It’s Monday, after a weekend of bad weather and sporadic power outages across Scranton the Dunder Mifflin-ites are beginning to trickle into the office. As has become routine for Jim and Pam they arrive early to have tea and coffee, as well as time to themselves before the daily grind begins. The first thing that Pam does when she gets to the office every day is check the messages on the reception phone, today is no different. To Pam’s surprise there is no blinking light demanding her attention for messages, which she finds strange.

Upon lifting the receiver and dialing the voicemail extension just to be sure, Pam is met with silence. No dial-tone. She looks down to her phone to notice that instead of displaying all of the information she is used to seeing like phone lines and extensions, there is simply a spinning circle next to the message ‘Initializing…` that she has only ever seen if the phone was restarted for some reason. Pam thinks that she may have bumped the phone wrong or something, so she thinks nothing more of it and goes to meet Jim in the kitchen and make herself some tea.

Upon entering the kitchen Pam was greeted by Jim, “G’morning Beesly, looks like the power went out here over the weekend,” Jim says as he gestures at the microwave clock, blinking the time of 3:43 PM at them.

“Morning Jim,” Pam replies, “Looks like my day just got a whole lot more interesting, pencil me in for 2 hours of fighting with the copier this morning. You just know how it loves to be rebooted,” as Pam is saying this, Jim grimaces.

“Well, good luck with that Pam, thanks for taking one for the team!” Jim says as he saunters towards the door to go to his desk and start his computer.

Pam also decides to exit the kitchen and continue her daily routine. As she is starting her computer, she notices that her phone is still stuck with the spinning wheel, but this time the message ‘Error – No Configuration Found!’ is shown.

“Hey Jim, is your phone working,” Pam asks, “Mine is being difficult.”

Jim lifts the receiver of his desk phone and dials a number.

“Nope, nothing,” Jim replies.

“I guess we should call IT, huh?” Pam says as she starts shuffling some papers on her desk looking for the help desk number that could be found everywhere when you didn’t need it, but nowhere when you did.

“Well, as assistant regional manager, I was thinking that you could call IT… and that I could supervise” Jim says with a grin.

In response, Pam signs and puts her head in her hands. After a few seconds of this she glares at Jim and then digs around in her purse for her cell phone.

“Fine,” she says, “but the company is compensating me for the long-distance charge that calling corporate is going to take!”

Jim continues to grin triumphantly and says, “Sure, but you have to file the claim with Angela,” and then winks.

Pam shakes her head and then proceeds to dial the number for the corporate office’s IT help desk. Pam is greeted by some garbled hold music, and after a minute she decides to put the phone on speaker so that Jim can suffer with her.

“I guess it’s still technically after hours,” she says as she looks up at the clock, “Nobody’s home at corporate.”

As Pam finishes saying this, a pre-recorded message begins to play from the phone.

“Hello and thank you for calling the help desk. Currently there is no one available to take your call. Our hours are Monday to Friday, 9 to 5:30, and Saturday from 10 to 2. If you are calling with regards to an issue impacting business operations such as a network outage or other such outages, press 1 to be connected to the on-call technician. For all other issues,” Pam presses 1 and cuts off the rest of the message.

Jim and Pam listen as the phone rings, on the third ring it is picked up.

“Hello,” A sickly sounding accented man answers, “This is Sadiq, who is calling?”

“Oh, hey Sadiq, it’s Pam calling from the Scranton branch…” Pam trails off.

“Hey Pam…” Sadiq sniffles, “sorry, what seems to be the problem?”

“Well, the phones are down, I think it might be something to do with the power outages we were having over the weekend,” Pam says.

“Oh, well that’s not good, what are the phones displaying?” Sadiq asks. Pam explains the spinning and the error message.

“It sounds like I will have to get someone down there… I would do it, but I am 3 hours away… and home sick for the day,” Sadiq says and trails off.

“Here is what we will do. Pam, I am going to give you the number for a company that we contract with occasionally for IT in the Scranton area. Call them and just have them bill our account, I’ll deal with the details tomorrow. Hopefully they can get a technician out to get you guys back to work,” Sadiq explains.

