C: I can’t get any of my programs.
me: Good morning. Have you restarted your machine? (She never logs out, just locks her screen. After a nuclear war, cockroaches and her login will still be here.)
C: OK. I will restart. (20 seconds later, not having gone offline) OK. It still didn’t work. Please help NOW.
me: OK I will head over there in a few minutes.
C: OK, Please come NOW.
me: (sighing loudly) On my way.
I get to her desk, and I see her laptop in its dock, and one of her two monitors is obviously near death. Unless you look at it closely, it looks like it’s powered off. Just barely, you can see her windows taskbar and her whole main desktop.
The monitor is buzzing off and on, and occasionally flickering.
I undock the laptop and proceed to set her desktop to be able to use the laptop screen as a secondary monitor with the other, good monitor.
C: That won’t work. I already told you I restarted it several times.
me: (look of disbelief that someone in charge of large acquisitions doesn’t realize that undocking a laptop isn’t the same as rebooting it) You’ll need a new monitor. I will order you one and tell IT Guy to get it to you ASAP.
C: I can’t order it myself?
me: No, please let me do it on your behalf. (anticipating the complete garbage fire that service call would likely become)
C: (Strangely defeated) …..ok. Well, get going, then.
At this point I just walked off. I ordered new monitor and had it delivered directly to the customer. I am still waiting for the call to “hook it up”
