Playing Ball Games In The Datacenter Was Obviously Stupid, But We Had To Win The League

Who, Me? Monday mornings see the resumption of endless coopetition between IT folks and those they strive to serve but sometimes disappoint. The Register celebrates that eternal struggle with a new edition of Who, Me? It's the reader-contributed column that offers the chance to admit failures and celebrate escapes.

This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Frank" who told us a story he heard from a boss who worked at a datacenter located in a country where cricket is a popular sport.

Your correspondent has long and bitter experience of trying and failing to explain the rules of cricket to folks who didn't grow up with the game. Suffice to say it involves one player propelling a ball that's a little smaller and harder than a baseball toward another player who wields a substantial oblong wooden bat, which when wielded well can send the ball over 100 meters through the air at speeds exceeding 150 km/h.

Frank's boss worked in a datacenter staffed by teams on eight-hour shifts, and the job was boring because it was a well-run facility where breakages and outages were rare.

To relieve the boredom, one of the team brought in a cricket bat and a softish version of a cricket ball used for indoor play and training. The team started to play, initially in the break room. Before long, somebody pointed out that datacenter aisles resemble the long and thin pitches on which cricket is played.

Games soon moved to the datacenter floor and the team enjoyed them so much that one day the late shift forgot to stop playing before the midnight shift arrived.

"Did they report them? No. Instead, the midnight shift started arriving early so they could play against the late shift," Frank told Who, Me? "This went on for quite a while and they had leaderboards to record the top scorers."

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The games continued until one day a player whacked the ball hard, and it crashed into the "In Case Of Emergency, Break Glass" alarm and broke the glass.

Management received alerts about the supposed "emergency" and showed up to survey what they thought would be some wreckage. Instead they found two shifts of datacenter crews, no evidence of cricket, damage, or downtime.

The teams made up a story about tripping and sharp elbows to explain why the alarm went off. To deal with the harder-to-answer question about why two teams were in the datacenter, someone devised an explanation about the incident coinciding with the two shifts conducting joint training on updated standard operating procedures.

The bosses accepted both explanations, and the players got off scot-free. They also recognized the error of their ways and never played datacenter cricket again. But the legend of the games lived on for many years!

What's the dumbest thing you've done in a datacenter? And how did you get away with it? Be smart and click here to send an email so we can share your story in a future edition of Who, Me? ®