Pam writes down the details for the company that Sadiq mentioned, wishes him well, and hangs up to call the company.

“Electric Cit-IT, thanks for calling my name is Greg, how may I help you?” a cheerful voice answers after the second ring.

Pam grimaces, there is way too much enthusiasm for this early on a Monday of all mornings. Jim just grins at her from where he is leaning against reception, able to hear Greg even though the call is not on speaker.

“Um, hi Greg, this is Pam calling from Dunder Mifflin Scranton…” Pam takes a breath and then launches into her explanation, “Our phones are down, I called our head office and Sadiq said to call you as he is out sick today.”

“Right on, Scranton you said?” Greg asks, “Can you give me a second, our phone tech lives out that way so if I call now, I might be able to catch him before he heads out here. Can you hold please?”

“Sure, I’ll hold,” Pam replies. Pam sighs as hold music starts to play, interrupted every 30 seconds or so by an advertisement for Electric Cit-IT’s many services. After about three minutes, the line picks up again.

“Hey Pam, I’ve got Carl, our phone guy, on the line. We managed to get him before he left the house, just a second while I transfer you,” Greg explains, and the background pitch of the call changes.

“Electric Cit-IT, Carl here,” Carl greets.

“Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam,” Pam says, prompting Jim to smile at her.

“Hey Pam, so Greg tells me that your phones are down? Do you know how long it has been since they went down?”

“No, they were down when we got in this morning, I think there was a power outage over the weekend, the microwave’s clock was blinking this morning.”

“I see, and what are they phones saying on their screens?”

Pam explains the spinning and the errors.

“It seems to me like your phone system’s configuration may have been wiped,” Carl says with a “hmm.”

“I’m pretty sure that we have a battery to prevent that sort of thing,” Jim chips in.

“That may be the case, I’m not sure what your setup looks like, but regardless of how it happened it has, the configuration may not have been saved since it was last changed, and losing power has reverted it,” Carl hypothesizes.

“Well, I will be down there in 20 minutes, I just have to grab my tools and head out the door, can I have the address and any instructions for entering the building,” Carl asks.

“Sure,” Pam replies, and gives him the address, “Just ask Hank, the security guard, to show you up to the office when you get here.”

“Thanks, I will see you in a bit,” with that, Carl hangs up.

Pam glances at the clock, it is 8:50 now, she has just spent the last 20 minutes climbing phone trees and talking to tech support, all the while Jim was just leaning against her desk making the occasional funny face. Pam sighs, her tea is cold.

9 o’clock brings with it the camera crew, co-workers, and an investigation by Dwight into the reason for the phones being down. Michael, on the other hand, had not even noticed that the phones were not ringing this morning, and was content to barricade himself in his office with the blinds drawn and take a nap.

Dwight had just finished interrogating Stanley, accusing him of sabotaging the phones to steal all the sales for himself, only to have Stanley glare at him. Dwight’s next victims appeared to be Jim and Pam, as he was making his way towards reception now.

“Pam,” Dwight greets neutrally, “Jim,” Dwight says with disdain.

“Hey Dwi- “ Jim starts, as Dwight interrupts him.

“Do you have anything to do with the phones being non-functional this morning Jim?” Dwight asks, “I find it very unlikely that such an impact to productivity could have been perpetrated by anyone but you,” Dwight finishes with a superior smirk.

“Um, wow Dwight, no,” Jim replies, “Actually we’ve already called IT this morning, the phones were like this when we got here, there should be a guy here any minute now.”

“Please, you expect me to believe that,” Dwight asks incredulously, “Corporate on-call technicians are based out of the head office, they would not be here for another 3 hours Jim.”

“Dwight, we called corporate, they are sending some contractor,” Jim tries to explain.

“Are you an idiot!? We can’t just let some stranger into our office to do things to our technology!” Dwight exclaims, “That is close to treason, Jim.”

“What are they going to do Dwight,” Pam butts in, “it’s not like they can install a phone tap while they are here and try to sell our clients list to staples,” Pam trails off.

“That’s it,” Dwight says, “I am going to fix this myself. I have always heard that turning something off and on again will solve most problems, I will simply reboot the phones.”

