Three Strikes, You’re Out: Keyed Up

This is part two of a three-part story about a 27-year-old adult’s first few days working at a real, grown-up place of employment.

On my second day at The Firm, Legal Talent briefed me on the task of the day: Within the eight hours allotted, I was to write and send a formal memo analyzing a legal issue addressed in a fact pattern, provided, pertaining to a fictional company linking in-home chefs with hungry patrons. My work would then be reviewed by my “writing coach,” a partner at The Firm. Legal Talent explained that previous summer associates had asked for more feedback on their written work product, hence the assignment. To me, this seemed like an act of malicious misinterpretation, as no sane person would request an eight-hour issue spotter—effectively a law school-style examination—on purpose.

For context, I arrived at law school convinced that, since I was the smartest person ever to have existed, academic excellence was assured. I was quickly disabused of this notion when I encountered my first set of law school examinations: I had forgotten that I am, in short, singularly terrible at timed essays. As soon as the clock starts, I lose my head completely; everything I know about the applicable law promptly dissipates, like lingering remnants of a lovely dream. Inevitably, as soon as the examination is submitted, I abruptly regain access to my knowledge bank, which means that I have plenty of time before the P appears on my transcript to ruminate on the fact that while I spent several paragraphs addressing whether or not the law of capture would permit a homeowner to claim her neighbor’s neglected dog for herself, the question was about trespass.

I was hardly enthused at the idea of taking such a test at work, of all places. But, being a “trooper,” when the assignment hit my inbox at 9 am on the dot, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work—I had until 5 pm to produce something coherent. How bad could it be?

It was utterly terrible. Predictably, as soon as I opened the assignment, the part of my brain capable of legal analysis went on strike, and I proceeded to type paragraph after paragraph of sheer nonsense. Worse yet, my fancy ergonomic keyboard was misbehaving, refusing to type for several seconds at a time before jolting back into action. As the faltering keyboard’s performance worsened, I realized I would need to fix it in order to continue.

Very stable genius that I am, I reasoned that it probably just needed some juice. I grabbed the charging cable out of my desk drawer and examined the circumference of the keyboard. I found no charging port, so, under what I imagined to be the watchful gaze of the partner sitting in the glass-paned office behind me, I proceeded to flip the keyboard over, turn it every which way, shake it like a Polaroid picture, and, finally, bang it lightly on my desk, at which point the cover concealing two AA batteries popped off.  

I pulled out the office map and saw that office supplies were located in a random nook on the 18th floor. I then remembered that I am incapable of reading maps, so I wandered aimlessly around the 18th floor like a sad ghost for about nine minutes until I happened upon the supplies closet. The supplies closet was organized like an OCD sufferer’s wet dream, well-stocked with tidy stacks of Firm-branded notepads and third-cut file folders, clearly labeled bins full of paper clips and other small miscellany; staplers, three-hole punchers, and electronic pencil sharpeners occupied a back shelf in neat rows, like soldiers on a battlefield. It would have been, like everything in the office, flawless, except for its utter lack of batteries.

After purchasing batteries from a nearby liquor store, I had lost at least thirty minutes of my precious time, but I had plenty left. I popped the batteries into the keyboard, which seemed to resolve the issue, and kept on keeping on. Shortly thereafter, the keyboard announced that it hadn’t needed the batteries I spent $7.99 on after all, by resuming its malfunctioning ways. Throwing up my hands, I located the number of the IT department in the firm directory. Following a brief hold, I was connected to an IT professional, who informed me that the solution was simple: I needed only to turn my computer off, and then turn it back on again. With great skepticism, I obeyed, and to my surprise, it seemed to work—briefly. When the malfunctioning picked up where it left off, I called IT again; sighingly, IT agreed to come take a look.

45 minutes later, the IT man sat at my desk, fiddled around with the keyboard, and declared that it was indeed broken. The prognosis wasn’t good; I would need a replacement, but I was not to worry, as one would be provided shortly.

As I later came to realize, “shortly” referred to sometime after the IT man met up with a friend in a far distant town, listening sympathetically as she regaled him with tales of her failing marriage over a seven-course meal (“Have you tried divorcing him and then marrying him again?”)—or so I imagined. After half an hour had passed, exasperated, I carried on as best I could, broken keyboard be damned.

Ten minutes before the assignment was due, it was time to proofread. Starting from the beginning of the steaming pile of garbage I had written, I began to click through the draft, searching for minor typos. Only then did I realize that the keyboard had not been merely malfunctioning—it was, in fact, cursed: Every time I clicked my cursor in a new place, it triggered the “delete” key and promptly excised a small chunk of text. My heart sank. Apparently, this had been occurring the entire time; in my distressed state, I hadn’t noticed. With eight minutes left, I realized that my draft was full of random little gaps, like a block of Swiss cheese. Attempts to repair the damage with the cursed keyboard only exacerbated the problem—so, at 4:59, I submitted a strong contender for the worst piece of writing known to mankind, then proceeded to lay my head down on my desk and cry at work for the second day in a row.

At 5:07, I was startled upright by a gentle knock on the wall of my cubicle. Through my tears, I could barely make out the IT man, sealed box under his arm, announcing, brightly, “Found you a keyboard!”