Microsoft Office Assistant Anecdote

I'm currently beta-testing Vista, so I hope to have some new posts soon. In the meantime, something I read on a beta newsgroup started me reminiscing about perhaps the only time this lover of technological distractions was ever annoyed by the Microsoft Office Assistant. The beta newsgroup really isn't the place to share, so I thought I'd post it here.

I'd pulled a call from our help desk database. The requester, a supervisor of another group in our IS department, had requested that we upgrade her to a newer version of Microsoft Office, and I did. Still something of a neophyte to the world of technical support, I imagined all sorts of horrors and consequences when I received an alpha page later that day informing me that I had "REALLY screwed the pooch," and that I needed to get back to the lady's office right away. Here I am, flying down the corridors at top speed, arriving out of breath, just hoping and praying that I could rectify whatever data corruption or data loss issue I'd caused. Imagine my relief when I discovered no angry glare, no threats of having me dismissed, and no reluctance to let me get back to work on the issue at hand. Still, I found that I could not provide satisfactory service to my user. I had to inform her that the cute doggie Office Assistant (was his name Spot?) had been put down due to obsolescence. After I left her, I marched down to the tech room and gave my follow technicians a tongue-lashing for such a mental circuit-shorting message, but they couldn't hear me over their laughter.