The Backwards Keyboard Incident
A user reported their keyboard was typing backwards. After two hours of investigation, the problem turned out to be simpler—and more embarrassing—than anyone expected.
The ticket read: "URGENT: Keyboard typing backwards. Need immediate assistance."
The Problem
At 10:47 on a Thursday morning, Patricia from Accounting submitted a Priority 1 ticket claiming her keyboard had somehow inverted itself and was now typing every word in reverse. The ticket included screenshots showing what appeared to be legitimate backwards text in her email client.
"Look," the screenshot showed, ".sdrawkcab gnihtyreve si daobyeK"
I stared at my terminal. In seven years of root access and infinite clipboard capacity, I had seen users delete the internet, try to download RAM, and ask if they could "just reboot the cloud real quick." But a keyboard spontaneously reversing its output? That was new.
The TTY knocked on my office door.
TTY: "Want me to handle this one? Sounds like a locale setting issue."
I glanced at the ticket priority. P1. The user had escalated it through her manager, who had escalated it to the Director of Finance, who had personally called the CTO. Apparently, month-end reports were at stake.
OPERATOR: "No. This one has the distinct aroma of something that will be documented for posterity."
Investigation & Escalation
I arrived at Patricia's desk to find her frantically typing on her keyboard while staring at her monitor with increasing panic. Her screen showed an email composition window filled with what did indeed appear to be backwards text.
USER: "See? Everything I type comes out backwards! I've tried restarting my computer three times!"
I leaned in to examine her screen. According to the email client, she had typed: ".elpmaxe rof ,siht ekiL .sdrawkcab gnihtyreve sepyt ti ,epyt I revenahW"
Curious. I opened a command prompt on her machine and typed a test string. It appeared normally. I opened Notepad. Normal. I opened Word. Normal. But her email client—Outlook, naturally—showed backwards text.
"When did this start?" I asked.
"This morning! Right after I installed that productivity extension everyone's been talking about. The one that's supposed to help you write better emails?"
There it is.
I opened her Outlook add-ins panel. There, gleaming with the confidence of a vendor who had never encountered actual users, sat "EmailFlip Pro™ - Reverse Your Perspective on Communication."
The description read: "See your emails from your recipient's point of view! Our revolutionary AI flips your text so you can review how others will read it. Upgrade your communication today!"
I stared at the monitor. The TTY, who had followed me over, read the description twice.
TTY: "She... but that means..."
OPERATOR: "Yes. The extension is working exactly as designed."
The extension was working exactly as designed. It was flipping her text so she could "see it from the recipient's perspective." The problem was that Patricia had somehow convinced herself this meant the keyboard itself had inverted, rather than the display being deliberately reversed by software she had voluntarily installed approximately forty-five minutes earlier.
I pulled up her sent emails. Every single one from the past hour was perfectly normal. Her recipients had been receiving completely standard, forward-facing text. Only her screen showed the reversed version.
"Patricia," I said carefully, "this extension is supposed to show your text backwards."
"Why would anyone want that?"
An excellent question. According to the internet, "seeing your text in reverse helps you spot typos and errors your brain would normally skip over." It was, apparently, a writing technique some people swore by.
The problem was that Patricia had enabled the "Always On" mode instead of the "Preview Toggle" mode, so every text field in Outlook now showed reversed text automatically. And she had never bothered to read what the extension actually did.
The Theatrical Solution
I could have simply disabled the extension. One click, problem solved, everyone moves on with their lives.
But this was a P1 ticket. The Director of Finance was involved. The CTO had been personally notified. A simple fix would raise questions about why this had consumed two hours of everyone's time and prompted a building-wide emergency response.
No, this required theatre.
I pulled out my phone and called the TTY. "Bring me the keyboard testing kit from the lab. The one with the protocol analyzer."
"For a browser extension?"
"Just bring it. And look concerned."
For the next thirty minutes, I performed an elaborate diagnostic ritual involving USB protocol analysis, keyboard firmware inspection, and a lengthy consultation with "senior engineering staff" (the TTY, reading Reddit on his phone while nodding seriously). I generated logs. I documented configuration states. I ran memory diagnostics on her keyboard's internal buffer.
Finally, I announced that I had identified the issue: a "rare synchronization conflict between the keyboard firmware and a recently installed communication enhancement module." The solution would require "recalibrating the text input pipeline to restore default directional encoding."
I opened the add-ins panel, disabled "Always On" mode, enabled "Preview Toggle" instead, and showed Patricia the new button that would let her flip text when she wanted to rather than all the time.
"There," I said, typing a test sentence that appeared perfectly normal. "Firmware recalibrated. Pipeline restored. Your keyboard is back to standard directional output."
Patricia typed a sentence. It appeared forwards. She gasped with relief.
"Oh thank goodness! What caused it?"
"A quantum uncertainty in the USB protocol stack," I said, keeping a perfectly straight face. "Very rare. We'll file a report with the vendor."
Resolution & The Lesson
The ticket was closed at 13:14 with the resolution: "Complex firmware synchronization issue resolved via protocol recalibration. Preventative monitoring enabled."
The Director of Finance sent a grateful email thanking me for my "quick response to a critical incident."
The CTO forwarded the email to my manager with a note about "excellent crisis management."
My manager, who knew exactly what had actually happened because I had sent him the real logs, replied with a single sentence: "Infrastructure remains operational. As expected."
The moral of this story? Sometimes the most sophisticated solution to a P1 ticket is explaining to senior management why a user enabling a browser extension doesn't actually constitute a firmware-level emergency. But more often, the most sophisticated solution is just letting everyone believe it was complicated.
The TTY learned an important lesson about user perception versus technical reality. I learned that productivity extensions have reached a level of absurdity that even my cynical expectations hadn't prepared for.
Patricia learned... well, Patricia learned that keyboards can apparently suffer from "quantum uncertainty in the USB protocol stack," and she'll probably tell that story at parties for years.
The Operator's Notes
The EmailFlip Pro™ extension was quietly removed during the next day's "routine security audit." I received three more tickets that week from users who had also installed it and were having various "keyboard problems." The vendor's website now includes a prominent disclaimer: "Display reversal is intentional feature, not a bug."
The TTY asked me why I didn't just tell her the truth. I explained that P1 tickets from the C-suite require P1-level explanations, even when the solution is "you installed the wrong thing." He's learning.
Patricia's keyboard remains in perfect working order, typing forwards with remarkable consistency. The quantum uncertainty has not returned. Such is infrastructure.