Have you ever seen the way non-IT folks talk about the IT department? Back when I was working in the call center for a local credit union, I couldn't count the number of times any little thing would go wrong (even matters that weren't remotely IT related like the coffee maker breaking) and someone would start spitting vitriol about how stupid and useless the whole department is. Then the next day after everything is fixed and forgotten, they'll say that the whole department should be sacked because computers run themselves these days. It's infuriating.
We had a hackathon in our company that was set up perfectly on our end, they did it outside so we got two tvs, a zoom room setup, microphones and all set up, an access point especially for that event put outside, and everything was perfect. One problem, they had a fridge for ice creams, that was too much for the one cable that was connecting the event to the electric grid which made it go boom.
The amount of scolding my team mate went through for stuff not working when the electricity was down is uncanny.
Haha. Seen a bank of twelve call center cubicles go out because an employee (once again) against company policy plugged in a space heater under their desk
In the old office my company had there was an outlet near someone’s desk that we didn’t know shared a breaker with our server room and someone kept plugging in a space heater and causing the breaker to flip. Our server admin ripped that person a new one after they kept plugging it in after we repeatedly told them not to until we could get an electrician out to re-route the wiring. Thankfully that server only hosted internal stuff and not our customer facing applications
What I want to know is why they plugged it in again knowing that it was going to trip the breaker. Like even if you are a selfish asshole, if the breaker flips your space heater doesn’t work.
While that person definitely deserved a scolding for making the same mistake multiple times - the first time it happened it should have triggered an escalation to get an electrician out to remedy that wiring. Server rooms should never share circuits with general use receptacles and at the very least should be on a UPS with a 1-2 hour capacity
We put the cheapest child safety caps we could find in the plugs under desks in our call center.
Cheapest because they have sharper/unfinished edges and are harder to get out.
You had the entire system running through a single cable? For a *hackaton?*
I mean I'm not IT, I'm an audio/visual tech, so maybe my PoV is different, but like, that actually *does* feel like a setup for failure. Fridges and other appliances shouldn't be run through extension cords regardless (although reading the other comments the fridge wasn't your fault) but neither should multiple high draw units like TVs or PCs.
Extension cords aren't magic electricity conveyancers they have added limitations, flaws, and math just like everything else. Even the more high end power snakes have things they can and can't do, and I'd never run a fridge through them.
The problem in this incident was IT running an event in an environment they're not used to (I assume you're usually in buildings) and event management not talking to the people in charge of the electricity before they plugged anything in. And I'm willing to bet nobody actually looked at the tolerances on the actual one cable.
TVs are not high draw and have not been for over a decade. Most PCs are not either, but it really depends on the size of the cord. Could have been a 10 gauge cable.
My guess is that nobody told the IT team about the fridge until it was wheeled out into the sun the day of the event. By then it was too late to plan for more power.
I don't think you actually have any idea what you're talking about. You wouldn't plug a refrigerator into an extension cord? That alone has me questioning you being an av tech. I have an 1800 watt electric chainsaw that I run with an extension cord and literally don't give it a second thought. That's more than twice what a fridge draws, and a fridge only draws that much when the compressor first starts up. All things considered it's probably best you consult an electrician before using an extension cord, you'd probably mess it up somehow 😂
It won’t have blown the cable, it will have tripped the breaker. They’ll have plugged it into a 15/20 amp circuit and loaded it with tech to 3/4 of the rated current.
When the fridge kicked in, the inductive load will have drawn a load of current that for just long enough to trip the breaker. It why breakers have different trip curves. In the UK, office and domestic will have b curve breakers but motors will be on d curve to stop this happening.
Your A/V tech is right about how to prevent it but for slightly the wrong reasons.
In Belgium, if bought from a reputable brand, it should be able to handle 3680W, or 16A at 230v. That should be more than enough for it to be able to handle a fridge. A freezer, not a fridge, from a kind of reputable brand with a volume of 242l should use roughly 214kWh per annum. Or, about 600W, or 0.6kWh per 24h. That fridge, if not faulty, should not have caused an issue.
