Getting untethered

After over a week of waiting to get a key for my laptop dock (without which I couldn't take my laptop anywhere) after submitting the request via a web form (per instructions from the tech support guy on the phone) & going through manager approval, I decided to escalate things on Friday, and by the end of the day I was told one more phone call would have it prepared to pick up. First thing this morning, I made the call, got an answer within 2 minutes, and got disconnected by a routing system bug. When I called back, the wait time had increased to 5 minutes and after 6 minutes of waiting, I decided to just march on over to the Desktop Support department in the next building and handle my business. I wrote on a Post-It the name of the person I was supposed to contact, plus the location code of their office, and the ticket number I had been assigned. I went to the support center and it was locked up, so I rang the buzzer. The door opened and there stood this gal who looked like she had just gotten ready for a tuner magazine photo shoot or import car show; fully dolled up, makeup, hair just done that morning, heels, a little bit of cleavage peeking out of a lace-trimmed top. Certanly not the stereotyped chubby, balding White tech-nerd I was expecting. I interpreted the wide-eyed, stuned look on the gal's face as saying, "Oh my god, how did you find us?" Well, come to find out, it was nothing but a ditsy blank stare. I quickly explained my situation and gave her my Post-It, and she said "Oh, yes, you needed to talk to _______ or ________, okay" before turning to walk to her desk (which was about 3 ft away). Well, it turns out she's actually the person who responded to the ticket, the 2nd "__________" on my note. She asks how to spell my name and I show her my badge, and she picks up a solitary black pouch from the edge of her desk, reading a small note on the label, and comparing it to my badge. She then shows me the note and asks if "they" spelled my name right. I guess she had trouble reading the sans serif printed version of my name on the badge. Well, no, "they" didn't spell my name right, they were missing an 'e'. She asks which 'e'. I hold up my badge again and say, "The first one." She draws the pouch closer to her again and looks at it with concern. "That's strange, it says your desk location is __._.___." With one raised eyebrow and a deepened voice I replied, "Yyyeesss that is my desk location." She said, "But..." and pointed with the manicured nail of her left thumb to the location code on my Post-It, holding it up towards me and looking at me with scared puppy-dog eyes (you know, the "don't leave me" or "I didn't eat the chair leg, it was termites, I swear!" look). Still with that same eyebrow up, I give a slow-motion nod of approval and explain, "That's your desk location." "Oh," she looks at it again, pauses to think for a moment, fails, and hands me the pouch to fend off further embarassment. Hot like fire. Not too bright, though.

Triumphant and armed with my shiny new key, complete with black "betcha don't know what's in here" security pouch, I raced back to my desk, freed my computer from its captor, and went on my way to the other local campus of my company, about 8 minutes away. There, I got to sit in a dark room with a handful of colleagues making faces at and cracking jokes about visiting users from behind a one-way mirror. The sessions were being recorded (the hapless users on the other side, not our face-making antics) and with our tech gone, I got to play around with the video mixing/fx board and the remote 3-axis camera controller.

After about four hours with a very brief lunch break in the middle, I returned to home base (North campus) to prepare for the big executive review. When it was time to rock, the review coordinator slyly invited us to start bringing our super-sized page flow diagrams (printed in color on one of our huge plotters) into the presentation room to give an extra push to the group that was already in there. The other crew got the hint and after brief project introduction by our product marketing manager, I was taking four directors (maybe 5, one guy came late & I don't know who he was) and our VP on sequential tours with the ghosts of page flow past and future.

The review went without a hitch and we were left with only a few recommendations for change. Tomorrow & Wednesday I get to make faces & push buttons & tweak joysticks again in between typing out ~7 pages of raw notes per hour.


Disclaimer: I was kidding in the part about making fun of users from behind the one-way mirror. I wasn't kidding about the mixer board though.