When a phone doesn't work, but it actually does.

I work in the IT department of a mid-sized company. One of my responsibilities is encoding newly-entered tickets (we use pretty old software for this, so auto-encoding isn’t an option). Because of this, I get to personally greet every new ticket that comes knocking at the front door of our Service Desk, from the frustratingly complex to the yawn-inducingly mundane. This ticket fell in the latter category, and came across as follows.

NEW TICKET: Desk phone is not working

[Head of HR] has opened a ticket

Comments: My desk phone does not work. There is no dial tone, but there is a message for me that I cannot retrieve.

The head of our HR department isn’t exactly the most tech-savvy, but she’s polite and (usually) puts in tickets instead of calling us directly. That, plus her elite status in the company, means we usually give her tickets a higher priority.

Phones aren’t normally my area, but I figure that something like this shouldn’t be too hard. The first few thoughts that cross my mind include some imaginations of the HR lead somehow managing to unplug her desk phone completely and some speculations that she may have swapped out the typical receiver with a faulty headset. To test these theories, I call her desk phone from mine. It rings all the way through, and then goes to voicemail. From this, I conclude that the phone must at least be connected.

Since I’m a fairly organized (read: obsessive) person, I quickly type a note of what I’ve tried in the ticket, and submit a comment that I’ll stop over sometime that morning. After maybe two minutes, I get a reply back that I can stop over anytime. Not wanting to put it off until after lunch—as I’ve been known to do with “easy” tickets on occasion—I let my teammates know what I’m doing and scale the mountain leading to the executives’ lairs. As I reach the top of the stairs, I immediately notice that the HR lead is in a meeting. She spots me, she gives me a look that says, “Sorry!”, and I slink back to the dungeon where we IT people dwell.

As I go to update the ticket to mention that she was busy when I went to investigate the issue, the lady herself ventures into our cavernous halls. “Sorry about that, GrammarPanda. You should be able to look at the phone now!” I delete the update I was typing on the computer, smile, nod, and hike back to the office to take a look.

Walking into her office, I find her desk phone and immediately see that it’s functional. The display is reading normally, and all the right lights are on. Okay, so it’s definitely a receiver thing, I reason. I pick up the receiver, and find that the dial tone is, in fact, missing. But, in pulling the receiver to my ear, I notice two things:

1. I’ve never in my life seen anyone tangle their desk phone’s receiver cord so badly; and,
2. The receiver is connected to some sort of sound amplification device.

This is when I recall that our HR lead is very, very hard of hearing. It was actually what made me suspect a receiver issue in the first place. But, I didn’t realize that she installed this gizmo to help. Oh, well; it’s pretty neat, and it makes sense. In any case, the device has several LEDs on its front, and none of them are on. I notice that the receiver is plugged into the device, and the device is plugged into the base of the phone. All the wires are securely connected, so either a cable is bad or the device isn’t powered by the phone.

To check on this thought, I flip the device over. Right away, I see a battery compartment that (thankfully) has a pull tab and isn’t screwed into place. I pop the panel off and see a puffy 9V battery. If someone would have told me that this battery was 30 years old, I would have believed them. I promptly remove the battery from the unit for proper disposal, retrieve a new one from the supply area, install the new battery into the device, and put everything back in place. Now, when I pick up the receiver, I hear a dial tone that could be used to call whales living in the ocean on the other side of the country.

Satisfied with this solution, I walk down the stairs and run into the HR lead on her way back up the stairs. When I explained the solution, she smiled gratefully, saying, “See, now I never would have thought to look for a battery!” “That’s what I’m here for,” I reply while returning her smile.

With that, I sneak back to my stalagmite-encased desk, type up the resolution, and close the ticket. Sometimes, solving a simple problem can be extremely satisfying—especially when users show gratitude like that.