Victory over the System!

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Today, after working hard for 54 days, I have finally been able to achieve victory. After numerous stressful hours, I have finally been successful.

I have access to my work voicemail again.

Don't judge me. It's been a pain in the ass almost every single day since it locked on me.

I apparently entered the wrong password too many times after trying to call into my voicemail from home to check on flights that had been cancelled for my business trip to Chicago and it locked me out. The helpful message it played everytime I tried to get back in?

This mailbox is currently locked. Please contact your system administrator.

And that was it. No directions or clues as to who the hell my system admin would be and how to reach them. 

After weeks asking anyone who would be remotely helpful for advice and scouring the company help website, I finally had a lead: an article on how to unlock it. Just call this number and push these buttons and la di da, voicemail access.

Well, apparently my company has like eight different types of voicemail and I had no clue what mine was called. Another stressful couple of days passed as I tried every combination of voicemail help options and got nowhere. It became like a Choose Your Own Adventure. I would write down the sequence of buttons I pushed any time I came closer to the solution.

But no matter what happened, I couldn't get a living person on the phone. The usual trick of just swearing until it triggered some sort of switch to a real person wouldn't work because I really didn't feel like swearing up a storm in a big collective office. (Although I suppose if I were fed up enough, I could have just stayed very late and waited until everyone left and tried then.)

With my map of numbers, I finally got a real person, and, what's this, you can unlock my voicemail and email me a new password? Yes, please! I wrote down the help ticket number and patiently waited as the human voice said it may take several hours.

Two days later: nothing. I looked up the ticket number on the help website and you know what it said? Ticket closed. No more problems.

Once my brain cooled back down, I gave up. I threw in the towel. So what if the little "missed messages" light on my phone blinked at me for the rest of eternity? If they call me and I don't call back, it's their own fault, right? The dozens, if not hundreds, of people who had called me would just need to know to email me instead from now on. Phones are so 90's anyway. I'm a child of the internet age who doesn't need a phone. Everyone else should be so cool and lucky.

After two weeks of trying to ignore the annoying little light, today the damn thing made me snap. I dug out my number map and managed to get a hold of a real person by the third attempt. She dug up the closed help ticket and do you know what had happened? The system had just sent the email to the wrong person. Someone else had received my temp password. 

Seriously? After the first person had double-checked my email, it still was sent out into the ether without a proper address?

Anyway, long story not so short, I have voicemail again.

And only had six missed messages. In 54 days, only six. That's one every nine days. That's just pathetic.