Remote Access

A long time ago, I returned from my year in France expecting to start my new career in publishing only to find that just as few people wanted to speak to me in 2008 as did in 2007.  With no prospects, growing debt, and no take backs on my decision not to renew my teaching contract, I took a job as a software tester at my father's company.  Yes, I worked in software development. This doesn't fit with what anyone knows about me, or what I know about me, and sometimes I forget it's even true.  But for 9 months I worked alongside engineers and filed bug reports, making a contribution to society and only once blew up the computer.  I could tell several ridiculous stories from this time of my life, and I may end up getting to them in other entries, but this one is going to focus on the day I learned about "remote access."

I was probably in my fourth or fifth month at the company.  It was around this time that the financial situation, which had been sharply declining since the day I arrived, took a turn for the worse.  The place was in so much trouble that they could no longer afford to pay their rent, so they were slowly phasing out the office, which meant at first half, and then eventually all, employees were working from home.

Except for me.

I had to be on a special testing computer and they hadn't quite figured out yet how to let me work from home.  This meant that by the end of it all I was literally the only person coming into the office daily which led to fun situations like that time they forgot for a whole week to tell me I'd been laid off.  Ha! That was fun.

But that comes later.  On this day, I was not yet out of a job,  but I was alone, and my boss had called in and told me something specific he wanted tested.  It involved a complex series of commands and functions and something that might have been html but could have just been gibberish.  At any rate, I agreed to take care of it straight away, opened up a command prompt, and typed in something that to me looked like abcd/open/file\::::\\/.  I got back an angry error message.  So I retyped it. Got back the error. Retyped it. Error.

I got frustrated.  I was typing it in EXACTLY like he said. I knew it. So I typed FUCK YOU PIECE OF SHIT COMPUTER.

Error, it said.

I'LL ERROR THE HELL OUT OF YOU YOU HATEFUL MACHINE I'LL SEE YOU IN HELL

Error.

My phone rang.

It was my boss. He said, "Hi Danielle.  Just wanted to check in....having any...problems?"
"Yes, actually," I said. "Having quite an issue here. It's just giving me an error message."
"Did you accidentally hit the backslash instead of the forward slash after the file?"
"Uuumm....yes! Yes I did! Wow. Thanks."
"No problem."

We hung up. I thought my boss was pretty amazing to figure out so quickly where I had gone wrong, but I just put that down to his being smarter than me.

I went back to my typing.  No error! Yay! On to step 2!! I typed in what looked to me like :::'';;,;kl(fileserver////Ping

Error.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, I typed into the command box.

Error.

I WILL FUCK UP YOUR SHIT, I replied.

My phone rang.

"Hi Danielle, just wanted to make sure things are going more smoothly."
"Actually, having another problem over here. When I..."
"Did you put the : at the beginning instead of the end?""
"Um...yes. I did."

This time I was a little suspicious, but I hung up, rearranged the : and continued onward without dwelling on it. I got to the next step.

Error.

THAT'S IT I WILL SMASH YOU TO BLOODY MOTHERFUCKING PIECES

I had hardly finished typing when my phone rang again.

"Hi Danielle just wanted to clarify that there's no space between the / and the \ okay?"
"Okay..."

Now I was convinced my boss was made of magic.

I went home that night and was telling my father the whole story (he no longer worked at that company by this time) and he just stares at me and before I get halfway through the story he said, "Danielle...you do realize your boss can SEE your computer screen?"
"No no," I said. "He can't. He's not in the office."
"He has software that allows him to connect to you computer and see your screen.  He's been checking on you. That's how he knows when you're having a problem."
This was possibly the most horrific news I could ever have received. Ever. I stopped breathing. "So....he saw..."
"Yes," said my father.
"Shit," I said.
"Yup," said my father. "any time you see a little red eye icon at the bottom of your screen, he's watching you."

This was especially bad news, because this was NOT the first time I'd gotten frustrated at the computer and used some pretty bad words.  Also, when I was testing the text boxes, I would type things like "LOOK OVER THERE. ISN'T THAT A BADGER WITH A GUN?" and "THERE WERE TWO MUFFINS IN AN OVEN....HAHAHAHAHAHAH."  And I had seen that little red eye ALL THE TIME and never thought about what it was.

He had seen everything. He never mentioned a damn thing. Not to me, and not to my father, who he spoke to regularly.

At first, I was very, very careful.  And no longer surprised that my boss always mysteriously knew when to call me to make sure I wasn't having a problem.  Soon though, when it was clear he was never going to fire me for using profanity or being generally weird, I started having some fun.  When I could see he was logged in, I would immediately start testing the text boxes and write in the weirdest jokes I could think of.  I even looked a few up at home so I would be prepared. I liked to think I brightened his day.

One day, I was having a major problem.  I could not get the commands I needed to work, and I was typing them over and over vainly.  Then I noticed the little red eye.  I typed it in a few more times so he would see that I was clearly stuck and call, but he stayed quiet.  No phone call.  No sign.  He kept pretending he wasn't there.  I repeated the same futile action for five more minutes, daring him to call me.  The red eye remained, but the phone didn't ring.  No email popped up.  I stopped typing for a minute and stared at the still computer screen.  The red eye stared back.

Finally, deliberately, I opened Notepad and typed, "I know you're there. I need your help."

For nearly a full minute, the note remained there, unanswered.  He was trying to keep up the charade.  But finally, slowly, my mouse arrow moved on its own and words eerily appeared under my note with the correct command.

From them on, the spell was broken. I didn't bother with anymore jokes, I watched my language, and I wrote a few more HELP ME notes in Notepad.  Soon after that I was apparently laid off, no one told me for a week, and when they did, I awkwardly moved on to teaching at Fox Chapel Area High School.  Which was pretty special.