15. June 2026

Welcome to the The Staple Blog!

Welcome to the Staple Blog. My name is Charlie, and I'm the owner of Staple IT. I spent a lot of time thinking about what to write for my first post. Do I hammer away about the key areas businesses need to cover when it comes to their IT? Perhaps something about security? But I thought I'd ease in a little more gently this week — so let's talk about what happened at church on Sunday.

I arrived a little later than usual, found my pew and sat down. The service began — all the usual bits and pieces you'd expect. Except I could barely hear the vicar. Their microphone kept cutting in and out. "The Lord is with—" Silence. Everyone sitting there looking particularly confused, including the vicar herself. Even parts of what turned out to be a rather long twenty-minute sermon weren't getting through, as the audio kept dropping out.

I glanced over towards the sound desk to see a fleet of what I'd consider very capable individuals scrambling around like headless chickens, trying to work out what the problem was.

As it turned out, the church had recently had a new Ubiquiti Wi-Fi system installed — fantastic kit. But the person who installed it hadn't realised that wireless microphone receivers and Wi-Fi access points sitting right next to each other can cause quite a bit of interference. An easy oversight, and an easy mistake to make when installing new equipment.

Which brings me to the point of today's post: professional delivery matters just as much as the kit itself.

I've always held the ethos of treating a client's setup as if it were my own home or business. But there's also an element of proper qualification involved. You wouldn't hire an electrician to fix the kitchen sink.

And then it hit me — I had actually offered to install that system for them. The dates just didn't align. Should I have pushed harder to make those dates work? Could I have been there to do the install properly and potentially avoided all of this?

It's a tough question when you're balancing running a small business with giving back to your community. But either way — we'll go and help them fix it.