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.