Healthcare Tech Support Sign

I am a software installer for a large healthcare information systems company that produces products for the AS. On a recent install, shortly after going live with the product, I needed to copy a new file to the live environment. In order to do this I needed to have all the users off the system. Rather than just shutting it down, I sent a message to all the terminals that read, "Please sign off by.. If you do not sign off voluntarily, your job will be terminated. Thanks."

I sent the message and about five minutes later, I received a call from the most irate ICU nurse I have ever talked to. She demanded to know who I was and who I worked for. I explained to her that I was employed by the hospital to install their new system. She basically ranted and raved for a couple of minutes and told me that my message was the most obnoxious and rude message she had ever read. She then hung up on me. I asked two of my colleagues to read the message and both of them thought I was quite polite. After all, I did say "please" and "thank you."

I had the system down for about an hour and then brought it back up. I called the emergency room to make sure that the fix I had put in was working. The nurse informed me that it had but then asked me if she were going to be fired.

"Excuse me" I said.

She asked again, "Am I going to be fired?"

I told her I didn't know what she was talking about and then she told me that she wasn't the only one worried. She then explained she had been on the system when it was taken down and she thought that meant losing her job! I couldn't believe it. I explained to her that the term "job" was a computer term meaning the program you were currently in. It suddenly dawned on me why the ICU nurse had been so rude and why, I found out later, the nursing supervisor and the head of Information Systems had been beeped! I send out a message over the system apologizing. The next morning, I ran into the CEO and CFO of the hospital who thought the whole thing was hilarious and took to calling me the Terminator. They told me that anyone that stupid deserved to be fired.