Subject: IT Help Tickets

I used to work at this place that couldn't keep an IT person on staff. So for two years we didn't have an IT person. There was an entire six months where I couldn't print a document. When I asked if we could have a person come fix the printer, I was told it was thousands of dollars to do that, and people just kept breaking it, so we didn't get a printer. I think it that was supposed to teach us a lesson, about what, I wasn't sure, but I don't think it taught me how to not break the printer.

I eventually got a new job (not because I couldn't print anything. That had been fixed by then, although the IT person was never replaced in my tenure). My first day of not working that job, I sat on my couch, drinking coffee, marveling that in a few hours, my entire house was going to be packed up and emptied, when got a text from a friend who still worked in the IT wasteland.

The text read approximately as follows:

Hey. I know you probably don't want to know this stuff, but I'm sharing it anyway. It's too good not to. We all got an email today that said we had submitted over 650 IT Help Tickets, and there were too many of them, so they were being deleted to help manage the IT backlog. They aren't fixing the issues, just getting rid of the full inbox about them.

I responded that I would always like to get such texts. Then I put my phone down and smiled. My new job had an IT person, I'd asked. And while I felt bad for my friends I'd left behind, I couldn't help but feel like my coffee tasted just a little bit brighter that day.