Atlas

Root Without Responsibility

#20 in Comedy Fiction · 🇩🇰 #148 in Fiction · 🇩🇰

About the show

Before helpdesks had ticket numbers. Before users had rights. Before IT had “customer service skills.” There was root. Root Without Responsibility is the origin story of the legendary Bastard Operator From Hell — told from the machine room floor. From a bored university operator at University of Waikato armed with system passwords and plausible deniability… To late-night rants written on a scavenged TRS-80 Model 100 with 23K of memory… To the strange, electric days of Usenet, when the support staff outnumbered the lusers and revenge was measured in diskquota.

Newest episodes

The No Button

Nov 12, 2026 20 min

Ollie has never been able to say no, so Philippa books him on Say No and Grow, a four-day course starring Percy the Padlock in a hard hat. She puts the measurement in writing: every visit to Ollie's desk under thirty seconds counts as a no, the target is twenty by Friday at 4:55, and the results go on the reception screen. IT to measure, exactly, no exceptions. Ollie says yes to everyone. Then the coffee machine on the end of his desk turns red, decides it doesn't trust the pump Ollie fitted at midnight, and starts turning people away in nine seconds each. By Thursday the screen says 151, Philippa's blog calls it growth, and Fiona Hale comes down to watch a refusal. Then Graham asks Ollie, in writing, to override the lock before the board meets. A darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on. Adapted from the Root Without Responsibility ebook. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

The Boardroom Projector

Nov 11, 2026 21 min

Nobody has worked the boardroom projector since 2017. Then Darren reads the whole wi-fi policy and finds the password on page three. Graham puts it in writing: Darren runs the board's AV, start to finish, whatever Darren puts on the projector is the board pack, and IT is not to touch it. Graham's eighty-four slides are on a memory stick. Darren's desktop is a shuffled slideshow of three thousand photos of his cousin's dog, Duchess. Graham presents the year of Digital Enablement for forty-one minutes, entirely in pictures of a Staffordshire bull terrier, and the chief executive laughs for the first time in a board meeting. Then a photo comes up that isn't a costume: Duchess in a life jacket, on a lilo, in the flooded car park, with a date stamp. Fiona Hale has nine rejected motor claims from the lake. A darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on. Adapted from the Root Without Responsibility ebook. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

Admin Rights

Nov 10, 2026 24 min

Sales hasn't raised a single ticket in a week, and its IT satisfaction score has gone from forty percent to a hundred. The reason is Darren, who believes he is a domain administrator and has been going from desk to desk fixing laptops. Every fix puts a new photo of his cousin's dog on the reception screen. Graham calls it citizen IT and puts it in writing: every member of staff gets exactly the same admin rights as Darren, Friday at 4:55, no exceptions, leadership first. Fiona Hale spends four hours assessing the risk of three hundred and forty people becoming administrators of one television. Graham asks to go first at 4:54, and for the first time in four years doesn't send the email. Then Dez looks at why the tickets really stopped, and finds one line in Bronwyn's notebook. A darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on. Adapted from the Root Without Responsibility ebook. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

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All episodes

The No Button

Nov 12, 2026 20 min

The Boardroom Projector

Nov 11, 2026 21 min

Admin Rights

Nov 10, 2026 24 min

The Printer That Knew Too Much

Nov 9, 2026 31 min

The printer on level three has never jammed, never guessed and never helped, and everybody hates it. So Graham brings in Tristan and PrintMind, an AI print assistant with a smiling toner cartridge called Inky, and puts it in writing: every job anyone at Kestrel has ever sent to the printer must come out, no deleting, no exceptions, collected in person at the Christmas party, Friday at 4:55. IT to move the printer. Smart Recall finds 41,212 forgotten jobs from eleven years: nine thousand photos of Darren's cousin's dog, 219 of Philippa leaving reception, six hundred green crayon drawings sent from the chief executive's phone, and 340 documents held for a man who has never touched a printer in his life. The insurer says Kestrel can neither print them nor delete them. Then the oldest job in Graham's pile comes out, one page, from extension 1200. A darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on. Extra-long episode. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

