"Trust but verify." "No u."
Background: I was vendor support for a service running on one of this company's servers. We had ruled out any issues on our end and pointed at a local network issue, but I was needed for testing at the end so I got to stay as a fly on the wall. This had turned into a big meeting with several network people, sys admins, several managers and upper management, and one lonely local IT guy who was the only set of hands on the affected machine. We had decided to change the IP on the affected machine.
A local IT guy (IT), a network guy (Net), and network guy's manager (NetMGR) walk into a bar...
Net: Alright, I'm going to send you the new IP in the meeting chat. You'll need to set it as a static on the server.
IT: Got it. Entering it now. ... Done.
Net: I'm still not able to reach it... Can you try rebooting it?
One reboot later.
Net: Still nothing... Can you send me a picture of the info you entered into the static just to double check?
IT: Sure, trust but verify. 760
I got you. Give me a second.
one blurry phone picture later, since the machine's offline at this point.
Net: This doesn't make sense... That's exactly what I sent you. Can someone else try to reach it from a different source?
NetMGR: Net, can YOU send a screenshot of what you entered on our end for that port?
Net: I guess? I copied it straight out of the entry...
Net sends a screenshot that has an IP that clearly does NOT match what he sent in chat earlier. I'm talking <IP_ADDRESS> compared to <IP_ADDRESS>. Not even close. It was probably an IP address from a different entry altogether, but I'll never know.
Complete.
Silence.
(For much longer than was comfortable.)
IT: And... done! Can you reach it now?
Net: Yes...
IT: Cool, can we check to see if the service is working with the new IP?
Me: Uh, yeah. Testing now.
The meeting proceeded and it ended up being something else (still a network issue, just something outside my wheelhouse). I'll never forgot you, super chill local IT guy. 760