Page 10 of October
“Because I’d have to fill out a ticket. That’s about twenty steps and takes forever. It’s fine. It only happens a few times a day.”
Finley bent down and found a new HDMI cable in her supply crate. She laughed at Molly because it seemed just like her to deal with a monitor going out instead of filling out an IT ticket.
“Can you stand up for a second, and I’ll take a look?”
“You don’t have to. I didn’t fill out a request.”
“I’ll do that for you later,” Finley said as Molly stood. “Give me just a minute, and we’ll see if it’s the monitor.”
“Okay,” Molly replied, moving aside.
Finley switched the existing HDMI cable into the second port on the monitor and stood back, waiting to see if the blinking happened again.
“How many times is it really happening?”
“Huh?”
“Molls, you said it was a few times a day. My guess is that you’re downplaying that.”
“Oh, yeah.” Molly laughed. “A few times an hour.”
The monitor blinked at Finley as if on cue.
“So, not the port,” she concluded and went to unwrap the new cable and plug it in after removing the old one.
She wrapped the old one as she watched the monitor to see if it would blink again.
“Nothing yet, but if it does it again, let me know. I have another monitor in the server room that we can try. If that doesn’t work, I’ll check all your settings, and we’ll see what the problem is. Sorry, some of this is a process. We’ve got to rule everything out before they let us order something expensive like a new monitor or laptop.”
“That’s okay,” Molly replied and smiled at her. “Thank you.”
“Will you promise not to suffer in silence and tell me if it keeps doing it, please?”
“I feel like a blinking monitor is a first-world problem, and I can deal with it. It always comes back up.”
“Until one day, when it doesn’t and you’re out a monitor,” Finley said and sat back down at her desk.
“True,” Molly agreed and returned to her chair. “Do I need to put in that ticket so that you don’t get in trouble for the cable?”
Finley laughed and said, “No, we have about a thousand of these.” She held up the old cable. “And we buy them in bulk. It’s probably the cheapest thing I can replace, but I’ll put the ticket in for you anyway so that there’s a record. That way, if we do need to replace something more expensive, we have proof that we tried everything else first.”
Finley watched as Molly’s smile widened, but she didn’t know what she had done to deserve it. She’d only replaced a cable and offered to put the ticket in for Molly, which was easier for her to do herself since she lived in the system and could mark the ticket as complete all at once. Then, she caught somethingout of the corner of her eye and turned, noticing India walking by, and she was alone.
“I’ll be right back,” she said to Molly, not wanting to go but needing to talk to her ex. “Hey,” she half-yelled.
India stopped walking, smiled at her, and said, “Hey.”
“Can we talk?”
“Sure. I’ve got a minute,” India replied and nodded at the empty conference room next to them.
“Yeah, okay,” Finley agreed reluctantly.
She didn’t really want to do this in a see-through conference room, but it was better than going somewhere alone with her ex, where India might try to talk her out of it and get her way. Finley followed her inside, and India sat down in one of the chairs, placing her phone and laptop on the conference table. Finley didn’t want to sit down, so she closed the door and remained standing next to it.
“I didn’t get your key back,” she said, taking India’s key out of her pocket and placing it down on the table. “There’s yours.”
“The key? That’s what this is about?”
