Level 2
Or
Phil's Help Desk Adventure, Part II

So I dialed the number for the Help desk. (Which is a local number redirected to someplace called Fishkill, New York...) After navigating the menu, I finally get a live operator on the other end.

Now for those of you not familiar with technical support calls, the guys on the other end generally know as much about computers as a high school graduate. And for about 80 percent of the calls that come in, that's enough. They run through a prewritten script to diagnose and solve whatever computer problem you might have. The first thing on their list, of course, is to reboot the computer.

But I didn't have time for Help Desk foreplay so I cut right to the chase and tell the guy on the other end exactly what my problem was.

A few seconds of uncomfortable silence later the Help Desk guy responds, "I'll put in a ticket and elevate it to second level support." I breathe a sigh of relief at this point because "Second level support" are supposed to be the guys who are on the campus who actually know a couple things about computers.

As the saying goes, "If I knew then what I know now..."

Much to my surprise the guy from "second level support" appears without me having to wait hours upon hours for him to show up. I tell him I have files on the laptop that I don't have backed up and that I would like to save if at all possible. He manages what at the time I thought was a confirmation of my comment but in hindsight could have easily been just gas.

So he takes my laptop away and in the meanwhile, I work on another machine without any of the files I needed.

At the end of the day, I come back to my cubicle to find a laptop. My first reaction was "Wow that was quick!" followed by a quick, "What the hell?" as I realized that my laptop hasn't been worked on at all.

As near as I could tell, the guy took my laptop, went back to his desk, forgot why he had my laptop in the first place and put it back before anyone would notice it was gone.

To Be continued...