This Canadian pilot fish is an IT team leader at a large company which fields dozens of calls every day. Most of them are quite mundane but every once in a while something comes up that makes him chuckle.
One evening, fish gets an urgent phone call from one of the senior managers in the firm. “He said his screen was flashing windows at him and he couldn’t type anything in or click on anything with his mouse,” fish says.
The manager is no computer whiz, fish explains, but he’s not a newbie either. “I wandered off to his office pondering what could be causing this anomaly.”
When fish gets there and checks things out, sure enough, the manager has numerous windows open on his screen. The window in the forefront is the firm’s e-mail program, which is flashing continuously. The manager is on the phone and gestures at fish to come in and take over.
“I surveyed the situation for a minute and looked at the keyboard, thinking it might be a stuck Escape key — but no cure there,” fish says. However, he notices that the manager has several books and papers covering his desk and that one open binder is near the keyboard.
“I moved in closer and saw the problem,” fish says. “I slid the binder down and slightly to the right on the desk, taking the corner of it off of the ‘Enter’ key. The screen immediately stopped flashing and all keys and mouse operations returned to normal.”
Fish turns to the manager, who is still on the phone, nods to him, smiles and heads back to his office to enter this job into the company’s work request system as ‘complete.’
A couple of minutes later fish’s phone rings — it’s the manager. “We had a bit of a giggle over the situation and called it a day,” fish says.
“I did notice, after that call, that the manager’s desk, especially around his keyboard, was much neater.”
Sharky’s got a hankering for some more Canadian treats! We promise not to publish your name or any details that would identify you — so don’t be shy, send your true tales of IT life to [email protected].
