Disgruntled Guy & The Tea of Misery
The morning was relaxing with the sounds of light music reverberating through the fluorescent lit halls of the mundane building that I call work. I tapped my foot to Mandy by Barry Manilow, and my blood pressure immediately spiked when I got the call. Beep Boop…”Adam” said the high pitched voice of peon #423 “My computer is broken”. I replied “What is the problem?” with my eyes closed and head shaking wishing I could get a better description of what has happened just once. “I can’t type anything” was the response. “Is your keyboard plugged in?” I said with a short tone in my voice. A minute passed. “Yes” said the peon. I said “Ok, I will be there momentarily”.
My coworkers who sat in cubicles wearing the standard company logo equipped denim shirts and jeans looked like prisoners of a women’s correctional facility as I despairingly trudged toward my “broken computer”.
When I arrived I saw nothing out of the ordinary except for a grown adult that had too many toys and pictures of animals on her desk. The keyboard however didn’t look broken. I attacked that machine with the standard array of techniques anybody would use. I performed “the reboot”, “the update”, and the “swearing under the breath”, but nothing worked.
It was 15 minutes later I decided to call the time of death on the keyboard and to fetch a new one.
I sat and wondered to myself. What happened? How could this be? Why would a keyboard stop working for no reason?
When I stood up to retrieve a new keyboard it was then she spoke I am not going to lie. I spilled my tea on the keyboard.
My heart sank, my eyes filled with rage, and I died a little inside. I pictured myself strangling her with the cord from that keyboard while a relentless fountain of tea poured over her face making it difficult for her to breath. Instead I replaced her keyboard and her computer worked. And I lived on to fight the losing battle that is tech support for another day.
I would like to thank my coworker for inspiring this story by spilling tea on her keyboard, cleaning it up, calling me to report the problem, and then wasting 15 minutes of my life by not telling me what happened.
3 Comments
chaunna on December 4th, 2007
neat story… looking forward to the next one 
admin on December 4th, 2007
Josh,
Thanks for the response. I am glad that you enjoyed to the story. And congrats on being the first comment on my blog.
Chaunna,
Thank you for reading the story, I appreciate all of the help that you have given me with the blog so far.
Adam
Josh on December 3rd, 2007
Good story, I like it!