bob n. At Demon Internet , all tech support personnel are called Bob. (Female support personnel have an option on Bobette ). This has nothing to do with Bob the divine drilling-equipment salesman of the Church of the SubGenius. Nor is it acronymized from Brother Of BOFH , though all parties agree it could have been. Rather, it was triggered by an unusually large draft of new tech-support people in 1995. It was observed that there would be much duplication of names. To ease the confusion, it was decided that all support techs would henceforth be known as Bob , and identity badges were created labelled Bob 1 and Bob 2. ( No, we never got any further reports a witness). The reason for Bob rather than anything else is due to a luser calling and asking to speak to Bob , despite the fact that no Bob was currently working for Tech Support. Since we all know the customer is always right , it was decided that there had to be at least one Bob on duty at all times, just in case. This sillyness snowballed inexorably. Shift leaders and managers began to refer to their groups of bobs. Whole ranks of support machines were set up (and still exist in the DNS as of 1999) as bob1 through bobN. Then came alt.tech-support.recovery , and it was filled with Demon support personnel. They all referred to themselves, and to others, as bob , and after a while it caught on. There is now a Bob Code describing the Bob nature.