I hope my tech support contract doesn't get cancelled like my AAA lockout service did

The great thing about working for a technology company is that I have access to top IT guys. . and I get a priority call flag by harassing them until they help me.

Today my printer was giving me attitude. Now, this is not unusual behavior from my HP Deskjet 1220C (circa 1997?). The last time I had trouble, the printer was going through all the proper motions: Opening Printer Connection, Spooling to Printer, Waiting for Job to Complete, Jop Complete. Yet oddly, no paper was sucked up and no paper printed out. But the HP insisted that the job was completed. After a number of reboots, I gave up and swapped this printer for Jeff the tech support guy's printer. Of course he figured it out when his printer "suddenly" starting having the same symptoms that mine had the week before, and miraculously mine was working again. So he swapped them back. I let mine collect dust for a couple of weeks and then decided what the heck I'll plug it back in and see what happens. I don't know if I was surprised or not (knowing how unpredictable printers can be) but it worked fine.

Until today. I'm sending a job to the printer, and keep getting an error message. So I call tech support. Since Jeff was at lunch I called his cell phone, which he never answers because he knows its me. I leave a message (I mimicked the professional yet panicked tone of our clients that call in with tech support issues): "Hi this is Karen calling from HealthWare Corporation, I'm having a little bit of trouble with my printer this morning, if someone could give me a call back" . . .then I bust up laughing because Thomas is watching me and laughing at my tone of voice. Anyway I spend the rest of the morning cursing at the printer, rebooting, adding and deleting drivers, running system utilities and nothing is working. So I went to lunch. When I get back from lunch I ask Jeff about the printer. His first question, "Is it plugged in?" At this point I have that forhead-slapping moment where I remember that I did unplug the printer USB cable to plug in the CD burner on Friday. So I plug in the printer cable again. It works now.