At work, we have students working our help desk. They are all usually programmers in training or something. Pretty smart kids.

One problem we have is, our departnent takes up 2 floors, so we can't just walk over and ask someone a question. Because of that problem, we have a kind of messaging software in place that is like instant messenger. It makes it really easy to talk to each other. So the students page me and ask questions when they don't know something or get stuck. Virginia paged me yesterday and this is how it went:

[11:59:42] Virginia: Hi, I have a data base question. I'm trying to create an email account for someone, but when I enter in the part in the DB for forwarding, the email address has so many characters, the entire email address gets cut off
[11:59:54] Virginia: is there a limit on how many characters can be entered in the mailbox?
[12:00:18] me: how long is the username?
[12:00:38] Virginia: 8 characters
[12:00:55] me: humm. save what you have and then I'll go in and look at it
[12:01:09] Virginia: ok, you can check it now
[12:01:31] me: you are in the wrong field.
[12:01:34] Virginia: i am?
[12:01:40] me: field 5 for mail address
[12:01:51] me: you are in the middle name field
[12:02:03] Virginia: oh my gosh
[12:02:07] Virginia: *embarassed*
[12:02:43] me: no need to be embarassed. we all do these things sometimes.
[12:02:45] Virginia: well, that makes a lot of sense why it didn't fit!
[12:04:13] Virginia: good thing i asked you and didn't page the whole room
[12:05:43] me: *chuckles*
[12:07:03] Virginia: Thanks for your help!
[12:07:10] me: sure, no problem
[12:07:13] Virginia: and uhm....don't tell anyone....
[12:07:18] Virginia: I'm already picked on enough here
[12:07:36] me: you're safe. I won't tell anyone ;)

Ok, so I lied and I'm telling all of you. But you don't know her, so I think it's okay. I trust none of you will be running off to tell all the other student geeks she works with :)