That last entry was written by my cat—FYI.

Some days I find public service really rough going, and think I would be better off as a day laborer. (I can think this only because I’ve never spent time as a day laborer.) Days like yesterday, for instance, I passed wishing I could rip the phone out of the wall and go take a nap. First there was the man who couldn’t figure out how to cancel his print job. He tried canceling the print job the usual way, by selecting the job in the print queue and clicking “cancel,” but this failed to have any effect. Apparently, he’d been unsuccessfully canceling print jobs this way all week, with the result that he’d built up a long list of undesired print jobs, some of which would occasionally spontaneously print out and cause him grievous worry because he didn’t want to waste his color print cartridge. He expressed his worry by blustering semi-coherently over the phone at me, as though I were part of the problem.

“Don’t you have a technology department?” he blustered. “Send me to your technology department!”

We do have a “technology department,” but they are knee-deep in thirty kinds of effluent right now. Instead, I dutifully did a Google search for cancel print jobs Windows XP and found many helpful websites on the subject, even one created by the Microsoft empire itself, but their helpfulness was lost somewhere on the phone line between me and this guy, who would hear none of the suggestions.

Me: Have you tried rebooting your computer and printer?

Blustering Man: No, that’s not going to work.

Me: Oh, have you tried rebooted them already?

BM: It’s not going to work. Maybe if I do [muffled] instead. (Clickety-clickety click in the background.)

Me: [wearily] But have you already tried rebooting them?

BM: Now see, when I click on [muffled blustering] I get this message saying [muffled clicking].

After twenty minutes or so of my bearing witness to his efforts to fix his own problem, the caller started to warm up to my suggestions. Finally, thanks to the advice on the evil-empire website, the problem was resolved. About half-an-hour later than it should have been.  

On the heels of this call was the woman who didn’t know what she wanted, but she wanted it right now. The battery on her phone was about to die and she needed to make a call immediately, to someone, anyone. At least it seemed that way to me. First she wanted to know what the major banks in the area were. I leaned back in my chair and listed a few off the top of my head, then offered to go grab the phone book for her. While I was fetching the phone book she changed her mind and decided that she’d rather know the phone number to Acme insurance agency in Madison, Wisconsin. While I was scanning the website for Acme, trying to find some way to locate their offices, she decided she’d rather have the number to their Boise, Idaho office.

Me: Oh, but I just found the number for the Madison, Wisconsin office. Are you sure you don’t want that?

Caller: [freaking out] Nonononono, I need the Boise number! Hurry, my phone’s about to die!

Me: [freaking out] Okay, uh, according to the website, there is no Acme insurance office in Boise.

Caller: [hyperventilating] Just look it up in the phone book!

Me: [sweating] We don’t have a phone book to Boise, Idaho.

Caller: YOU DON’T HAVE A PHONE BOOK TO BOISE!?!?!?