Full speed ahead!

This is lovely, this is brilliant.  This is why I decided to blog.

The short version is that our tech support here at the school decided to change the email login process, and after the change was implemented, they emailed us with instructions for logging into our accounts.

The long version is more fun.

I sit down at my computer, needing to email several parents about exactly why their students are failing my class.  I begin, as I always do, by opening MS Word and drafting a basic message.  MS Word’s click-and-drag-to-select capability far exceeds that of my email client’s, so whenever I will be copy-pasting information, I prefer to start there.

The email reads something like this:

Dear concerned or, more likely, disinterested, neglectful, and possibly abusive parent:

Your child is not only lazy, he or she (or it) is also an idiot.  Besides the fact that none of the homework I’ve assigned has been turned in, the last time I gave a literature quiz, your student turned in an Algebra test.  Since I know the Algebra teacher is quite thorough in collecting all of her quizzes, I don’t even know how this is possible.  It may be that your child is, in fact, so moronic that he or she has gone right through the entire spectrum of stupidity and come out the other side into some as-yet-undiscovered realm of transcendent genius.

Please contact me to arrange a conference as soon as possible.  Bring a firearm.

Sincerely,

Aylad MacOdys

I’ll do some minor editing later.  It has just occurred to me that I should check to see if any of these amazing examples of parentage have attempted to contact me over the weekend.  So I click-click on Internet Explorer (yes, I prefer IE… so shoot me), click on my “email” bookmark, and stare blankly at the magical “404″ appearing on the screen.

*sigh*

It shouldn’t be any big deal.  After the “my computer logs me out every 5 minutes” fiasco, I have tech support on speed dial.

Beep boop bip “You have reached technological services for Yoknap County Schools.  Current hold time is estimated at:  twenty.  Five.  Minutes.  Please remember to check the online support log for updates to common proble” — click.  I hang up.  There’s no point in waiting a half hour for some stupid glitch that’s probably been answered on the county website anyway.  I click over to my school system’s home page.  Click the “tech support” link.  Login screen.  Login? Uh… don’t know if I even have a password set up.  I try all thirty-nine passwords I’ve ever used, including a few that will probably put a red flag icon on my profile in the “teachers can’t be trusted online” Office of Orwellian Oversight.  Dang, no luck, but hey!  There’s a nice little “forgot your password?” link.

You can see where this is going, I’m sure.  If you guessed “clicking the link emails your password to the inbox you can’t access,” you’re right.  Kudos to you.

*sigh* Beep boop bip “You have reached technological services for Yoknapatawpha County Schools.  Current hold time is estimated at:  forty.  Five.  Minutes.”  Dang.

Time passes.  I spend much of the wait editing words like “idiot” and “moron” out of my email draft, figuring a little compassion can’t hurt my karma.

More time passes.  I’ve counted 17 unique ways of phrasing “your call is important to us” (and this blog claims to be dishonest!) when I finally get in touch with a live person.

“My name is Maximus,” he says, with a mildly far-Eastern accent that is at least 3,000 miles away from the nearest birth certificate featuring anything similar to a Latinate given name.  “How may I help you today?”

“I can’t log in to my email account.”

“Oh, yes, we have changed the login process.  We sent an email with instructions for the new login.  You should have received it already.  Goodbye.”

“No, no nononono wait!  Um.  Actually, no, sir, I didn’t receive it.  An hour and a half ago, the last time I successfully logged in, it wasn’t there.”

“Oh, yes, we sent the email about a half hour ago.”

Wait… so I’ve been on the phone for nearly an hour, and the email was down several minutes before that…  I quickly guzzle a can of Mountain Dew while “Maximus” waits patiently.  This is gonna be a twelve-pack day, I can tell.

Didn’t you get the memo, it was taped to an exploding castle? — Xykon

(Thanks to Terry Pratchett for the “out the other side” trope.)

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