that they can walk out of my office and know it all,” said Lut, making frightened grin.
“And our users ask so many questions, I’m hanging on the phone all day long
answering, but at the same time I have to work on the new programmes, I just haven’t
managed yet to create several virtual selves to respond to all that demand.”
Several of the CHD started to grin now. Several virtual selves! That would be nice!
What a lot of good ideas.
“And they come to me to get help with their reports, and think that my knowledge
about computers will make that the report writes itself all alone,” said Gwendoline
drawing a funny face.
“They ask me how I know all this, and when I tell them that I sometimes sit down in
the evening to study they don’t believe me. I think they believe I acquire my
knowledge by sitting five minutes per day in a pentagram or so,” said Hilde, looking
puzzled but everyone laughed again. They imagined her well indeed.
“I learn a programme in five minutes,” said Maurice. “And not using witchcraft, I’m
- 189 -
The Crazy HelpDesk
just smart. Not some bloody witch.”
“There are nice witches.”
“No, witches aren’t nice, but maybe we could use some white magic,” said Myra,
looking dead serious. She believed in ‘other things’. But the others didn’t know that yet and laughed because they thought she was joking.
Well not all of them:
“Yes there are nice witches,” said Gwendoline. “There is white magic.”
“And what if we were to give it to them, this ‘white magic’? I mean practical magic.
Something like training, but nor they nor we have the time for training,” said Leo, who
was the only male present to be keen for such way of thoughts. ”Lutgarde and I can
impossibly do all this alone anymore. We must find a trick to convey our knowledge,
but how.”
Johanna frowned. She was a practical being, but the situation was such a mess that
even she was going to consider an unusual solution:
“Yes but how?”
Yes but how? That was the question.
“We could ask some Oracle!” said Lexi, only half joking.
“Yes we must,” said Myra, but seriously that everyone looked at her with some
suspicion. All this talk about magic had just been a joke, a way of expressing their
stress. They were IT people, sound with figures and numbers, and had to pretend not to
believe in such things. But this wouldn’t last for long. Lexi jumped back to her help:
“If our users believe in magic, why don’t we? The situation needs a miracle to be
solved. A solution must be found from heaven. Of course we could do with some
magical things like an Oracle glass. The glass would show us what we should do to get
out of this mess.”
“Why not ask the Tarot or the I Ching, Lexi, while you’re at it?”
“I did ask the I Ching. It’s a sacred book.”
Maurice looked amused: “And the result?”
“The I Ching answered we would undergo a period of great troubles and changes, but
that at the end everything would settle down and we’d come out of this mess.”
“Lexi you worry me,” said Maurice, but he didn’t mean it. He knew his Lexi was rather
sound. And a bit scheming too. But exhausted. He smiled:
“To say the truth I’ve tried it myself at some time in my life, but all it ever answers is: The great man, in due time, will come and save the little ones. Where is he? I don’t see him.”
But now even practical Hilde and best friend at the CHD, out of female solidarity
maybe, came to Myra’s and Lexi’s help too:
“Maurice. You of course are this great man. We all know that. But YOU, a man with a
scientific education, think of course that all this about far-seeing, telepathy and so is
- 190 -
The Crazy HelpDesk
rubbish. You label everything you don’t understand as a belief in magic, and then say it doesn’t exist, that it’s not scientific. But in fact yours is not a scientific attitude. You just refuse all of it as a superstition, instead of looking for explanations. SCIENTIFIC
explanations.”
Myra, with now two allies, glowed brightly at Maurice. What a pity. Why was he so
stubborn? He had seemed to her more open minded then the average. Why only believe
in what one could see? It was the same for Lexi: She was sure of her skills. Had she not foreseen the MOVE itself?! This feeling at the pit of her stomach.
“And Maurice,” said Gwendoline, ”have you not told me just the other day that you
have met a man who had witnessed people in trance talking in ancient languages they
had never learned or spoken before? Aramaic and so? And don’t say no, you DID
believe it.”
Now Maurice was slightly taken aback:
“But that of course, is true.”
“See! Because I don’t believe either just without having seen it myself, but I am at least willing to investigate at least.”
