Snerk…

From a friend in the ‘business’ Down Under…

Having done a ‘little’ IT work over the years, I can attest to some of these.

GETTING THE MOST FROM YOUR I.T. DEPARTMENT

-When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and children’s art. We don’t have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.
-Don’t write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages from here.
-When an I.T. person says he’s coming right over, go for coffee. That way you won’t be there when we need your password. It’s nothing for us to remember 300 logins.
-When you call the helpdesk, state what you want, not what’s keeping you from getting it. We don’t need to know that you can’t get into your mail because your computer won’t power on at all.
-When I.T. support sends you an email with high importance, delete it at once. We’re just testing.
-When an I.T. person is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and spill your guts right out. We exist only to serve.
-Send urgent emails all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.
-When the photocopier doesn’t work, call computer support. There’s electronics in it.
-When you’re getting a NO DIAL TONE message at home, call computer support. We can fix your telephone line from here.
-When you have a dozen old computer screens to get rid of, call computer support. We’re collectors.
-When something’s wrong with your home PC, dump it on an I.T. person’s chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem. We love a puzzle.
-When an I.T. person tells you that computer screens don’t have cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument.
-When an I.T. person tells you that he’ll be there shortly, reply in a scathing tone of voice: “And just how many weeks do you mean by shortly?”. That motivates us.
-When the printer won’t print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes.
-When the printer still won’t print after 20 tries, send the job to all 68 printers in the company. One of them is bound to work.
-Don’t learn the proper name for anything technical. We know exactly what you mean by “my thingy blew up”.
-Don’t use online help. Online help is for wimps.
-If the mouse cable keeps knocking down the framed picture of your dog, lift the computer and stuff the cable under it. Mouse cables were designed to have 20kg of computer sitting on top of them.
-If the space bar on your keyboard doesn’t work, blame it on the mail upgrade. Keyboards are actually very happy with half a pound of muffin crumbs and nail clippings in them.
-When you get a message saying “Are you sure?” click on that Yes button as fast as you can. Hell, if you weren’t sure, you wouldn’t be doing it, would you?
-When you find an I.T. person on the phone with his bank, sit uninvited on the corner of his desk and stare at him until he hangs up. We don’t have any money to speak of anyway.
-Feel perfectly free to say things like “I don’t know nothing about that computer crap”. We don’t mind at all hearing our area of professional expertise referred to as crap.
-When you need to change the cartridge in a printer, call I.T. support. Changing a cartridge is an extremely complex task, and Hewlett-Packard recommends that it be performed only by a professional engineer with a Master’s in nuclear physics.
-When you can’t find someone in the government directory, call I.T. Support.
-When you have a lock to pick on an old file cabinet, call I.T. Support. We love to hack.
-When something’s the matter with your computer, ask your secretary to call the helpdesk. We enjoy the challenge of having to deal with a third party who doesn’t know anything about the problem.
-When you receive a 300mb movie file, send it to everyone as a mail attachment. We’ve got lots of disk space on that mail server.
-Don’t even think of breaking large print jobs down into smaller chunks. Somebody else might get a chance to squeeze a memo into the queue.
-When an I.T. person gets on the elevator pushing $100,000 worth of computer equipment on a cart, ask in a very loud voice: “Good grief, you take the elevator to go DOWN one floor?!?” That’s another one that cracks us up no end.
-When you lose your car keys, send an email to the entire company. People in the Hong Kong Office like to keep abreast of what’s going on.
-When you bump into an I.T. person at the grocery store on a Saturday, ask a computer question. We do weekends.
-Don’t bother to tell us when you move computers around on your own. Computer names are just a cosmetic feature.
-When you bring your own personal home PC for repair at the office, leave the documentation at home. We’ll find all the settings and drivers somewhere.
-In no way do we believe that end users are ungrateful. It hurts our feelings that one could even think such a thing on the basis of the above statements. In truth we wish to express our deepest gratitude to the hundreds of wonderful end users portrayed herein, without whom none of this would have been remotely possible.

Regards, Your Friendly Computer Guy.

 

Comments

Snerk… — 37 Comments

  1. Oh, yes. Absolute truth.

    As the physical security section of a federal law enforcement agency, you would not believe the things people asked us to do. Amazingly, one of us could almost always fix the problem or answer the question. Maybe that’s why people kept coming to us?

    My favorite was all the times we would talk to IT support, and they would answer some technical question with, “I don’t know. Why don’t you figure it out?” (Normally answered with, “We could, but you won’t give us the network passwords!”)

