Plot your summer escape with these must-read tech tales

It may be summer, but the daily grind of tech work does not let up. Fortunately, that same daily routine often makes for entertaining tech tales.

If you want to escape the demands of the workplace, even if only in your mind, check out these stories from InfoWorld’s Off the Record — cool drink and lounge chair optional. Included are tech tales of workplace follies, pompous managers brought down a peg, humorous misunderstandings, and illicit office affairs.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Batten down the hatches, there’s an IT rogue on the loose! Here’s how to spot admins gone bad and how to minimize the fallout. | Get a new tech tale in your inbox every week in InfoWorld’s Off the Record newsletter or follow Off the Record on Twitter. ]

And if you’d like to cash in on your IT experiences by publishing a story in the Off the Record blog, send it to offtherecord@infoworld.com. InfoWorld is looking for your amazing or amusing IT adventure, such as managing IT, developing apps, supporting users, colliding IT and business expectations, or even a lesson learned. If we publish it, we’ll keep you anonymous and send you a $50 American Express gift cheque.

• Just to prove to The Suits that the server had its own circuit breaker, the senior network administrator went ahead and, well, broke it. It’s time to rethink the philosophy of “we don’t need no stinkin’ UPS.”
• In the midst of the Windows server migration that wouldn’t go away, a tech pro discovers that the devil is in the details when dealing with a massive data center consolidation.
• The tech pros research the instant messenger database to see why it’s corrupted — and the DBAs break out in a full blush when they find out more about their coworkers’ office activities than they’d bargained for.
• When an executive resists a request to hand over his laptop to computer jail, the IT staffer is reminded why user education can never be emphasized enough.
• The chief of police may know how to work a beat, but he stirs up trouble in homicide and among the network detectives when he hires a so-called expert to join the in-house IT department.

• In “D’oh! Donuts may get you fired,” it’s a recipe for trouble when management doesn’t like desktop shortcuts or donuts, and the tech pro likes both.
• In an IT soap opera proving why passion and programming don’t mix, careers are bound to suffer when dirty dealings enter the workplace.
• Have you heard this one before: “I didn’t buy the computer, so why should I take care of it?” That’s just one of the ways employees use and abuse their company’s computer equipment.
• The foot patrol officer should have been an ally. Instead, he was the company’s biggest security problem, especially when he flipped the wrong switch during a nightly run.
• Inspired by “The Emperor’s New Clothes” from Hans Christian Andersen comes “The CEO’s new software,” a tech story about a vain CEO.

This story, “Plot your summer escape with these must-read tech tales,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more crazy-but-true stories in the anonymous Off the Record blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.