Thanks for the great post u/OinkyConfidence

I had a Monty once, except he was called Dennis.

Dennis claimed to have come from the world of big Corporate I.T. and moved to a different type of engineering at the small company for a change of pace on his way to slowing his career down...... hmmmm.

This company had a fair few VLAN's and needed Layer 3 switching. As such, they had some 48 port Meraki Layer 3 switches in their rack. Dennis was given the full run down on their switch config as he declared he needed to know all of these things.

We received an urgent call one day. There had been an I.T. Theft, Our Layer 3 is missing...

To say we were confused was an understatement. Onto the Meraki dashboard, all devices present, all VLAN's routing as expected. We call him back, to say everything is fine, and he says he's getting the police involved and we better get over here.

So, after an hour's drive I arrive on site to meet the fuming Dennis, and the company owner who is confused and perturbed by the situation. This was a small business, while it was a big factory with lots of machines, there were only about 50 employees. Dennis was irate about the theft of a device, but i asked the owner was anything in the business not working? No, everything was functioning as normal.

Dennis is in a grump, and he frog marches us to the comms room talking about needing cameras installed and calling the police to log an incident. We get to the comms room.

Dennis: "You said we have layer 3 switching in place, well, where is my layer 3?"

Me: "Pardon?"

Dennis: "Where is our Layer 3, it is missing?"

at this point, my brain has come is struggling to operate on his level, I'm failing to see his issue, there is a slight possibility i think i know what he is thinking, but nobody should be thinking this......

Me: "could you explain?"

Dennis in an angry tone: "what is missing from this rack?!?!?"

Me: "Nothing, it's identical to how it was left 18 months ago when i installed all the new hardware" at which point i got my phone out, opened google photos, searched for the location and found the rack photos i took after completing the install - "look here are the pictures from the original install"

Dennis "Aha, so you were ripping us off! There never was a layer 3!"

oh dear god, he was thinking that...

Dennis "Look, at the top, there's layer 1, then mid way up the rack, there is the layer 2 switch, but where is the third?" - to say this was said with the world's most smug face was an understatement.

Right, we have just been accused of theft by a man who claims to have worked in corporate I.T. and believes layer 3 switching means 3 physical devices and we are in front of his boss. Over the next few minutes it was like a subtle game of verbal chess, where I got Dennis to "nail his flag to the mast" that he was an expert and in his expert opinion, the device was never in fact installed, let alone missing!

Not only did he successfully dig himself a lovely hole, but the accusations of improper work and invoicing for devices that were never delivered were just the chef's kiss. If we were in a restaurant, a snooty french waiter would have walked up saying "I see you have ordered the JCB digger for one, would you like the bucket scoop as well to make zis 'ole a bit bigger sir?"

It was then i chose to explain in a way he could understand

"if someone asks you to give them a hand, are they asking for assistance, or a body part?"

"assistance of course!"

"So, do you, with your high level corporate I.T. experience, think that Layer 3 switching, means 3 devices one above the other, or could it also be a reference to the logical capabilities of a device referencing Layer 3 of the OSI model of networking?"

The penny dropped far quicker for his boss than it did for Dennis, the boss took me for a word outside, apologising every step of the way. The next day we were informed that his role of I.T. coordinator (which he had self created in the company after joined) was no longer, and they were going back to individuals logging tickets directly with us.