If You Are Not Part of the Solution Then You Are Part of the Problem

Apparently I am a part of the problem. I know you all find that hard to believe but it’s true at least today anyway.

For the past couple of weeks we have been having some real DSL speed issues. AT&T has been working on it. Well, I can’t really say they are working on it. Let’s just say they tell me they are working on it and giving me some stupid line about a router down somewhere in the continental US. I guess if they tell me it’s somewhere in the entire United States I will be patient while they try to find that needle in a haystack. Anyway, it comes and goes so I never know from day to day if it will be slow or not. This morning for 3 hours my Outlook tried to download 46 e-mails and the only one it would download was a question from a co-worker and it downloaded that message at least 20 times. I should have answered it 20 times. That would have ticked her off and then a new problem would have started.

I finally decided to launch a complaint to the computer complaint department. So I closed my door and yelled at myself. It kind of hurt my feelings. I finally decided that I wasn’t going to do anything about it so after another ½ hour I decided to contact Biff. I told him that I couldn’t download e-mail and I was getting really frustrated and oh by the way, I e-mailed myself 5 pictures from home last night. Shoot. I didn’t want to admit that maybe that was the problem, but I knew he would eventually figure it out. He’s smart like that. Yeah...that was the problem. Well, that and of course a slow DSL connection. So he comes back in that condescending tone I love (OK he’s instant messaging but trust me when I say he can still talk down to me even through IM), and tells me he deleted that e-mail and then asked why I didn’t download the pictures onto my thumb stick.

My what?

Thumb stick? Finally it dawns on me that he means my memory stick. You know those little things you can plug into your USB port and download all kinds of stuff. Now I have heard it called a geek stick, a removable storage plug, a memory stick, but this was the first time I have heard it called a thumb stick. So I asked him why they call it a thumb stick. His response…I don’t know. Maybe it’s because it’s the size of your thumb.

I think with an answer like that I can safely say I’m not the only problem this company has.