Well… Chad has requested I tell more stories. Reporting news of one kind or another is kewl, but we need to put a more human interest spin on the blog. So… here it goes…

I’m one of the System Admin’s for a company resident in Delaware. Our small IT department is a close knit group of individuals. We like each other… we like working with each other… and will usually stick up for each other. (What I’m trying to say is… we take care of our own.)

On Friday of last week, my supervisor and a few other individuals were on vacation. This effectively left the IT department with myself and 2 of the desktop technicians. No big… we can handle the volume.

On this day, a user (we’ll call her Jane Bitch) called in a ticket with our Help Desk stating that her Outlook wasn’t sychronizing with her Mailbox. OK. She dropped her laptop off and requested that we escalate the ticket to urgent since she had a plane to catch at 9pm that evening. It was only 10am. No problem… lots of time. Our head desktop dude (whom I’ll call Kevin) was called. He jumped to… and snatched up the laptop.

After about an hour, I decided to check in with Kevin to see how it was going. He informed me that he’d barely had any time to work on the problem since Ms. Bitch kept calling him every 10 minutes to get status updates. I instructed him to focus on the problem and let his voice mail deal with her.

Well… Jane was not to be denied. Since no one was answering her calls, she decided that she’d need to go face-to-face to get the answers she needs. She started her visits around 11:30am. The visits occured every 15 minutes, and soon became quite annoying. Kevin was doing his best to keep his patience with Jane, but it was obvious that it was getting harder with each passing visit. One Office reinstall, 1 registry tweak, 2 reboots, and 4 or 5 Bitch-visits later… she was apparently starting to get annoyed at Kevin’s lack of progress. She started yelling… and I mean LOUD!!! However, what got to me was that she used the word “incompetent”.

Now, as I said, we take care of our own. Having been a desktop technician myself in the past, I feel that I have earned the privledge to verbally abuse the desktop tech’s is my department. I rose from the ranks… so I earned the razz’ing privledge. When I do it, it’s just in fun teasing. However… users like this have absolutely no right to inflict this brand of verbal / mental cruelty on our Techs. Something had to be done.

Once she departed, I pulled Kevin aside and told him to let me see her laptop. I browsed around for about 10 minutes and found what I was looking for. Jane Bitch was going down! I pulled her hard drive out of her laptop, replaced it with a blank, and told Kevin to start pulling a clean image to her box. Then, I locked her original hard disk in one of my cabinets. The stage was set… and players soon to enter.

At 1:45pm, Jane returned… in full on Bitch-mode. She nagged at Kevin a little and had a conniption when she discovered that her laptop was being reimaged!!! The horror!!! As instructed, Kevin told her to come speak with me.

Here’s how conversation went…

Jane: Kevin said you told him to reimage my laptop!
Me: Yes. That’s correct.
Jane: You had no right! It’ll never be read in time for my trip!
Me: Yes. That’s correct.
Jane: But I need my laptop! What am I supposed to do in the meantime?!
Me: I’d suggest that you start with appologizing to Kevin for your rude behavior.
Jane: WHAT?! How dare you…

< She kicks into high gear and really starts to lay it on. By know, you can see the penis-envy ailment known as "management" starting to kick in. 2 or 3 minutes pass... then she finally starts to calm down. >

Me: Are you done?
Jane: What?
Me: Are you done? Do you feel better now that you’ve vented on someone?
Jane: How dare you…

< more of the same... finally >

Jane: HR will be hearing about this. I can’t believe someone like you managed to get hired.
Me: I was just thinking the same thing.
Jane: That’s it… I’m calling HR! You’re gone!
Me: GREAT! I’ll dial for you!
Jane: What?!
Me: Well… I’d like to speak with HR as well. If you’re going to call them, then let’s do it now. That way I can make sure that they have all the facts straight.

< She looks a little confused now... which means that I'm starting to have fun now! >

Jane: What facts?
Me: Well… I’m sure HR would like to hear about THE 2 GIG OF PORN YOU HAD ON YOUR LAPTOP!!!
Jane: Oh… well… you can’t prove that. Kevin is reimaging my laptop. It’s gone. So… HA!
Me: No… he’s reimaging a different hard disk. I have your hard disk (porn and all) hidden away in a nice safe place.
Jane: What?! You have no right… I…
Me: Actually, catching people like you who abuse the company’s equipment with your personal fetishes is part of my job description. I’m perfectly justified.
Jane: But… I… ummm… Wait… I…
Me: As I said… you were just on your way to appologize.

She didn’t quite appologize to Kevin. However, she was alot more docile… and the words “Please” and “Thank You” were suddenly added into her vocabulary. She left early that day… but we didn’t tell her that we were almost done her laptop. Kevin finished her laptop, we moved her files (the business related ones anyway) to the new laptop, and handed it off to FedEx… and didn’t tell her. She flew home to California that night… stressed and wondering how she would ever get her laptop back.

She was amazed to find that her laptop beat her home. Inside the box was a little note that read…
— See what happens when you say “Please”… now call 1-302-xxx-xxxx and say “Thank You”. Signed, Me –

Kevin got a call that morning from a very grateful Bitch.

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