Copyright 2021 by Katherine Lato

Carol slapped the side of her computer in frustration as her email failed to load for the third time.

“That won’t help,” her officemate said. “The wifi is down.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I noticed when I attempted to read my email.” Jack bent over the pile of papers on his desk, clearly not concerned.

“That’s all I need.” Carol took out her phone. She had an email from their IT administrator. The wifi would be down all day because of an upgrade. That would make organizing the volunteers at the nonprofit more difficult than usual. She loaded the schedule of volunteers on her phone, but the font made it impossible to see both names and times. 

She looked at Jack. “Do you know who is coming in today?”

Jack started to reach into his desk, then paused. “It depends. Are you going to give me grief for running the printer out of ink again?”

Carol shook her head. “So much for a paperless office. Since we got rid of all but one printer, we’re spending more on ink than before.” She placed her hand over her heart. “I promise, I shall not berate you for using printer ink.” She took her hand away. “Unless you try to print in color.”

“No danger of that. We haven’t refilled the color cartridges since December.” He handed her several sheets of paper. “It’s from last Friday, so there may have been some changes.”

“It’s better than trying to read it on my phone.”

“I could use my phone as a local hotspot.”

Carol shook her head. “Doesn’t that use up all your mobile data?”

“I have a good plan, but it can be flakey.”

“We can use the printed information.” She paused to smile at her colleague. “Thanks for printing it. I promise to only complain if you print out a user manual or something else extreme.”

“That was a mistake,” Jack said. “I thought I was printing one table in it. Too bad no one was in the staff break room and noticed until it was done.”

“Bygones.” Carol waved her hand airily. “We should call anyone whose volunteer tasks require using the computer and tell them not to come in.”

“Not all of them,” Jack said. “This would be a good time to rearrange the break room. If you don’t object.”

“Sounds reasonable. How many people do you need?”

“Two or three. Depending on who–oh, no, Keith is entering the building. Please, do not stick me with him.”

Keith had been very vocal at the last volunteer appreciation dinner that he disliked Jack’s proposal to provide a laptop to every school-age child. Keith claimed that kids preferred to use their phones. He said that buying equipment was a waste of money that could be spent on food, or job interview skills. Not only did he have strong opinions, he made them so forcefully that he often swayed others to his position. Jack had worked hard on his proposal, but Keith’s objections had drowned out the presentation.

 After the meeting, Carol tried three times to explain the reasoning behind the goal to provide better equipment for kids to use for homework. Keith didn’t get it. Some people needed to be shown. The lack of wifi could provide the perfect opportunity.

“Don’t worry,” Carol said. “I have something that Keith can do today.”

“I suppose we should go tell him that the wifi is down. He won’t be able to check in on the computer in the lobby.” He stood.

Carol held out her hand. “Let him figure that out for himself. It will give us time to contact other volunteers. To be fair, you should notify the ones that you want to help rearrange the break room in case they’d rather not come in today.”

“I’ll start with David. He’s always so positive and appreciative of what we do that he’ll make the job fun.”

“Sounds good. Who else do you want to ask?”

“Imani. She used to work in the food pantry and liked the physical activity, but finds it too cold in winter. Jada would be useful, but I think I’ll let her know that we don’t need everyone today. She has an important exam coming up and can use the study time.” He took back one of the pages of volunteers. “Everyone but David is on this list, so you can call the others.”

Carol half-listened to Jack’s phone calls as she was waiting for people to answer. His volunteers all seemed to agree. One of the many things that made working at the nonprofit enjoyable was the willingness of their volunteers to help wherever they were needed. Well, most of the volunteers were agreeable. There always seemed to be a couple that volunteered just to make life miserable for everyone.

A few minutes later, she heard Keith clomping up the stairs.

“You sort him out,” Jack said. “I’ll finish this list in the conference room.” He scooped up the paper list. “Good morning, Keith.”

Keith didn’t acknowledge the greeting. “The check-in terminal in the lobby is broken.”

Carol waved a hand at a spare chair. “Our wifi is down.”

“So?” Keith settled his large bulk on the folding chair.

“It requires wifi to access the volunteer database.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Someone should have put a notice on the terminal.”

“We just found out. Were you able to check in on your phone?”

“Eventually. It took three tries.” As usual, Keith returned to his earlier complaint. “Someone should have put a notice on the terminal.”

“You’re right.” She wrote a brief message on a sheet of paper, then said, “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

“To put a note on the check-in terminal.”

“I didn’t mean–”

Carol practically skipped down the steps. After exchanging greetings with the receptionist, and telling him that the wifi was down, Carol placed the note on the terminal. She walked slowly upstairs, thinking about how she could best use the situation to have what her mother called a teachable moment with Keith.

Once back in the office, Carol said, “I have a special task for you today. We need to remove duplicate information on our website. I want you to do a comparison across our coalition partners on resources available.”

“I can do that.”

“It needs to be finished today,” Carol said. “Several of our partners have asked for that comparison in time for their budget proposals.”

“Okay.” Keith started to open his laptop.

“Since the wifi is down,” Carol said. “Most of our computer volunteers won’t be coming in. You can use the lab today.”

He grunted. “The chairs are better there, at least.”

Once he was gone, Carol opened her laptop. She had downloaded a grant proposal that needed to be reviewed. It was a good morning to do that.

Twenty minutes later, she heard a noise at the door. 

“I’m heading home,” Keith said.

“Have you finished the comparison already?”

He snorted. “Of course not. I tried using my phone as a hotspot, but it keeps cutting out. Looking at the website can wait for another day.”

“Why not look at the data on your phone? As you said at our last planning meeting, anything that can be done on a laptop can be done on a phone these days.”

Although Keith’s face turned red, he didn’t say anything, just turned on his heel.

Carol waited, then turned her attention back to the grant proposal. If she tweaked–

“Where’s the printer?”

“Huh?”

Keith stood in the doorway. “Where’s the printer?”

“What printer?” Carol asked.

“Surely you have a printer?”

“Nope. The office went paperless last year. Don’t you remember?” She wasn’t going to tell Keith about the printer in the break room.

“How about a second phone?”

Carol said, “Imagine your teenage sister has one. Go ahead, ask her if you can borrow it. See what happens.”

“Okay, okay, you made your point.”

Carol looked at him. “No. I’m not sure I have. I want you to do the comparison between the resources on the websites and our summary table. Identify where there is a difference and what the differences are.”

“That’s ridiculous. It can’t be done on a phone.”

“Maybe you’ll remember that the next time you’re about to argue how schoolkids prefer to use their phones for all their homework.”

He mumbled something.

“What was that?”

“You made your point. Now what?”

“I’m willing to extend the deadline. That task can be done tomorrow.”

“What about the partner’s proposals?” he asked.

“I may have stretched that a little.”

“To help me see for myself how difficult using a phone can be.” He grunted. “I probably deserved that.” He started to walk out, but paused in the doorway.

Carol asked, “Is there anything else?”

Keith glanced at the doorway. Turning back, he asked, “Do they need any help in the equipment room preparing the computers to be given away? Or maybe I can bring them some baked treats from the shop around the corner to let them know how important their work is?”

the end