Found: Duke’s Loneliest Employee
OIT staffer has worked alone for more than a decade
Hidden deep inside the American Tobacco Campus, tucked away from offices and coworkers, Working@Duke this week found Augie Schweiber, the Office of Information Technology’s loneliest employee.
“Are you sure you’re not lost?” Schweiber asked with a resigned sigh when spotted by Working@Duke reporters on Monday. “You’re probably looking for the Help Desk. It’s just down the hall.”
Schweiber, associate assistant junior manager for Duke’s Office of Nostalgic Super Computing, has worked at Duke for 14 years and spent his entire career in this office, where he eats lunch by himself each day at his makeshift desk and works toward level 30 of Castle Hastle on his Commodore 128D.
“Sometimes my mom calls,” he said. “You know, just to check in.”
When he isn’t helping to archive Duke’s historic storage backup systems, he’s coming up with OIT-related jokes to hopefully tell someone, someday.
“Why is Duke OIT like the best-run restaurant in town?” Schweiber asked, waiting a few beats longer than needed to deliver the punchline.
“Because it has excellent servers.”
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April Fool’s!
Instead of trying to track down Augie, who's really Stephen Toback, senior manager with Academic Services and Research Computing, Duke community members can find help from OIT at three main offices across Duke:
- OIT Service Desk at the Link
- OIT Wireless Service Center
- American Tobacco Campus (Main Administrative Office)
Help is also offered online and over the phone. For all the ways to contact OIT, visit their website.