Stranded Support: The Real-Life Tech Nightmare of “The Island That IT Forgot About”
Imagine this: You’re an IT pro with a knack for remote troubleshooting, but one day a ticket lands in your queue from a place so isolated, so disconnected, that even the concept of “remote” support seems laughable. Welcome to “The Island That IT Forgot About”—a true story of corporate missteps, FIFO paramedics, and an IT setup so fragile it’s a wonder it ever worked at all.
On this remote Australian mining island, the only thing more scarce than a good Wi-Fi signal was a visit from an actual IT technician. Medical staff came and went in one-week rotations, laptops were shared like hand sanitizer, and the entire operation depended on a patchwork of cellular SIMs, guest Wi-Fi, and virtual desktops. The result? An IT support scenario so nightmarish, even seasoned techs recoiled at the thought of grabbing an “island” ticket.
Welcome to the Clinic: Where IT Goes to Die
Let’s set the stage: This wasn’t some sun-kissed paradise. The clinic, set up to care for mining workers and island residents, existed entirely off-network. There was no on-site IT presence, no domain connectivity, and support was handled by a team back in Sydney—who, as the original poster “Chris” discovered, would rather do anything else than deal with this location.
The Standard Operating Environment (SOE) was a Frankenstein’s monster: cellular laptops (that barely worked), VMware Horizon for persistent Windows 7 virtual desktops, and a reliance on another company’s guest Wi-Fi. “No company Network equipment installed in the clinic,” Chris recalls, “and each laptop was shared by whichever paramedic was on duty.” The recipe was simple: take a highly regulated medical environment, sprinkle in FIFO staffing, and top with unreliable connectivity. What could go wrong?
As community member u/Entegy quipped: “It’s tough to support that kind of environment for sure but man why even bother having the contract if you're gonna provide no service?” The answer, as others dryly noted, usually boils down to money and metrics—a theme that would haunt this story until the bitter end.
Tickets From Hell: When Support Metrics Trump Support
Chris’s first “island” ticket should have been easy: a printer wasn’t mapping properly in the VDI. But what should have been a routine fix devolved into a marathon of VPN workarounds, missing drivers, and cellular dead zones. Each step took three times longer than in any other clinic. “Is that why nobody grabs these tickets?” Chris wondered.
Turns out, yes. In fact, the entire support team was incentivized to avoid these tickets because they tanked their precious KPIs. “Love that moment where you find out your job as Support is not to provide support, but to hit that ‘Close ticket’ button as often as possible,” joked u/Flintlocke89. Another commenter, u/Quartinus, nailed the real issue: “If the support team’s metrics and leadership actively discourage working on this site because it takes longer, that should be ringing internal alarm bells… Not just pushing their tickets to the bottom of the pile and hoping they will go away.”
This misalignment of incentives meant that, while the clinic’s issues festered, support staff learned to avoid anything time-consuming—and users suffered. Tickets for basic problems like full VDI disk space or login issues would linger for weeks, only to resurface when a new paramedic rotated in. As Chris wryly observed, “It was really just a bad design right from the beginning, and they were effectively set up to fail.”
The Quest to Fix the Unfixable (and Red Tape’s Last Laugh)
Eventually, the mounting complaints and risk of losing a lucrative contract got the attention of upper management. Enter Ted, a one-man project team tasked with fixing everything: migrate to Windows 10, overhaul networking, refresh hardware, and “make the business happy.” Ambitious? Absolutely. Successful? Not so much.
Some progress was made—users got shiny new Win10 VDIs, and a new process for caching user accounts was put in place. But real infrastructure upgrades, like installing fiber or corporate network equipment, were shot down as too expensive or too slow to approve. As u/ipullstuffapart insightfully remarked, “This is a fantastic example of where the trade-off between security and convenience needs to be flexible to reality. In effect, corporate policy getting in the way of patient care which could be life or death.”
Instead, the workaround was to have the outgoing paramedic set up the next user before leaving. Predictably, human error and forgetfulness soon led to more lockouts and frustration. “With respect Mr Boss, Sir, are you trying to make this fail?” asked u/ratsta, echoing the collective eyeroll of the IT community.
Lessons from the Island: What Not to Do in Remote IT
In the end, the clinic closed—contract lost, users stranded, and support staff left with a cautionary tale. The comments section became a support group of its own: some shared war stories from similar hellish environments (“As an Australian ex-IT worker, I’ve felt this pain on so many levels,” sighed u/d1ng0d4n), others offered technical suggestions that should have been obvious (Starlink, anyone?), and many just marveled at the preventable chaos.
OP Chris was philosophical about the experience: “Everyone who took calls from the island was well aware that they had IT support problems, and it wasn’t their fault.” The real culprit? A mix of bad design, corporate penny-pinching, and a culture that valued quick wins over real solutions.
As u/Harry_Smutter put it: “Who offers a support contract for a healthcare clinic that they can’t adequately support!? …Kudos to you for doing everything you could to help the clinic out.” Sometimes, all you can do is try—and maybe share your story so the next company doesn’t repeat your mistakes.
Conclusion: Have You Survived an “Island” of Your Own?
If you’ve ever fought with remote support, battled stubborn infrastructure, or been told to “just make it work” by someone who’s never left the office, this saga is for you. Share your own horror stories, advice, or just commiserate in the comments below.
After all, in IT, sometimes the best support comes not from a ticketing system—but from those who’ve been stranded on the same digital island.
What’s the worst remote support setup you’ve ever seen? Let’s hear your tales from the trenches!
Original Reddit Post: The Island That IT Forgot About.