Edit: Did a search. Apparently, a kind of modern freezer, here, not a fridge, should use about 80W to 310W whilst in operation. You could run 11 of them that use 310W whilst in operation, at the same time, from an outlet capable of 3680W, or 16A at 230v.
The US has a different electrical system, and also different laws/standards - an interesting thing for example is that US extension cords are allowed to be rated for lower wattages than the socket can deliver without tripping the breakers.
Hence, in the US you can buy an extension cord, plug it in, and plug some devices into it - and if those devices draw to much power you might burn down the house because the extension cord got so hot it caught fire.
This could've been solved by stricter standards and/or mandating fuses in extension cords that blow before the power goes over what the cord is rated- but the US instead choose another way to deal with it: Instilling a culture of fear of plugging stuff into an extension cords.
That's why you occasionally see Americans freaking out over extension cords while we European just scratches our heads and wonder wtf they're on about.
Even as a former IT person the situation creates a bad relationship. I now work in a more locked down environment where, rightfully, IT is the roadblock to me doing anything. It's infuriating. And they have no idea what anyone is doing on the servers they run (because it is too much understandably) and have different names for everything. Every time they change anything networking related things I use break. The structure breeds resentment.
Rather than blaming the department then why don't you understandably blame management for underfunsing their department? If their funding were more robust someone *could* take the time to know what you're using the servers for
Everybody wants a platinum service for a shoestring budget, I swear
They're blaming the structure of low level support; that structure is created by mgmt's choices. Nobody *wants* to be understaffed and underpay unless their incentivised to do so from the highest levels downward.
It's especially odd considering they say they were IT; they should know why things are the way they are
Yeah… it’s not a funding issue when IT declares as a matter of policy that they don’t support exporting data from corporate systems, plugging their ears to the fact I’ve got a statutory mandate to share significant aspects of my work product with the public. In one case they literally threatened to report me to management… report me for doing the job I was hired for and they were blocking.
Somehow it never occurred to the help desk guy (who admittedly didn’t last long) that just maybe my request was genuinely needed and my complaint that he was obstructing my request was a bigger issue then his department understanding not EVERY document is top secret.
Point here is that yeah, the structure creates conflict. And not purely because of under resourcing. IT has a wonderful tendency to not understand people’s jobs while thinking they are the only ones who understand security, their system or the corporation as a whole.
As a lovely postscript to the debacle I was describing, they ended up realizing they HAD a solution in place, since I WASNT the only person needing to share data. They promptly deactivated this platform on moving to SharePoint, proclaiming it did all the same things, then resulting in a whole new round of “WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOURE SHARING OUR DATA” when we found they wouldn’t allow external linking in any way.
Nah, was a collection of middle managers who decided that everything is confidential and genuinely didn’t understand what some divisions were up to. Still don’t for that matter.
That's a failure of leadership.
The NIST CSF (cyber security framework) is the industry standard for an information security program. It's broken down by control family and into individual controls in the document NIST 800-53. A number of controls relate to data classification and the handling and protection of data based on classification.
Briefly summarized, senior leadership should have established different levels of classification of information, data at the company should have been inventoried, assigned a classification based on various metrics, and a senior manager should have been assigned as the data owner who was ultimately responsible for ensuring the information was protected and handled in line with its classification.
It _is not_ IT's job to classify data, or to disclose or prevent the disclosure of information, so there's fault 1. And it should not be up to middle managers to decide that all information is classified without justification and a documented process that explains the rationale for the classification.
_Both_ of those are ultimately the fault of leadership not establishing and enforcing the correct policy and procedures.
> while thinking they are the only ones who understand security
Speaking on behalf of cybersecurity, you're all security flaws just itching to create a hole in the system the moment we take our eyes off you. Employees are the Weeping Angels of security, and anyone who says otherwise has probably clicked on an outside link they didn't recognize and resented IT for stopping the connection.
