Tuesday, December 23, 2008

How to please your IT Department



1. 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.

2. Don't write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error
 messages from here.

3. 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 700 screen saver passwords.

4. When you call the help desk, 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.

5. When I.T. support sends you an E-Mail with high importance, delete
 it at once. We're just testing.

6. 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.

7. Send urgent email all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and
 flags it as a rush delivery.

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 telephone line from here.

10. When you have a dozen old computer screens to get rid of, call
  computer support. We're collectors.

11. 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.

12. When an I.T. person tells you that computer screens don't have
  cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument.

13. 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.

14. When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times.
  Print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes.

15. 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.

16. Don't learn the proper name for anything technical. We know
  exactly what you mean by "My thingy blew up".

17. Don't use on-line help. On-line help is for wimps.

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. 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?

21. 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.

22. 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.

23. When you need to change the toner cartridge in a printer, call
  I.T. 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.

24. 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.

25. When you receive a 50mb (huge) movie file, send it to everyone as
  a mail attachment. We've got lots of disk space on that mail server.

26. 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.

27. When you lose your car keys, send an email to the entire company.
  People out in Pofadder like to keep abreast of what's going on.

28. When you bump into an I.T. person at the grocery store on a
  Saturday, ask a computer question. We do weekends.

29. Don't bother to tell us when you move computers around on your
  own. Computer names are just a cosmetic feature.

30. 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.

31. Keep it crashing!

25 comments:

North Northwester said...

Merry Christmas, Tudor.

I've been right there myself.

You might have missed the one that goes:
'Never, ever tell them who you are and where you are calling from. Giving out account information up-front only takes the challenge out of locating their login details.'

Footsteps said...

Yikes! You have my deepest sympathies (and respect)!

theBandwidthHog said...

I love it!

n+1: Page us with a return phone number, then immediately call your best friend from the same phone.

n+2: When you get an error, don't stop there and immediately call the help desk. Try to fix it for us first. Everyone knows that multiple choice problems are the easiest.

And I didn't know that about #7, I'm gonna have to try that.

Chris said...

Welcome to my world! LOL!

pinaykeypoint said...

Happy New year!! Wishing you all the best in 2009. Good life & Good health. More blessings to all of us. Cheers!!

The Scribe said...

Good one!!! Couldn't resist commenting again...I guess it the tons of decorations for a honey PC cubicle is entertainment enough, ha!
Shout out to BandwidthHog: don't you just love the urgency of a techie problem being bumped off because a girlfriend's, friend of a friend is on the phone having a breakdown??? Hahaha...

Nash said...

hahaha i can relate to this lolz :P

Anonymous said...

HA HA!! Thank you for posting that! I only provide limited IT assistance at my job, but so many of those are on the money for me!

Jan said...

This list is hilarious. :) I particularly like the one about monitors having cartridges in them and the reluctance to remember the proper name for anything, "that thingy..." Love it.

Kerstin said...

Definitely cool, I think I will put that up on the cube walls of my colleagues, I'm sure they will all have a good laugh.

Elvio said...

Recibí tu correo. Buena la página aunque confieso ser lento con el inglés.
Saludos cordiales.
Elvio, desde Argentina

http://elvio-elvalordelapalabra.blogspot.com

Janelle Meraz Hooper said...

Oh, great. You're a techie.Well, you're going to think I'm really dumb. Tudor, I can write you a book, but I don't know an url from a turtle.
I did manage to see you're in Romania. Your family sounds wonderful, and you write very well. Loved your tips on keeping the techie happy! Ha!
We'll talk more as we go. I'm sure you're too busy for a long note, and I'm in the middle of a rewrite.
Happy New Year! Janelle

mjm49uk said...

What a wonderful way to start the day with such a hilarious piece. I enjoyed it so much..hope you dont mind if I pass it on

Don Wilson said...

I'm feeling more empathetic towards I.T. people already.

the Mom said...

Thanks for this! I am sending this to my beloved Computer Guy and all the guys he works with.

Anonymous said...

This is hilarious! (and true)

Loveanewidea said...

We were just reading this post here at work, and we are all laughing so hard we're crying! LOVE THIS!

lisawho? said...

I'm sorry about asking you about my printer in the grocery store. Didn't know you were so sensitive, sheesh.
You are funny!!!

Bernadette said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bernadette said...

OMG, Tudor, I've done it all to our IT staff!

You are FUNNY...I wish you worked at our company.

Shahnaz said...

I have done many of the things on your list. Didn't quite see it from the IT person't point of view.

Vince Elgey said...

Just loved the printer ones and the bring home computer in, this happens to me just about every other week and they seem to think because your the companys IT Dept your expected to sort out the own home PC's.

You missed out

32. If the IT Dept tell you that there rebooting the File Server at 12:30 remember to just carry on working on files on the Server, they and the 100 or so users don't mind hanging around for you to finish, its not like there at work or anything !

Handicraft-products.com said...

hahaha....lol

as me self is an IT person, and we often face problems like what you wrote in your article...:)

Regards,
Rizal
www.handicraft-products.com

Serey said...

This is so funny and even if I am not a "techie" myself, I know how you feel. Thanks for having a sense of humor about your job... this what makes the workplace interesting. I also know a lot of snotty IT people & they're not nice to work with so we end up crashing our computers rather than calling them right away for help.

Astermeds.com said...

Hello,
This is an amazing blog post found here... Keep posting such an amazing blog post. Thanks a lot for the share. Keep it up.

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