They’re Not Excelling At This

(I work in tech support. My company has hired several temporary workers to help out with some data-entry stuff.)

Temp: “Hey, can you help me?”

Me: “Sure. What do you need?”

Temp: “I was working on a spreadsheet, and I saved it, but now I can’t find it.”

Me: “That shouldn’t be a problem. What was it called?”

Temp: “I don’t know.”

Me: “Okay. When did you save it?”

Temp: “I don’t know.”

Me: “Did you save it yesterday?”

Temp: “Maybe. I can’t remember.”

Me: “Tell you what; I’ll search your entire hard drive for every file ending in ‘.xls’ or ‘.xlsx.’”

Temp: “What for?”

Me: “You said it was a spreadsheet; I’m assuming you used Microsoft Excel to create it.”

Temp: “What’s Excel?”

Me: “Okay, never mind. I’ll search your hard drive for every file that was saved over the last few days.” *does so* “Here’s one called ‘Important Work.xls.’ Would that be it?”

Temp: “No.”

Me: “Okay, how about this one. ‘Important Stuff.xls’?”

Temp: “Open it and I’ll see… No, that’s not it.”

(Thirty minutes later:)

Me: *frustrated* “I’m really sorry, but I can’t seem to find your file. You’ve told me that all the ones we’ve found aren’t correct.”

Temp: “Well, that’s just great! I thought you were going to HELP ME!” *stalks off*