Sometimes the only way to deal with an ignorant, entitled person is to show them how ignorant and entitled they are. Then move on.

That’s what happened in this story where a clueless employee made a request that was possible to fulfill but impossible to actually fulfill the ultimate goal.

Check out all the details.

Ticket closed. Reason: Can’t teleport mass storage media.

Sometimes you just gotta wonder why a person’s train of thought derails, and how it comes they aren’t even aware of it.

A staff member from marketing is at a conference today, where she’ll hold a presentation. Nicely following protocol, she had opened a ticket several days ago to request a loaner laptop for the trip, which was prepared and given to her in time.

That was the last reasonable thing this worker did.

The conference is 700 km away, so she had to leave by plane yesterday evening. But right before she left, she opened another ticket, about an hour after our IT team leaves the office and only one of us is available over the phone for emergency purposes, via the on-call number.

When I arrived in the office this morning, one of my team members met me, a very confused look on his face, saying he’s afraid he’ll have to escalate a ticket to me. He was in complete disbelief about was was requested and wasn’t sure how to handle it.

“Sure, escalate it over to me, I’ll take care of it,” I said. By the time I finished logging in the ticket already was in my queue.

It was a mind boggling instruction…

It stated the following:

“Please put the attached files on a USB stick, they contain my presentation media for tomorrow’s conference. The files are very important for this event, so please make sure there are no errors in copying.”

Two minutes later she had added a note to the ticket:

“Be aware I won’t be in the office tomorrow.”

Wait, what?
blank stare into the distance
How can you…
WHAT?

So she did what had to be done.

Alright, there’s only one sane solution to this.

I fetched a USB stick and copied her files to it. Then I responded:

“Attached files were transfered to a USB stick as you requested.

Delivery of said media in time is, unfortunately, impossible due to a lack of USB mass storage teleportation capabilities.

… into the solution box and hit [Submit]. Ticket closed.”

Really looking forward to the inevitable backfire!

Here is what people are saying on Reddit.

Bless you for giving her this much credit.

LOL don’t give them ideas.

Maybe, but that’s not his job.

Exactly! Thank you.

He’s just not trying hard enough.

Closing tickets must feel nice.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.