IT Departments :: Behind the beards

[Brains]

So at the request of Ben, here starts a thread about all things that happen in the most loathed department of all departments: your company's Information Systems, Information Technology, Computer Support, "if it's got a screen it's your responsibility" department.

IT is that one department we all know we need, but we all hate to contact. We all know the place, the "File a ticket and we'll get back to you." black hole. The smug yet smelly nerds who come and make you feel stupid when you can't figure out why your computer won't turn on, only to see them push the power button on the UPS you kicked under the desk. So this thread will give you a glimpse from the other side, what goes on after they get back from helping angry Sally reformat her Word doc for the 7 millionth time.

I'll start. Names have been changed to protect the ... people.. Sally is in Accounting, Steve is the IT manager.

Sally: "We need printer maintenance in our department."
Steve: Which printer?
Sally: "The (Laser Printer) near my desk"
Steve: Ok, and what's the issue?
Sally: <carrying a stack of ~200 sheets of paper> <pointing to her forearm> "Any time I print a large report and pick it up off the printer, the paper is hot and it feels like it's burning!"
Steve: Laser printers use heat, lots of heat, to make the toner stick to the paper. If it wasn't hot, it wouldn't print. There's nothing to fix.

You'd think at this point the conversation would be done, but nope.

Sally: "Oh. But normally when I print it's only a little hot."
Steve: You like to bake, right?
Sally: "Oh yeah I love to bake!"
Steve: Ok, think of it this way. Don't turn your oven on, but instead put a candle in the bottom and close the door. Then bake your cake.
Sally: "A candle isn't enough heat, that wouldn't work"
Steve: Exactly. How about 200 candles?
Sally: "Ok. So can we get maintenance on our printer?"
Steve: ......
Sally: ......
Steve: No.

 

[BRD@66]

Wait! A Word doc can be reformatted???

 

[Coonan357]

I was the I.S. manager at a resort hotel in Kissimmee Florida for ten years. In fact, during that time I was the only computer person.
I had one very troublesome sales manager/ditz who always had problems with her computer, due to her lack of computer knowledge. She was very frustrating to deal with .
During one particularly frustrating episode I told her the problem was caused by sunspots (solar flares were making the news at that time.)
To my surprise she bought the fib and left me alone for the next week!

 

[DD130]

It's because we don't want to deal with you neophytes either.. in fact not at all. We try to make the experience as distasteful and condescending as possible. There is a special BOfH certification. Just pray we don't free up some disk space for you.

 

[TxStetson]

Let me preface this post by pointing out I am not IT, but I do help people with small computer issues when I can. I was a certified Windows System Administrator way back when WinNT 4.0 was new, and was online tech assist and chat room monitor for Compuserve many moons ago. My company has a very extensive IT network that is by far the worst I have ever seen. We all have identical 10 - 15 year old laptops that were the cheapest they could by at the time and have shared system resources. I got a call from one of our accountants asking me to check out her computer because it was running extremely slow and IT had it for 3 weeks and couldn’t find anything wrong with it. When I sat down at her desk, I saw that she had 23 Excel spreadsheets open, 11 of which were on mapped network shared drives, 6 different RDP programs running with a different SAP database open on each one, 17 Lync conversations open, and Outlook with 19 different reply emails open. Once I closed all that, I saw that she had 12 folders and 111 different files saved to her desktop. Not shortcuts, but actual files. I cleaned it all up for here and had it running as well as could be expected from a 12 year old Dell laptop. 3 weeks later she called me again and I found almost the exact same conditions as the first time. She kept asking why she couldn’t use it like she needed to but wasn’t understanding my point. I realized she drove a Corvette Stingray so I compared what she was doing on her computer to road racing a 1993 Yugo. She has been happier with her computer since then.

 

[Vaquero]

Worst mistake I ever made was getting sql server admin certified by Microsoft.
Seemed like years before I saw the sun again.
That was long ago. Don't ask because I've forgotten every bit of it that I can possibly purge.

 

[DD130]

Worst mistake I ever made was getting sql server admin certified by Microsoft.
Seemed like years before I saw the sun again.
That was long ago. Don't ask because I've forgotten every bit of it that I can possibly purge.

I would N*E*V*E*R recommend anyone get into any type of IT, unless you either plan to have not life other than some weird screen tanned existence with constantly working off-hours and getting crapped on by every other department. I mean.. if you like that sort of abuse... it's a great career. LOL. Yes, you can get exceptionally rich surfing startups, but most of us either missed the wave, or were surfing on the wrong digital beach.

 

[benenglish]

Subbed. I'll post some tomorrow.

 

[Texasjack]

Our local IT guy is across the hall from me. When he has to get help on something from the support staff, he has to call at 5 pm (when it's morning overseas). I've overheard them telling him, "Have you tried turning it off and turning it on again?"

