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.