Snippets from Friday 2.26.10

Amie, the color copier is broken. Can you fix it?

Sure, let me call IT.

(I sit on hold laughing to myself because I just spent the last four days watching a TV show about the IT department and I have visions of them in my head.) The man who picks up the phone is not British, though, so I’m quickly pulled out of my British television day dream. JP takes the information and tells me they are sending someone over. Being IT, I don’t really expect them until sometime after lunch. However, apparently the color copier being down is cause for extreme panic in the office.

I send out an email to everyone telling them that the main color copier is broken and to send their printing needs to one of the other two assistants who have color copiers. Here is my logic behind this: it all comes from the same cost center! So if we need to print on your printer for the day, it’s not coming out of your pocket! But apparently that wasn’t the logic everyone took. I was told by one of the women that they don’t have the time to be printing out everyone’s documents and I needed to call IT. I told them that I had already done that. No less than four execs have come to me and asked what happened. I tell them I called IT and someone is on the way.

My favorite of the printer epic is the woman who had this conversation with me:

Is the printer broke?

Yes

Oh no.

Sorry

Are we going to fix it?

Um, yes. They’re coming.

Are we going to fix it?!!? No, we’re not. I think it’s worked enough this week and should take some time off. It's Friday, afterall. I turned the broken machine off and am just sitting here hoping no one needs it. No, we’re not going to fix it because I like to bother people and this is how I can do it best.

And the crowning moment of this Friday? At 2:45p the CEO walked out of the office. At 3p every other executive was gone. But 3:30 all the assistants were gone. I sat alone on the office floor, watching my television, shocked that it was 3:45p on a workday and no one felt the need to actually be at work. So I backed up my bags and clocked out at 4p. Had a three hour drive to Orange County anyway.