Janet's Thursdays

Nov 6, 2026 21 min

With the Harrogate claim finally paid, Janet in finance has nothing to reject on Thursdays. Graham puts it in writing: Janet audits every expense claim since 2014 against the expenses policy, word for word, no exceptions, no seniority, and anything without a receipt is paid back by Friday at 4:55. IT to give her the data, all of it. The policy turns out to be Graham's, voice-typed in the bath, and the strictest document in the company. His five lanyards are rejected as jewellery, Philippa's mileage costs 190 pounds per minute of presence, the coffee machine needs 212 signatures, and Darren's carrier bag of receipts makes him the most compliant man in the building. Then Janet reaches the board: the chief executive signs everything in green crayon, and the crayon has no receipt. A darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

The Storage Unit

Nov 6, 2026 22 min

A forty-pound invoice from Shiftwell Office Moves reveals that Kestrel has been renting a storage unit in Redditch since 2009, paid from a cost code called Ask Dez. Graham, now Head of Cost Transformation, puts it in writing: every unexplained contract closes at 4:55 on Friday, and anything found is disposed of by Shiftwell, no questions asked. Don't look in the boxes. Dez puts all forty-one unexplained contracts on the reception screen, with names. Darren explains the visitor wi-fi (it's for the dog), Philippa explains her photographer, Fiona writes three pages explaining the insurance, and the chief executive explains the soft play centre in green crayon. Only unit 14B is left. So Dez, Ollie and Carol drive up the ring road with a brass key from the drawer marked Responsibility, and find something under a blanket that has been humming for seventeen years. A darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

The Probation Review

Nov 5, 2026 22 min

HR's quarterly headcount check finds Darren on payroll twice: once as Darren, Sales, and once as Gary Darren Pollard, the new starter he's been buddying for three months. One of them has to go by Friday at 4:55. Graham puts it in writing: HR must not decide, Darren decides, IT provides all the data, and whichever Darren performs worse is offboarded. Dez provides all of it. Gary has never clicked a phishing link, never raised a ticket, never filed an expense claim and has perfect presence, mostly because he's been in a box under Darren's desk. Darren writes his own probation review, Philippa launches Be More Gary, Janet reads the leaver policy, and the insurer takes a very close interest in a 312-pound receipt from a soft play centre in Harrogate. A darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

The Benchmark

Nov 4, 2026 29 min

An American magazine wants to put Ask Kes in its annual helpdesk AI benchmark, against Thoughtwell's Kes-4 Enterprise: one point two trillion parameters, no lunch break, eleven thousand pounds a month. Graham puts the rules in writing: Kes-4 gets the same rights as Darren, nobody may touch a Kes-4 ticket, and if Kes-4 says it's fixed, it's fixed. Dez follows it exactly. Kes-4 answers every ticket in under a second with perfect empathy, and nothing gets fixed. Graham is locked out of his laptop, the coffee machine dies, Philippa photographs herself through the revolving door, and the leaderboard in reception says ninety-nine point nine percent. The baseline entrant is Carol the fern. Then someone reads rule twelve out loud, and Dez finally explains what the visitor wi-fi can do. A darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

Clive

Nov 2, 2026 26 min

The council has replaced Clive from the drains with FloodFlow, an AI powered app with a winking drain cover called Gully. Graham, who may have recommended it, puts the rule in writing: nobody at Kestrel may phone the council, everything goes through the app, and if it isn't in the app, it isn't happening. Dez follows it exactly. Gully will only help with water that already exists. The only person allowed to report a flood is Bronwyn, who doesn't use anything with a mascot. The car park becomes a lake for six days, with a duck, a heron, Graham's car, Philippa in a canoe and Darren's flood party, while finance rejects every claim because the flood isn't happening. Then Dez reads the model card, and finds out what the whole Midlands has really been using as its weather forecast. A darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

