Not quite what he thought success would sound like
Flashback to the mid-1990s, when this electronics manufacturer is trying to get a Japanese supplier to cut its component prices -- but it's not going well, says an IT pilot fish on the inside.
"We had a senior purchasing manager, a no-nonsense, hardcore professional, who decided to fly out to meet directly with the supplier," fish says.
"He needed a laptop, which at the time weren't common in the company. But we had just purchased 20 new laptops and we had yet to distribute them. I was on vacation, so my intern pulled one out and set it up for him so he could leave the next day."
What the intern forgets is that he and fish frequently add startup and alert sound files to personalize new computers for users they know pretty well. Those sounds are already set up for a different user when the intern grabs the machine for the purchasing manager.