If SearchWin2000.com bloopers have taught us anything, it's that attempts to clean computers and disks inevitably lead to disaster. In True IT Blooper #105, an administrator in Canada used a head-cleaning tape to make backups, leading to inevitable disaster. And in True Blooper #62, a cleaning lady caused havoc when she unplugged a server to free up an outlet for her vacuum cleaner. Just when we thought SearchWin2000.com members learned their lesson, we got wind of this story, which may be the most bizarre cleaning blooper yet.
If you ever have an urge to tidy up the server room, don't. An IT pro named Richard, one of the stars of this blooper, would tell you that it's probably clean enough.
One day, Richard was getting ready to welcome an external consultant to his company to install the company's first Exchange server. The Director of Management Information Systems (MIS), wanting to make a good impression, asked Richard and a co-worker to clean up the server room. That was bad idea No. 1.
The server room floor (which was carpeted, if you can believe that) was filthy, so Richard decided to plug in a vacuum. For those keeping score, that was bad idea No. 2.
The room's only available plug was in the UPS on the application server, which housed the sales, accounting and inventory software. Unbeknownst to our intrepid IT cleaner, the UPS was not functioning correctly that day. When Richard turned the vacuum on (note: bad idea No. 3), the UPS blew, and the main server came to a halt.
Lucky for Richard, it was Friday, and his cleaning fiasco cost the company only one day of work. By Monday, everything was back to normal, but, as Richard says, "the unanimous opinion in our office is now: It's clean enough."
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