“Now I have all the girls against me,” said Maurice, with falsely pretended
unhappiness.
But Leo, now too, came to the girls help:
“Things are not always what they seem,” he said. ”That is a common saying which
might have some truth to it. Our grandmothers are not in for nothing.”
“That’s why you’re so old fashioned Leo,” said Maurice. Mighty, Maurice was really
having some sort of a problem today. Maybe his wife was away again, on one of her
travels to the end of the world. Making money in a way Maurice wouldn’t admit.
Sven only sat cross-armed and highly amused, Nico was on one of his holidays (maybe
with Franca, Maurice’ wife), Johanna was grinning and Lexi had become silent and
was rubbing her head. Finally she added with intention to Maurice:
“If I didn’t know better I’d say you were mean.” Lexi adored Maurice.
“It’s your bump,” said Maurice as meanly as he could, “that makes you believe things.
I AM mean.”
Indeed Lexi had a big bump on her head which she had gotten on one of her wild runs
through the corridors by colliding with, yes, the HO1 himself. The printer she was
carrying had had a crash with the floor and was declared a total loss. The bump had
turned from green to blue during the jest of conversation
HO1 had been very nice and had collected her from the floor, and, since she had
conveniently fainted, led her in person to the infirmary, which had made lots of the
female witnesses of the scene jealous because the HO1 was very good looking. And
rich. One couldn’t but be rich in his position.
“Have you been provoking that crash in order to get the HO1 as replacement of your
dreadful boyfriend?” asked Maurice. Lexi’s boyfriend was one other little Slovene,
- 191 -
The Crazy HelpDesk
good looking, quite nice, but always playing pranks on everyone. Also, he was not the
marrying kind. Maurice was sure Lexi was secretly looking for someone more serious.
Also Benedek was not very rich. The HO1 would just be her type of man. Lexi had
luxury tastes, belying all her crawling on the floor to stick network cable ends into their sockets. She knew all fashion makers of the world by heart and had dreamed of
Bohatian jewels since she was six years old.
“Well he’s still free,” said Johanna, grinning mildly.
“But he’s not the marrying kind either,” said Leo. ”He likes women too much for that;
how could he choose one and forget about the rest.”
“Either? You mean just like you Leo?”
“And you know he doesn’t like blonde women,” said Sven.
It was all but true: The HO1, still single, was said to have a lot of affairs - or to have women friends, to say it nicely. He seemed to like women of all kinds, ages, heights
and weights but for some reason there was one kind he avoided: The blondes.
He had even been overheard saying so: “Blond women are just like in the Blondes
jokes, you know what I mean. Not very smart. And they always want to lead a man to
the altar. Always nagging about this. No way! No way!”
Catherine, his secretary, a dark haired semi-beauty was telling this to everyone with
some glee, except to the blondes. House people were rarely cruel. Indeed there seemed
to be a greater concentration of Angels at the House than elsewhere. And Catherine
was sure the corridors would help her spread the good word anyway.
HO1 was very good looking, and also very nice, and blond Lexi, it was obvious, had a
shine for him. His picture hung on one of her walls, the only man there. It had initially been a group photo, showing him in the midst of some women delegation. Only that
Lexi had cut the women out. Otherwise they were merely photos of her home village,
her dog and her two cats. The next morning, the HO1’s poster, typically for Lexi, still
hang there. Lexi was so very much ‘transparent’, that one never knew where one truly
was at. Not hiding the truth makes people forget about it.
The team separated, just as wise as before, or so at least they believed. After all, some jesting and joking between good colleagues together was soothing to the soul.
It’s lunchtime
Lunchtime came, and Myra and Lexi fled to have a sandwich at the Pink Bar, called so
because each year one could see the salmons passing there, travelling from their cold
oceans to the heights of Russia. At this season they were many, it was autumn, and
there was still nowhere an end to be seen to the mess they were in. “A never ending
story,” said Lexi again. Since the split, some six months ago, she had counted 400
offices moves.
Maurice fled home to see his wife. He needed a break after all that talk about magic.
