The time a client asked me to run fiber through a haunted house

I was doing a site survey for a new 10 gig circuit at this old mansion in Savannah, and the owner's son, who was maybe 19, was my guide. He looked me dead in the eye and said, 'The patch panel has to go in the east wing, the spirits in the west wing mess with the packet loss.' He was totally serious. We spent an extra hour mapping runs just to avoid the 'bad vibe' rooms. Has anyone else ever had a non-technical request completely change a deployment plan?

2 comments

2 Comments

martin.margaret1mo ago

Oh man, that's not even the weirdest one. I had a client once who insisted we couldn't run any cable through the walls of the master bedroom because it would 'disturb the earth energy' or something. We had to do this crazy surface-run chase around the entire door frame with white ducting (it looked awful, but they were happy). You just have to add it to the project scope as a 'client site-specific routing requirement' and charge for the extra time and materials. Sometimes the job is more about keeping the peace than the perfect install.

hart.parker1mo ago

My buddy's client demanded all outlets face north.