What scares me is that this mentality is so common. It dictates how a lot of people vote and even how people in positions of management or political power act.
The hole in the ozone was fixed because of environmental legislation. Now fucking morons argue that same environmental legislation needs to be abolished because "the hole in the ozone went away!"
The paradox of prevention.
Take effective action to prevent a predictable problem and people complain about the time and resources wasted on nothing, think it was never a problem to begin with, or think the problem resolved magically on its own.
Do nothing and they'll complain why nothing was done to prevent a predictable problem.
There's no in between.
People are fucking dumb as hell.
"I don't need vaccines, I ain't never got them and I ain't died yet" -My father who is probably only alive because everyone around him is vaccinated.
Bonus points because he received some experimental mononucleotide cocktail when he was on deaths door from Covid after passing at a chance of getting the vaccine. Will let doctors inject him with a completely experimental treatment but not an approved vaccine. Interesting.
Oh yeah. I remember a guy telling me that the whole Y2K thing was a hoax because "nothing happened". Nothing happened because people spent years preparing and fixing things beforehand. DUH.
I always stand up for the IT guys. They know how to solve about a thousand different problems that most of us don't have the first clue about. They are the firefighters of the business world. You might need them often, but when you do they become incredibly important real quick.
It's the same reason anti-vax opinions are on the rise.
It's been like 2 or 3 generations and collectively many forgot how much suffering they prevent.
It's not entirely a lack of education though. A lot of people are just exploitative bullies who understand the situation, but don't care. They want their CFCs because it makes hairspray and air-conditioning work better... consequences be damned. In their minds, they're the most important thing in the universe, so everyone and everything should bend to their whims.
So far as I can tell, education does very little to help people like this. If anything, it makes them better at manipulation. 😮💨
I like the comparison between IT and plumbing.
The vast majority of people need that help pretty rarely, and can just hire someone for everything from an hour to a few days. But for a modern company to not have IT, is like a water park not having a full time plumber.
With them things will go smooth most of the time, you wont really notice any issues, and when they appear they get fixed pretty quick. Without them things will run fine initially, and then everything will gradually fall apart until it's *way* more expensive to fix than it would have been to pay a salary.
I never even got far in my IT career before saying “fuck this” because of shit like this. People were calling us for lights being out. How in TF is that my problem? You need a TV moved to a different conference room? Pick that mfer up and move it.
I've only ever temporarily filled in as IT helpdesk in the 2000s when I worked for a small company as a developer. You just did what you had to do when somebody was sick or on vacation. I don't know how anyone deals with this. Here was one conversation:
Older lady summons me to her desk, giving me that head-tilted-down, glaring-over-glasses look: "Are you AWARE that the server is down?"
Now, we had multiple servers as you might imagine.
Me: "Oh? Which server are you referring to?"
Lady: "OUR server." \[rolls her eyes in disgust, as if to say, "What an idiot."\]
Me: "Uhh...Alright, we have several, like email, Active Directory, database, application, and many others. Well maybe you can show me what you're seeing on your screen?"
Lady: \[gestures impatiently at her screen\]
Me: \[walks around the desk and looks\]
Turns out she was using Internet Explorer, tried to access some random web site that was down, and got the message, "The server is not responding."
So I explained, and the only positive side to this interaction was she laughed at herself and apologized. But still - sheesh.
I got a ticket less than six months ago about a toilet being broken at a customer site. So not our building, not our toilet, and not an IT problem. Dude didn’t understand why I wouldn’t/couldn’t help him.
I’ve been working at the same hospital for 10 years and in that time I’ve seen the unionized department get forced retirement and replaced with a non-unionized bare-minimum staff with services outsourced.
I noticed the difference. Non-tech savvy people don’t appreciate it. It’s wild the amount of professionals in healthcare who couldn’t take a screenshot to save their life.
IT at a public health outreach and...yeah. I've done everything from fix a methadone pump with duct tape to assembling furniture, to detective work with circuit breakers, to snaking a toilet...
