Sometimes a little effort can go a long way!

Imagine working in IT, and someone at your company needs help with something on their personal laptop. Would you help them out even though you’re technically not supposed to since it’s not work related?

In this story, one guy was in this situation, and he helped restore a lost manuscript for somebody at work. But he didn’t just restore it, he also educated her on how to save it going forward.

There’s a very happy ending.

Check out the full story. 

A Simple Issue Solved; Years Later, A Special Thank You

Years ago I worked as an entry-level tech at a large company.

Basically, I did simple things and the stuff other people didn’t think was worth their time.

This is where it gets interesting…

One day a woman who works there sends a ticket for a computer that has caused an important document to disappear. Due to many employees over-using the term “important” this gets shuffled to me.

I make my way to her office only to find that it’s not actually her work computer but her personal laptop that has made her important document disappear.

Also, the important document that is missing is not for work, but is the manuscript for the 300 plus page novel she’s written outside of work and for some reason she has only saved in one location.

He was trying to be pleasant towards her…

I know that normally I’m not supposed to do anything with personal computers and certainly not if it has nothing to do with their actual work for the company, but since I’m there I agree to look at the laptop, which she has already booted up and sitting there ready for me.

She shows me that she can’t open the document from the shortcut on the desktop and it’s always worked before.

I search for the actual file and can’t find it.

Then he asked a key question.

OK, back to this shortcut. Where is it located? On an external drive of some sort!

Me: Did you recently remove anything from this computer?

Her: Yeah! I took out the thing on the side because it was getting annoying. My mouse cord kept getting caught on it.

It could be a really easy fix.

Me: Do you have it with you?

Her: Yeah. (fishes in purse) Here it is!

She hands me a back-then version of a USB drive. Like many back-then things, it was physically larger than our modern versions but storage space was of course smaller.

She’d attached this still relatively small drive to what I can best describe as a long thin stick which I think was supposed to be some kind of novelty key chain.

The moment of truth…

Anyway, I get this monstrosity into the USB drive and click the shortcut and like magic her document begins to open (yes, begins is the appropriate word given its length and well, this was years ago so slower tech).

She is thrilled and profusely thanks me for recovering her “lost” document.

I remove the giant stick thing and replace it with a company lanyard (since we had hundreds of extra company lanyards laying around for some reason).

I also take a few extra minutes to show her how to save to her hard drive AND the external drive, and set up and explain a free online account where she can save the document just in case.

She was very grateful for his help.

She is incredibly happy and can’t thank me enough.

I wink and tell her just don’t tell anyone I was working on your personal computer and she smiles and agrees.

I go on about my day and in my time there I never interact with her again (remember, large company).

Watch how the story takes a twist…

So it’s now years later, I no longer work at the company in question, but I get an email from my old supervisor.

Someone I’d helped while I was there wants to get in touch with me and is it OK to pass along my personal email? Sure.

A few days later I get an email from her. I’ll summarize to make sure I don’t give away anything I shouldn’t and this stays anonymized.

She recaps the day I helped her and apologizes, saying she now knows how computer illiterate she was back then.

That’s ADORABLE!

She says that her novel was published and sold quite well and without my help she probably would have lost the manuscript, as her external drive eventually got broken (!) but she had backup copies thanks to me.

She asks for my mailing address because she wants to send me something.

I reply and say some nice things and give her the information.

Several days later I get a package. It is a copy of her novel. On the title page inside it says “To my computer angel, for helping make this possible.” And she signed it.

Of course I sent her an email of thanks. The book is an incredibly good read, too.

AWESOME! That was so wholesome!

Let’s find out what the Reddit community thinks about this one.

This user is happy they read this story!

This user wants to read the novel now!

This user knows not everybody who needs help is a mean person.

This user is happy that this guy helped this author with her manuscript.

This user has a question about the book!

Somebody really saved the day here!

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.