At Demon Internet, all
tech support personnel are called Bob
. (Female support
personnel have an option on Bobette
). This has nothing to
do with Bob the divine drilling-equipment salesman of the
Church of the SubGenius. Nor is it acronymized from Brother Of
BOFH
, though all parties agree it could have
been. Rather, it was triggered by an unusually large draft of new
tech-support people in 1995. It was observed that there would be much
duplication of names. To ease the confusion, it was decided that all
support techs would henceforth be known as Bob
, and identity
badges were created labelled Bob 1
and Bob 2
.
(No, we never got any further
reports a witness).
The reason for Bob
rather than anything else is due to
a luser calling and asking to speak to
Bob
, despite the fact that no Bob
was
currently working for Tech Support. Since we all know the customer
is always right
, it was decided that there had to be at least one
Bob
on duty at all times, just in case.
This sillyness snowballed inexorably. Shift leaders and managers
began to refer to their groups of bobs
. Whole ranks of
support machines were set up (and still exist in the DNS as of 1999) as
bob1 through bobN. Then came alt.tech-support.recovery, and it was filled
with Demon support personnel. They all referred to themselves, and to
others, as bob
, and after a while it caught on. There is
now a Bob
Code describing the Bob nature.