As I went through the process of transferring the accounts, I got a call from the advisor. He begged me to leave the account in his hands because after my dad passed, he had a whirlwind romance with my mom and wanted to keep managing that account to remember her.

I admit, my response wasn’t very professional. I said, “Ew,” hung up, and finalized the transaction.

This just happened to a coworker of mine who is active-duty military. She’s been in a leadership class all day, so she left her military-issued laptop in my office for safekeeping while she’s in class. 

For those not familiar with US military IT regulations, there are a great many things that cannot ever be plugged into a government computer’s USB ports — chiefly anything with internal memory such as flash drives, cameras, and cell phones. Doing so causes the government computer to report the unauthorized plug-in to the network, and the network security people take steps to secure the device from possible attack.

As mentioned, [Coworker]’s laptop has been sitting in its computer bag in my office since she left for her class, and nobody has touched it. A little bit after her class broke for lunch, [Coworker] got a phone call from her Chief Petty Officer. It seems the network security people had been frantically trying to reach [Coworker] about an unauthorized plug-in to her computer. Since she was in class and her phone was therefore turned off (Navy tradition says anyone whose phone rings during training has to buy donuts for the whole class the next day), they couldn’t reach her and therefore decided to shut off not merely her computer but her entire network access.

Once she’d turned her phone back on and started seeing all the calls from network security and her Chief, [Coworker] called the Chief to find out what was going on. After she was told about the “problem”, [Coworker] talked to me and found out that no one had been anywhere near her laptop at all. Confused, [Coworker] called the Chief again to find out how to fix the problem.

She was told it would be no problem. The Chief would annotate that he had counseled [Coworker] about network security, and she would have to retake the online network security annual training. Once these were accomplished, [Coworker] would be able to get back into the network to do her military job as Leading Petty Officer for the shop.

Most of the readers familiar with various IT disasters are doubtless nodding sagely as they can see where this is going. In order to regain access to the network, [Coworker] had to take a network security training course on the network, and all of her network access had been shut off. She couldn’t even get into the network from another computer because network security had killed all of her access rights.

After laughing until I was blue in the face, I strongly suggested she take the laptop to the network security office and kindly ask them how she could retake the security training if they’d shut off her access. She was too tired to get into a fight after a day in the classroom, so she called the Chief and told him someone else was going to have to handle the morning muster reports and other administrative tasks she normally handled until someone at network security realized the Catch-22 situation they had created.

Network security is actually a pretty important job for government workers — especially military — but some of the network security administrators are full-on caricatures who absolutely belong here on Not Always Right.

I recently dropped my longtime ISP for multiple reasons. The most recent was a large price hike they tried to mask behind a deal that if you had automatic withdrawals with a debit card, you would save $5 a month, but if you had automatic withdrawals linked to your checking account you would save $10 a month on your monthly bill.

I thought I was going to save some money on my bill, but I came to find out that my bill actually went up $18, and they deducted $10 for having auto-pay linked to my checking account. In the end, I was still paying an extra $8 a month, plus the extra $12 in price increases over the past two years. To top it all off, this ISP still had a data cap of 1.2TB that any family of four-plus people could easily exceed.

This ISP company is large, all over the United States. They not only offer Internet but cable service, cell phone service, and even landline service. Their job is connectivity with devices on a massive scale.

Now that I’m done with that ISP, I have to return their X-Box. (It’s not an actual Xbox gaming system; it’s just what the company called it because of its name.) I never used nor even asked for it; I don’t even know what the stupid thing was for. It got shoved into a closet and forgotten there for the last few years. I have to ship it back to them on my dime, or I can drop it at a local store of theirs. I opt to drop it at a local store. If I don’t return it within thirty days, I have to pay them money for it.

A couple of days after I cancel my old ISP service, I have time to head to one of their local stores to return the X-Box. I arrive at the store, and a nice handwritten sign is taped to the entrance of the store as I enter. I don’t remember the exact wording on the sign, but it pretty much says that the store’s Internet is down and they cannot provide any services that require access to the network or systems.

I enter the store and am greeted by an employee there. He tells me that their network is down and he can’t assist me with anything that requires network access.

Me: “I’m just here to return this X-Box since I canceled my account with you guys the other day.”

Employee: “Oh. Okay. Once our system is back up, I’ll scan it in that you’ve returned it.”

Me: “Okay, thanks. You know, it’s kind of ironic that a company like this that is driven on connectivity has network issues right now, isn’t it?”

Employee: “Uh.” *Staring blankly at me* “What do you mean?”

Me: “Never mind. Have a good day.”

A company with a net worth of over $150 billion, and its store locations are having network outages. I guess the employee just didn’t understand the irony of it all.

My workout buddy and I went to a restaurant. The waiter stopped by and asked if we wanted to order drinks. We said no, just water, because we’d just been working out and were very thirsty. Plus, my buddy tends to get post-workout migraines, and if he does, then I’m the driver.

Before we could say we wanted appetizers — we were, after all, very post-workout hungry — the waiter vanished. Twenty minutes later, people who’d come in after us were getting their appetizers.

We weren’t able to wave down our waiter, so we walked out.

I know alcohol and even soft drinks boost the total and corresponding tip, but that’s no reason to ignore water drinkers.

On my way to work after getting off the streetcar in the morning, I meet a coworker.

Coworker: “You’ve seen the unionists at the streetcar stations?”

Me: “Yes.”

Coworker: “They’re boring with their petitions! It’s bad enough that I have to leave early now that we have fewer streetcars.”

Me: “You know what the petition is about?”

Coworker: “What?”

Me: “The petition is against the lack of streetcars in the city, especially in our area.”

As we were really early for our workplace due to the lack of streetcars — it was either that or be late — he finally went back to sign the petition. Unionists aren’t such a pain when you agree with their petitions! But maybe you should listen to them first!