Thank you, Peter — a well-earned retirement
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If your business has called Peat's for IT help over the last couple of decades, chances are Peter McKechnie has been to your office, untangled your network, or talked you down off a ledge over the phone with that unflappable calm of his.
Peter spent the better part of his working life keeping the district's computers, servers and networks running — quietly, reliably, and without ever making you feel daft for asking. He learned each client's setup the way you learn a neighbour's place: which machine sulks in the heat, which cable's been dodgy since 2014, who needs the screen made bigger. That kind of memory doesn't come out of a manual.
“Half the job is the technical bit. The other half is being someone people aren't afraid to ring.”
He started when a 'server' lived in a cupboard and a site visit meant a boot full of beige boxes and a soldering iron just in case. He finished in the era of cloud backups, remote monitoring and one-click support — and took every change of those years in his stride, because the job underneath never really changed: turn up, listen, fix it, explain it.
Peter has retired, and while we'll miss him at the bench every morning, we couldn't be happier for him. The quiet competence he brought to every job is exactly what we've built the service desk around — and what we'll keep doing in his honour.
From everyone at Peat's — and from the hundreds of businesses he looked after — thank you, Peter. Enjoy it. You've earned every minute.
