Yesterday was the day from hell. I�ve mentioned that one of my jobs is moving and setting up computers. It�s not that hard. However, I must also mention that I don�t understand the inner workings of PC�s. The things that seem to be easy turned out to be very hard yesterday.
Men. I know I have male readers who�ll understand what happened between me and a formerly adored supervisor of mine yesterday. I had a relatively easy job. Move two computers on two different systems. Not too hard.
Well, I got lost on the way to this office. When I finally found the right hallway, I realized that somewhere along my journey that I also lost my information sheet about the exact location of the office and the customer�s name. Drat!
Sighing, I went down to an associate�s office to look up this information. Armed with info, I felt confident that this task wouldn�t take too long.
I found the office pretty quickly. I was doing a move for Mr. Man. I took down the two systems like that. No problem. The customer was a nice older Christian man and I really enjoyed talking to him while completing this portion of the job. It didn�t take long at all.
However, once I moved them to the new office, I realized we didn�t have enough of the right cable to hook the system up correctly. The guy had one of those stupid Ethernet boxes. Folks like me hate them.
I tried calling downstairs to my office to see if I should go ahead and replace the card with regular cable. No one answered the phone any of the 3 times that I called. So, I talked to this gal, we shall call her Rue, who�d worked on my team at some time recently. She said she thought I should take out the Ethernet box.
Simple enough. I�d done it before. However, after struggling to get the cover off the CPU and going to work on the screw holding in the Network Interface Card, I realize that it was probably a He-Man that put it in, in the first place. The thing wouldn�t budge. I had my handy toolkit, but the Flathead screwdriver did nothing but scrape out of the groove. It wasn�t big enough. Then I went down to my desk and got my bigger flathead/Phillips screwdriver combo. I thought for sure it would work.
It didn�t. I sat on the guy�s floor for an hour trying to get this unscrewed. I called down to the office and nobody was there.
I decided to call it a day. I assured my customer.
�Mr. Man, I will be back in the morning with stronger tools.�
Once I left, I felt that maybe, just maybe if I went back in them morning with a renewed attitude, I might just be able to get that screw off the box. Maybe I was just tired.
In the morning, I went straight to Mr. Man�s office. I was all smiles and confidence.
That quickly disappeared when, after 25 minutes, the screw still hadn�t loosened. I�d done everything I could, including �righty-tighty, lefty-loosy�. I called downstairs and my supervisor, we shall call him Rupert, hurriedly gave me some pointers, none of which I hadn�t tried already. We hung up.
Exasperated, I went at this again, and sadly, the NIC card broke out of it�s slot, damaging the port and the NIC card. My heart dropped. I was in tears now. This poor Mr. Man soothed me the best he could, but I was mad and humiliated. I felt stupid.
I called back and told Rupert what happened. �I�ll be there in a few minutes� and he hung up on me.
He appeared in the doorway in less than five minutes. I�m sure the sight of me sitting on the man�s carpet with an open CPU in front of me didn�t warm his heart. He examined the NIC card, the port and sighed. He unscrewed the NIC with a handy-dandy multi-use tool in less than 20 seconds.
�You�ll need to get him a new IBM out of the PC farm.� He said this without looking at me.
I explained that the man needed information off the hard drive.
�Then you�ll need to put his hard drive into the new IBM.�
He made me follow him to the PC farm. He picked up an IBM, took the cover off with no problem. He hurriedly showed me how to take out the hard drive, what cables to hook up and mentioned how easy it is to replace a NIC card. Unfortunately, I didn�t really understand what he said but I was too embarrassed to ask.
I took the new IBM up to Mr. Man�s office. I began doing my surgery immediately, and was irritated to note that the inside of this PC looked nothing like Mr. Man�s PC. After much struggling, I realized I had taken out the zip drive. Crap.
Then I got it mixed up, what went to what. I couldn�t remember what went into what.
Finally, it seemed I had everything in place, so leaving the cover off, I went ahead and hooked up the PC to the monitor to see if it booted up okay.
Darn. A message came on saying, �No operating system detected.�
Well, it was probably because I missed hooking up some wires. No matter what I did, the same message flashed on the screen.
Dejected, I once again called Rupert.
This time, he slammed the phone in my ear after I told him that I�d had it, that this wasn�t my area of specialty and I was done with it. I told him I was ready to give this gig up.
After we hung up, I apologized profusely to the customer, who had a good point. �Melissa, if they would�ve taken ten minutes to help you when you first asked for it, then the NIC card wouldn�t be broken and you wouldn�t have had to replace my system. Don�t feel bad.� I wanted to hug the guy, but before I could, Rupert walked into the office and set to work on this man�s PC. The only eye contact was an icy glare.
Without a word, I loaded up the man�s old PC, and left.
I had a lot of work to do that day, but I said the hell with it and asked to go home. My boss told me that it was fine.
You know I know I explained that I didn�t know how to do this stuff. How can Rupert be mad at me for not knowing it?
The day from hell was over. The hell with it all.
08:44 - Thursday, Nov. 20, 2003
Recent entries:
What you missed - January 16, 2012
%%older_entries%%From hell - October 19, 2010
%%older_entries%%a rant from a few weeks ago - August 17, 2010
%%older_entries%%Tired - June 20, 2010
%%older_entries%%A beautiful lie - March 11, 2010
%%older_entries%%
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