Franca was not on a faraway trip at all, and even less with Nico. Johanna never fled but
- 192 -
The Crazy HelpDesk
stayed in her office fighting. Leo fled by grinning in his beard. Arthur was nowhere to
be seen. He didn’t need to flee; he had never been captive yet. So maybe he could free
them all?
Lut fled with Gwendoline and Hilde to have lunch at the Goats bar together with two
users, Anne and Lena. They used one other shortcut smart Maurice had discovered
recently, and of which security seemed to know nothing about. It was about 500 meters
long, and curved beneath the House’s buildings and even beneath the river, and they
had to use a pocket lamp. Otherwise it was in good state and it spared them twenty
minutes instead of the five they took now. They never met anyone there except their
own CHD team. This time they ran across Sven who gave each of them one of his
reassuring sexy smiles. He didn’t stop, but sped on, to one other mysterious
‘rendezvous’. Dear Sven, he was ever so nice. As he found every girl desirable, even if
nothing would ever happen. One felt so safe with him. Lexi even lost the slight fear she always felt when taking one of those shortcuts: That of meeting the Minotaur there.
Anne and Lena were of course sworn to secrecy in what regarded the shortcut.
It was true that Maurice shouldn’t be doing this, but since he had discovered software
on Tucows to crack passwords on the Network he had discovered that HO1’s password
was just his initial one still. And on the My Documents of his PC he had discovered a
freshly pasted photo of Lexi. The typical convict photo, made by security, to put on the badges. And he didn’t know yet if he was going to tell her. That would have been
admitting he had been prying.
Maurice had a sixth sense for such things: his sixth sense was about computers and
with the seventh he guessed about the use people would, or should make of it.
- 193 -
The Crazy HelpDesk
Grateful users
Norbert, the MOUSA of MOU III popped in early in the morning to ask Hilde if she
agreed to share the Distribution Lists she had made for MOU XII in the Public Folders
of Outlook with the users of his own MOU:
"Both MOU’s are communicating a lot."
Of course she had agreed and said that she would add the MOU III users to the
permissions of MOU's XII contact groups in the Public folders of Outlook. They
chatted a bit about themselves, a rare event.
Hilde liked Norbert a lot. He was intelligent and a very nice man. And a rather sexy
one too. He smelled of tobacco, though he didn’t smoke, of thirty years old whisky,
though he only drank French wine, and of a house filled with children, though he had
none, of horses, though he did no sport, of cotton farms, though he had no slaves, and
of some nice after shave. Hilde sniffed, and couldn’t decide what it was. Her sense of
smell was interrupted by a phone call, what else, the first this morning, coming from a
rather charming Greek. He introduced himself with a compliment:
“Ah it’s Hilde. The Queen! Sorry to be so early Golden One. It’s only eight o’clock”
It was Dimitri Delpini, a charming and brave CLA who, when meeting her in elevators
and so, always treated her like she was his favourite discussion partner. He had
interesting opinions, and was not afraid to say how much he felt lost in the Chaos,
looking at her with his intense eyes, like they were the only two persons in the world to understand.
“Hi Dimitri.” Of course she couldn’t help but feeling flattered. As her colleague Eleni
had told her: Greek men one should never marry nor work directly with, but they were
the most charming colleagues and buddies. And Dimitri was rather good-looking too.
Would Eleni say this about not working with or living with about Dimitri too? Anyway
she had Egon and Dimitri a wife plus a pair of charming twins
But look, I have to do a ‘Show this folder as an email address book’ but the address
book is in my Public folders, and I don’t know where the Public folders are. They have
disappeared!”
“Dimitri they have not disappeared, they are on the EMail Server somewhere. You
must just find them. If you click on the yellow Folder List icon, in the left panel, you will find the +Public Folders at the very bottom. See the Picture:
- 194 -
The Crazy HelpDesk
“Thanks Hilde, I feel better now, I was afraid I had deleted the whole thing. Bye
Golden.”
Greek men sure knew what to say.
Norbert again started to tell her about his garden, about the problems he had with his
tomatoes, but the phone rang:
It was Jakinda, wanting to know how she could see her address list, when writing a
new email.
“Hilde, ma Belle, I keep forgetting this, shame on me.”
“Show this folder as an email address book,” said Hilde patiently.
