One reason I enjoy working on a network is that many of the problems can be resolved by a reboot, an upgrade, a reconfiguration, or a replacement of the problem hardware.
But more than once I've had network problems that were caused by people, and it's not so easy to reboot or upgrade or reconfigure them. Some examples that made my life hard:
Just last Friday night our Help Desk called me sometime past midnight to report their site was down--off the network.
But they use VoIP, and I could see the call was from their site. I said I'd be happy to help (the Help Desk guy is a good guy--he was just flustered and was the only one on duty at that time of night). I asked if he'd tried calling the on-call Network Analyst, since it wasn't my turn to handle late night calls. He said he couldn't find the info for the on-call Analyst because the network was down, and the on-call rotation info is stored on the network. But he'd kept a copy of my cell phone number for emergencies, so he just called me.
I got out of bed and started remotely troubleshooting DHCP and VLANs and ports. I could access their switch remotely, and it quickly became clear that the network was OK.
In a few minutes the phone rang again.
HD: "Whatever you did fixed it!"
Me: "Try that again, since I made no changes, and I can see you rebooted your PC."
HD, a little ashamed: "Actually, I've been having problems with my PC all week, and I think maybe it got some patches and security updates and needed to be rebooted. I didn't try that before calling you. But I rebooted, and now everything is OK."
Another time an inexperienced I.T. Director at a different company called my cell phone to demand I head into the office immediately--the whole organization's network was down! I was a little worried--he sounded really upset.
Me: "What's not working?"
IT Director: "E-mail."
Me: "That certainly sounds bad. Who else is reporting problems?"
IT Director: "No one. My PC isn't working, so everyone's computers must be down, too!"
Me: "Hmm. Maybe it's not as bad as you think. Have you tried rebooting? Or better yet, ask your secretary if her PC's working OK."
Wait . . .
IT Director: "It looks like it was just my PC. But you better get in here anyway in case it's more widespread."
I think he may have been related to Dilbert's pointy-haired boss.
The same IT Director, e-mailing me some months later, trying to persuade me and my staff to support his amazing statements in various public forums: "If I say 'The sky's pink' in a meeting, YOU say 'The sky's pink!'"
Me: "I can do that. But when you say this new project will only cost the organization $60K, and I've shown you the cost will be $3.5M, what will happen to your credibility when the bill hits Finance and Accounting?"
IT Director: "That's not your concern; you just say what I tell you to say."
Lots of stress over that. Although my Manager was part of that thread, and although he told me I was golden because I had the e-mail from the Director to use as a "Get out of Jail Free card", I decided I didn't want to work at a place where I needed something to CMA. I left for a better position elsewhere. And that IT Director was gone in a few years when the dirt under the rugs finally was exposed.
In each case I lived to fight another day, and things only keep getting better.