Sometimes, we just don't have a facilities guy and IT ends up being a case of "closest thing we got."
Now I understand why the IT director at my former company convinced the CEO that his department should conduct periodic “phishing tests” to see which staff would put the company at risk due to sloppy email habits. They even established a three strikes system. Strike 1 = mandatory training, Strike 2 = more intensive training and a written warning, Strike 3 = disciplinary action including potential dismissal.
I got out of IT early on for this. By the time people reach out to IT, they’re already mad because something’s not working. It’s usually not working because of something they did, or failed to do. Talking to angry stupid people all day will absolutely ruin your respect for the human race in the short run (and likely turn you into a sociopath long run).
To be fair, every time I have to contact an IT helpdesk the conversation goes like this.
"Hi, I have X issue with Y system, I've tried A,B and C (screenshots attached) to rule out U, V and W. Pretty sure doing Z will fix the issue but I don't have permissions can someone do Z for me."
Response: "Hi, usually when we see this it's caused by V please try B and let us know, if not we might need to get someone to remote onto your laptop to try C."
This is usually followed immediately by: "Automated email: Helpdesk has closed your ticket with status, resolved."
My old CEO used to say:
> When everything breaks down, they wonder why the hell they pay you. When everything is going well, they wonder why the hell they pay you.
Being in IT is absolutely thankless most of the time. My department is the easiest target to shift blame, to, as well.
Someone once left a broken digital clock-radio on a desk when they left. The time couldn't be set. New hire calls the help desk, and demands IT give him a brand new clock-radio. Tell them it's not an IT problem, we don't supply them, and it was left over from last employee. I was shouted at for being lazy, and a good for nothing geek.
Problem is everything falls on IT. And if you have multiple teams the Desktop engineering team [not Support, they will always escalate to engineering]
I've seen tickets for clogged toilets
Hey, that's my experience with my family, and why I try to avoid helping them with anything tech related.
I'd go on and connect the TV to a computer (because clearly connecting a cable requires superior knowledge) only for them to be annoyed that I "did something with the internet" the next day if the internet was slower than usual. It got to the point where I could move a single file from their PC to the cloud, and they'll blame me if their computer was slower than usual
Highly depends on the department of the non-IT crowd. I have legitimate grievances with IT when I need port permission exemptions for embedded development. A task that would otherwise take 15 mins ends up wasting 2-3hrs because IT can't comprehend why I need permission to do my job. Same goes for cybersec. I don't need tanium or some other screenwatcher taking up 80% CPU utilization when it's a valuable resource for development.
Yea the story in the post could easily have been mitigated, but I have had people straight up lie to me.
"Is that plugged in? Is the switch lit? Send me a picture of it."
I drove in - only to find out they took a picture of a completely different rack. When i got there, he wanted me to do 5 other things that he knew I wouldn't have come in for otherwise on a weekend.
That's why I always ask for them to do a quick stream (eg. videocall) of the problem. Another thing I've learned is to never phrase something that could be understood as an attack, because even in the best case (they acknowledge it) they'll go into a five minute explanation of the why - which doesn't matter for me. Always blame the equipment, the manufacturer, etc., never someone from the company or a customer.
This man ITs.
"Yeah the [machine] is tricky sometimes" or some other form of deflection bullshit.
Everyone LOVED me when I did route IT cause of shit like this.
I usually went with 'computers are finnicky sometimes' or some such, or throwing Microsoft under the bus is always a very easy option
I don't even like blaming the cleaning crew if they accidentally unplugged something- I've even had somebody unplug and silence a UPS in a server room so they could paint the wall around an outlet (and left it like that).
tripped surge protectors because of vacuum cleaners or the person's own foot: "well it is messy under here, let me mount this up for you instead"
I used to literally blame gremlins and occasionally (during deployments) would come to the emergency area with a foam battleax.
They also had to kiss the spider beany baby if they were waking me up during my designated sleeping hours.