“Thanks so much, coffee soon, my treat of course.”
She hung up. Trillions of coffees they never took the time to drink lately, or rarely.
Norbert continued about the problems he had with his tomatoes.
But the phone rang again and again and Norbert gave up and left, but a bit of his scent
too. It stagnated pleasantly in the office. Norbert gone, Maurice appeared for one in his demo sessions in Hilde’s office. He smelled of violets. She was feeling sensual this
morning. Maybe it was because the weather was nice for once, that she had got up
early, and done some gardening, just before the rain came. She kept on smelling things,
especially nice smells. So it was violets now. Maurice indeed presented Hilde with a
box of ‘Violettes’, a French candy in the form and colour of a Violet flower, of which
she took one. The he sat down beside her and gestured passionately:
“Hilde, I have discovered a super little software. Abby Fine Reader. It converts static
paper documents and PDF files into a text format you can easily work on, like Word,
saving you time and effort. You just let Abby fine read the pdf document and have it
converted into Word.
Maurice privately admired Hilde’s hair. Hilde was so utterly healthy. Like if she never
ate anything but the choicest vegetables and herbs from her garden. Today she exhaled
health itself. She WAS health. But the phone rang and Maurice went back to his office,
sorry to leave. It was Gerhard on the phone.
“Hilde, I have my Outlook mailbox filled with HTML codes, I can’t see a thing
clearly anymore, whatever has happened?”
“You mean you have the subject and beneath it some text? Like:
- 195 -
The Crazy HelpDesk
“Yes!”
“But those are not HTML codes. This is the AutoPreview. Choose ‘View - Current
View - and there ‘Messages’’ instead of ‘Messages with AutoPreview’’.
Hilde heard Gerhard fiddling around and she pictured his nice wide smile:
“It works my Dear. Thanks, like always you could help me. What would we do without
you!”
Gerhard Katz really had the nicest smile one could imagine. It burst up in his face like the sun coming out of the rain. It was such a bright smile that she could see it over the Remote Connection.
On this, Gwendoline popped in. This place was a Perpetum mobile in what regarded
people; one never had a moment’s of peace. Ok for Gwendoline really, she was a
giving person, but others would come in and begin talking about a problem even if they
had to see she was on the phone. Everybody at this place was doing is, it was really
rude. Did they think she had two or more brains and mouths to listen and answer to
questions at the same time? They say that women could do two things at the time; that
their CPU, unlike computers, could do two operations at once. Was it true? At any rate
everyone certainly believed it in her respect.
It could come from the fact that everyone here talked between three to more then ten
languages, and well. Hilde smiled at Gwendoline. Gwendoline, just like Maurice, was
giving her something back too. She was such a good listener herself, always giving
good advice. Sometimes Hilde believed that Gwendoline was kind of a saint. Holy.
Holger, from the Helpdesk team of MOU XIII, passing by the office, stuck his head in.
“Hi Hilde and Gwendoline. You girls know everything. Would one of you know how
to compare two documents in Word? My user Eldred asks.”
“You must open one document in Word,” said Hilde. ”Then choose ‘Tools - Track
Changes - Compare documents’’. And then find the document you want to compare
with and click on it to open it.”
“I can call her and explain,” said Gwendoline,”I know her from a previous MOU.”
Holger thanked them and left the office, only to slip directly into the adjacent one,
which was Maurice’s.
Maurice had just been laughing out loud a second before, and since Hilde had just
opened a joke which Lut had sent to the whole team, Maurice might be laughing about
that one.
Holger and Maurice began talking, but pieces of their conversation could be overheard.
- 196 -
The Crazy HelpDesk
“I don’t like her,” Sven had said to Maurice. ”She’s too intelligent. Always knows
everything.”
“I like her,” said Maurice. ”I like intelligent women. Moreover she has a lot of
humour.” Hilde sensed outrage in his voice.
“And her inseparable colleague, this Gwendoline, she’s too nice to be true, not my type
either.”
Maurice took some time to answer to this: “What’s the problem with that?”
“Too goodie-goodie. And this Lut is not my type either, not my kind of woman.
Always about to create something.”
“Having a problem Holger?” said Maurice, a slight bewilderment in his voice.