The Middle Name

Oct 30, 2026 35 min

Graham has bought Verity I.D., an identity platform with an owl called Hoo, and put the rule in writing: every employee must prove their full legal name matches their passport by Friday at four fifty-five, or nobody gets paid. Nobody, including I.T., may type in or look at anyone else's name. Trust the owl. Dez follows it exactly. Carol verifies with her plant passport. Darren turns out to be Gary. Graham's legal name briefly ends in "sent from the bath". And by Thursday, the whole company is waiting on one record: Bronwyn Ask Dez Tully, whose real middle name is in a brown envelope in the drawer marked Responsibility, which Dez has never opened. A longer special about trust, insurers, sweepstakes and the one name Dez has never written down. A darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

The Free Trial

Oct 29, 2026 24 min

Sales has gone independent. Tired of runbooks, Ask Kes and being told that it is broken and it is also them, they've signed up for Yesly, a bright orange cloud helpdesk with its own A.I. that answers in three seconds, day or night, and has never once said no. It's a free trial. It's on Darren's company card, just in case. Graham calls it citizen led digital enablement and puts it in writing: I.T. must not interfere, and if anyone in Yesly asks for anything, the answer is yes. Dez doesn't block it. He reads page thirty-one, joins as a helpful colleague, and helps. Exactly as the onboarding checklist asks. By Thursday the whole company is an active user, the renewal is worth nearly half a million pounds, and the contract goes to the workspace's most active user. Which is a fern. A darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

The Leaving Party

Oct 28, 2026 29 min

H.R. says Darren from Sales is leaving on Friday. Payroll says he isn't. His badge opens every door in the building except the one to his own floor. The culprit is Leaver Intelligence, a shiny new A.I. pilot from Thoughtwell Partners that reads everyone's calendars and offboards flight risks automatically at four fifty-five on a Friday, with no human in the loop. Graham has put it on a board slide. Tristan trusts the model. Dez is only Informed, so he doesn't fix anything. He just reads the leaver queue very carefully, writes the change request, and sends it to Bronwyn. With names. By Wednesday the whole company has accepted an invitation to Darren's leaving do at Wriggle Kingdom, the A.I. is predicting one hundred percent attrition, and somebody is going to have to be the human in the loop. A darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

Annual Leave

Oct 27, 2026 35 min

For the first time in eleven years, Bronwyn Tully has booked a week off. Nobody believes it, until her desk sensor reads zero. Her out of office says "For anything urgent, ask Dez", the leave policy says nobody may contact her, and Graham has been appointed Interim Executive Assistant, acting, in green crayon. By Tuesday the coffee has stopped, the car park is a lake and the chief executive is in three places at once. So Dez does what he always does: exactly what he's told, in writing. He has root on every system in the building, and Bronwyn is in almost none of them. To keep the lights on he has to work out what she actually does, one phone call at a time, while Philippa Crane occupies her desk next to the ball pit, the board meets on plastic chairs and Fiona Hale from the insurer arrives with a deadline: four fifty-five on Friday. And in the drawer marked Responsibility there is a sealed envelope, to be opened in an emergency. Define emergency carefully. A longer special episode of a darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

The Model Card

Oct 26, 2026 27 min

A new law says every artificial intelligence needs a published model card: one page saying what it is, what it was trained on and how often it makes things up. Graham has bought a glossy one from Thoughtwell Partners, with a glowing brain, one point two trillion parameters and a hallucination rate of zero. The chief executive would like a second opinion. So Dez fills in the official template for Ask Kes, the company's much-loved AI helpdesk, accurately and completely. Number of parameters: two. Scheduled maintenance: lunch. Then Fiona Hale from the insurer arrives to verify it. She watches the model work, observes a cheese and pickle sandwich, runs the regulator's hallucination test and asks to see the night shift. At two forty in the morning, Ask Kes answers a question nobody in the Cellar typed. Episode 6 of a darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on and the drawer marked Responsibility. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

The On-Call Rota

Oct 23, 2026 23 min

The drawer marked Responsibility now lives on level twelve, next to a ball pit, and Bronwyn has charged the on-call phone. At four fifty-five on a Friday, for the first time in his career, Dez is Responsible, in writing, on every row of the spreadsheet. So he does it properly. Every call goes exactly by the runbook, and all sixty-four runbooks start with the same step: ask Dez. By Monday there have been twenty-three incidents, seven thousand eight hundred and forty-three emails, two trips up the ring road with a fern and one man isolated in a ball pit. Two hundred and twelve people have signed a petition, and the building climbs the stairs to beg Bronwyn to take Responsibility back. Then someone asks who actually wrote the runbooks. Episode 5 of a darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on and the drawer marked Responsibility. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

