Projecting Incompetence

(I’m a receptionist. People can borrow beamers/projectors and laptops for presentations elsewhere in the building. A coworker hands in a set he borrowed.)

Coworker: “You gave me a broken projector!”

Me: “That’s odd. I hadn’t heard any other complaints about it. Let me check it.”

Coworker: “I had a presentation for guests and we had to huddle around the laptop. It was humiliating! And— What are you doing?”

Me: “Hooking things up. That way I know what is wrong and I can tell the service desk what needs to be fixed.”

Coworker: “You are hooking it up wrong! This cable needs to go here!”

(I look at our projector. It’s the fool-proof kind, color-coded and all. I also have quite the technical knowledge, but I double check, just in case.)

Me: “Well, let’s see what it does when I put the blue VGA-cable into the blue VGA-port… Huh, it works. Which port did you say you used?”

Coworker: “I, eh… I guess we picked the wrong port.”

(He hurried away. He apparently picked a port that said, “Monitor out,”’ to hook up an extra screen. I don’t even know why that projector has that port, but I guess I’ll now have to say, “The blue cable goes into the blue port,” for extra clearance.)