So I was just returning to my office from a meeting, and felt a brief burst of alarm, as I could see from down the hall that my door was wide open, and the light was spilling into corridor. Since I am generally quite consistent about locking things up – particularly after a spate of computer thefts here late last year – the open door and lit office suggested that someone had been inside. Fortunately, I discovered that this was not a thief, but a very frustrated ex-occupant of this same office, who had somehow persuaded security to let her in to retrieve her old electronic files.

Now, personal files at the university are stored on a central server, but are mapped to a drive when you log in to any networked campus PC. This means, of course, that this person had absolutely no need to be given access to the actual office they used to use, as they could have accessed their personal files from anywhere on campus. As it happens, however, they specifically couldn’t access their files from the PC in my office, as I don’t use it, but instead plug the LAN cable into my own laptop. So the PC isn’t immediately networked, unless someone thinks to remove the cable from my laptop and plug it in.

So this person had wandered in, panicked to realise that someone else had been moved into a space she had apparently used off and on, informally, for quite some time, shoved my laptop off to the side, and tried to log in. And, of course, couldn’t get to any of her work, and then began to panic in earnest.

Now all of this is within the bounds of reasonableness (although, personally, I probably wouldn’t wander into an occupied office, even if I had used said office informally in the past, and close someone else’s laptop and shove it off to the side – but maybe that’s just me… ;-P). It was also in the bounds of reasonableness that this person, who studies a non-technical field and uses PCs as high-falutin’ typewriters, didn’t understand that her files were not physically resident on the machine in the office. And it was also somewhat reasonable that the IT helpdesk person whom she had called for help couldn’t work out what was wrong, as it’s perhaps understandable that, consulting by phone and not able to see the actual office, it might not occur to the helpdesk person that someone might have removed the LAN cable from the PC and plugged it into a laptop.

What exceeds the bounds of reasonableness is for the helpdesk person then to suggest that I must have “done something” with her files – thus reinforcing the false impression that the files are somehow resident on the physical machine, when surely every helpdesk person is aware they are not, and leading to a situation where I walk into my own office, somewhat alarmed already, and immediately confront a panicked and desperate person, her draft dissertation and future academic career clearly flashing before her eyes, demanding to know: “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY FILES?!?!”

Fortunately a small cable shift resolved the situation. I also explained that the files could be accessed from anywhere – that they weren’t actually on the physical machine and that, therefore, no, they honestly didn’t needed to be transfered to a memory stick – they could even be accessed from off campus, if needed. Trust me. Seriously. (It’s so odd, watching someone try to come to terms with something like this – when you take this kind of thing for granted, you forget that it can seem quite alien. There was one point in this discussion where she seemed to have an experience of the uncanny: “If they’re not here” she asked, actually half-rising from her seat to glance at the back of the computer, as though one might see little files running away back there, “then…” voice dropping: “where are they?”)

I personally might, had positions been reversed, have given the other person their desk back at this juncture. But maybe that’s just me. Instead, I got to sit at the meeting table for some time, rifling through old course guides, while this person reassured themselves of the integrity of their files by double-clicking on what looked well nigh to be all of them. I drew the line at the proposal that they might perhaps also make a few phone calls, pointing them on their way to other unoccupied spaces…