It was Friday lunch-time and with most of Pottersgate Paints down the pub Sidney was busy googling trying to find out about ‘managing information’. He had been invited to join them down the pub by the MD’s nephew Peter, but was instead glad to get some time alone in the office. It had been a very difficult week with Peter Pottersgate criticising most things that Sidney did. He had complained that the Administrator account was still called ‘Administrator’, he had complained that the version of Office was only 2003 and had criticised Sidney’s style of trousers. The annoying nephew had also by-passed the Corporate Firewall so he could get to YouTube, disabled his virus checker and downloaded four films in full causing the company Internet connection to grind to a halt.
Sidney now had just two weeks to come up with a proposal for the Board of how he could better organise the company’s mound of information. He hadn’t really got very far, but under Peter Pottersgate’s guidance had started using Social Networking to get to talk to other IT Managers. He had joined Facebook, started to Twitter and was now Linked-in. Sid was quite impressed that he now had nearly twenty Facebook friends even if only two lived in England and several had names he wasn’t sure how you pronounced them. He had even been contacted by a woman who claimed she went to school with him at Perry Barr High. He really couldn’t place her but thought best not to say. So on all these sites Sidney asked for everyone’s advice on ‘Information Storage’. The replies back ranged from the far too technical to the offer of a one-to-one session priced at £400 with ‘Luscious Lips Linda’. But at least he was getting to interact with real people.
Sidney was trying to complete the far too complex Excel Expense Form that Fred Farthing, from Finance, had designed. All Sidney was trying to do was reclaim his rail fare from his trip to London last week. Once completed the form had to then be signed by his Line Manager, witnessed by somebody who wasn’t in his department and countersigned by a director. All this usually took up to three weeks to achieve by which time it was either lost in the internal mail or the monthly Expenses BACs run had been missed. Perhaps there was a more efficient way of doing this. After writing the amount in the wrong box Sidney gave in and decided to just forget about the train ticket. Instead he decided it was a good time to go through the pile of mail in his In-Tray. Actually the incoming mail also filled his Out-tray and his Pending one too. Much of it was junk mail and Sidney managed to fill all three bins in the IT Office with it without the need to open any of it. As usual his ‘Computer Weekly’ remained in it’s polythene wrapper although like many IT Managers he did have a quick read of the Dilbert cartoon strip on the back and thought to himself, “how true”. It was as he was trying to find room in one of the bins for the ‘Computer weekly’ that he noticed the article just above Dilbert trying to put out a Server Room fire. It caught Sidney’s eye because it mentioned the launch of SharePoint 2010. This rang a bell because one of his new Twitter chums had said they were attending the launch of this ???when??. Sidney was going to read more about it and even ripped a hole in the polythene so he could do so when a new email message arrived on his computer.
Sidney was excited to see the email in his Inbox was from Hannah Harper. Now, after Hannah’s last email left him in no doubt that she never wanted to see him again after he had stood her up he was somewhat surprised that he was now reading a very severe telling off from her for the fact that he hadn’t emailed her all week. She was obviously still very cross with him and again the last line emphasised the fact that she never wanted to see him again. Sidney had never really managed to get to understand the working of the female mind. He was unsure whether a reply was required or not. The end of the message clearly suggested not but the start was complaining about him not being in touch. Sidney decided that he needed to write a grovelling apology as he really wanted another chance to see Hannah Harper. Just as Sidney was typing the email Ken Klondike came loudly in the room.
“Six days. Six bloody days I have been without my email”, Ken Klondike was not happy. Sid looked somewhat confused.
“Did you log a helpdesk call Ken?”
“I rang last Friday but nobody has bothered to come and fix it”, Ken was fuming and Sid tried to recall being told about this. “I want it fixed today”, Ken banged dramatically on Sid’s desk (well Colin’s desk) and then stormed out. Sidney was left to frantically check through his emails to see if he had missed something. He remembered Colin’s fondness for post-it notes and quickly scanned through the twenty or so around his desk. None of them mentioned Ken Klondike’s email. But then he noticed the one saying ‘Buy Hamster Food’ had something written on the back. Sidney turned over the slightly greasy yellow post-it and saw the words ‘KEN EMAIL BROKEN URGENT’. They really needed a better IT Helpdesk system. At that point Sidney’s PC flashed up a message saying that updates had been applied and it was restarting. It was asking him if he wanted to send the open message so Sidney clicked ‘Yes’. Unfortunately all Sidney had written in the message to Hannah was “Hi Hannah, I know I have been ignoring you so I will just...”
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