Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 23:05:24 -0400
From: Mister X
Subject: And yet this is common...

So it's Monday, again!
I come strolling into my cubicell, boot my PC and grab my mug to fill it with 
that heavenly blood suppliment known as coffee and punch in.  I get stopped by my 
boss before I can punch in... a woman in admin who was hired not for the length 
of her wit, but the length of her skirt, is having problems with Word.

Ah... stupidity, aka job security (unfortunately).
I walk to her large office... complete with closable door, and peer at her 
computer. A Compaq, running Windows 95, with a document open in Word...and four 
spreadsheets in Excel, a half composed letter in Lotus Notes, two databases in 
Access, 8 things in the system tray (none of which are the virus scanner which I 
just enabled on her PC last week) and Netscape opened to 
www.streamingbandwidthhog.com displaying current real-time satellite images of 
weather patterns down to the atom.

She can't print.

Wonder why.

So I do the futile ctl-alt-del to try and close down one little thing and it 
BSODs.

She asks "What'd you do to my letter!"

Explaining to her why not to open fifty things at once is useless considering 
I've tried four times, fifth time's a charm.

"You had way to many applications open on your desktop."
(Blank stare)
"Too many things open on the screen."
(Blank stare)
"Your mouse needs cleaning."

"Oh, yeah it has been kind of slow."

So I reboot her machine and watch it turn 4.72 megs o' data into file001.chk 
through file162.chk and promptly delete them. It finishes rebooting comes up to 
the login screen I tell her to try it again with just Word this time and head off 
to get my much sought after caffine. I've just put the cup to my lips in the 
coffee room and she appears in the doorway. 

"It still won't print."

I roll on down the hall back to her room and look again. This time she truly only 
has Word open with one document with the "I can't print" error message floating 
above it.

I check her networked printer, everything fine there, paper, online, and ready to 
print. Then I check her connection to the network... she is, of course, not even 
logged in.

I try not to think about the fact that I left her at the Novell login screen and 
she HAD to click on cancel to do this to me.

I kindly inform her for the ten billionth time that she has to log in to print or 
get access to the network drives.
(Blank stare)
I bring up the login again and hold her hand through the difficult login process 
of entering her name and remembering her password (which is her son's name and 
written on a sticky note attached to the front of the monitor).

After I'm convinced that I can now leave her to her own devices and get back to 
the important things, like repeat this process for fifty more users, I go back to 
get my coffee. 

It's tepid.

Now the only reason that this whole episode is brought forth is because a week 
later my paycheck comes with one day missing. When I ask the person who is 
supposed to check on these things before it goes to payroll, a certain short 
skirted, web surfing, non logging in admin. She says that because I forgot to 
punch in and because she was too busy to verify it, I have to wait two more 
weeks.

AND NOW THE GAMES WILL COMMENCE!