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Up until now, my articles have been a little controversial. I probably pissed a lot of Mac enthusiasts off as well as Vista haters and telemarketers with my previous articles. While writing this one, I had a bit of an epiphany. Why just irritate certain people? Why not target everyone? That’s exactly what I decided to do on this one. Most of it is satirical, even exaggerated at times, but it all has to come from somewhere right? I think the only group that won’t be irritated with me after reading this are people in the same field. They know it’s true, so they’ll be thoroughly entertained. Enjoy!
Do you feel neglected by your information technology (IT) person? Are you one of those users who feel that your problems always seem to be last on the office IT guy’s list? Do you feel that you are smarter that your IT professional and could do his/her job just as good, if not better than they do? Are you getting tired of hearing your IT person tell you to reboot your computer first? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then maybe you have found yourself in some of the following situations too many times and therefore warranted the seemingly harsh treatment from someone who could quite possibly be the most valuable person on the staff.
I too, am an IT person (a damn good one too! Ouch! I just broke my arm patting myself on the back). I would like to give you a look at what we deal with on a daily basis and just why your so-called problems that really aren’t major are pushed to the bottom of the pile sometimes. You, the users, have to understand that we are responsible for more than just your issues and things have to be managed in an order of importance. I’m not saying that your problems aren’t important, but you being unable to change the background of your computer to a family portrait versus an entire fleet of computers crashing are on two different levels here. Sometimes, things need to be placed in front of others.
Another thing that you need to get out of your pretty little heads is that we are the root of all evil and inconvenience when it comes to your phones, desks, computers, desk trolls, copy machines, coffee makers, wall portraits, microwaves, and fax machines. We are not the masters of the universe here and firmly believe that a network upgrade is not going to cause the microwave to explode your cup of soup. Stop sticking foil in it and you won’t have those problems anymore. The software upgrade didn’t cause your home phone line to stop working, so stop calling us when you can’t use up your four million hours of America Online (AOL) because there is no dial tone.
If you want good and fair treatment from your office IT person, here are some things to avoid doing/saying to them:
1) Ask us to come over and look at a computer problem that you’re having and then go for coffee out of the building. That way you’re not there when we arrive. It’s okay, we can wait. It’s not like we have anything better to do according to you.
2) When we come over to move your or set up computer, don’t provide any help whatsoever when it comes to running wires under your desks. We have extendable arms and have no problems stretching that far.
3) Call us to help you fix iTunes or any other music playing software. IT people don’t really care about their jobs and have no problem violating the company’s acceptable use and anti-piracy policies when it comes to music and movies.
4) Second guess us when you are given a correct answer, especially if you didn’t want to hear that particular one. IT people love having their abilities challenged by second-rate employees who stare at spreadsheets, get coffee, or pass out mail for a living.
5) Let your kids play with the company laptop at home. IT people love finding endless amounts of pornography, viruses, spyware, and Webkins that can crash our servers the next time the laptop is connected to the company network. After all, what is disaster recovery for anyway?
6) Make yourself sound more important than you really are when we have to consult other members of our team for a problem. Use buzz words like “lead-time” in your attempts to pressure us. Solitaire will be running by the end of the day, don’t worry.
7) Copy our boss, our boss’s boss, and his boss’s boss when you’re feeling neglected while we’re trying to solve your problem 20 minutes after the incident. We love having our work questioned by 12 different people…it builds character and proves to be quite exhilarating.
8) Get angry with us when your personal pictures can’t be recovered from the company computer you crashed. We deeply regret that we can’t get back “Little Timmy Riding His Bike for the First Time” since the only place that you kept it was your work computer and not somewhere safe.
9) Tell us you’re young son can fix the problem faster than we can when you see us struggling. Industry certified IT professionals love having their abilities compared to those of obese 10-year olds who spend all day playing World of Warcraft eating twice their weight in junk food.
10) Call us over for an emergency when all that you need is a toner cartridge changed. HP and Ricoh just put instructions on the box to make it look pretty. Apparently the orange tab that says “Remove” isn’t clear enough and you need a Master’s to figure it out.
11) Stand next to our desk/cube/office door and glare at us while we’re on the phone doing remote troubleshooting. The pressure makes us work faster…we live to serve.
12) Drop your computer off at our desks with no description of the problem, password, or power cable. We love a challenge, especially when the battery is dead too. It also not a big deal for us to remember everyone’s password.
13) Call to complain about not knowing how to do your daily job functions. Since we are all knowing, we should have to know how to do yours, ours and everyone else’s jobs. We entered all of the data in your Access databases too, so complain when the results of your queries are not accurate.
14) Call and yell at us because your home internet connection is slow. We control that too, that’s why we always sign the checks when you mail the payments in.
15) Don’t offer to help whatsoever when you see one of us pushing a dolly with expensive equipment on it. Opening doors with our heads and asses is a skill they teach us in Geek School.
16) Don’t ever use Google! You might actually solve the problem on your own and then you won’t need us anymore.
17) Ask us to help you log into personal use and social networking websites. That way you can blame us when your bosses write you up for being a slacker. If we would have never helped you, you would have never even thought of browsing to that website or shopping online.
18) Demand that we come over to your desks to work on your computers when you’re sick with the Swine Flu, Black Plague, SARS, TB, Smallpox, or any other terminal illness. There’s no such thing as remote assistance and we don’t want to be a burden by asking you to click “OK” when we try to connect to your machine. Plus, we like being sick too and want to spread your illness to our loved ones at home. That way, we can all share in the misery!
19) Call us when your desk lamp shorts out and smells up your cube. It doesn’t matter that you have your cell phone charger, mp3 player charger, space heater, curling iron, warm plate, phone headset, monitor, and computer all plugged into the same outlet. That’s not a fire hazard and couldn’t possibly be the reason why the light doesn’t work anymore.
20) Come over to our desk to ask us something, then insult us by looking at pictures of our wives, kids, etc. and say things like “How much did you pay that woman to pose with you? I didn’t think computer geeks had girlfriends let alone wives and children. Are they nerdy too?”
If you can honestly say that you’ve treated your IT person like any of the ways listed above, then shame on you. No wonder why your stuff is pushed aside (because you’re going to criticize it no matter what). We are here to help people. That’s why we made this a career in the first place. Think of what we do in relation to a medical doctor. They work on people, we work on computers. All in all, we both fix things. Do you really want your IT person to be labeled as the Brooding IT Guy with a meek exterior that is hiding a quiet, seething rage? Keep in mind that the “Brooding IT Guys” know more about you and your computer habits than yourself, so assign them mundane tasks at your own peril in that case.
We are not the bad guys here. All that we ask of you, the user, is to listen to what we’re saying when we are trying to help you. Write down the ways to fix the small errors so that you can be a little more self sufficient with your computer. What we do is complex, that’s why there are so many of you and so few of us. We have to balance time and prioritize certain tasks, which mean that other requests may get serviced before yours. If you can’t live with that…then tough, sorry, get over it. If you go to our bosses, they probably already know that you are one of the people who always have problems and 9 times out of 10 it’s the same problem. How do we know that? We’re IT people, we document just about everything. Individually, I can look up every problem that my users have ever had. So don’t think that you’re going to pull a fast one on us because it’s not going to happen. Just remember, if IT people were really malicious (there are some in this world), they can make your lives pretty miserable in the office. Files can disappear, your passwords may not work anymore, all of your precious desktop settings and icon placements can get screwed up, the list can go on but it doesn’t have to. Treat them with respect and you’ll get the same.
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