On Call Y2K: Tales from the Tech Support Frontline

December 26th, often recognized as a holiday across much of the global reading community, also happened to fall on a Friday during the peak of the Y2K scare. This week, we're sharing stories of tech support during one of the most anticipated and nervously watched events in recent history, starting with a tale from a reader we'll call "Cane."

Cane, who worked in the IT department at the UK branch of a multinational alcohol producer in December 1999, recalled feeling confident about their preparations. "We spent the last two years meticulously testing, verifying, upgrading, and replacing systems," he explained.

To emphasize the importance of the Y2K readiness effort, senior management introduced a custom screensaver displaying a countdown to midnight. They also restricted the IT team from taking leave for two weeks after New Year’s and warned they might need to stay on-site full-time in case of issues. To prevent any threats from malware, the network was disconnected from the internet as the clock neared 2000, under orders from the top executives.

As the moment of midnight approached, everyone watched the countdown tick down from 1999 to 2000. When nothing happened, a collective sigh of relief was shared, and after an hour, the network was reconnected, confirming that the world hadn’t ended.

However, challenges persisted. Users brought up issues—some based on misconceptions, such as insistence that their screens were blank when they simply weren’t. A vendor’s so-called "fix" rendered a critical application unusable during working hours, and careless users temporarily knocked out the network by disconnecting cabling.

The first real problem emerged when a PC left on against instructions mysteriously crashed. The IT team rebooted the machine, which then displayed a screensaver counting backward into negative numbers. Eventually, Cane discovered that the external developer responsible for the Y2K screensaver hadn’t tested it for the bug, leading to this unexpected fallout.

The company kept the IT team on-site for several days until no further issues arose. Cane noted, “We returned to normal, although the consultants probably earned a sizable payday. The salaried employees, meanwhile, just made do with time-off-in-lieu.”

Have you provided tech support during a major event or holiday? Share your story with On Call by sending an email—we’d love to hear your experiences!