Tag Archives: Burt Mustin

Amos’ Moment of Terror

12 Jul

July 12, 2021

Amos: I didn’t know where I was!
Me: But you went-
Amos: Then the lights went out!

Amos comes to the office once a week, every week, for as long as he has been working for the company. He has been working for the company for better than two decades.

Amos has had some issues with the fax machine my boss bought him.

Amos: I sent it back to the manufacturer.
Me: Didn’t it come from Amazon?
Amos: It came in the mail.

After exhausting every effort to get the fax machine working, my boss finally faced the reality that he was fighting a losing battle. He printed out the return free shipping label from Amazon and asked Amos to pack up the machine and send it back to Amazon.

Amos took it to his neighborhood Staples, where they boxed it up and shipped it to Cannon, for $32.75.

Amos: It was the right thing to do.

With no fax machine, it was more important than ever to get his email working. He had somehow blocked me so neither I nor our general office account (also blocked) could reach him. I found out today that he also blocked our other supervisor and the boss. Amos had blacklisted the three most important people in the office.

I found the directions to remove the blacklist. I told Amos it would probably take me a few minutes.

Amos: Can you take your time?
Me: Sure.
Amos: I have to go to the bathroom. I might be awhile.
Me:
Amos: I’ll bring my phone.

Amos had not returned after awhile. I was not sure how long but I had finished the email and moved on to other work. Then:

Amos: I got lost!
Me: Where did you go?
Amos: I went to the bathroom.
Me: Our bathroom?
Amos: The lights are on a timer. They only give you 15 minutes.

Amos explained that he was in the bathroom when the lights went out. He did not know what to do. Amos explained that after he completed his business, he slowly opened the stall door. Amos did not want to hit his head on the door, he said, so he turned with the door and closed it. But now he was turned around.

Amos: I was afraid to move.
Me: Shouldn’t the lights have come back on? There’s a motion sensor.
Amos: I moved so slow I guess it didn’t see me.

Amos, in closing the stall door, had spun himself around and did not know if he was facing a sink, a stall, or a wall. He felt for the wall and then made his way along it, feeling along inch by inch, until he found the door and escaped the 8′ by 10′ room.

I tested Amos’ email before he left. We are all still blocked. The problem must be in his phone, not the account settings on the sever. Amos is now effectively unemployed until he gets this problem solved. He’ll probably buy a new phone.

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Vrooom-A-Zoom Zoom!

18 Jun

July 18, 2021

Amos: I’m a Zoomer now!
Me: What?
Amos: I’m a Zoomer. I’m zooming!

That’s Amos, who works for me. He’s a crack investigator whom I once avoided for 20 minutes by the cleaver ruse of simply walking two feet behind him and slightly to his left.

Amos has a little trouble with technology.

Amos: This cellular phone isn’t working.
Me: What’s wrong?
Amos: I can’t find the antenna. I think it must have fallen off.

I had to set up a Zoom meeting for Amos so he could get some training from an outside contractor.

Amos: That’s what you call people who do Zoomer meetings, isn’t it? Zoomers?
Me: Yup. You’re a Zoomer.

Amos has gone through 4 cell phones since I have known him, about 3 years. They never seem to work right. They all have the same problem: user error. Amos has no idea how to set up a contact, so every time I call him- and during the week I may call him four or five times a day- I have to tell him who’s calling when he picks up since he doesn’t recognize my number.

Amos also cannot receive email on his phone. There is something wrong with the settings on all his phones, he tells me. He’s gone to his local Staples to fix it and they always tell him they can’t find anything wrong. Amos says it is a scam to get him to buy a new phone, which he usually does.

When I want to send a case to Amos, I have to email it from a coworker’s account since Amos has somehow blocked me on his email, which he has to go to Staples to access and someone there has to “pull the email off the computer” for him.

My boss recently bought a fax machine for Amos. That was nearly three months ago. It is still not working. Amos has called in the phone company, the company that made the fax machine, and tech support from a number he saw on a flyer on a pole, and they all agree that there is nothing wrong. Amos is so far behind that he is flailing about like a trout on the line trying to figure out the fax machine, a piece of technology that is nearly obsolete.

Amos does not have a home phone line and is dependent on his cell phone (a disaster in the event of emergency) so in order to set up the fax he needed a phone line put in, which will cost him $30 a month. He asked my boss to reimburse him for that. My boss, who is notoriously cheap, agreed to pay it based on my advice.

I told him why not? The odds are he’ll never figure out how to use it anyway and he’ll send it back.

Go Speed Amos Go!

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