Proof of Presence

Oct 22, 2026 38 min

Kestrel Amalgamated has a new Chief Workplace Officer, a return-to-office mandate and three hundred and forty desk sensors that count, every ten minutes, whether anyone warm is sitting at each desk. She wants every desk measured, back-filled to March and shown on the big screen in reception, with names. Dez calibrates the sensors to exactly the manufacturer's recommended setting, and a Boston fern becomes Presence Champion of the Week. Then level twelve goes live. The executive floor turns out to have been empty since March, the "forty percent rule" sends a removal van in at five to five on a Friday, and the drawer marked Responsibility ends up somewhere nobody expected. Episode 4 of a darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on and the drawer marked Responsibility. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

Business Continuity

Oct 21, 2026 24 min

Kestrel Amalgamated insures other companies against disaster, but it has never tested its own recovery plan, which is forty-two pages long and mostly a photograph of a fire extinguisher. An auditor arrives to run a live disaster recovery drill, Graham buys himself an Incident Commander vest, and Dez is asked to write the scenarios. He picks a disaster where the I.T. team is unavailable for the whole day. By lunchtime, the Incident Commander and the auditor are locked in a stairwell, Dez is officially dead in the car park with a flask of tea, and the only person who ever wrote a real page of the plan has quietly taken command. Episode 3 of a darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on and the drawer marked Responsibility. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

The Click Rate

Oct 20, 2026 23 min

The company's insurer wants proof of a "mature security culture", so Graham Pettifer orders a phishing test. He wants a big, scary click rate for his board slide, followed by a reassuring drop after some very expensive cartoon training. Dez Mulvaney, the sysadmin with root access to everything and responsibility for nothing, is told to make it realistic, with no exceptions. In writing. From the bath. Three rounds of fake emails later, the building has been emptied by a biscuit, a lorry full of peas has become soup, and the graph Graham takes to the board does not look like a ski jump. It looks like a tower block. Episode 2 of a darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on and the fern that approves the changes. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

Single Pane of Glass

Oct 19, 2026 24 min

A cost-cutting consultant arrives at Kestrel Amalgamated with a punishing password policy, a list of servers to kill and a plan to replace IT with an AI helpdesk. Dez Mulvaney, the sysadmin with root access to everything and responsibility for nothing, does exactly what he's asked, in writing. Episode 1 of a darkly funny original audio fiction series about the people who keep the lights on and decide who gets to leave the stairwell. Original story; all characters and companies are fictional. Voices synthesised locally with Chatterbox TTS (MIT).

The Bastard Wreaks Terrible Revenge

Mar 12, 2026 24 min

The Bastard Operator is back from a “fact-finding tour” of the United States… and finds the office exactly as he left it: full of incompetent users, clueless management, and people who really shouldn’t be touching network equipment.

Birth of the Bastard Operator From Hell

Mar 1, 2026 21 min

Ever wonder what the person controlling your server really thinks of you? In this episode, we dive into the "gluten-free, high-fibre" archives of the Bastard Operator from Hell (BOFH). Born in the late 1980s at the University of Waikato, the BOFH was a "Technical-SuperHero" with all the power and none of the responsibility. From rants written on a 23K "Trash-80" to a global cult following on Usenet and The Register, we explore how Simon Travaglia turned IT boredom into a cynical digital legacy. Discover why "I'm just an operator" became the most dangerous phrase in tech, and how one man from Hautapu, New Zealand, managed to terrify "lusers" for decades. Listen now to see if your disk quota is safe. 💾🚫

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🇩🇰 Comedy Fiction Best #20

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🇩🇰 Fiction Best #148

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Podcast details

Created by: Atlas
Status: Active
Latest episode: Nov 12, 2026
Episodes: 21
Release period: Daily
Avg. episode length: 26 min
Explicit: No
Language: English

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