There was a problem with a contractor (drafting) that complained it was taking an hour for his computer to start up. The IT guy showed me what he found: the drafter had every email that he had received in the last 3 years OPEN on his desktop. As we say, a PICNIC situation. (Problem In Chair, Not In Computer).

 

[karlac]

And piss off a sysadmin at your peril.
Good chance he has the keys to YOUR kingdom.

 

[avvidclif]

Nothing pisses me off more than my computer telling me I have to contact the sys admin to resolve an issue. I'm the owner, operator, janitor, plumber, carpenter, etc. Just who the hell am I going to call???

 

[TexasBrandon]

I have to admit, I've been doing IT for 15 years now and am a senior technical instructor and it sucks. I've been a network engineer, VoIP design and implementation engineer, and instructor over that span of years to include m time in the army. Deployed and maintained networks in a combat zone in Baghdad and today, I straight up hate IT. I went into it thinking it was fun but you get so overworked and abused at times that it gets ridiculous.

I'm in a senior position now and my next jump is a director position. I know more than I care to admit about networks and voice systems and I get pulled every direction when I am not teaching a class. Bottom line, IT sucks and if I could get out of it and make the same income in another job I would. Problem is, with my neck and back injuries from Baghdad that have gotten worse over time, I can't really do anything else.

 

[Dawico]

So this is the official thread to come to for computer help?

Sweet. Thanks guys.

 

[Younggun]

So just because Sally has a feminine name she must like to bake?


I’m calling HR because the IT guy is sexist and is mansplaining to Sally and assuming she’s too stupid to know the printer is on fire.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[SQLGeek]

As my name might betray, I know a few things about this field. I was a SQL Server DBA in a former life. I've seen some stupid and just downright frustrating behaviors.

You want to know WHY admins get chips on their shoulders?

Despite what developers think, we DON'T have magic wands to "fix" your database for you. Hint, the database is fine, your shitty query and table design is the actual problem. And no, I'm sorry Mr Vendor, I can't "just grant you sysadmin real quick" to perform this installation. I'm sorry Ms. But-I-Have-A-PMP-After-My-Name Project Manager, you DO have to fill out these forms and get an exception to grant Mr. Vendor sysadmin "real quick". Clearly it is my fault you didn't build that into your project plan.

Now I've found my niche. Still in IT technically though I don't do as much end user support and I don't deal with on-call support at all. I should have gone into a trade.

 

[Brains]

I have to admit, I've been doing IT for 15 years now and am a senior technical instructor and it sucks. I've been a network engineer, VoIP design and implementation engineer, and instructor over that span of years to include m time in the army. Deployed and maintained networks in a combat zone in Baghdad and today, I straight up hate IT. I went into it thinking it was fun but you get so overworked and abused at times that it gets ridiculous.

I'm in a senior position now and my next jump is a director position. I know more than I care to admit about networks and voice systems and I get pulled every direction when I am not teaching a class. Bottom line, IT sucks and if I could get out of it and make the same income in another job I would. Problem is, with my neck and back injuries from Baghdad that have gotten worse over time, I can't really do anything else.

I've been very fortunate. I'm in a director level position, but I stay very hands on. I'm in an environment in a medium size company that is pretty low stress by common standards. Very low stress by IT standards. I love my work, I love the company, things are pretty good. One constant, is I'm the Shell Answer Guy for pretty much everything. If you interact with a screen to do your job, then I've basically become the go-to guy for everything that shows up on that screen. Unfortunately, that also means I'm very aware of just how little people choose to know about their job and how little people choose to understand about the what and why of their work processes. "But we've always done it that way" is a frighteningly common phrase.

 

[FireInTheWire]

My IT department is great. They handle business.... some are hard to understand? Sure.

 

[mroper]

I was a programmer lead at a company . I would get all kinds of calls about the application I supported
There were a few guys that would always call about being locked out. I would always ask if the caps lock was on. Next thing they would get in and ask me what I did. Of course I did nothing. I would call that the ID 10 T problem

 

[DD130]

... I should have gone into a trade.

I've long lost count of the number of times I've mumbled that, yelled that, screamed that at myself.

 

[benenglish]

I've done a few jobs with computers. Even at the most-removed-from-the-end-user jobs, I've never shied away from desktop/deskside/frontline work. I'm one of those perverted minds that actually enjoys that sort of work. Besides, that's where you get the best stories.

I had a woman once who reported her laptop was overheating. Having dealt with battery fires, I took that seriously and immediately went to her office.

The overheating was of her hand. The fan for the laptop exhausted a gentle breeze of hot air out the right side of the computer directly at her hand as it rested on the mouse. She wanted me to "fix" the laptop so that the hot air blew out somewhere else because the hot air was drying out her skin and she was constantly having to apply moisturizer.

I patiently explained to her that I couldn't redirect the airflow from the computer itself. However, I did configure an extended vent of cardboard that sat under her machine and blocked the hot air from directly hitting her hand, redirecting it by 90 degrees so that it blew straight away from her.

Origami computer support for an engineer - that was a weird one.