How a Laptop Took Down a Warehouse

Welcome to the story of a perfectly known and visible laptop that somehow became critical production infrastructure inside a warehouse environment — without going through proper validation, testing, or operational review. The system worked, solved an immediate problem, and was quickly integrated into daily operations… right up until the laptop entered sleep mode and warehouse activities ground to a halt.

What followed was a frantic investigation into why scanners stopped working, workflows froze, and logistics operations suddenly stalled because of a standard power-saving setting. It’s a story about how quickly “temporary” operational solutions can become business-critical, and why governance, testing, and basic operational checks matter far more than people realize — especially when convenience quietly reaches production.

Listen now on Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, Youtube or where-ever you get your panic attacks.

Back to the Nilies: Early 2000s IT

No Methodology, Just Madness

Remember the early 2000s? Agile wasn’t everywhere, Scrum was a word you used for rugby, and even the waterfall model was just something you vaguely knew about. You just did things, and if they worked, everyone was happy.

“Those things existed, yes, but they weren’t as omnipresent as they are now in IT. You just did your thing and as long as it worked, it worked and everybody was happy.”

The Can-Do Mentality:
Back then, engineers wore every hat: project manager, architect, security guru, whatever needed doing. It was all about getting things done—the can-do approach, for better or worse.

“Officially on your payslip it said senior IT engineer. Yeah. So that is what you did.”

Warehouse Down: When Operations Stop

The Friday Night Call that Every IT Pro Dreads

It’s Friday night, naturally. If disaster strikes, it always waits until just before the weekend.

The call comes in from the helpdesk:

“Hey, our main application is down.”

But in this case, the “application” isn’t just a piece of software—it’s the entire warehouse: scanners, printers, sensors, forklifts. If the IT system fails, nothing moves. Pallets stay put, and truck drivers start nervously checking their clocks.

Modern IT would turn this into a ‘P0’ incident—meaning maximum urgency and business impact. Truck drivers start racking up overtime, goods don’t leave the warehouse, and everyone’s thumb-twiddling.

Diagnostics: Everything Looks Fine… Until It Doesn’t

You check your dashboards—file server, print server, remote desktops, email. Everything is green. Users are logged in. No obvious signals of disaster.

Jack calls back:

“Hey, I see nothing wrong. What’s going on?”

The operations desk responds:

“Oh yeah, no, it is the main application says it cannot make a connection and that connection is going to a Windows machine. Therefore we call you.”

Logic: It’s running Windows, and it has a power plug, so it must be an IT problem.

Troubleshooting Begins: The P0 Panic

Track the Server, Diagnose the Service

Jack connects with the support team, who point out a particular module isn’t responding.

“That module is supposed to be running on that server.”

Jack logs into the server. The application is installed, but—uh-oh—the Windows service is disabled. This is a manual action; someone flicked the switch, either intentionally or accidentally.

Jack tries the IT classic:

“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”

He restarts the service via VPN—no dice. Errors everywhere.

Time for an On-Site Visit

As remote troubleshooting hits a wall, it’s time for a drive to the site—a 45-minute trip, searching for a makeshift parking spot because the usual spaces are taken by trucks.

“The joys of being on call and having to go on prem while on call.”

Mission Control: Skynet on a Budget

Inside, the team is greeted with what can only be described as a mini-NASA mission control:
CRT screens everywhere, monitoring every module, every flow.

“Imagine a wall full of NASA control room type CRT screens.”

One screen glows red—there’s the culprit. The module monitoring service claims it can’t reach a particular IP.

Cable Chaos: Patchwork and Guesswork

Follow the Cable (If Only It Was Labeled…)

“Let me guess. The IP address was not the IP address of the server that you actually connected to, and that was supposed to run. Bingo.”

Even better: The IP is linked to a user VLAN. At 2am, it’s time to wake up the network admin and play “find the IP address” in the dark.

Network admin logs in, traces the IP to the third floor, second cabinet, switch number three.

“Do you need me? For now, no. But stay awake, okay?”

