Randomly Banned User of the Day

This is, perhaps, the origin of my infatuation with breaking things professionally.

I was working at NeXeT running tech support while studying, building, and tinkering constantly.

The graveyard shift was my playground.
Quiet. Undisturbed.
The few calls we did get were usually dumb.

“I broke the cup holder in my PC,” one caller said.
(It was the CD-ROM tray.)

That job taught me how to be cordial to people—while loathing them completely.

And in that hatred for the stupid customers… I found inspiration.

Joel was working opposite me that night.

“What if I made a tool that kicked people off,” I said. “Just to fuck with them.”

He laughed.

“Like ban them from the internet?”

“Exactly!”

“I’ll call it… No Internet For You!”
(Said in a bad Seinfeld-Soup-Nazi accent.)

“Nah,” Joel said. “Not catchy. Plus, you’ll get in trouble.”

Hmm.
I shelved the idea.

A month or two later, I was on a different rotation, training a new hire Jake. A couple friends of mine were heading west for a summer road trip.

I wanted to go.
No gas money.

I explained this to Jake. He was a few years older than me and chuckled:

“Just get fired. You’ll get unemployment. It’s like a paid vacation.”

Cool. Get fired. What could I do?

Oh, right.
No Internet For You.

I explained the idea again.
We both agreed—yeah, that’d probably get me fired.

So I built it.

I wrote a Perl script to manipulate RADIUS, the authentication system for dial-up modems.

Then I hooked it into our ColdFusion-based website.
Glued on a code generator to auto-generate the changes.

Perfect.

I called it:
Randomly Banned User of the Day.

I even had it update Remedy, our tech support ticket system, with instructions for whoever answered the call.

“Huh. That was… unexpected.”

I fielded the first call myself when I launched it.

“Sorry, John Smith. You’ve been randomly selected to not receive service today.
There’s an internet shortage, and not enough to go around.
So you’re out.”

Click.

He called back.

Another support rep got him.
While they were reading the Remedy script aloud, another John Smith called in.

Wait, what?

I told my coworker to put the phone on hold.

I also had a John Smith on the line.

Different voice.
Different caller ID.

A third call hit the switchboard.
Another John Smith.

What?

News reached Edgar and Sharon pretty quick, they ran the company.

Edgar called me into his office.

He turned his monitor toward me.
On the company website, wrapped in a <blink> tag:

Today’s Randomly Banned User of the Day is… John Smith!
Fuck John Smith. No internet for you!

“You did this?” Edgar asked. Voice flat.

Yeah.

“Why?”

Honestly?

“Yeah. Honestly.”

I told him the truth.

“I wanted to get fired so I could get unemployment and go on a road trip with my friends.”

He chuckled.

“You don’t get unemployment for being fired.”

“Oh. That’s not what—”

“Not important,” he cut me off.
“If you want time off, just ask.”

“We can’t put this on the website, you know that, right?”

I nodded.

“Good. Make it internal.
I want to find out how many of our customers are sharing passwords.
You’re in charge of it now.
Find out how much money we’re losing.”

I nodded again.

“So… about the time off?”

“Talk to Sharon. And your new title.
This is a good find.
You’re getting a promotion.”

I didn’t get to go on the road trip.
But I did get a $15K raise and a promotion to Lead Engineer.

Fuck yeah.