“Dwight, you don’t even know what the phone system looks like,” Jim tries to reason, “and you know how the film crew doesn’t like us being in there while they are here.”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures Jim, we must nip this corporate espionage in the bud,” Dwight explains, “I am going in, if you do not see me in five minutes, the film crew is in on it.”

With this, Dwight strides purposefully towards the door in the accounting corner, which happens to be the room that holds the IT rack and the film crew’s equipment.

“Do you think we should stop him,” Pam asks Jim, “he might break it even worse before the phone guy gets here,” she says with concern.

“Nah, what’s the worst that could happen,” Jim tries to reason.

After saying this, everyone hears a small ‘pop’ come from the speakers of all the phones in the office as they suddenly die, and a muffled ‘Hah, take that!’ come from the IT room. Seconds later the internet goes out and Michael emerges from his office, looking flustered.

“Hey, my computer is broken,” Michael starts to explain, “I was in the middle of… checking… my emails! Yeah, my emails, and then it just stopped working! Pam you need to get IT over here STAT!”

Jim shakes his head slowly in equal parts disbelief and amusement, and says, “Already on it Michael, they should be here shortly.”

“Oh, well… that was fast, good work Jimbo, anticipating the needs of the boss and all that… I’m just going to go back in my office and wait for them, then,” Michael says, turning on his heel and retreating back into his office.

Pam thinks that it is funny that Michael would be the first one to notice the internet going out, but upon thinking that she reminds herself that he was probably watching a video online or something.

“I’m going to go check on Dwight,” Jim says, tapping her desk and starting to move away.

“Yeah, you do that,” Pam replies with an eyeroll, watching him go.

Pam decides she may as well play Freecell until the IT guy gets here, seeing as she can’t do any real work without phones or internet.

A minute or so later, Pam saw Dwight returning to his desk, looking quite smug. Jim returned to leaning against reception and looked at her expectantly.

“What,” Pam asks defensively.

“You will never guess what Dwight did,” Jim trails off.

“I think I have a pretty good idea,” Pam says.

“Well, okay sure, you probably do,” Jim says, “but I’m going to tell you anyways. You know how there is the big rack of IT stuff in the back room,” Pam nods, “well Dwight couldn’t figure out which machine in there was the phone system… so he just pulled plug that went into the wall,” Jim finished with a laugh.

“Suffice it to say, Dwight just rebooted everything,” Jim says, finishing his explanation.

“Wow, I have, no words,” Pam says with a sigh, “That IT guy better hurry up and get here before Dwight can do any more damage.”

With that, Pam returns to her Freecell game, with Jim leaning over the counter occasionally and pointing out moves that he thinks she has missed.

One good thing to come of this morning was that Pam had yet to answer any phone calls or emails. Monday might not be so bad after all.

Pam started to hear a strange buzzing sound around 9:30, only to realize on the fourth buzz that it was her cellphone and that she had neglected to turn the ringer on. Not quick enough to dig the phone out her purse, she was greeted with the voicemail notification when her cell finally surfaced. Pam decided to play the voicemail, it may have been someone trying to call in sick or something.

“Hey Pam, this is Carl from Electric Cit-IT calling, I am calling to let you know that I am on site here. I’m at the front desk downstairs and there is no Hank. I just noticed the suite number for your office on the letter board, so I am going to make my way up. I’ll poke my head around a bit, if you see a rather lost looking fellow with a too heavy shoulder bag, that’s me. See you in a bit,” and with that the end of messages prompt played. Pam hit 7 to delete the message.

“Hey Jim,” Pam said to get Jim’s attention, “Carl just called, he’s on his way up. I’ll go meet him in the hall, so he doesn’t get lost and wander into Vance Refrigeration.”

“I’ll come with you Beesly, it’s dangerous out there,” Jim says as he stands up from leaning against the counter.

“Never know when the beet bears are about on a Monday morning,” Jim finishes with a wink.

Pam rolls her eyes at him and smirks, as they begin to walk towards the door to the hallway. As they come even to Michael’s window, he suddenly pokes his head out.

“Hey! Where do you two think you’re going,” Michael accosts them, “Getting some necking in while there is work to be done!?”

