boat anchor
= B =
BOF
bob n.
At Demon Internet,
all tech support personnel are called "Bob". (Female support
personnel have an option on "Bobette"). This has nothing to do
with Bob the divine drilling-equipment salesman of the Church of the SubGenius. Nor is it acronymized from "Brother Of
BOFH", though all parties agree it could have been. Rather,
it was triggered by an unusually large draft of new tech-support
people in 1995. It was observed that there would be much
duplication of names. To ease the confusion, it was decided that
all support techs would henceforth be known as "Bob", and identity
badges were created labelled "Bob 1" and "Bob 2". ("No, we
never got any further" reports a witness).
The reason for "Bob" rather than anything else is due to a
luser calling and asking to speak to "Bob", despite the fact
that no "Bob" was currently working for Tech Support. Since we
all know "the customer is always right", it was decided that
there had to be at least one "Bob" on duty at all times, just in
case.
This sillyness inexorably snowballed. Shift leaders and managers
began to refer to their groups of "bobs". Whole ranks of support
machines were set up (and still exist in the DNS as of 1999) as
bob1 through bobN. Then came alt.tech-support.recovery, and
it was filled with Demon support personnel. They
all referred to themselves, and to others, as `bob', and after a while it
caught on. There is now a
Bob Code
describing the Bob nature.
--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.