The GeekHiker

Today I got an e-mail from a user, a new temporary employee, with a whole list of things that were “wrong” with her system and needed to be fixed.

Item #4 was this: “my direct fax to e-mail number 123-456-7890 doesn’t work.  People tell me the number hangs up.  I need a viable fax number.”

Viable.  Nice touch.  ‘Cuz, you know, sometimes I hand out fake numbers just as a prank.

I e-mailed her back, informing her that her fax number that she was assigned was actually 098-765-4321, not the number she had typed in her e-mail.

What I didn’t bother to point out to her was that she had the correct number already… in the e-mail signature she herself created yesterday.

In fact, it was at the bottom of the e-mail she sent to me, the one in which she’s complaining that her fax number wasn’t viable.

I’m not asking for people to come into an office environment with a computer science degree.  Really, I’m not.

But is looking at your own signature too much to ask?