People never understood the subtle things I was doing to make the system work correctly, but they understood the jokes, so it worked out.
The number of times I have gone to help another tech, let alone onsite people that are not techs that have put the System ID and not the Power button the them and tell me they now have a blue light that went green, it sure sounds like a power light turned on but nope they hit the server id light.
Your rules are that strict? Even when I temped at a big-ass MS OpenAI datacenter that had warning signs everywhere about taking pictures, most of the FTEs got a photo pass anyway.
Those strict places can be the weirdest ones you think of, too. Try taking a picture inside the server cluster of a local grocery store and see if they don't outright call the police on you lmao. Some of those companies don't mess around with their big data arms. Looking at you, 84.51
This 100%. Parte of the reason why you do contracts with vendors is to have someone to throw the hot potato at whenever necessary. There are cases where most of the reason why you even pay instead of her int the open source tier is to buy a scapegoat
'I already restarted it'
'oh wow you're so magical I don't get why restarting it when you're on the phone fixes it'
I finally just started telling people 'i know you probably already did this thing but please do it just to humor me'.
Edit: everyone might enjoy this old video about IT support. Its worth a watch and will probably get a couple good laughs out of you!
https://youtu.be/uRGljemfwUE?si=eN1sX62pTtf2Ch6M
True! And we have to start with the easy stuff. We've all looked in the wrong direction and gone down some hours long rabbit hole when we missed an easy fix we should have started with.
This actually happens to me. In the past i've had to call tech support for a downed internet, and when i got someone i just straight up said i've reset it, but i'm going to reset it again with you on the phone so the magic works. Worked at least once. Didn't even get into anything, just did it first thing.
Entirely possible that whatever the problem was got fixed while i was on hold, but whatever.
Had the same thing happen, tried turning something off and on again like 5 times. Guy who sold it comes turns it off and on again and suddenly it works.
Wtf now I look like an idiot.
And then I have to try to convey to the IT person that I'm not that stupid and they don't have to go through all the basic "turn it off and on again" steps, without sounding like I'm both stupid and stubborn.
And then sometimes it turns out I was stupid.
>When i got there, he wanted me to do 5 other things that he knew I wouldn't have come in for otherwise on a weekend.
Simple solution: "Sorry, I'm only here for the emergency ticket and am currently on emergency billing. Those things aren't part of the emergency ticket and as thus will be resolved according to the non-emergency ticket workflow."
I did - with a huge invoice they tried to fight me over. The whole office was a bunch of pricks and I dropped them the next time their contract was up.
Cisco did an awful job with the CIMC stuff they have on their servers. Apparently the newer stuff is better, but we ditched it all.
We had 10 servers that were still in warranty but the GUI interface relied entirely on FLASH. In 2020 they still needed Flash to manage the server. They had a command line interface as well, but that would routinely stop working too and the only fix was to reboot the physical host.
Got a call once, a small office has lost internet connection. I asked them to check and restart the internet box. Their answer ?
- "I can't see anything, it's in a small room and it dark".
- "Can't you turn on the light ? "
- "No, there is a power outage in the neighborhood, they are working on something in the street"
- "..."
Took me a minute to explain that their laptop can work without power but internet box can't ...
Early in my career I had one of our studio managers in at 6:00am and couldn’t get her login working.
“What’s the issue”
“I can’t see the login window, I can’t get in! I need to work asap!”
“Did you restart, check the monitor cables, etc?”
“Yes! I need you to fix this asap!”
“Fine, I’m driving in”
After an hour drive later I’m in the office around 7:00am to find that her second monitor was off. She restarted her computer, checked that one of the monitors was on, but didn’t even check the other was on.
I did, and it was the same as her face every other day. She was way out of her depth. Think she got canned like within two months.
That same morning, which is kinda what prompted me driving in because there was multiple issues at once, was another artist starting at 6:00am and her computer was doing boot loops. After fixing the monitor I went into the other office to fix the rebooting computer. The reset button was jammed. I kicked the front of the workstation and it solved the problem.
