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A
Website Dedicated to Computer Professional...and
some not so Professional |
Making the most of your IT department
--Unknown
1. When IT say they're coming right over, log out and go for coffee. It's no
problem for us to remember 700 network passwords.
2. 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.
3. When you bring us your own no-brand home PC to repair for free at the
office, tell us how urgently we need to fix it so your son can get back to
playing DOOM. We'll get right on it because we have so much free time at the
office.
4. When an IT professional is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and
spill your guts out and expect him to respond immediately. We exist only to
serve and are always ready to think about fixing computers.
5. When an IT professional is at the water cooler or outside having a smoke,
ask him a computer question. The only reason why we drink water or smoke at
all is to ferret out all those users who don't have email or a telephone
line.
6. Send urgent email ALL IN UPPERCASE. The mail server picks it up and flags
it as a rush delivery.
7. When you call a helpdesk engineer's direct line rather than the helpdesk
number, press 5 to skip the greeting that says he's on holiday for a week,
record your message, and wait exactly 24 hours before you send an email
straight to the director because no one ever returned your call. You're
entitled to common courtesy.
8. When the photocopier or fax machine doesn't work, call computer support.
There's electronics in it, right?
9. When you're getting a NO DIAL TONE or BUSY SIGNAL message at home, call
the helpdesk. We can even fix telephone problems from here.
10. When something's wrong with your home PC, dump it on a chair in IT.
Leave no name, no phone number, and no description of the problem. We love a
good mystery.
11. When you have a helpdesk engineer on the phone walking you through
changing a setting; read the paper. We don't actually mean for you to DO
anything; we just love to hear ourselves talk.
12. When we offer you training on the upcoming OS upgrade, don't bother.
We'll be there to hold your hand after it is done.
13. When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print
jobs frequently just disappear into the cosmos for no reason.
14. When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to all
68 printers in the office. One of them is bound to work.
15. Don't use online help. Online help is for wimps.
16. If you're taking night classes in computer science, feel free to go
around and update the network drivers for yourself and your co-workers.
We're grateful for the overtime when we have to stay until 2:30am fixing
them.
17. When you have an IT person fixing your computer at a quarter to one, eat
your lunch in his face. We function better when slightly dizzy .
18. Don't ever thank us. We love this AND we get paid for it!
19. When a helpdesk engineer asks you whether you've installed any new
software on this computer, lie. It's nobody's business what you've got on
your computer.
20. 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 45 lbs. of computer sitting on top of them.
21. If the space bar on your keyboard doesn't work, blame it on the
network/mail upgrade. Keyboards work much better with half a pound of muffin
crumbs, nail clippings, and big sticky drops of Coke under the keys.
22. When you get the 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?
23. Feel perfectly free to say things like "I don't know nothing about
that computer crap". It never bothers us to hear our area of
professional expertise referred to as crap.
24. When you need to change the toner cartridge, call the helpdesk. Changing
a toner cartridge is an extremely complex task, and Hewlett-Packard
recommends that it be performed only by a professional engineer with a
master's degree in nuclear physics.
25. When something's the matter with your computer, ask your secretary to
call the help desk. We enjoy the challenge of having to deal with a third
party who doesn't know anything about the problem.
26. When you receive a 30-meg movie file, send it to everyone as a
high-priority mail attachment. We've got plenty of disk space and processor
capacity on that mail server.
27. Don't even think of breaking large print jobs down into smaller chunks.
God forbid somebody else might get a chance to squeeze into the queue.
28. When you bump into an IT person in the supermarket on a Saturday, ask a
computer question. We work 24/7, even while at the supermarket on weekends.
29. If your son is a student in computer science, have him come in on the
weekends and do his projects on your office computer. We'll be there for you
when his illegal copy of Visual Basic 6.0 makes your Access database flip
out.
30. When IT send you an e-mail with high importance, delete it at once.
We're probably just testing out the public groups.
(This next section was contributed by Bill Bouchard, IT Director)
31. When it's 5 minutes past our shift and you see us with our coats on
ready to leave, feel free to ask us your questions. We don't mind working
for free, nor do we have families to go home to. All we really wanna do is
work on computers 24 hours a day.
32. When you are trying to listen to radio stations off the internet bother
us when they come in choppy or skipping, we have nothing better to do. There
might be a server down somewhere but your listening pleasure is our goal.
33. Your monitor is not your computer damnit!!!!! There is a difference.
34. You do not save files on your monitor. When something happens to your
monitor and we have to switch it out, don't ask us if you are going to lose
any important files. The only thing lost will be our sanity.
35. You do not know more about computers than us. Period end of statement.
36. Our official title of something to the effect of Support Specialist or
Network administrator, not computer geek or nerd. We don't refer to the
janitors as the toilet swabbers and we love being talked down to.
37. Yours is not the most important problem in the world, You'll be able to
check your email again in 5 minutes. Emails don't have legs, they won't walk
away, and they are very patient.
38. Also when you have a problem, feel free to call and email every tech in
the building. When someone does come and fix it, don't tell the other
techs it's all fixed. Make us rush through things and blow off other things,
because we have a million things to get to. Besides we love that feeling of
relief when we realize it's done. That's our fault though you should've been
our first priority the whole time.
39. Come to us with flyers from the newspaper and ask us if the latest
Gateway is a good deal. Even though you have no intention of buying it
anyway, we love explaining everything to you and taking our time to
carefully go over everything even though you don't want to buy anything,
that's our job.
40. Feel free to bring in stuff from home and ask us to take time out of our
day to look at it. I mean we get paid to fix your stuff from home. Oh and by
the way if we are nice enough to take something home and have a look at it,
please at least by us lunch or something, I mean when someone takes their
own free time to fix something of yours without compensation and saves you a
bundle of money, the least you could do is offer. then again all we want to
do is fix computers anyway. Also it's ok to page us at home with your own
problems, heaven forbid we would get to eat dinner or watch the news.
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