Pam levels a glare at Michael and corrects him before he can go further, “No Michael, we’re going to go find the phone guy.”

“I didn’t know you guys were into that sort of thing, with a nerdy type even,” Michael mock gasps.

Jim just sighs and says, “No, Michael, just no.”

With that, they exit through the door and shut it behind them before Michael can harass them even more and potentially scare the phone guy off.

As Jim and Pam get out into the hallway, they notice the elevator is on it’s way up. They stand off to the side with their backs to the office doors.

Pam looks at Jim and says exasperatedly, “Can you believe Michael sometimes? I know it is in his nature to be inappropriate, but does he have to be that way,” Pam suddenly breaks off that thought, as Michael has appeared behind them, having followed them out.

Just as Pam and Jim turn to address Michael, the elevator dings and a twenty-something man with large glasses and an even larger shoulder slung tool bag exits the elevator.

At that same moment, as the IT guy is glancing around trying to figure out which way to go, Bob Vance rounds the corner and greets him.

“Hey, you look lost,” Bob says as he sticks his hand out to shake, “Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration,” he says while shaking the IT guy’s hand.

“Back off, that’s our IT guy,” Michael says as he pushes past Jim and Pam and pulls Bob away from the IT guy by the shoulder.

“Michael Scott, regional manager, Dunder Mifflin,” Michael greets as he enthusiastically shakes the IT guy’s hand, pumping it up and down more than is strictly necessary.

“Uh, hey, howdy,” the IT guy starts, looking a bit nervous at all the sudden attention, “Carl Mann, Cisco Certified Networking Associate in Voice, also known as a phone guy, from Electric Cit-IT,” he trails off.

With all of the commotion in the hallway it was a given that Dwight would be making an appearance soon, so Jim and Pam started to move forward to greet Carl. Unfortunately for them, Dwight beat them to the punch as he barreled out of the office and came to a stop in front of Carl.

“Dwight K. Schrute, Assistant,” Dwight started, breathlessly, only to be interrupted by the mandatory ‘to the’ from both Jim and Pam, “Regional Manager,” Dwight finished, shaking Carl’s hand sharply up and down three times and promptly disengaging with a look of indifference.

“Carl Mann,” Carl states, but it comes out sounding more like a question, he’s looking a bit overwhelmed.

“Hey,” Jim says with a small wave, “I’m Jim,” and he steps forward to shake Carl’s hand, “I’m the Assistant Regional Manager here.”

“Howdy,” says Carl, looking a little more relaxed, seemingly sensing that Jim was one of the more normal people there.

Pam stepped forward then to introduce herself, “Pam,” she says with a smile and shakes his hand, “Receptionist.”

“Good to meet all of you,” Carl says with a slightly strained looking smile and a nod to the medium sized crowd around him, and a nervous glance at the camera crew peeking through the blinds.

“Does someone want to show me where the phone equipment is and I’ll get started on that,” Carl asks, looking around at all the faces gathered before him, before settling

“Sure, right this way Carl-Mann, Call-man, Call-me, Calmy, Calm,” Michael begins, before Carl cuts him off, looking wide eyed.

“You’re too kind Mr. Scott, but I shouldn’t waste any more of your valuable time, is…” Carl glances over the faces around him and lands at Jim, who makes eye contact, “Would Jim be available right to give me a hand?”

“Not like he ever does any work anyways” Dwight mumbles from behind Carl, and Carl pretends not to hear him.

“Great,” Carl cuts in again before Michael can respond, “I appreciate it, I will keep you posted Mr. Scott; Jim, I’ll follow you,” and Carl begins to move towards the door without waiting for anyone.

Jim catches on quickly however, and Pam shortly behind him, as they make their way back into the office. Jim leads Carl over to the back room by accounting while Pam returns to her FreeCell.

Pam wondered how long the phone guy would last, but then reminded herself that the hardest part was over, he had seemed to survive Dwight, and had even bested Michael, if a little awkwardly. With that, Pam took her cold tea to the kitchen and dumped it out, refilling her teapot and returning to her desk. This was going to be an adventure of a day if the first hour was anything to go by.

