#extreme thread drift mode on

(all from bad memory 40 years ago)
My first job was a bench engineer fixing printers which was boring but a good learning zone. One day a box arrived for repair (under warranty) which smelt a bit odd as I registered it and performed triage. It was from a company called Farmfax who provided equipment for Farmers including the IT that ran the milking machines. On opening it contained 40% computing and 60% cow excrement. I was politely encouraged to take it in the car park and hose it down before I suffered an accident.

Once hosed off, dissembled and hosed out, then hosed and wiped again I bought it in. No fault note but it did have cow poop inside and everywhere so I had a good idea it was a right off. I phoned them to ask the issue (with a grin on my face) and they said they had sent it in for warranty repair as it had suffered a power supply problem. At this point I had to laugh a little bit at which point the FF guy got annoyed. I asked my boss to join me and put it on speaker phone as it was likely to be an interesting discussion on warranty coverage.

He explained that on of the cows was spooked by a noise whilst waiting to get into the shed. It jump or kicked the table containing the computer, printer and assorted other stuff. The computer and printer ended up in the trough that runs across the blunt end of the cows and tries to catch the poop etc. whilst they are being milked. Sadly two were in the process of filling it at the time this happened. The electricity went up the trough and both took a hit. One died instantly and the other became somewhat distressed. The fuse went and the power cut but a little too late.

My manager and I looked at each other (the phone was on mute) and were unable to speak as we imagined this happening. Poor taste I know given the poor things are sentient beings but it was hard not to see some monty python sketch unveiling in your mind hearing this. His deep Cornwall accent was not helpful in our remaining unemotional at this point, sorry I am insulting pretty much everyone at this point.

Anyway we managed to recover our self control and asked if this was the first time this had happened (playing for time to clear the tears) and he said no. We lost it completely. We phoned him back later on the auspices of trying to find out if we could cover it for him. Given the poor man had lost 1.5 cows that day we worked the system to get him a new printer, some recon parts etc. and said that we would send a request to the maker to ask for a waterproof model to be considered for production.

I will never forget that among many other things that happened in those early days prior to H&S being a serious subject. How we never killed other members of staff etc was a mystery to me.

#de-faulty mode on

Everyone loves a Morgan. Even me, unless it's broken again.