Everything crash. That’s what the Ethiopian said.
And so it was, the whole network, hundreds and hundreds of computers were down, and nobody could figure out what to do. Except find someone to blame.
All the employees had been summoned and were gathered in a large, brightly lit fluorescent room, furnished with long tables, no chairs.
Everyone stood. The boss produced a big chart with an explorer-type tree printed out. It seems the offending item, Exhibit One, was a file named A. “A-dot”, no file extension, just A.
“Who made this file?”
His eyes fell on Ali.
“Did you make this file?”
Ali shrugged, “No”.
“It’s an ‘A’. Your name starts with ‘A’. A-L-I. Who else could it be?
“You are the only Persian here who answers to that.”
“No, no. It couldn’t be”, interjected an employee, one knowledgeable in such matters.
“He never had access to that drive.”
That shut the boss up, for a moment.
We were ordered to form a cue, sort of a gauntlet which we all walked, each in turn signing a form which no-one was given time to read.
In the end, Management did the only thing they could do: force each and every one of the work force to sign a waiver absolving the company of any and all responsibilities, forever.
