Shark Tank: The right tool for the job

The sales director for this company isn't very computer-savvy, and the IT manager pilot fish who's setting up the guy's new laptop knows that. So fish decides to try a little color coding.

"To make it easy for him, I gave him a blue LAN cable and a yellow modem cable," says fish. "And I marked his computer with a blue piece of tape where the LAN cable went, and a yellow piece where the modem line went."

The sales director hits the road with the laptop -- and promptly calls to complain that the modem is broken.

For 30 minutes, fish tries to troubleshoot the modem over the phone with the sales director. But nothing seems to be wrong. It passes all its diagnostics, and the settings are all correct.

Finally, fish asks if the cable is plugged into the laptop.

"He said yes," fish reports. "On a lark, I asked which cable. He said the blue one."

But the blue one is the LAN cable, fish points out. It has an RJ45 connector that's too wide to work with the modem.

"The sales director relayed to me that he had forgotten his modem cable at home," sighs fish. "So he took out his penknife and whittled the RJ45 connector until it fit in the modem port."