Every once in a while something at work screws up. The shipping computer or Puro server goes down, our main network server goes wonky, our web server dies (a frequent occurrence over weekends resulting in our online ordering system being inaccessable on Monday). It’s usually chaos when crap like this happens, particularly our main server, as that means we can’t enter orders or check stock or anything of the sort, resulting in us up here in the offices having to resort to an archaic method known as “pen and paper.” (Well, “notepad.exe” for me)
This morning, though, we arrived in the offices to the discovery that our phone system is down. We evidently use a ringdown service that’s connected to a main server here that routes all calls to whomever is logged in and holds whatever calls can’t be routed because all available agents are busy until such time as one of them isn’t. The server computer itself seems to be fine, but either the hardware it’s connected to has gone wonky or the service itself is buggered.
Our fax is also connected to this server on its own phone number, so we don’t even have the benefit of processing incoming fax requests.
Either way, the end result has been a deafening silence in an otherwise moderately busy office, leaving me with sod all to do but surf the dope. Not that this is a bad think in the short term, but since anyone who calls is needs to contact us for any of a variety of reasons, they’re not just going to forget about it. They’re going to call back. And once our phone lines are back up, that means we’re going to get inundated with a dodecabillion calls for the rest of the day.
Our “IT” guy (in quotes because he has no background in IT and seems to have it in his job description only because everyone else is even less qualified. I know more than everyone here combined, but I’m also the low man on the totem, and anyway I know nothing about this PBI system we run) has been on the phone with the company that provides this service. Or rather, he’s been on their voicemail waiting for a callback for the last hour and change. Their service is provbing itself rather poor at the moment, which isn’t very good for them because our contract is up for renewal shortly.
I think I’ll take a nap.