Help: Our Middle Name

Help: Our Middle Name

IT help desk pilot fish fields a question from a caller: "I'm filling out paperwork for a new work-study employee who will be doing general office work. What should her title be?" Fish: I'm not sure it matters, and certainly it isn't up to me to decide. Caller: "Would 'administrative assistant' be appropriate?" Fish: No, I don't think so if she's just doing general office work. Caller: "How about 'office clerk'?" Fish: Yes, that sounds fine. "She thanked me and hung up," fish sighs. "We don't call it the help line for nothing!"

Er, Yes

New user calls support pilot fish early one morning, complaining that his computer won't power up even though everything is plugged in just as it was the night before. Fish walks down to check it out -- and finds the user pressing the power button on his empty laptop docking station. Fish: Where's the laptop? User: "I left that at home. Do I need that to get on my computer here?"

Missing Persons

VP of IT sends out an e-mail announcing a big IT meeting on Friday, and it's not hard to guess what it's about. "It was the end of the quarter, and we'd been through several reductions in force before," says a pilot fish working there. "So it didn't take a genius to figure out what the meeting was about. But the kicker was that, since the people who were being let go weren't going to be there anyway, they didn't receive the invitation to the meeting. All anyone had to do to figure out who was being let go was to check who was missing from the e-mail header."

Film School

Pilot fish is browsing among the digital cameras at a big discount store when he overhears another customer complaining about the cost of the digital film for her camera. "She said it was too expensive to keep buying memory cards because she filled them up so quickly," says fish. He explains to her that she can copy her pictures from the cards onto a computer, then erase the cards and reuse them. The customer is delighted for a moment -- then she frowns and asks fish, "But now what am I going to do with those 25 extra cards?"

Thanks, Boss

Boss confronts this small outfit's IT administrator in the parking lot and fires him on the spot. Next day, tech-savvy pilot fish hears about the firing, and he's a little concerned. Did you get the admin passwords, and did you change them? fish asks. "Not to worry," boss says. "We took his keys when we fired him!"