Comments on: If you’ve ever suspected the tech support staff of acting a little bit passive-aggressive…

By: travtek

travtek — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 08:26:22 +0000

Recorded message, “We are now closed. Please hold for the next available representative.”

By: Chimera

Chimera — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 10:00:17 +0000

Or when the power’s out. Yep. My war story:

Client calls. Computer won’t turn on. Go through all the usual. Tell her to make sure it’s plugged in. She says she can’t tell, it’s daaark back there. I say can’t she turn on a lamp or something. She says, “Oh, no, the power’s been out for a while!”

By: mo

mo — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 19:57:48 +0000

The worst is the IT techs that absolutely don’t know anything about IT. FAIL!

By: Niveus Pluma

Niveus Pluma — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 18:24:14 +0000

Surely there’s only one response IT helpdesk techies need: “Turn it off and turn it on again”. Works every time…

…except when it’s not plugged in, of course.

By: techess

techess — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 17:11:25 +0000

Zomboid,
Wait, let me get this straight — a virus got into the network, so the tech people had to work around (or through?) the holidays recreating accounts and rebuilding the servers, while you get to sit at home?

Geez, have a heart.

By: techess

techess — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 17:04:13 +0000

These comments are a good example about how in IT, you’re darned if you do, darned if you don’t. Of course there are cruddy IT people out there, but please remember — we deal with a lot of people.

If you’re good with computers, fantastic, but there’s a good chance that most of your co-workers are not, which means that if we start every conversation with “Are you sure it’s plugged in”, it’s not an insult — we just may not remember which 5 out of 100 people are tech savy.

For every person who does some research to try and help the tech team, there’s a person (or 12) who has done “a little research” and will now argue and argue and argue about the cause of a problem.

And for pete’s sake, yes we do have to look things up because there is a lot of “stuff” under the IT umbrella. Someone may be great at networking, hardware, and fixing printers, but not know every quirk of Excel 2007. It happens. If the user figures out the answer faster, I think it would be nice to share the fix with the IT person.

I know, I know, TL;DR, but there you go.

By: Canthz_B

Canthz_B — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 10:08:50 +0000

I hate the security question in case you forget your password.

What street did you grow up on?

Did I say “Halstead St”, Halstead Street”, “Burnett Ave”, or “Burnett Avenue”?

Never mind. Your website isn’t really that important to me.

By: Dina

Dina — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 01:20:34 +0000

I think my favorite story my IT-working girlfriend every brought home was the time someone managed to explode a desktop by confusing the voltage switch with the power switch.

By: Kate from Iowa

Kate from Iowa — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 20:29:47 +0000

God, that alone reminds me of my mother’s first PC. She had me up until nearly 2 am, I ran through everything I could think of that might be wrong, had her check and double check and rechek all the connections, wires everything…even had her looking for missing bits or signs that the boxes had been dropped by the UPS guy. Finally, at 1:45 (we’re speaking am, and I had to be at work at 5,) she goes “Oh shit. You are going to be so pissed at me. It’s all plugged into the power strip, but I forgot to plug the powerstrip into the wall.”

By: park rose

park rose — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 04:43:31 +0000

A Russian would say that ♥

Oh, I fixed up my email address so that my gravatar is showing again

By: JetJackson

JetJackson — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 03:31:24 +0000

Butt, you’re spot on… I am so lucky not to work with a pretentious douchecanoe like you.

By: punkypower

punkypower — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 02:30:36 +0000

I’m not an IT person, but people ask me for help with their computers at work. One person was positive her computer had died and wanted the actual IT guy summoned immediately. I pointed out to her that it was just unplugged only to have her refuse to believe that she could accidentally yank the plug with her foot.

Another person wanted me to call IT because they couldn’t figure out how to center their text in Word.

By: Divvitar

Divvitar — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 01:29:26 +0000

Ah, you beat me to it! ID-10-T error is a classic!

By: butt

butt — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 01:10:14 +0000

I’m in IT, and in my department we’d just roll our eyes if someone tried to kiss our asses with a short skirt or a tech buzzword. Either we like you already, or we don’t (and probably won’t). We don’t care to give special/good equipment to anyone unless a firm partner requests it. Consider yourself lucky you don’t work at my company.