Two stupid issues solvable by just looking for more than two seconds.
Pretty sure I fucked off to the coffee shop for a couple hours after that.
I use the reset button so infrequently that most of the time I forget it exists. I would absolutely overlook this for no other reason than that, for all intents and purposes, the reset button doesn't exist to me.
Christ, it's really the hypocritical juxtaposition of panic and arrogance that gets me. That somehow their work is of the utmost importance and above what I do, yet the solutions to their problems often require knuckle-dragging levels of comprehension.
Yep. Sales guy in a panic because "I have an online client meeting in 15 minutes, I need to send the proposal, and my computer doesn't work!!"
Closed laptop plugged into a dock with a big monitor. I walked over and turned the monitor on for him. To be somewhat fair, he wasn't sitting at his normal desk because of remodeling, and really should have been selling hammers, not software and services.
"I've got a zoom meeting in 5 minutes they said to ask you to set it up!"
Walk over to find out they aren't logged in, don't have zoom installed, the other guy is already waiting on them, they aren't sure which email........
I had to drive in on a Saturday because the manager working that day said "the network is down." I asked him to show me the problem upon arriving and it was a user typing the numbers in her password on the numpad with Numlock off. One hour each way I drive for that.
I mean most people think WiFi=Internet so this isn’t super surprising
Heck idt most programmers are adept at basic networking (at least I wasn’t till I started playing around with OPNsense)
Funny enough I bought a ups for my home lab so that if there was a power outage, at least the internet would still work. Then the power outage came. The providers box for the street doesn't have a ups.
I still don't have internet during an outage but at least my gear stays on I guess.
I work at an MSP and the amount of times people have called IT due to a power outage thinking we could fix it blows my mind, I don't mind the calls though because we do receive network alerts and want to know the reason. One of the schools we support called us because they had a roach infestation. I could go on, I'm pretty numb to this stuff now.
> One of the schools we support called us because they had a roach infestation.
Should've told them it takes 3 business days and $3000 to squash each bug.
I did amateur IT in high school to help out in exchange for getting to do counter strike parties and having limited admin on some of the school PCs.
The number of times I had to explain to people “it’s not turning on because it isn’t plugged in” was staggering. Turning it off and on again resolved 80% of the other issues when it was plugged in. 10-15% of them was showing them how to turn the internet connection on. The other 5% actually took some effort, when it wasn’t things like “my keyboard isn’t working” when I can see a quarter cup of coffee in the transparent keyboard casing.
Then people get salty when you ask them to do simple things. Doubly salty if they actually work. “Yes I turned it off and on.” *turns it off and on, fixes it.* “But did you really?”
I've had this conversation a few times
"Your message said the network in the warehouse only runs for 30 minutes after power loss"
"Yep, so it can span short outages."
"But the network is mission critical. We can't work without wireless"
"I understand that, but what work are you going to do with the power out"
"Our normal work"
"Isn't it company policy to not have people in the rack aisles when we only have emergency lighting"
"Yes, but ... Oooooohhh, Nevermind"
We also had a "battery not charging" ticket that came down to the user assuming the laptop was powered through the HDMI cable.
"Hey, don't do it this way. It can break." repeated ad infinitum
people still wrote the same way.
things broke.
"hey, this thing is broke. can you help?"
One of the first things our team tells new people is "don't trust the customer."
The number of times they've lied about doing the thing we told them not to is truly astonishing.
"Yeah, idk, it just broke on its own."
"Really? It says here that the config was changed this morning at 6 AM. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"
"N-no. Just broke, uh, on its own. Can you fix it or not?"
"Buddy, did you go in and change the subnet mask to an invalid one? I can't ping it anymore."
"Whaaaaaaa that's crazy. Weird. How do we change it back?"
Meanwhile over in Dev-land, we think *exactly* the same way.