    Oh, and the IT security people dropping a three inch thick compliance requirements document on us, and then telling us that they don’t even know what the terms mean, but we have thirty days to comply.

    • Back when SSL V3 was found to be lacking, corporate security told us to update the system (iSeries, aka AS400) to use TLS v1.0 and to have it complete by the end of the month.

      Except we needed a PTF to make TLS work, and the earliest the PTF would be out is three months from now.

      My team lead spent 3 hours a week updating security exception reports for the corp security team…

  2. That first one sounds like what my wife does with the home printer. Whenever I need to use it, I can count on having to move a lot of things around.

  3. Chuck reminded the couple times we called the worthwhile guys at the help desk on direct line* about lost connectivity for groups of offices. Turned out that someone had tested a router and forgot to reconnect two cables. Oops.

    * Magicsl access granted when we opened our stashes and brought out our spare adapters, scavenged from old machines. Made them look like heroes.

  4. Are the IT troglodytes who never really see actual daylight (pasty faced ‘office tan’ from the occasionally flickering light tubes overhead), actually human? I know that there has been endless discussion on the subject.

    • And shouldn’t a computer keyboard be DESIGNED to function with half a pound of muffin crumbs on it and a spilled Coke over the top? What are the designers thinking? And yeah, having the secretary interface with IT relieves a lot of stress because you have an early golf game. This list makes perfect sense.

      • The old IBM type M (the ‘clicky’ buckling spring) keyboards had drains. Let the crumbs and spilled sodas (usually) drain out before shorting the electronics out.

  5. … and when the IT guy puts the Leatherman that his wife gave him for their anniversary on the desk, make sure to steal it and deny it even though he saw you pick it up.

    I am still pissed at that one ten years later.

    • Ooh, THAT sounds like a reason to go full BOFH on some dolt.

      • Well, there must be such a thing as Karma, because that new computer had all sorts of problems for months afterwards … for some reason.

    • Death penalty. To be administered immediately. I hate that kind of um, stuff.

      P.S.: The reason I know an unauthorized body was messing around in my toolkit is cause people are too dumb/lazy to put the inappropriately-borrowed tool back where they found it. I have a system, dammit!

  6. And don’t forget to ask several colleagues to help you “fix” what ever is wrong first, and then go to the IT guy because “You didn’t want to bother him.” (I’m not IT, but I know enough to get worried when several people are backing away from a desktop and one says, “It’s never done THAT before. Unplug it!” I later heard that someone had at last decided to solve the problem of an intermittently bad monitor cable by re-installing Win10 and almost bricked the machine.)

  7. There is nothing in life more common than someone becoming massively retarded when they decide to dump a problem into someone else’s lap……

    I dunno……..

    And you wonder why IT gets frustrated??????

    The converse has issues as well.

    IT people can get very snooty when they look down upon the ignorant masses of users they are hired to assist. This attitude contributes to that ongoing war of wills that exists in the IT/User universe.

    Maybe we can make a series of movies about this like they did for the Avengers or Iron Man?

    “The ITPros” a team of underpaid overworked computer professionals take on a system wide hack attack causing chaos across their network.

    “The ITPros; age of Upgrade” The team is confronted with unexpected crashes and lost data during what was supposed to be an easy system update.

    “The ITPros; department war” The team comes under attack after the entire system crashes on cyber Monday throwing the retail department into panic during the largest retail season of the year.

    “The ITPros; endtimes” The team is expected to deploy all new hardware throughout their universe over the weekend and it does not go well……

    • That’s been done with a British show named IT Crowd. If you’ve ever provided tech support for other people, you’ll appreciate the episodes.

  8. When you lose your car keys, send an email to the entire company. People in the Hong Kong Office like to keep abreast of what’s going on.

    One of the companies I worked with had an ice maker in the HQ’s kitchen. It broke, and the folks in Amsterdam made sure to “reply all” to the emails saying that this just broke their hearts.

  9. Edit: Change ITPros to

    IT WARRIORS

    That is how they think of themselves on the front lines protecting unwitting users from the entire hacker universe.

    I say this with a lot of personal experience in serving in a support position myself………

  10. Those are really funny. I have seen more than a few of those in real life. I am glad to say I didn’t do any of them, I was smart enough to learn from other’s mistakes.

    Had a very nice IT guy (was probably nice because my secretary would bring him donuts for breakfast) who once told me when the computer wasn’t working right to turn it off completely, wait 5 minutes, then turn it back on. Then, if it still wasn’t working right, to call him. Not to try anything else. So I did. At least 85% of the time it would work and I wouldn’t have to call him.

