Confessions of a Genius Co-worker

I walked past her cubicle and Connie was on the phone. She mouthed the words “I’m calling tech support” and I stopped. A lot of people had been having troubles earlier in the day accessing the accounting/timesheet software, so I went to tell her that if that was the problem she was calling about, then it was being sorted already.

“No,” she said, and pointed to her monitor. “I’m locked out. I’m calling tech support to unlock it.”

I looked at her computer screen. It was the Windows message that comes up when you’ve left your computer for ages. ‘This computer is locked and can only be opened by Connie [Surname] or the administrator.’

“I’m calling the administrator to get them to unlock it,” she told me.

I picked myself up from the floor with difficulty, and tried to suppress the urge to shout “HOW IN HELL ARE YOU EARNING A SIX-FIGURE SALARY?” and asked if she’d tried hitting control-alt-delete, as the box on the screen told her to.

“But it’s locked,” she said plaintively, but still doing as I suggested with some reluctance.

“Now enter your password,” I instructed, remembering the time, years ago, when I ran a free Internet training club for over-60s called “Silver Surfers”, and shuddering.

When she hit ‘enter’ her screen came back to life. The accounting software, which apparently she’d also been unable to access earlier, was up and running.

“How about that!” she exclaimed. “Three hours later, I can work again!”