"I don't know how many times I have to say it — our server room is outdated and we need some money approved for new equipment. Or at least someone to come in and check out the air conditioner. It's making that sound again." Peter was losing count of the times he'd complained about their aging infrastructure.

"Oh, for f*ck's sake! How many times do I have to say that our equipment is fine?! Now would you kindly f*ck off?" Peter's boss's winning personality was made worse by all of the service requests. He'd always considered the requests to be power grabs from subordinates that wanted to see how much money they could milk out of him.

The server room had been filled with state-of-the-art equipment during the dot com boom. Venture capitalists kept a steady stream of money coming in, up to the point that there was one server for every two employees. One server in particular was responsible for transferring money to the tune of $400,000 every day — it was essentially the lifeblood of the business.

Years later, when the funding dried up, server maintenance became more lax. The budget wasn't there to keep updating the servers, so the staff just had to work with the old equipment. It was hard to complain, though, as these people got to keep their jobs after the crash — not like the other 70% of the staff.

Hardware issues increased in frequency and severity as the hardware aged, which is why Peter wasn't surprised when his boss couldn't "log in to [his] piece of sh*t computer." Either that or he'd locked himself out of his account again. Peter tried logging in to his system, and it didn't work for him either.

Peter walked to the server room and quickly glanced past all the servers to see if there were any red flags, but nothing obvious was wrong. Sighing, he pulled out the keyboard drawer, which splashed water all over his pants. This is not good. Looking up, he saw a thin stream of water winding down the wall from the air conditioning unit to a stack of servers and devices in the rack.

Panic set in as Peter slid two servers that were underneath the keyboard drawer. Both were half-full half-empty, and splashed more water on Peter. Peter ran to the hallway, and barked to the first person he saw "I NEED PAPER TOWELS. AND A HAIR DRYER." Which must've been pretty awkward since the front his pants was completely soaked.

While he waited for the confused employee to come back with the paper towels, Peter dried his hands on his shirt and started pulling together all of the components he could get his hands on. When the paper towels and hair dryer arrived, he started doing his best to dry the components that looked salvageable. He shut off the air conditioner and ordered that the door stay open so that the servers stayed somewhat cool.

After that, it was off to Home Depot for some waterproofing gear. With a few cartfuls of tarps and tape, they had all they needed. After a few hours, the server room was haphazardly waterproofed. The olive green tarps draped over the racks blotted out the fluorescent lights above, making it look less "server room" than "Apocalypse Now."

The cobbled-together waterproofing was in place for a few weeks. Since the incident, however, Peter's boss was willing to approve money to maintain and improve the infrastructure. When his staff asked for equipment to be serviced, he agreed, and with fewer f-words. The damaged servers were replaced, as was the faulty air conditioner. Peter has since moved on to greener, drier pastures.