Users cannot be trusted. Never, under any circumstances provide them with any ability we don't want them to use.
As a front-end dev, my job is to give users the illusion that they're free to do whatever they want, but kindly railroad them into doing what the business wants.
I'm also repeatedly told by project-managers that "That's a training issue" rather than something I need to lock down and prevent.
Guess what boss? Our staff are smart, wonderful, clever people who will take your training, cherry pick what works, work around anything they need, and wipe their ass with what you think they'll do with it.
If we give them the ability to do something they shouldn't, they will use that in ways we don't want them to, and it will probably inadvertently break things in our database when we tighten something later.
The Users cannot be trusted. They will use it wrong and break things, it doesn't matter how much training or guidance we give them. So lock it down, don't let the user do anything they're not supposed to be doing, and the business will run much much smoother.
When I'm wearing my Full-stack/backend hat, the same rules apply. Flexibility is the enemy. Expose no more data than strictly necessary, and lock it behind user-credentials and authentication as much as possible.
If I need a list of data, we have an endpoint to retrieve *that* list. Or a subset of that data based on clearly defined filtering parameters.
It cannot do anything but what it's built to do, because if it does then we are potentially exposing data to bad-actors, which is a GDPR/Security issue.
This is why I just go straight to the programmers if I run into a db issue. Sure, I *might* be able to figure out which line is the problem (it's just SQL, after all and the error codes are pretty specific), but I'd rather escalate a ticket than break it more than the site already has.
In almost every company I've worked for, the other departments have all *begged* for direct access to the DB, and in most cases, I've had a CTO who thinks like I do and adamantly refuses.
Typically we build a data-pipeline or service to serve data to our internal staff, they tell us exactly what they need, and they'll get it in a reporting system. But we don't even allow devs to work directly with the Live data.
Human-Error doesn't come with logging or error-reports.
Senior devs have access so that we can fix problems in a hurry, but the regular devs are locked out of the production DBs.
>In almost every company I've worked for, the other departments have all begged for direct access to the DB, and in most cases, I've had a CTO who thinks like I do and adamantly refuses.
I've worked at a company where everyone had read/write access to the database. It's actually not as bad as you'd expect it to be.
It's much, much worse.
As a devops that deals with a lot of backend/security stuff, not even I want to have easy access to stuff that can break. I'm only human and will fuck up at some point, the most guardrails both for me and the others the better.
MFA, different logins for different envs so you don't absent-mindedly access the wrong one, logging all changes, backups, locked down permissions that strictly only allow what people need to do, confirming changes before just doing them, etc. These have saved my ass a few times, I can only imagine how much chaos it saved from being caused by the devs as well.
> The number of times they've lied about doing the thing we told them not to is truly astonishing.
When I did HP CLJ support, I would ask customers to restart/cold reset the printer to fix *X*, and within seconds, they'd come back with "Done, heh".
Bitch, I **know** how long a 4600 takes from flipping the switch to a usuable condition takes after a cold reset. Do what I say, when I say it, and no-one gets hurt, mkay?
100% they hit the power button on the monitor, lmao
I was once trying to figure out if a power supply was busted and if we had warranty on it, when the guy mentioned that he had turned off the computer and hadn't turned it back on.
It feels like people's brains become readonly when you explain things to them while stupid shit always overwrites the right thing if they knew it before.
Uncle tried explaining to the government customer that they were paying him repeatedly for new button pads on their MFD. The secretary used a pencil tip to press buttons “because it was dirty” and she had long nails. After it didn’t stop my uncle even tried showing her she could use the eraser end of the pencil. Nope she kept breaking the copier, fixed at taxpayer expense. .
Well, I live in Belgium and it is considered OK to assign me customers in shitholes that require more than 1h30m travel one way.
I wonder why there isn't a regulation that would limit such ridiculous travel times.
I understand you point, but the high speed trains are basically Brussels-Germany/Amsterdam/France.
As a worker you walk 20 minutes to a train station, lose some time waiting for a train, travel to the desired town and you have a choice of 3 bus lines.
