As a newly hired employee in a PR company, I cannot afford to spend a lot of money, even to buy a new laptop. The laptop issued to me by the company broke down one day. It was actually not brand new nor was it too old, maybe a couple of years old. It was unfortunate that it crashed when I was using it but I had no choice but to have it repaired without anybody in the office knowing what happened.

I went to a service center the day after the laptop broke down to have it assessed and fortunately there was a part that had to be replaced. I didn't really ask anymore about what part it was because I was just concerned about having it fixed. I asked if it was possible to have the laptop fixed in a day so that my co-workers wouldn't notice anything fishy. But the guy there said it wouldn't be possible. It usually took a couple of days of repair since the damaged parts needed to be ordered. I practically begged on my knees to have it repaired quickly. I told the guy my job was on the line. He took pity on me and told me that it would be possible to have the laptop fixed but only if the part was in stock.

He said he needed to check the replacement laptop parts database and see if there were orders of parts that were not claimed. He said that it would be possible to use that part since nobody claimed it. Sure enough he found the right model and the right part number from the laptop parts database. He claimed that since it was not claimed for a month, the company had the right to give it to somebody else. I thanked my lucky stars that day.

I gave him my laptop and actually waited for him to repair it. I waited only for a couple of minutes and the laptop was as good as new. He tested it in front of me and sure enough, it was running smoothly, just like a newly bought laptop. Nobody would really notice that it was just repaired. I was able to breathe normally after that. I felt as if the world was lifted from my shoulders.

It was really a good thing that there were replacement laptop parts that were ordered by people who forgot to pick them up because if not, then I would have been screwed. My boss would have demanded I replace the laptop since I broke it and he wouldn't have agreed to just have it repaired. The people in my company might have thought that just repairing the laptop would not be enough because it could break down again. They could also say that there was nothing wrong with it when it was used by others and pin the fault on me. They might have really insisted that I replace it, which was a complete no-no for me because I could not afford to do so. I could barely pay my rent. Good thing that it's all behind me, thanks to replacement laptop parts. Nobody knew what I did with the laptop; it would be my own little secret.