Who doesn’t love Halloween? Nobody, that’s who! No matter what your age, Halloween is a night of good times, fun costumes and overindulgence – whether that be of the sugary variety or the slightly more intoxicating!
Best of all, it’s the only night of the year when you can actively try to scare the pants off friends and family without being considered a jerk. But if you want to give your IT buddy a scare on Halloween, it’s going to take more than ghosts and ghouls.
Want to strike sheer terror into the heart of your Sys Admin this Halloween? Here’s how you do it.
Tell him you opened a suspicious attachment
Cryptoviruses. To most IT pros, they’re scarier than Freddy Kruger with a rare west-African pathogen. If you want to have your Sys Admin quivering in his boots, just tell him you opened an email attachment from a kind Nigerian prince and now you can’t access any files. Seriously. Scary stuff.
Of course, just a warning that while terror is a likely outcome in this scenario – rage is just as likely. If your Sys Admin may be prone to violence, maybe play your little joke via a phone call instead…
Tell her the CEO needs a file from 2 years ago restored from tape within 30 minutes
Really, this one’s getting kind of mean. While there are still a lot of advantages that tape can hold over newfangled technology, speedy recoveries sure as heck aren’t one of them. That’s why a surefire way to get your Sys Admin’s goosebumps raised is to demand she restore an individual mailbox item from tape. The further back this file was archived, the scarier. The sooner you need it, the scarier. The higher your position in the company and the greater your powers to hire and fire, the scarier!
Don’t pull this prank if you want your Sys Admin to have a happy Halloween!
Tell him there’s no room in the budget for backup software
Here’s where we start to cross an ethical line from Halloween-fun into pure sadism. Because while the other two examples of terrifying trickery mentioned above can be resolved with a decent backup solution, taking away that backup solution altogether is the stuff of IT-nightmares! Honestly, you’re looking at long-term psychological damage for your poor Sys Admin here…
Now we’ve armed you with the bone-chilling ability to strike fear into the hearts of IT pros everywhere, use your new powers responsibly! And just remember before trying anything too devious, these people have access to your internet history! You’ve been warned.
Happy Halloween from everyone at BackupAssist!
Do you have an IT ghost story or tech-related Halloween horror?
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