By Emory Williamson

It’s 4:12 in the morning and the telephone rings, startling 50-year-old Carolyn Drury.
She almost spills her coffee, but manages to gently place her candy cane decorated mug on her desk. Swiftly turning her chair, she puts on her headset and begins speaking.
“U of L Help Desk, may I have your user ID please?” she says to the caller. “This is Carolyn, how can I help you?”
It’s a male student requesting information regarding his e-mail account. He’s in his dorm room, sloppily slurring his words as his inebriation becomes evident through the telephone line.
She completes the call and wishes him luck. And that’s her job. For the third shift at the Help Desk in the Miller Information Technology Center (Midnight – 8 a.m.), better known by her as the “Operations Center,” Drury, a desk assistant and her co-worker, James Frick, a temporary desk assistant, answer phone calls throughout the sleepy hours of the night.
“He’s trashed,” whispers Drury to Frick.
“The system crashed?” Frick responds with confusion in his face.
“No, no. He’s trashed,” she says laughing.
As Frick sobers up to the situation, he joins her in laughing.
They receive few phone calls – rarely more than half a dozen she says – but tonight is an exception.
A variety of calls keep coming in, mostly regarding e-mail accounts (GroupWise, ULink, etc.), accumulating five calls in a two-hour time frame and 17 for the night.
During a 24-hour time frame, however, the center receives about 400 calls, which are all counted on a large black “Call Board,” similar to that of a baseball scoreboard.
“It’s tough coming in at midnight because everybody is going home, but I’m going to work,” said Drury, adding that only about six other workers are on campus during this time. “It gets pretty quiet around here.”
It can get lonely, both Drury and Frick agree, but they’ve had their share of interesting and rather entertaining moments, including calls from other countries and a 5 a.m. call concerning a former university president unable to access his e-mail. Other than a few instances, yawns are easy to come by and the laughter is rather limited. Time slowly drifts on and the two occupy themselves surfing the web and downing coffee.
They also like to walk around the IT center, visiting maintenance workers or checking out the servers in the basement, which operate the university’s power supply. If all of the power goes out, Drury is confident the Help Desk will remain operating with power.
The phone rings again. 5:08. Drury answers. Normal procedure ensues.
The large, but cozy room is filled with empty cubicles and black-screened computers and a decorated, blinking Christmas tree near the center of the room.
The cubicles all have their own style, a collage of photos, multi color construction paper cut outs and, of course, coffee mugs.
Drury’s cubicle is plain.
“I’m more of a private person,” she says looking up with her tired eyes at the Call Board.
5:45 comes around and Frick has fallen asleep in his chair with his chin on his hand, slightly snoring, far away from the Help Desk.
“Uh, whoops,” he says as he awakens with a bashful smirk, quickly adjusting himself and moving back to his computer.
Although the office is filled with family portraits and even a wall of photos submitted by IT staff members, which include various excursions throughout the world, the atmosphere is also grim with recent financial news. Due to an economic shortfall and pending budget cuts, the IT center has decided to let go of their temporary employees, including Frick.
Even though his job is all but gone, 57-year-old Frick keeps coming back into work. He’s a man of smiles and quirky jokes and he says the night job lets him finish his “business” during the day. He doesn’t say much else.
“He’s such a nice guy,” says a choked up Drury about her co-worker and his job loss. “This job was perfect for him too.”