Monday, January 18, 2010

Dear Help Desk, Please Put the Gun Down

It's probably unethical or something for me to work on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday (observed). I came to work anyway, knowing that the office would be largely empty. I didn't know that the main source of my work-related consternation would be here, serving up shitty emails and sauntering into my office to blinkety-blink at me as they stuttered their discombombulated concerns.

I just want you to know that I just ate, so I should be less cranky, by a factor of at least five, and much less likely to begin to cry. But there's nothing really like a good frustrated cry.

Dear Help Desk, reads an email from a friend... someone I actually like and enjoy talking to... could you please change the wording of this fake official email that I keep getting from some spammer? Dear friend, I know it looks like it's our email system sending you email but we don't use the mailer-daemon for our email, so it's not us. And, yes, we've told you this at least four different times in five different ways, but I'll tell you again, patiently, because I like you. But I swear to G-d, if you ask me again about this crap I might just scream. P.S. You're still coming to the dinner-ish party I'm hosting, right?

Other topics, from people I really can't stand, or those who just annoy me intermittantly are:
"Why won't my computer knead and bake my bread for me? It is a computer after all. It can do anything, even if I have every application known to man open and running complex regression analyses."

"I've been having this recurring problem but I always call the emergency Help Desk phone number instead of documenting it in an email to Help Desk so that people can follow up on it. It gave me an error and I wrote it down, in crayon, on this napkin. I can't read this, can you?"

For the record, I disabled part of your email system because you abuse it so badly the rest of your programs won't work. And I refuse to even talk to you, even as you toddle around in my office on this quiet vacation-like day, when I was trying to get other stuff done that actually requires concentration.

Also, when I was working on your computer I took a screen shot of your desktop because you think that's where all your files should go. I share it with my co-workers and we laugh at you relentlessly because it is a great illustration of how far up your ass your head is.

(this image deleted, as requested)