There are times when nothing in your life seems to work the way that it should. Technology doesn’t do what you want it to, things that were working suddenly stop and people just don’t take pride in doing their jobs.

At times like this, the sheer volume of things that suck makes the notion of doing anything about it seem like folly. This is always nice, because I personally love to just drizzle futility all over my frustration-flavored shit sundae. But despair not! Help is often just a phone call away!

My wife works for the public school that my son attends, so I am in the rare position of getting both sides of every school-related story. Today’s story was about these digital projectors with built-in DVD/VHS players that the school had received. Theyr were brand new, unopened, and had been that way for months. Meanwhile, teachers were making due rigging up DVD players and laptops from home to the 19″ TVs in their classrooms. What gives, I wondered?
The answer I was given was that the county would not allow anyone at the school to set up the projectors the first time. A tech from the county had to come down and do it, and there weren’t any available.

Thinking this was silly, I called my school board member, told him the story and asked for an explanation. Naturally, he didn’t have one, and he conceded that there probably was no good explanation.

“So you’ll take care of this then?,” I asked him.

Within an hour, the tech person at the school received an email from the head of the county’s IT department, asking them to send a list of anything they needed, and that their needs would be addressed within 48 hours.

The point here is that even if you don’t receive such immediate and comprehensive results, it doesn’t hurt to call and ask for your concerns to at least be heard. It doesn’t take much time, it keeps people on their toes and you will definitely feel better.