    I know enough to know I don’t know jack about computers. I can translate medical-ese into English, I can explain how meds work, what physiological processes are going on in your body so that the meds work, or so that you can lose weight, or not; I can use your glucose meter to show you patterns, and to bust you when you tell me you have been being very good when ya haven’t been. I can adjust your insulin pump so that you get back on track. But that’s about the limit of my abilities.

    I totally understand the concept of unintended consequences which is what occurs when a big up grade gets pushed through.

    And I think that the ability to possess my computer when you are several hundred miles away is the best example that magic does exist in this world.

    Janitors, maintenance guys, secretaries, and IT folks…the 4 most important workers in any organization in the world. Period. Don’t ever irritate any of them. Ever!!

    • Suz: from your screen name, I’m guessing you are female. From your attitude, I hope you will marry me. Why,yes, I was in field service. How can you tell?

      • yes, I am female. No, I wont marry you. Got married 3 x…3 strikes and I am out. But thanks for the offer πŸ˜‰

  11. Glenda — there’s an extension to that. I was in the interesting position of programming all the data management systems for a large company for a while (don’t even ask how I got there…). I once did a rough assessment of the computer code which I wrote for them. 98% of it was to protect the users (and the company) from dumb mistakes… 2% actually did something useful (like file, find, and retrieve and analyse data).

  12. All- I think we ALL have those stories… sigh… My two best ones were the lady that ‘cleaned up’ her cubicle by wrapping the network cable AROUND the power supply cable, and the other was the ditz that used the CD player to hold her coffee because her desk was so crowded with personal crap…

  13. So I get this call.

    The technologist says her machine won’t come up. (It was an MRI machine located in a hospital across town) It’s giving her an error. “No system drive, or no operating system on boot drive.”

    Okay, that’s usually an easy one. So I asked her to eject the floppy disk from the floppy drive. (That alone tells you how long ago this happened.)

    She says “I’ve done that. There is no floppy in the drive.” The next step was to have her power everything down, wait 5 minutes and power it back up.

    No joy.

    Okay, that’s bad. It sounds like the system disk had probably failed or there was no power to the disk sub-assembly. I grabbed a spare hard disk and power supply from my spare part cache and got on my horse to ride out there – about an hours drive in traffic.

    When I arrived, the very first thing I did was hit the eject button on the floppy drive. You guessed it! Out popped a blank floppy disk and schwing! The machine came up.

    All in a days work.

    That particular technologist didn’t last long.

    • Roy: I feel ya, brother.

      A 2.5-hour-drive-away hospital called me with “the machine ain’t workin’. No error message or nuthin'”. I couldn’t phone fix it, so I hit the road. On arrival I see in flashing reverse-highlighted orange all-caps text “Close lid. Press enter.” Sigh.

    • OH, yeah. I had a relative who was a copier repairman, who covered an entire Midwestern state. It cost $200 for him to show up. About two thirds of the time, he would plug in or turn on the copy machine, and that was it.

  14. In my career, I went from the Hell Desk through programming, then networking, then IT Director. My touchstone was always that “We’re a service organization,” but there are days it is hard to remember that when your staff feels they’re being taken advantage of and you have to agree with them because even a blind man could see it.

    Last job was at a university. God, but I learned to hate faculty. Self-entitled and self-righteous is the starting point. It just gets better from there.

    It’s amusing when the CFO asks why there is a backhoe in your budget request.

    • And plastic drop cloth and duct tape.

      Did you jury-rig your shed’s indoor PV light to work during daylight hours or do I have the wrong Freeholder?

  15. Free- I can believe it… PhDs in research are the same way… My best one was proposing to buy a submarine… πŸ™‚

    Robert- Those were NORMALLY in my supply closet… πŸ˜€

    • I once recommended to my agency that we purchase and refurbish a retiring US aircraft carrier (available at the time). We were looking for space for a large new office and also a new location for an aviation group…

  16. Ca. 1990 trouble call:
    My computer has frozen.
    What were you doing?
    Nothing.
    *sigh* What were you trying to do?
    I downloaded the Oxford English Dictionary. (brand new on CD/ROM and totally maxed out the memory on the late ’80s vintage machine).
    Why?
    So I can make sure my spellcheck knows all the words.
    Why?
    *in high dudgeon* My papers are read by the most senior policy makers of the country. I NEED to use the most exact and precise word in the English language. (Why, yes! It WAS an DI policy wonk)

  17. Stretch- LOL, figures… I knew one person that TRIED to download the entire CIA Fact Book to her computer…

    • Well THAT was on the internal system so didn’t have to worry ’bout that.