“So, as I was coming in, Michael mentioned something about the internet being down,” Carl questions as Jim leads him towards the infrastructure room, “When did that happen, I thought just the phones were down?”

Jim reaches the door and opens it for Carl, and they are greeted by the screams of fans and a long beep every 3 seconds or so.

“Oh, about that,” Jim rubs the back of his neck, “Dwight thought that you were a waste if money so he was trying to solve the problem before you got here… so he rebooted the phones… but since he doesn’t actually know which one is the phone system, he pulled that plug,” Jim finishes, pointing at the plug in the wall that goes to the rack.

“Right, well, I’ll look into that real quick first,” Carl says as he unpacks his laptop from his shoulder bag, “Seeing as you had internet earlier this morning, it should come back by itself… Also, you were right about you guys having a battery backup,” Carl says, pointing at a grey box at the bottom of the rack with a flashing yellow light and a rats nest of power cords plugged into it.

Cables can also be seen spilling over from the rack and across the room to where the film crew has set up their equipment. Carl traces the cables by sight and grimaces.

“Well there’s a problem,” Carl points at the cables running across the room, “I am going to bet that your battery backup is not rated to run this rack and all of that,” Carl finishes, pointing at the film equipment.

Jim just shrugs, and Carl shakes his head.

Carl finishes setting up his laptop and plugs in to one of the switches on the rack, “Alright… we’ll have to call your corporate IT and get their opinion on that, in the meantime we have internet,” Carl says with a little fist pump, he smiles at Jim, “I love it when a problem solves itself.”

“I’m just glad that Dwight didn’t break anything worse than it was,” Jim says with a shrug and a lopsided grin.

“Well, we’re not out of the woods yet,” Carl tries to temper Jim’s expectations, “Now we have to figure out what went wrong with the phones, and for that I am going to need some credentials from your corporate IT department.”

With that, Carl shoves his bag closer to the rack with his foot, and then starts towards the reception desk with Jim following.

“Hey Pam,” Carl rounds on the reception desk, “Do you think I could grab the corporate IT number from you?”

“Sure,” Pam hands Carl a sticky note.

“Great, thanks,” Carl says as he starts to dial the number.

The other end picks up, and Carl greets them, “Hey, Carl here from Electric Cit-IT, how are you?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“Actually, I’m on site here at your Scranton branch for a phone outage, I was wondering if you could fill me in on the setup and maybe get me some credentials.”

“Thanks, do you know if you have any backups of the config? It looks like it may have been wiped.”

“Uh huh… You are aware this is at emergency rate, yeah?”

“… Just making sure. Yes, I can do that, it will take some time though. Anything else you can tell me?”

“Right, almost forgot, there is some equipment from a film crew in the IT room overloading your UPS, was that supposed to be there?”

“No, I can tell them, I’ll just ask the staff who’s in charge of that.”

“Right on, thanks, I’ll let you know if anything else comes up, Bye,” Carl says and hangs up. He then turns to angle himself towards Jim, who is by now leaning against the reception desk sharing a laugh with Pam.

Carl grabs Jim’s attention with a small wave, “Hey, Jim?”

“Yeah?”

“Who can I talk to on the film crew, I need to talk to them about the equipment they have plugged in to your battery backup.”

“What do you need man,” A mic operator who had been standing behind a fake plant suddenly asks, nodding at Carl.

Carl turns and addresses the man, “I need the equipment relocated as per corporate.”

“Oh, uh, I can handle that for you,” The man says as he raises the boom pole to rest and comes towards the trio.

“Great, thanks…”

“Brian,” the man supplies, reaching out the shake Carl’s hand.

“Great to meet you Brian, Carl. Let’s get to it, I’m paid by the hour,” Carl chuckles.

Carl, Brain, and the camera operator all head off toward the IT room.

“Do you think that means no filming today,” Pam asks Jim.

“No, they explained to me one time that they use that stuff for editing footage and getting the signal from our mic-packs,” Jim explained.

“Shucks, I was really hoping for the winning combo, no work or cameras,” Pam sighed.

Jim and Pam continued to chat for a bit, but eventually Jim decided he should look at his emails today, so he wandered back to his desk to pretend to work there. After about half an hour Carl returned to reception to explain to Pam that the phone system got wiped, but corporate was able to restore the basic configuration from the time at which the system was first installed. However, all the phone extension settings had been lost, and so he needed to rebuild them.

