On Call has turned 500! • The Register

A short while back, The Register published the 500th installment of On-Call, the reader-contributed column in which you share your tech support stories.

Thank you all so much for making it possible. The generosity shown by El Reg readers who told us their tales so that we could share them with the world is enormously appreciated by the team, and no doubt by millions who read our publication.

The On Call column first appeared in 2014 as part of some experiments to bring more IT pro and software developer voices into our pages. I wondered if we could create a format along the lines of having readers say to world-plus-dog: “We decided to implement technology ABC and this is what happened,” or: “This is what we learned when working with technology 123.”

But I know most of our readers are not allowed to discuss what you do at work and that if you did, it could sour your relationships with suppliers or even lead to legal problems. An alternative was the case studies that vendors themselves serve up, although those are usually too saccharine and shallow to pass muster.

I next wondered if techies might be willing to tell personal stories – because a friend had a good one. He’d taken his talents and his family to another country in search of career advancement and adventure. Having done the same thing myself years earlier, I knew such moves aren’t easy and that those pondering an offshore escapade would probably appreciate insight from readers they could consider peers.

My friend’s experiences became the first in a series called “The Expat Files.”

Reg readers seemed to like the Expat Files and many volunteered to become a subject of fresh installments.

One contribution caught my eye because it varied a little from the Q&A format the Files used, and instead told the story of a tech support task the reader was asked to perform while working abroad. A light bulb lit up: Every techie I’ve ever met has a bonkers tech support story. There’s going to be a ton of tales we can help share.

On the spur of the moment I labelled that fella’s story “On Call” and in December 2014 the column started with a piece titled: So this Saudi Prince calls and asks why he can’t watch movies … Reader reaction was solid, which was a relief. The Expat Files always ended with a request for readers to contribute their own stories and so did the first On Call.

A few fresh On Call contributions trickled in but not enough for the column to appear every week. It alternated with new Expat Files whenever we had one to write.

Then I was sent an On Call story that we ran with the headline: The server broke and so did my back on the flight to fix it.

That tale of spine-cracking tech support agony breached the 100-comment mark for the first time in On Call history. It also included many of the elements that now exemplify a great On Call yarn: An unreasonable boss, badly-designed tech, clueless people, botched backups, and a Register reader going above and beyond to solve the mess.

After that column the On Call mailbag of story ideas swelled and before long I was writing the column every Friday. It soon became a great forum for your wit and wisdom. Comments posted to On Call are often magnificently amusing, insightful, and delightfully tangential.

I feel like On Call brings out the best of The Register’s community. Thanks for that, too.

Several contributions landed in the On Call inbox every week and the column began to feel like a part of the furniture. Plenty of the contributions had a slightly different flavor because they told tales of readers who messed up, in contrast to On Call’s convention of IT folk saving the day.

We took those tales of near-failure and spun them out into a new column, Who, Me? which is now tended terrifically by Matthew JC Powell.

I foolishly left The Register in 2018 in pursuit of managerial glory at another publisher. Rebecca Hill and Richard Speed wrote the column for a few years before I sensibly returned. I hope The Register keeps running On Call for as long as you keep sending in stories. For what it’s worth, I fantasize On Call will become my beer money gig when or if I retire.

For that plan to work, we’ll need to run about 500 more On Calls.

Your generosity means I’m confident they’ll arrive – helped by the sad reality that some users aren’t getting any smarter, some bosses never become more reasonable, and AI will rob both groups of common sense.

And of course tech itself will always have enough foibles that clever techies find a way to shine. And that’s what On Call is really about: celebrating your skill, your effort, and the lighter moments of your working lives.

It’s a privilege to tell those stories and if you play your part in helping The Register to keep telling them it will make many people very happy for years to come.

Which is why I have to end this piece in the same way that we end every On Call: If you have a tale of tech support trauma or triumph, click here to send On Call an email. We never use your real name, nor betray your trust, nor otherwise drop a reader in the doo-doo. And no story is too silly, too old, or too short.

And while you’re at it, please send Who, Me? an idea too – that column‘s mailbag is a little sparse compared to On Call’s, and could really use some help. Cheers! ®