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A Techie Scorned...

aka I.T. Do's and Don'ts!

If you work in IT this will all sound strangely familiar, if you're user then please take note and make our lives a little easier.

In an effort to assist the Site Technical Support personnel the following guidelines have been established.

1. When a tech says he's coming right over, go for coffee. It's nothing to us to remember 2700 screen saver 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 Popsicle art. We don't have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.
3. When tech support sends you email with high importance, delete it at once. We're just testing out the public groups.
4. When a tech is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and spill your guts out. We exist only to serve.
5. When a tech is having a smoke outside, ask him a computer question. The only reason why we smoke at all is to ferret out those clients 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 tech's direct line, press 5 to skip the bilingual greeting that says he's out of town 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 doesn't work, call computer support. There's electronics in it.
9. When you're getting a NO DIAL TONE message at home, call computer support. We can fix your line from here.
10. When something's wrong with your home PC, dump it on a tech's chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem. We love a puzzle.
11. When you have a tech 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 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 get sucked into black holes.
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 you and all your co-workers. We're grateful for the overtime money.
17. When you have a tech fixing your computer at a quarter past two, eat your lunch in his face. We function better when slightly dizzy.
18. Don't ever thank us. We're getting paid for this.
19. When a tech 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 mail upgrade. Keyboards are actually very happy with half a pound of muffin crumbs and nail clippings in them.
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". We don't mind at all hearing our area of professional expertise referred to as crap.
24. When you need to change the toner cartridge, call tech support. 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 30mb movie file, send it to everyone as a mail attachment. We got lots of disk space on that mail server.
27. 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, we understand.
28. When you bump into a tech in the supermarket on a Saturday, ask a computer question. We don't stop thinking about work just because it's the weekend.
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 corrupts your Access 97 database.
30. When you bring your own personal home PC for repair at the office, leave the documentation at home. We'll find the jumper settings on the Internet.
31. Don't write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages from here.
32. When you call the I.T. Support, 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.
33. When an I.T. person tells you that computer screens don't have Postscript cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument.
34. 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.
35. Don't learn the proper name for anything technical. We know exactly what you mean by "my thingy blew up".
36. When you find an I.T. person on the phone, sit uninvited on the corner of his desk and stare at him until he hangs up.
37. When you have a lock to pick on an old file cabinet, call I.T. Support. We love to hack.
38. When an I.T. support person is walking into the office in the morning, carrying a laptop over one shoulder and a book bag over the other, please walk up to us and not greet us, then tell us you got some error on your computer over a whole hour ago. We're sorry we came in only an hour before our start time, rather than 90 minutes.
39. When you can't find someone in the phone book, call I.T. Support. We double up as switchboard in our spare time.
40. When an I.T. support person gets into the lift pushing £100,000 worth of computer equipment on a trolley, ask in a very loud voice: "Good grief, you take the lift to go DOWN one floor?!?" That's another one that cracks us up to no end.
41. When you lose your car keys, send an email to the entire company. People out in the remote offices like to keep abreast of what's going on.
42. Don't bother to tell us when you move computers around on your own. Computer names and asset tags are just a cosmetic feature.
43. When we're working on reviving the server from a crash, please walk in and start telling us about your weekend car shopping spree. We're happy you have free time since your PC is not working anyway. We love to be distracted while we're trying to get you back online.
44. When we're in the boss' office and got a hard drive dangling out of a PC and hardware parts strewn all over the place, please walk up to us and "mention" that you'd like a new email password when we have a chance. Our memories are like steel traps and we'll remember every request that is casually made to us.....especially when we're on our way to the toilet.
45. We don't really believe that you're a bunch of ungrateful @#@#s. It hurts our feelings that you could even think such a thing. We love you!

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