This morning at work I opened an Excel spreadsheet I have been working on and it seemed to have a life of its own. Wherever I put the cursor it would start making a long line of dashes-----all by itself. I was perplexed (not to mention a little frightened) about what was going on. Had my laptop been taken over by a virus? Computer Gnomes? Aliens? The Government? Excel is a big part of my work day. I use it a lot, so I was kind of dead in the water. (I was secretly hoping they would have to overhaul my laptop and I would get a day off. That, of course wouldn’t happen because I have a desktop as a backup….but a girl can dream!) 3M is constantly updating the antivirus programs on our machines and that’s all well and good. But sometimes it can interfere with work to the point it gets pretty frustrating. So naturally I thought it had something to do with that and I was cursing under my breath. Sorry, I’m digressing.
I tried to submit an IT help request but got the strange little line of dashes to the point I couldn’t type. So I tried the online chat mode. Well someone named Andy comes on and asks how he can help me. So I try to type faster than the dashes are forming to tell him my problem. So it looks something like this: -------------I keep getting these----------dashes--------wherever I put my cursor----------and they are doing it all on their own-----. I can’t control them.
IT Andy says: Is there something sitting on the upper right part of your keyboard?
Well, if you’re looking at your keyboard right now you can see that the upper right part has a dash key…..and yes there was something sitting on top of it. I laughed so hard I cried! Then I admitted to Andy that there was indeed something sitting on it and this was a big DUH on my part. I also told him I was glad to provide him with a laugh for the day. He was nice enough to say it happened all the time…..On one hand, I hope that’s true. On the other hand, if it happens all the time what does it say about the workforce at 3M?!
3 comments:
I was all set to send this off to Kjel so he could diagnose your problem. Guess you got it solved. good laughs run in the fam. I was out walking yesterday and saw some medium sized rocks in someone's yard. Because of the placement it seemed like the rocks should be bigger and fill more area. For a split second I thought to myself... I wonder if they spaced them that far so they could grow?
LAUGH at me all you want, I was laughing at myself.
Who can we laugh at if not ourselves!
This is good. Laughing is good for all of us whether it is at ourselves or with others. I heard an account once, about a IT person who diagnosed a older woman's computer and then found out that she did not have it plugged in. He told her to pack it back up and return it because she was too stupid to own a computer and he call was being monitored thus, he packed up his things and lost his job. This came from a reliable computer tech working for Jordan School District. Moral of the story they better be nice to us in our moments of -----------.
Love you!
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