I've seen enough horrors first (but mostly second) hand of small shops (admittedly not like the story, but I'll talk about what I know) running their own systems. They'll have 2-3 people running everything. From the mail server to setting up printers to replacing bad hardware components.

If I were in that boat, I'd beg and plead to put everyone on a disposable internet-only type machine and run webapps only. Then I could worry about security and reliability, which sadly gets last priority in most places :(