The Joys of Unlabeled Networks

Network cables aren’t numbered or color-coded (not back then, not now, honestly). Jack and local support trace cables by hand, following messy patchwork under desks, through carpets—classic IT horror story style.

A tangent from the podcast:

“We’ve had a case where we say, okay, you need to reboot the access points or one access point in the building. You don’t know which one it is. You know what, unplug all the yellow cables and plug them back in.”

But watch out: If you don’t specify which port to use when plugging things back in, you might end up with nothing working—been there, done that, Saturday ruined.

Director’s Laptop: The Discovery

The Hidden Heart of Production

The cable leads them to… the office of the divisional director—the very person responsible for the warehouse and its application.

“Why is it always an office of a director or a VP or something like that?”

The cable disappears into a drawer. Open the drawer… and there it is: a laptop, blinking its battery error in sleep mode.

“Every cliche is happening. Open the drawer. It was not locked, so we didn’t need a crowbar. And in there is—drumroll—a laptop. Of course it’s a laptop.”

No power supply nearby, but the team manages to find a spare, plug it in, wake the system, and the warehouse suddenly roars back to life:

“Literally, in an undescribable way of explaining it, the entire building went brump. It’s a good feeling when that happens.”

Health and safety procedures were apparently in place, though whether anyone followed them is another matter!

What Was Actually Happening

The laptop was locked with the director’s user, running the application not as a service, but right on the desktop. Power supply missing—unclear if someone stole it, unplugged it, or just hoped the battery would last.

“People, whatever you do, if you have something running in production, make sure it’s on production hardware and a laptop is not production hardware. No.”

Lessons Learned: Production and Hardware

Never Run Critical Systems on a Director’s Laptop

Let’s be clear: If your application is mission critical, it should never, ever be running on someone’s random laptop stuffed in a drawer.

“It’s completely acceptable to run it as a pilot. It’s even acceptable to run it as a proof of concept, as a mirror of the current system. But once you’re actually going into production and actually using it or benchmarking it, run it on the proper hardware.”

Why do people still do this?

Convenience
Shortcuts
Lack of budget
Politics (“I’ll just sign off on it myself…”)

But it’s always a ticking time bomb.

Communication Is Key

If you shift something, even as proof of concept, you must tell your operational team. Otherwise, monitoring and management systems get updated, but nobody knows what’s actually happening.

“Should you run this as a proof of concept somewhere, even not on a live machine, but in a test environment or acceptance environment to see, hey, let’s run it for a night and see what gives. Inform your operational teams…”

Proof of Concept? Or an Eternal Quick Fix?

Many quick fixes last longer than intended. A “temporary solution” becomes a permanent fixture, until the day everything comes crashing down.

“There is no fix that is as permanent as a working temporary fix.”

The Real Cost of IT Fails: Impact vs. Salary

Trebuchet Time: When Business Impact Means Goodbyes

A sobering (yet humorous) comparison in risk management:

If the business impact is higher than your monthly salary, you might get away with it. One or two times—slap on the wrist.
If it’s your annual salary? Your days are numbered.

“Once the business impact is higher than your monthly salary or annual salary, your days are numbered. That’s actually a good comparison as to how quickly does the trebuchet gets rolled out to say our goodbyes.”

If you’re really good, or part of the umbrella blame-shifting system, or nepotism, you might survive—but don’t count on it.

Blame Games and Consultant Umbrellas

When things go wrong, responsibility is often shifted:

External consultants get blamed
Umbrella systems repoint responsibility
Those at the top always have a consultant nearby… just in case

Conclude, Reflect, Laugh (and Learn)

What to Do Next Time

“I hope you learned what not to do. And maybe you can come to the conclusion what you need to do the next time.”

Bob and Jack share their hard-earned wisdom:

Label cables (yes, really, even in 2024)
Don’t run production on laptops
Always inform teams of changes
Don’t go home until you’re sure everything is running on proper hardware
If you’re on call, get ready for adventure—bring coffee and maybe a crowbar

Standout Quotes

“Never ever do this, because the impact that you will generate is humongous.”

“Once the impact becomes in terms of your annual salary. There are very little people who ever come back from that.”

Episode 14 : Sleep Mode in Production