“So, I need a list of extensions, and then a map of the office showing who has them and where would be great,” Carl explained after he finished updating Pam.

“Can do,” Pam said, producing a copy of her branch directory.

“Great, thanks,” Carl took the copy from her, “I have to write down all of the hardware addresses of the phones, so you’ve got some time before I need that map,” he said as he came around the side of the desk and turned her phone upside down, copying some numbers and letters off the back into a column that he had roughly added to the directory page.

With that, Carl started making his way around the office, painstakingly recording the hardware addresses of all the phones next to the names on his list, and occasionally having to ask people who sat where. As he disappeared to the annex Pam had finished her sketch of the office with all of the phones. Pam heard Kelly start talking from her desk, and grimaced.

Deciding that Carl might be a while back there, Pam started adding details to the sketch to pass the time. She doodled some beets and bears on Dwight’s desk, some cats for Angela, M&Ms for Kevin, and so on around the office, until she was left with Jim’s.

Before Pam got a chance to pick something for Jim’s desk though, Carl approached her desk, “Hey, got that map for me? I’m ready for an IT scavenger hunt,” he said, startling Pam.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Pam yelped, “Just finished.”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” Carl took the sketch from her, “This is a lot more than I was hoping for, is this your side gig from doing art or something,” Carl asked with a raised brow, looking quite impressed.

“No, I’m in classes though.”

“Huh, well I think you're doing just fine judging by this,” Carl said with a nod and departed for the IT room.

Pam was ecstatic to have a complete stranger compliment her art and beamed at Jim who was giving her a goofy grin, clearly having overheard that conversation.

All in all, it was shaping up to be a pretty good Monday despite the shaky start, Pam thought to herself.

About half an hour after Carl disappeared to the IT room, Pam heard the soft ‘pop’ and saw the flashing lights on her desk phone indicating it had just rebooted. A short while later Carl came back out of the IT room and approached her desk, clipboard in hand.

“Hey Pam, got a few minutes,” Carl said as he moved to stand before reception.

“Well I’ll have to check my schedule…” Pam trailed off, but seeing Carl’s confused look she quickly added, “Just kidding, I answer the phones for a living, what do you need?”

“Well, I’ve set up all the phone extensions now, and I just had a few questions about call flow,” Carl paused, taking a breath, “As you are the operator slash receptionist, I’m assuming that all calls come through you?”, Pam nods, “Great, so what happens when you’re busy, is there an auto-attendant, or does the phone ring someone else, or what?”

“I usually just hit this button,” Pam gestures to the ‘Do Not Disturb’ button, “and the calls go to voicemail.”

“Well that doesn’t seem really ideal, I guess they never set up an auto-attendant for you,” Carl shakes his head, “I’m hear anyways, I might as well set that up for you guys. It should only take a minute for a really basic one.”

As Carl finishes speaking, he comes around the side of Pam’s desk and punches some dial code into Pam’s phone. He appears to listen to it for a second, and then hit some more numbers.

“Here,” Carl presents the handset to Pam, “Go ahead and say something along the lines of you’re busy, press 1 for customer service, 2 for accounting, 3 for sales, 4 for shipping and receiving, or 5 for the call by name menu… Oh, and don’t forget to add the part about dialing the extension now if you know it, pressing star to leave a voicemail, or holding to talk to you.”

“Ok, that’s a lot, do I get a script?” Pam says, quirking an eyebrow at Carl.

“Yeah, sure I can write it down if you want, more of a guideline than a script though, I don’t know how corporate you want it to feel,” Carl says, as he starts jotting bullet notes and then hands Pam the paper, “Ok, press one when you’re ready, and pound to stop.”

“Got it,” Pam hits the number, “Thank you for calling Dunder Mifflin Scranton, we can’t come to the phone right now as we are helping other customers or it is after business hours,” Pam says robotically, as she has heard many other auto-attendants sound.

“If you know the extension you would like to dial, you may do so at any time.”

