Camels and phones

[Orcs]

All the talk of the practicalities of Mounted camels reminded me of a formal complaint I received from the Army. This is a very amusing true story

In the early days of premium and freephone phone numbers- Late 80's. These were both provided on a dedicated  Electro- mechanical switch exchange in London. I was the Technical manager in Customer Services for all types of these lines.   

The Army had a freephone number,  would be recruits could ring for information of how to join up.
One of the premium lines was a joke line you could call up at £1 a minute.

One of the switches developed an electrical fault where it jumped an extra space when it was used. This resulted in it going up an extra level it then connected the caller to the wrong line.

When a call went through this piece of kit the caller got sent to the wrong destination line. Most of the time they just hung up and redialed and if they missed the faulty switch got through to the correct place.

BUT

On the occasions a person calling Amy Recruitment got this faulty switch it put them onto the premium joke line. This meant the caller was charged a £1 a minute until they hung up.

The biggest problem was the first joke on the line was the one below.  Do not read if easily offended.

An army general is newly stationed in a desert post. On his first day, he calls for a soldier to show him around. While doing this, he notices a camel randomly tied to a tent.

He asks the soldier, "Soldier, why is that camel tied to the tent?"

The soldier looks awkward and answers, "Er, well Sir, as you know there are no women on the base so er, the camel is there for when the men get certain...um...urges"

The general nods in understanding And says, "Well I don't condone this behavior, but I suppose I understand"

A few weeks into the post, the general starts feelings these urges himself. He calls for the soldier to bring the camel to his tent. He then goes outside, gets a stool, and has wild animal sex with the camel.

After he's finished, he climbs confidently off of the stool and sees the soldier staring at him, wide-eyed.

"So" the general says with a grin, "Is that how you boys do it here?"

The soldier answers, still wide-eyed, "No Sir, we usually just ride the camel into the nearby town where the women are"

It took us quite a while to actually find the single switchthat had the problem , out of hundreds,  by which time I was having some very awkward conversations with Senior Army personnel

[Leon]

That's an awkward conversation and almost genius coincidence that it's an army joke on an army line.

[Orcs]

That's an awkward conversation and almost genius coincidence that it's an army joke on an army line.

Our initial testing could find no fault. The vast majority of calls went through correctly. When we finally got the joke like we had to call the exchange and get them to do a trace to work out he route it was going through the exchange.

Once we had that we knew which was the most likely switch and checked it out. It jumped up another level on every call and mis connected every one, but it was only this one that caused such a problem.