Tech Support Difficulty
D. Paul Angel
461 Words

“Hi, Tech Support.”

“Yeah, I’m having a really hard time with my new word processor.”

“Oh? What’s going on?”

“Well, I’ve got a 90 page report I have to have in to my boss before I leave today.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And, well it was 90, but now it’s 88.”

“Well that’s not good.”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m calling.”

“Of course, of course. Anything else?”

“Well you know how it underlines words that are misspelled?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, I’ll look at the page and there’ll only be a couple of words misspelled, but then when I go back, there are a ton more words underlined.”

“Oh no.”

“What do you mean, ‘Oh no?'”

“Well, it’s- Have you checked your difficulty level?”

“My difficulty level?”

“Yes, you know, EASY, MEDIUM, HARD, etc…”

“Is this a joke?”

“No sir.

“I’m talking about a word processor, not a game. I need help. I do not need jokes.”

“I assure you sir, this isn’t a joke. Can you please click on FILE and then click on DIFFICULTY?”

“I told you- What the Hell?”

“You found it ok, sir?”

“Why in the Hell is there a Difficulty setting on a word processor?”

“Well, we found too many of the employees were getting bored with routine tasks so we added difficulty levels to keep them interested. Didn’t you get the notice?”

“No! I would’ve remembered an email like that.”

“Email? Uh, right. Um, well, it was on our FaceBook page, Pinterest, Twitter had a link to our Tumblr page too. None of those?”

“What? I don’t have any of those!”

“Not even MySpace?”

“Of course not and- And now it’s down to 87 pages!”

“OK, tell me what difficulty it’s on. EASY? MEDIUM?”

“It says LEGENDARY. Should I switch it to EASY?”

“No! Sir, whatever you do, do NOT change it now!”

“What?”

“Seriously, whatever you do, don’t change it.”

“What, why?”

“LEGENDARY is just like the games. So if, like, in the games, if you die on LEGENDARY you start the level again, right? Same thing. It knows when your report will be done, and you can’t switch it till then. And you’ll lose all your work if you leave early.”

“WHAT!?”

“Sorry, there’s nothing I can do about it. But you should know it will slowly delete words to keep you typing. Oh, and the slower you type, the faster it deletes.”

“Oh is that all!?”

“Uh, no. If you don’t fix a typo within 3 seconds it will randomly spawn five additional typos on the same page.”

“Holy sh- So what the hell do I do now?”

“Type man, type! Type like you have never typed before!”

“Son of a…”

“And pray to God you finish before tonight’s update restarts your computer automatically.”

“WHAT? When is-”

*CLICK*