“Press 1 for customer service, 2 for accounting, 3 for sales, 4 for warehouse, or press 5 for the call by name menu.”

“To leave a message, and have us get back to you later, press star.”

“If you would like to continue holding for reception, stay one the line and we will answer as soon as we can.”

Pam breathes a sigh of relief as she hits pound, and is grateful that she managed to get all of that in one go without stumbling over herself as is common to do when talking to no one.

“Great, that should do it, thanks Pam,” Carl says with an small smile, “Now I just need to set up the back end of that IVR, and show you how to forward the phones to it,” Carl starts to move his way back around the desk, “Oh, one more thing, almost forgot, everyone is going to have to redo their voicemail greetings and self identification prompts, I’ll get some instructions printed for that in a minute.”

“Alright, thanks Carl.”

“No problem,” Carl says, and then he walks back towards the IT room.

On his way to the IT room, Carl is confronted by Dwight, who had gotten up to intercept him upon seeing him leave the reception desk.

“Carl,” Dwight says, with a hint glee, “I overheard you saying something about an auto-attendant, does that replace Pam? I’ve always found her position to be a waste of resources.”

Carl is slightly taken aback, but recovers quickly, “I’m sorry Mr. Schrute, but due to the nature of my non-disclosure agreement, I can only discuss the details of this ticket with the onsite contact,” Carl gestures towards Pam,  “and management individuals,” Carl says as he tries to step around Dwight to get back to the IT room.

Dwight shuffles to the left as well, “I am the assistant regional manager here Carl, you can tell me.”

From behind Carl Jim can be heard clearing his throat, “Assistant to the regional manager, Dwight, as we have reminded you countless times,” Jim interjects with a barely concealed smirk.

Dwight glances at Jim suspiciously, “For all we know this auto-attendant could be listening in on our calls, you heard Pam earlier Jim,” Dwight says as his eyes widen, “Oh no,” he adds, casting his gaze around the office, “you’re all in on it,” he exclaims as he storms towards Michael’s office.

“Michael!” Dwight cries as he quickly enters his office and shuts the door behind him and closes the blinds, peeking through the slats out at the office.

Carl just stands there looking dumbfounded for a few seconds, but gains the courage to turn around and make eye contact with both Jim and Pam, and asks, “What just happened?”

Pam glances at Jim with a grin, who rolls his eyes and smiles, “Don’t worry about it,” Jim addresses Carl, “Dwight is a little crazy,” he finishes with a shrug.

“Oh-kay,” Carl says slowly as he shrugs takes a step back and turns on his heel, resuming his original course to the IT room.

After Carl has sequestered himself in the IT room again, Pam gets up to go over and lean on Jim’s desk, she sighs as she does so.

“I was really getting used to the quiet,” she opens, looking at Jim, “any minute now Carl is going to work his magic and the phones will be ringing again… do you think we could convince him to leave before that?”

“We could probably sick Dwight on him,” Jim says with a grin as he swivels his chair towards her, and then frowns, “but do you really think we could live with ourselves doing that to an innocent man,” he says mock-seriously.

“I don’t know Jim… the ends may justify the means here, the needs of the many, all that,” Pam tries half-heartedly to support her cause.

“Maybe you’re right Beesly,” Jim says with a shrug, “so do we tell Dwight that he took a call from Staples on his cell, or what?”

“On second thought Jim, I don’t think he deserves that,” Pam says with a chuckle, “we should just enjoy the quiet while it lasts.”

Jim and Pam continued to talk, until Dwight exited Michaels office looking deflated and shot them a glare. Pam returned to her desk shortly thereafter to continue her solitaire and wondered when the lazy day would end and the phones would start ringing again, she was not really looking forward to doing actual work today.

Maybe she could convince Michael that she was having woman troubles, and go home for the rest of the day, it was already almost lunch so she would only be missing a half day, she tried to convince herself. Shaking her head to herself, Pam moved the next card.

About 15 minutes after Carl had retreated to the IT room, he reappeared making a beeline to reception, shooting anxious glances in Dwight’s direction. Upon reaching reception, He seemed to consider himself safe, and turned to address Pam.

