You must be Klaus Hergesheimer, right? From G section? Checking radiation shields?
My own totally busted story:
I worked internal tech support for a while as a first level. When I got a problem that didn’t show up in the documentation, I called second level for help. Occasionally, I got Tony. Tony would occasionally get into these … moods and play the whole cat-and-mouse thing. “Well, what do you think is causing the problem?” Dude, I dunno. That’s why I called. After a few minutes back and forth, I broke out my Teacher Voice[sup]TM[/sup] and explained that I had gone through the possible resolutions I knew, checked all the resources on hand, and was now calling him for an actual answer, per department policy. He finally lightened up and told me the fix.
As I reached to disconnect to the call, I thought to myself, “Geeze, I hate it when he’s a dick.”
And then I heard this very startled, “Excuse me?”
I’d used my outloud voice. And I still could have salvaged it if I’d just said something like, “oh, not you, Tony. So-and-so just grabbed half the M&Ms on my desk.” But no, I automatically apologized, just like the good girl I sometimes am, and confirmed my own stupidity. He hung up on me.
I understand he went to my team lead and insisted on me being written up. My team lead’s response was, apparently, to laugh in his face. Tony had been a dick to people other than me just a few too many times. One of the other team leads came and found me a couple days later (when I’d finally stopped blushing in mortification), and said, “yeah, I heard about what you said to Tony. That was fucking awesome!”
I miss that job.
