Nothing Is Free

Yesterday, I walked into my office and saw a box with a note attached to it, sitting on my desk. The note read, "We tried to set up this wireless router and now the computers are down. Please fix it. Thanks." Almost immediately, a volcano went off in my head. Who is "we" and why would you even attempt to set up a wireless router, when I told you that a professional had to do it. My office computers are set up in a daisy link type of network. Any easy problems, I troubleshoot and fix. Certain problems are beyond my expertise and I leave them to the computer tech that we have a contract with. When the idea of having wireless internet was mentioned, I called our tech. He said that since we are a network, there would be a bit of a complicated setup, so he would have to do it. It would take one hour and cost $150. I told this to my boss and never heard another thing about it. It seems that a drug rep came to the office and in the course of conversation, she said she knew how to install a router. Well.... we all know how to do it at home. But we do not know how to do it when it is attached to a medical software program. By now, you know what I am getting to. My boss allowed her to set it up and, you guessed it, she crashed the entire internet and medical software system. I was now left to mop up the mess. I called the tech and we had a good laugh about the stupidity that happened. It took him 3 hours to uncross the wires, reinstall and save the medical system and set up the wireless router. All at a cost of $450. The moral of this story is, nothing is free.