Based on Performance

Okay, since I have permission from a majority of commenter's I will continue to blog as the whim hits me.

And the whim has already hit today. The reason for this? Fax machines.

The story(ies).
As a grand omen to the way my Friday would go, the heaven's opened and sent a dear, sweet, young lady to my workstation who wanted to fax something. Back in the day (a few short months ago) we had our fax machine (pictured above) and our printer (pictured below) next to each other on a beautiful, round table outside of Boss Lady's office. However, since this was an HR fax machine we had it moved over by my workstation and left the printer alone on the table. In lieu of our machine we had IT set up two additional fax machines on the third floor for the "other" employees to use. So this morning, this particular lady comes to ask me to help her fax something. I thought it was an odd request, I'm not known for my amazing faxing skills or anything (not that they really require that much skill), but I thought, "what the heck." She is one of my favorite people that I rarely talk to (do you have people like that? I have favorites and not favorites of people I interact with, then there are the ones you rarely interact with, and then the ones you only see walking past your workstation...P.S. I like lists, and I make them for everything). Digression! So as I am standing up to help said individual fax a document on the oh so complicated machine, she says, "I can't figure out where the numbers are." Without missing a beat I realize what she has done. She has walked up to our printer and assumed it was a fax machine...pictured now:

I....can't see it, I want to see it, but I can't. It's a printer. She was right though, the lack of buttons is a problem. I smile and tell her that it's our printer, and then I walk her to the proper fax machine (not even telling her about ours because even though this thing is right out there in the open people don't see it...kind of like when I dance). Once she lays eyes on the fax machine she laughs. I tell her she's not the first (and she's not, it's how i knew so quickly that the problem was not that the fax machine had somehow swallowed it's buttons, but that instead she had stepped up to use our printer for a function it was unfamiliar with and unequipped for). It was just a bright spot in the morning, not that the morning was ghastly, it's Friday, how could it not automatically be a good day? Barring, of course, the death of loved ones, car accidents, computer crashes, break-ups, cell phone catastrophes, and being chased by squirrels...but those are things that tend to wait for Mondays anyway. Pretty much it was just a good laugh that only enhanced an already smooth sailing day.

However, even though this seems the end it is not the end. The fax business continued! I received a call this morning from a lady named Michelle, she was trying to do a verification of employment and thought I had been ignoring her fax, when in reality I never received it. So I had her send it again and then we discovered that we didn't have paper in ours. As soon as we put paper in, Michelle's fax comes through. I respond and send it back. Then she calls about an hour later making sure that I had received the fax and that I had gotten her original message (check, check). Her machine was telling her that the fax wasn't going through. I was happy to report that the fax had been received and sent and then she informed me that I missed a spot. So I filled it in and sent it again and haven't heard back so I'm hoping that means she's doing well.

In between that I got a message from a frantic woman named Jeanne who apparently was running in circles and not getting anywhere. She was relieved when I called her back and explained her situation, I took pity on the woman, gave her our fax number and had her send it. But then I waited and waited and it never came. I was beginning to think that Jeanne walked up to a printer and tried to put it through. Worse yet, maybe she was under the impression that it worked. But it finally came and I wonder if I was supposed to call her because I felt like she said she was going to call me, I mean, why else did she get my direct line? Then I thought, "This is too much like dating."

And last but not least...remember back in the beginning, back when you had a full day ahead of you and you were oh so excited and then you sat down to read my blog and slowly felt your life slip away? Good times right? Our fax machine...moved because it is a confidential fax. There is one and only one employee who still walks back here and uses it, despite the fact that she has to pass two others before she even gets here. Every time she comes over Dilbert and I talk about how we need to find a way to tell her that she can't use our fax machine. So today when this girl came back to use ours, Dilbert called me over to her workstation and we devised a plan. We would write a note!! Cause everyone knows that notes are the best passive aggressive way to get your message across. Not only did we print out not one, but two notes stating that this was a confidential, our department use only fax machine...but we put it on top of blue paper to "make it pop". So we shall see how that goes.

Phew...and all of this before lunch.