I was asked today to help “unlock” a co-worker’s keyboard. Said co-worker was just copying and pasting between one document and another. All of a sudden she couldn’t type anymore. She was “locked out.”
Bwah? thought I. Locked out? Like I have some sort of super secret password to fix this? I considered telling her to call the tech support people in SoCal, but decided that might be more trouble than it was worth: I’d have to find the number. . . and then she’d have to explain the problem to them and they’d ultimately end up telling her the same thing I would. And it would take longer.
Sympathizing with my co-worker’s plight, I sat down at her desk to see what was going on. The mouse worked, but the keyboard definitely didn’t, so it wasn’t like her whole computer had locked up. It occurred to me that maybe her keyboard had come partially unplugged, but …. nah, that was too easy. That would be the first thing you’d check before you asked someone for help, right?
You see where this is going, don’t you.
I told her that I guessed we’d have to restart her computer, but if we did that, she’d lose everything she was working on if she hadn’t saved recently. My mystified co-worker sounded dismayed. Lil commented irritably over the cube wall that I should just try reseating the keyboard cord, and I bitched just as irritably that I didn’t want to go crawling around under desks today.
My co-worker helpfully scrambled into the dust and grime under her desk and moved the computer around to look at the rat’s nest of cords in the back. In the process of doing so, she jiggled the keyboard cord. Suddenly her keyboard was “unlocked” and working again.
You know, if I wore skirts and suits instead of jeans, I wouldn’t even get asked to drop everything and help with computer issues.
I think it’s time to upgrade my wardrobe.
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