The Teacher Becomes the Pupil

Each Tuesday I will be posting a short story of an event that has occurred in the office the past week that may be memorable, embarrassing, or offensive in nature. This event took place between last Wednesday and yesterday.

Most of the time on this site I give advice on ways to get away with doing the least amount of work possible while keeping your job intact. This weeks Tuesday work story is of a different breed, however. Today I will tell a tale that involves me screwing up and how you can benefit by learning from my mistakes, however few there may be.

Each day when I write on this site I open up Microsoft Word 2007 and type away. I then save the file to my desktop, email the attachment to the sitemaster, and delete the file from my computer. In all honesty, it shouldn't be (especially for an IT wizard) too complicated. Ah, but that's where we tend to screw up the most in the world, on the easy tasks that we take for granted. Last Wednesday I wrote an article titled Internet Site of the Week, saved it to my computer, and emailed the attachment. Normally my next step would be to delete the file off my desktop, but I was busy trying to walk the dog with a yo-yo that I brought in from home and must have forgotten. I eventually nailed the trick in case you were wondering. Today I brought in my handheld electronic Yahtzee game, and I'm going for the record.

Anyway, I walk in to the office yesterday and I'm immediately confronted by one of the Help Desk guys in IT with a concerned look on his face. "Steve, is this yours?" What he handed me was a printed copy of last Wednesdays cantbefired.com article. It turns out I didn't save it on the desktop, but instead saved it to our H: Drive, which happens to be the most popular public folder within our companys network. It was opened by Sherry in Marketing who was just snooping around, read the article, and immediately called the Help Desk. This is where I got lucky. She's not smart enough to figure out who wrote it, and just so happened to report her findings to a low-level IT guy that owes me a favor. He immediately figured out it came from my computer, printed a copy off, and deleted it from the network.

I had an inkling that this young punk might try and blackmail me with this information, so I had to get smart quick. I pulled him into the kitchen, closed the door, and explained to him that I'm writing a personal memoir about my life (not true, this is hardly a memoir) and I was working on it during lunch at my desk. Then I asked him to please not to tell ANYONE because I'm kinda sorta embarrassed about it. He agreed, and handed me the printed copy, which I immediately destroyed. When I walked back to my desk I went to our site and reread the article to remind myself if I said anything at all incriminating, in case the document would have fallen into the wrong hands. Here are some excerpts...


-This question comes up often...Steve, if you do so little in your occupation, then what are you doing for the eight hours while you're at work each day?
-The problem with this is if you work in a small company there isn't much of a chance that you'll have anyone reasonably interesting to talk to.
-This site has one of the greatest miniature golf games I've ever come across.
-So I taught him one of my new favorite ways to deal with unhappy clients. Simply hang up and then unplug the phone from the jack and keep doing what you're doing.


Needless to say, I would have been fired immediately. Security would have had to escort me to the exit without even allowing me back to my desk to retrieve my personal belongings. Then they would have boxed up all the things in my office and shipped them to an incorrect address in Morocco on purpose. I would have been without my yo-yo for a good long while. This is how mad they would have been. But these things happen at work sometimes, so you have to know how to react when a situation gets out of hand and put out that fire before the fire engulfs your electronic Yahtzee.

**Charles Update** Yesterday he scheduled his first meeting with a client that will occur this week with a government contracting firm. I told him you're not allowed to look government contractors in the eye so make sure you look down at the floor at all times. It kinda sucks that I lost this kids trust the first day, cause he does not believe a single thing I say.