“Hey Pam, I’ve got the backend all sorted out, I’ll just show you how to forward the system and then I will turn inbound calls back on,” Carl said, and made his way around Pam’s desk to show her the proper dial codes on her phone.

“So it’s pretty simple, the IVR is essentially just an extension like any other, so to put calls through to it you just have to forward your phone to the proper extension,” as Carl says this, he hits the call forward button on Pam’s phone and enters a number, “… and just like that, No need to answer phone calls if the people on the line know what they want,” Carl finishes with a flourish of the receiver and a smile.

“Wow, that’s great, so I can do that, and I won’t have to write down voicemails anymore,” Pam says, and then lowers her voice and stage whispers conspiratorially to Carl, “more time to play solitaire too.”

“I’m more partial to Minesweeper myself, but yeah, you do you,” Carl says with a shrug, “So as far as setting up voicemail greetings, can I borrow your computer and a highlighter to get those instructions printed off?”

“For sure, go for it,” Pam says as she scoots aside so that Carl can access her computer.

“Thanks.”

Pam watches as Carl opens a new tab in her browser and goes to a website that he seems to have memorized, which turns out to be a document with a bunch of dial codes and buttons for the phone system and prints it. Pam’s eye catches on a few that look like they might make for prank material.

“Can I bookmark this,” Pam asks Carl, “I’d like to be able to print it again if we lose that copy,” she says innocently.

“Yeah, don’t see why not,” Carl says with a shrug, “no state secrets on here, if there’s something you shouldn’t use then you won’t have the privileges for it, though as the operator you can pretty much do everything.”

Pam thanks Carl and glances up to see Jim looking at her intently, as Carl starts highlighting a few sections in the middle of the page.

“Do you think anyone will need a copy of this to tape up?”

“Hmm,” Pam hums, “probably Michael, he’s really bad with the phones, keeps conferencing instead of transferring, that sort of thing” Pam says, thinking nothing more of it.

“Sounds good, I’ll just test inbound and outbound calling and then show him how to do the setup.”

Carl proceeds to call in on his cellphone, causing Pam’s phone to ring.

“Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam,” she says with a smirk.

“Yep,” Carl says, moving his phone down to hang up, “working as intended.”

Carl gets Pam to call his cell, to the same effect. Satisfied, Carl prints off another copy of the cheat sheet and heads off towards Michael’s office, intent on wrapping the work up and going for lunch. Pam can see Carl explaining things to Michael through the window, and as Michael punches some buttons in on the phone, suddenly he can be heard across the entire office.

“Hey you’ve reached the voicemail of Michael G. Scott, Regional Manager of Dunder Mifflin Scranton! You want paper, and we want your money,” Michael exclaims and starts laughing, but suddenly stops, looking gleeful.

“I have the power!” Michael screams, echoing around the office, realising that he is in fact on the intercom, not the voicemail greeting recording.

Pam meets Jim’s eyes and together they facepalm. Pam sees Carl reach over and hang the phone up, quickly dialing the correct menu for Michael. Once Michael is all set, Carl beats a hasty retreat out to the bullpen.

“Jim, got a sec,” Carl asks as he steps out, moving towards reception.

“Yep,” Jim says as he gets up and falls into step with Carl.

“So I feel like you’re probably more on the operational level as opposed to Michael, he strikes me as the big picture sort of guy, so I’ll wrap up with you,” Carl says, as Jim gives him a knowing smile.

“So the phones are back up, all is working as intended, Pam now has the option to forward to an auto-attendant instead of voicemail when she goes home for the day, or lunch, or you know, just all the time if she feels like it,” Carl pauses, “and Michael has been educated in some of the more advanced features of the phone system,” he grimaces, “like the PA function…”

“You know, we were wondering earlier if we should sick Dwight on you to have more time off work with the phones down,” Pam trails off, “we decided not to, we may have to re-evaluate that,” she deadpans.

There is a pregnant pause, as Carl looks mildly concerned, with an eyebrow quirked.

“Just kidding!” Jim says with a laugh, Pam and Carl joining in, “about re-evaluating, we already decided to do it,” he deadpans abruptly.

“Alright,” Carl says shaking his head with a smile, “with that, I am out of here. See you guys around.”

And then he just… left.