A funny thing yesterday at work, I had an IT guy come up to my desk and scared the bejesus out of me as I had my headphones on with my brain firmly engaged in re-drafting a contract. (I listen to www.pandora.com whilst at my desk) He tapped me on the shoulder and I jumped. “Sorry mate, need to have a look at your Outlook.” He went on to explain that with a recent shuffle of secretaries and maternity leaves that most meeting requests in the company are getting rejected on the basis of a persons PA is not there or has changed roles. To me that seems stupid and I began to explain to this to my intruder, but he looked at me, put his hands up and said “Mate, I know, its stupid, but that’s fucking Microsoft for you.”
And who can argue with that logic, so I stood aside and let him sit at my machine.
He then noticed I run two monitors and said “Ah cool!”. He then dives into MS Outlook and starts selecting options and sure enough my assistant Gaylene was not listed as one of my delegates but given she had gone on Maternity Leave (and had since come back) it listed Karen who was her Mat Leave replacement but Karen was now filling in for another department and was apparently, according to the IT guy, getting all my meeting requests. So he wrote this all down and again I said “can’t you do this now?” and he just said without looking up “Microsoft. Needs to be done from the server”.
He then minimises everything to get to my desktop and sees my spivvy Firefox wallpaper. “Firefox! Best program ever written.” I agreed with him on that and then he opened Windows Explorer and opens the CD ROM drive which still had in it the CD for “IceWind Dale II”. I hate that when you get busted for using your laptop for non-work stuff, but the guy went “ah cool game! Have you got Neverwinter Nights II… Don’t worry I’m a geek too”. I laughed, I had now been labelled officially as a geek… Tweaked work PC, Firefox replacing the work standard Internet Explorer, and a RPG game disc in the CD drive. I was a member of the club.
So we got chatting about the virtues of World of Warcraft, the impending D&D online and the new IT helpdesk guy (well I hadn’t seen him before in the corridors) was a new friend and I now know that there is a geek culture in the office…
2 comments:
We are everywhere, secertly plotting the downfall of all those have oppresed us. Then again who would we scam the money from?
Wow, thanks for the Pandora tip, a very interesting concept. I've been wanting to find some new music based on what I like for ages, so this is perfect.
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