Poker Face

I will be coming to work this morning and the first thing I'm going to do is work on the computer of one of the secretaries. She called me to her desk late yesterday without a hint of concern in her voice, saying "Hey, Bryan, there seems to be something wrong with my computer. Can you look at it?"

Before I go on, let me tell you that this is a woman who has been stressed to the max by the beginning of the school year. She's taken on some new responsibilities lately, and she's operating at all times at about DEFCON 2. She really wouldn't be able to handle any bad news.

I walked over to her computer and saw a black screen. Written on it were just a few words, the message of which isn't entirely clear to the end user, but I knew what they meant: her operating system had corrupted, and her computer was in some big trouble. I could probably get most of her files off of the machine, but it was going to take some time to do that and to get her machine working again, and there was the very real possibility that I wasn't going to be able to get ANYTHING off the computer. I focused myself on displaying my best poker face.

"It's probably something I did," she said merrily. "What can you do to fix it?"

"Uh, I'm going to have to get my tool bag in order to look at this," I told her, "and based on this message I would think this is going to take a LITTLE more time the ten minutes we have left today. How about I look at this first thing tomorrow morning?"

"Sure!" she said cheerfully. "Maybe I'll just take off ten minutes early today."

"Why don't you do that," I said, "and I'll get my tool bag and everything I'll need and we'll do it first thing tomorrow morning."

So that wasn't what I had on my plate for first thing this morning, but it is now. I hope I'm able to be the hero.

For her sake.