Don't want to pay £50 for castors? OK. How about £300 + lost production time?

Posted by New-Assumption-3106@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 44 comments

This is back in the day but when we quoted for structured cabling installations we itemised the rack contents. So it would be 42U rack + 4 shelves + patch panels + cable management bars and so on. The last item would be heavy-duty castors.

This would be for a rack in an office or production environment, not in a climate-controlled server room, and you might need to move it a bit to get access behind to feed in more cable or services, or just for whatever.

This client didn't like the idea of £50 for castors so he approved the whole £30,000 project quote, but he struck off the castors.

I strongly advised against this, but the project went ahead with fixed feet on the rack.

A couple of months later, guess what? they needed to move the rack a few feet to get some electrical work done.

That's fine. We can do that. We'll just have to shut the network down, remove all the epquipment form the rack, lay it on it's side, change the fixed feet for castors, upright it, reinstall the kit & off you go.

He saw the irony.

I stopped itemising rack components

[-]

Starfury_42@reddit

I worked at a law firm. Our director rejected dual monitors for a contract attorney. That attorney went to their managing partner who called our director and read her the riot act about having a $200 monitor added to the computer.

Mothringer@reddit

I will say, there are lifting devices designed for this exact kind of case that would be cheaper and less disruptive than shutting down the racks to install castors like you did, but they’d still be more expensive to rent than just fitting the racks with castors from the beginning would’ve been.

bondies@reddit

Another example of typical corporate penny wise, pound foolish behaviour.

Tomme599@reddit

Damn! I was scrolling to the end to post that — and there you were!

Shinhan@reddit

And I bet he was soooo happy to find a way to save money!

bubbathedesigner@reddit

But, quarter earnings

takezo_be@reddit

As a french native speaker, I was expected a whole different story.

"Castor" in french = beaver :D

senapnisse@reddit

Trying to figure out what the hell a castor is. Google clsim its a beaver.

When you post a story to an international audience, maybe try use common words, hm?

Stryker_One@reddit

They are the simple things that Apple thought was okay to charge $699.00 for.

Ranger7381@reddit

Castors are the little wheels on the bottom of heavy pieces of furniture that allows them to be moved more easily.

Ancient-Composer7789@reddit

I thought it was spelled castEr.

syntaxerror53@reddit

Caster is also a type of Sugar. Used in baking usually.

Moleculor@reddit

It is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caster

A caster (or castor)

LupercaniusAB@reddit

No it isn’t. The word is “caster”. Castor is some kind of fish oil or something.

OrangeRadiohead@reddit

British English, you know the source for American English.

New_Enthusiasm9053@reddit

No in English it's castor.

Dessler1795@reddit

Improve your google-fu. I searched for "what castors mean when talking about racks" and the answer was obvious.

Strazdas1@reddit

this shows how fucked google is. Instead of search terms you now ask it questions and get better results. This is trained behavior because of how many morons use search terms to ask questions.

ratsta@reddit

The algorithm tends to show you more of what you've already expressed interest in. Have you been googling beavers a lot lately?

Smooth_Brain3013@reddit

Dam! 🪵 🦫

Environmental-Ear391@reddit

Good tail?

stewieatb@reddit

He's just had his stuffed.

grauenwolf@reddit

https://www.bing.com/shop?q=castor&FORM=SHOPTB

SavvySillybug@reddit

If you don't know what a castor is, just bing it!

Stupid name, but I do find it to be (somewhat) more reliable than Google these days.

I was redditing with one hand. I just double clicked "castors" and right clicked and clicked google and it gave me photos of little wheels to go under stuff.

Armouredblood@reddit

What's funny is the -or form is considered British. In the US it's caster. Which might have helped your googling.

deeseearr@reddit

Asking Google "What is a castor?" turned up the Cambridge Dictionary definition of "a small wheel, usually one of a set, that is attached to the bottom of a piece of furniture so that it can be moved easily", just after Merriam-Webster's definition and right before the Collins Dictionary which said "Castors are small wheels fitted to a piece of furniture so that it can be moved more easily".

Unless there has been a new executive order forcing Google to block references to potentially subversive Non-American dictionaries from US viewers, I can't see how much help that would have needed.

BeefyIrishman@reddit

I don't know if it is regional, but I have only ever seen them spelled caster, or caster wheels. The most basic version most people have seen are the ones on the bottom of rolling chairs, but they also get larger and beefier for heavier loads, like a fully loaded network rack.

MoneyTreeFiddy@reddit

Proud to be from a country where we all believe in having wheels on things, we are a very Pro-castor Nation!!

EruditeLegume@reddit

-so you also put off fitting of the wheels as OP was forced to do?

Yes!

Familiar-Lemon-674@reddit

Saving £50 on a £30,000 project. This is why I hate my accounting department.

vinyljunkie1245@reddit

Supermarket I worked at did that. Manager decided he didn't need to pay someone £200 a week (1990s) to stock the frozen foods and that it would just get done when needed. Cue empty customer freezers while the stock sat in storage. We were losing about £20k a week in frozen sales plus more as people started going elsewhere so sales across the shop dropped.

yourenotmydad@reddit

Throwing wheels on server racks seems wildly unstable to me, but i generally built out tall skinny ones, 3+ at a time.

cas13f@reddit

If you buy rack-scale appliances, they're certainly on casters.

Those racks usually ALSO have feet that can be accessed from the top so they can be extended enough to become the primary support.

New-Assumption-3106@reddit (OP)

It's fine if you put the heavy shit at the bottom, like UPS's and servers

Nice when yu get to work with reasonable people

and love the "I stopped itemising" part

He saw the irony.

I stopped itemising rack components

LOL, great ending. Thanks