Gwendoline and Hilde looked at each other. Hilde wondered what Holger’s type of
woman could be. She wondered sometimes, if he liked them at all, even if he was
pretending to be a womanizer all the time. He had made her sense of smell go away,
and everything just smelled drab. But when she saw the look in Gwendoline’s face, she
almost felt pity for him. Holy Gwendoline could be very, very cruel, and was capable
to tell the whole world what this guy was worth, if it pleased her to do so.
Jaana, who’d left their MOU some month ago stuck her head into Hilde’ office in as if
to emphasise this:
“I just saw this guy, what’s his name, Holger, leave the office next door. Do you know
him?”
“Yes indeed…”
“He’s ever so awful. He is supposed to work in a HelpDesk, but he never knows
anything. What’s a HelpDesk for, if they never know anything? And more to come, he
thinks the world of himself, at despises those who can and want to help. Your users are
so lucky here; it’s common knowledge that you’re the best HelpDesk of the House,
maybe of the world, hihi. You know how the saying goes? If you want a problem
solved, go to CHD.”
“But there are a lot of very good guys in the other HelpDesks here!”
“That may be true. But not in our MOU. And this other girl in the HelpDesk of our
MOU, she’s Murean I think, I don’t even know her name; don’t even mention her,
everyone hates her, all of us users. She’s not only not nice, she never knows anything.
And when for once she does, she always makes you feel she is so superior. You never
did that, you two, and the rest of you,” said Jaana. She threw them a kiss from the back of her hand, withdrew her head from the office and closed the door.
Well this was a lot of bad talk, and they all three hated that.
It got worse, because when Gwendoline phoned Eldred to tell her how to compare two
documents she got received by a:
- 197 -
The Crazy HelpDesk
“Gwendoline! Thank God, it’s you, and not this Murean, whatever her name is; I don’t
want to hear it.”
The three, far from being happy to hear this, felt downcast:
“I like to hear I’m good, maybe even that I’m the best, but I don’t to hear I’m the only one good,” said Lut.
“Yes compliments are nicer to hear when they are clean of criticism toward others.”
Then, just if someone had listened and had taken pity, and wanted to grant
them just that, an Email appeared on Hilde’s screen, with her, Gwendoline and Lut as
recipients:
Subject: “Thanks to you three”
Message text: “From Monday on, I will be working at MOU XVII. But before I leave
the building, I want to thank you for all your help, your patience and your good
humour, everlasting in spite of all the stress.
All the best, Maria.”
Lucky Maria, she had managed to flee chaos, but this kind of Email of course did them
a lot of good each time they got one.
Another one followed, again with the three of them as recipients.
Subject: “All those changes”
“Lucky me, I’m going to MOU X and will thus survive the year. I don’t know if our
paths will again cross in what regards work, but I want to thank you in all cases for
your efficiency and everlasting readiness to help.
Kaia.”
And never two without three:
“Hilde, you’re such a darling and IT star, however did you know that? I’ll remember
that one, I promise. Mairin.”
This had been in answer to:
>>>From Hilde to Mairin 06/04/YY 10:57 >>>
Mairin, you must select the table. Click into the table and choose ‘Table - Select
Table’ and then you choose ‘Table - Autofit to Window‘‘
Which was in answer to:
>>>From Mairin to Hilde 06/04/YY 10:30
Hilde, I have copied a table from another document into Word, but now it hangs over
the left edge of the document... What shall I do?”
>>>
To read from top to bottom or upside down, was, of course, the way of the House.
Gwendoline found a third one just for her alone too:
“Thank you very much for the super useful introduction course to the PC at MOU XII,
- 198 -
The Crazy HelpDesk
really super well done. Ignacio.”
And Lut was happy to show them:
Subject: Miss you.
"Message Text: I really miss you all, at my new MOU they don’t know half as much as you. Might come back just for you. In the meantime, you might find time for a coffee?
Marco"
Both printed out the Email and went to show it to Hilde. Hilde grinned, knowing what
they meant. Compliments are choice food for hungry souls. For all their stress, they
had at least their nice users.
Gwendoline told them that while she was giving the c