Every year we spend a couple of months replacing older equipment and upgrading the newer. All have to have their software replaced with a fresh image and usually several other tasks have to be carried out afterwards.
One year we were running a week or two behind schedule and classes were coming in to the rooms on introductory tours.
I was in a room surrounded by around twenty four workstations, configuring the printers and few other bits and pieces. I had logged on to all the machines and was configuring a row at a time.
I was half way around the room, when the door opens and in floods twenty or so adolescent teenagers. Not understanding what chairs were for, they stood around chatting and trying to workout why people get annoyed when they play loud rap music from the 'tinny' mobile phones place in the palm of their hands.
A rather tired looking tutor comes in and it only takes them about ten minutes to quiet the rabble and get them to sit down. Then ignoring the authority figure at the front, their attention turns to the computers. Yes the computers that I am configuring.
Resisting the urge to slap the idle hands away with something heavy, I politely ask a rather spotty looking kid with greasy hair and a nose ring to "please leave the computers alone." I got a look from him that told me that he did not speak human. I gave up and continued working as fast as I could to get the computers logged off before the little buggers undid everything I had just achieved.
The tutor started to call the register and I continued with my job. The room suddenly went silent and I realised the woman at the front was talking to me.
I look up, feeling guilty for doing my job and persecuted by every pair of eyes in the room. The tutor looks at me and then down at her clipboard register, then back up at me again, tapping her pen on the paper.
"I'm sorry" she says. "I can't find you on my list. Are you sure you're in the right room?"
"Yes thanks" I replied innocently. "This is definitely the room I should be in."
The tutor looked further confused and hastily started to search through her list of names, pointing at each person in turn until she had no one left to count. This had to be the day that just for once, everyone had turned up.
"But you're not on my register" the tutor tells me after her long fruitless search.
"That's good to know" I say "I am not in your class, I work here. I am getting the computers ready for your students."
The woman becomes slightly embarressed, then eyes the staff identity card around my neck , suddenly realising her mistake. She apologized and hastily shepherded out her students as quickly as she could.
They were in there less than twenty minutes. After that I had to completely reimage three of the computers.
Later that day...
I am in another computer room, this one was larger and more open plan than in the other building. I had thirty eight computers to image and I decided to do half a room at a time.
The first had finished and just wanted configuring, so I started to set the other half off on the other side and then go back to them. As I was working on the other side, I was unlucky enough to get bombarded with yet another group of social misfits.
In they trooped, a collection of girls with pink hair, wearing too much makeup and not enough clothes, and several boys with their trousers almost down to their ankles, showing off their boxers and a strong aromor of BO. Surely these guys could save money on clothing by buying shorter trousers.
Before I finished getting the last computers imaging, it was already too late. Two guys that looked like they had just been released from juvenile prison were already clacking away on the keyboards. As the computers were nowhere near ready, theit small underdeveloped minds had problems conceiving the fact that the computers "didn't work."
The tutor this time was a tall lanky fellow who didn't seem to care that his students would rather mess up my afternoons work that listen to him. I made my way over to him, trying to restrain myself.
"Please can you ask you students NOT to play around with the computers. I am still getting them ready for the new year." I ask him politely.
"Uhh!" He answers. (Am I talking to a student here?)
"The computers, they are NOT ready to be used. Can you ask your students to leave them alone?"
"Oh, I didn't know." He says. You would have thought the setup screen rather than the logon box would have been a huge giveaway.
At that moment, I had to take a phone call, when I got back the two boys and several other troglodytes were still playing with the computers.
Fuming I go back over to the tutor, but before I can say anything he says to me "the computers are not working." No s*** Sherlock!
I explained to him again in an "I am PO'ed" tone of voice and finally the group give up tormenting me and leave.
Once I had finished the second half of the room I had to start all over again on the first.
Bloody vandals...
No comments:
Post a Comment