- Text Size +
Story Notes:

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.


Author's Chapter Notes:
Just a fun little what-if moment that I thought about.

Pam hoped that Dwight would make the right choice with the doomsday device, but just in case, before they left for the farm, she decided a call to IT couldn’t hurt. She dialed the number for the corporate helpdesk and waited for the call to ring through.

“Electric Cit-IT, Greg here, how can I help,” greeted the voice on the other end.

“I thought this was the corporate helpdesk line,” Pam asked, confused.

“Sorry, could you let me know what company you’re calling from and I’ll get you more information,” Greg replied, sounding equally confused.

“I’m calling from the Dunder Mifflin Sabre Scranton branch.”

“All right, just a moment while I pull this up… here we go, So your parent company Sabre has contracted out your IT support to us, so we manage all your IT needs now, not the helpdesk that you’re used to calling. With that out of the way, what seems to be the problem?”

“Well, one of my coworkers has supposedly created a doomsday device that is going to email our boss a bunch of sensitive emails at the end of the day because we exceeded our allowed number of mistakes today,” Pam explained, trying her hardest not to come off as a crazy person, and not entirely sure if she was succeeding.

“Oh-Kay, I’m afraid that this issue sounds a little more complex than what I usually deal with so I’m going to ask you to hold for a minute while I consult a senior tech on next steps, is that all right Pam,” Greg asked, sounding to Pam like he was concerned for her sanity.

After a minute of waiting on hold Pam heard the music stop and the handset get picked up again.

“Hey Pam, you still there?”

“Yep, still here.”

“Great, I am going to be escalating you to the senior technician in a moment, I’ve explained the situation to him as best I can but he will probably have some more questions for you, please bear with us as I transfer you.”

Pam heard the call ringing through to another extension, and then heard the pickup.

“Hey Pam, this is Carl, I just need to get some clerical stuff out of the way here first, do you know if you’ve ever had a ticket with us before?”

“I think so,” Pam said, wracking her brain, Carl sounded awfully familiar, “It would have been a few years though.”

“Let me just take a look here… I’ve got a Pam Beesly for a phone system outage 3 years ago, does that sound right?”

“Yeah, it’s Halpert now though” Pam confirmed, her memory of that day coming back to her, “I think I remember that you were the technician who came out to fix the phones.”

“Ah, Congratulations; according to the notes here, yes… Ah yes I remember now, is Michael still managing down there?”

“No, he got replaced, it’s Andy now, I don’t know if you met him last time.”

“I don’t believe I did, shame. Anyhow, could you describe what this doomsday machine looks like? Is it running on a computer, one of the servers in the back, or what?”

“I think it runs on Dwight’s computer, but I can’t be 100% sure, last I knew he had the admin password.”

“Right, well, we can get that reset after we deal with this, I don’t imagine Dwight is supposed to have that… Can you hold on a second I’m going to check the servers to see if there is anything running there that shouldn’t be.”

“Sure, take your time, we’ve got until five until this thing fires off or proves to be a clever ruse,” Pam said nervously.

“Alright, nothing out of the ordinary here, so it looks like this thing must be running on Dwight’s workstation. Do you know if he has any unsaved work open on his desktop? I’m thinking the easiest solution would just be to shut it down, that way it can’t do whatever it was going to when the time comes.”

“Sorry,” Pam says, “I don’t actually know.”

“All right, not a problem Pam, plan B is unplugging the network cable, you said this thing is supposed to send an email, right?”

“Right.”

“Great, can’t send an email with no internet. Do you know where the network cable is at the back of his tower? Unplug that and we should be golden.”

“All right, thanks Carl, we will do that.”

“Right on, that’s all we can really do, was there anything else I can give you a hand with?”

“Thanks Carl, that was all we had.”

“Perfect, let me know how it works out, I’ll schedule a followup call for tomorrow afternoon just to make sure everything is still working, bye Pam.”

“Bye Carl,” Pam said and hung up.

“Erin?” Pam called over to reception.

“Yes Pam?” Erin asked as she bounded up to Pam’s desk.

“Erin, could you please unplug the network cable from Dwight’s computer?”

“Which one is the network cable Pam? How do you tell, they’re all just wires!” Erin exclaimed in wonder.

Pam was beyond done with the doomsday machine at this point so she told Erin, “Just unplug them all if you’re not sure, I don’t care if Dwight left any work open at this point,” she said with her face in her hands.

“Ok,” Erin said and proceeded to climb under Dwight’s desk, and Pam was delighted to hear the quiet whir of the computers fan stop.

Now they just had to go to Dwight’s and spare his feelings, making sure that he felt like he was the one in control. This was the delicate balance that the role of the office administrator required.

Chapter End Notes:
Hope you enjoyed, I just felt like writing something a little closer to home for me, and thus we got an average ticket resolution from helpdesk.


DoomGoose is the author of 4 other stories.

This story is part of the series, Tales from Tech Support. The previous story in the series is Tales from Tech Support: Phone Guy.

You must login (register) to review or leave jellybeans