It's the early 1990s, and time for the sales guys in a remote office to enter the world of PCs, says an IT pilot fish who's supposed to make it happen.
"These three sales people had been happily working without PCs all their lives, and were not too excited about the prospect of joining the IT revolution," fish says.
"I could tell that one of them was more reluctant than the others, and I fully expected an uphill battle to get him to use his computer more than absolutely necessary."
None of the sales guys have used PCs before, so after setting up the top-of-the-line desktop computers, fish gives them a few hours of training on the basics of using both the PCs themselves and the software they'll be working with.
And before he leaves, fish also gives them some quick-reference guides, along with his phone number for when they need help.
After a few weeks and a few minor support calls to resolve some teething issues, things settle down and fish is feeling pretty good about how well it has gone.
But then he gets a call that worries him: It's the reluctant user, who says, "My computer is full."
How is this possible? fish wonders. These are brand new high-spec machines, and fish can't imagine how anyone could fill up the hard drive in less than a month -- let alone a novice user who's not even enthusiastic about having a PC.
"My mind raced through possibilities," says fish. "Hardware failure? Memory dumps? I asked the user a few basic questions and to describe the error message, so I could understand what he had been doing at the time.
"Pretty soon he started giggling, and told me, 'I can't keep this up. The truth is that I've hardly turned it on. I've just been using the monitor as a convenient place to put Post-It notes, and now there's no room for any more. Can you come back and give me some more training?'
"Eventually I managed to get him using his PC every day, but I bet he still has a stack of sticky notes on his desk."
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