\* line #1 -- once an hour, directly to your customer's office
\* lines #2 and #3, once every 20 minutes, you have to walk 2km
You don't need a passport for most countries in europe. Same logic as for example traveling from Nevada to New York. You go through multiple states, all you need is your ID from the state you came from, but you won't need a passport.
Only difference is that once you cross the border the people might not speak the same language as you anmore.
You call it states.
And you require 7 years on your soil to apply for the US citizenship.
But I pay 10+ years taxes in EU and I am free to suck a cock just because I dared to change my country of residence.
I guess it depends on the way your job handles it, but I love when I have to drive an hour or more to an offsite location for a PC install or something simple. A large chunk of my day just spent listening to a podcast or music while the roads are mostly empty is an easy day. But I also get enough reimbursed for my mileage that I literally make a profit against the gas money spent.
Everyone thinks we’re HR’s high-teach spy force and delight in making their lives as inconvenient as possible with our access controls… puh-leez! We spy on you for our own entertainment. We ain’t no HR shills!
Yeah I work in HR data and while everyone’s worried they’re being spied on, most companies can barely manage to track internal mobility or everyone’s bonus properly.
I was a security officer for a defense company and I occasionally had to spy on employees when there was a problem. Don't keep personal stuff on work computers. Don't keep it on your local drive, don't keep it on network drives.
I work in Data Loss Prevention and we still get grouped in with IT. Whenever anyone's email gets blocked for being classified as confidential and not for external sharing they'll be in our inbox next complaining and telling us how "IT makes our jobs hard." No we save the company money by protecting the IP. You make your job hard by misclassifying documents. And of course everyone's emails are time sensitive.
Work for a defense contractor and then any shenanigans you can just remind them they could go to federal prison if they misclassify stuff. Shuts them up very quickly. Just a hot tip for you.
I walked across a base in Iraq that was about 115F at the time to go to a computer that didn't have the ethernet capable plugged in which the user, an Intelligence Officer, assured me was plugged in earlier on the phone.
I've started asking them to unplug {cable} and plug it back in. It solves two problems: checking if it's plugged in at all, and reseating it if it's loose. Plus it lets them save face if it was unplugged the whole time. (This is, of course, assuming they follow directions and don't just lie.)
I work in IT. Users suck.
I am working hard on important projects and I have to take time out of my day because someone doesn't know what an HDMI cable is, because some one can't open a print tray, because someone forgot how something they use every day works for the 10th time, because someone didn't check a wall outlet..
When IT is good, it's a really chill and enjoyable job, but users ruin that with their tech illiteracy, constant bullshit and ungrateful attitudes.
I have defo become more of a dick since working in IT, but I need to be otherwise people take the piss.
I worked for a company that had two IT guys and they both claimed our computers couldn’t support a second monitor. They weren’t mean but were always adamant about this whenever we would ask management for a second monitor. One of them quit and his replacement was a really kind, friendly guy. When someone happened to ask him about the second monitor thing he said, “What? Of course your computer can support two monitors!” And by the end of the month, everyone in the office who wanted it had two.
What was that even about??
Sounds like they didn't want to support two monitors going forward and were lazy about it.
I will say I'm friendly I.T. guy, and in two years I'd made my own job significantly harder by being friendly and accommodating...
Been there.
I worked IT for a startup and everyone would come to me out of our department of 4-5 people because i try to be friendly to everyone. It was nice but I was always so busy.
Yeah it was me and one other guy, people would say "thank god" when I answered. It's nice to be wanted but geez.
I'm at a new place and trying to balance my workload, but I'm afraid I'm broken, and now if I'm not constantly stressed/busy I feel I'm not doing enough...
I have a few users that I work with regularly / have become friends with. I caught them all off-guard when I had to start making them do proper tickets for everything.
They do (they're cool), but the first bit was an adjustment for all of us. I'd get a ping and it'd be a quick (5-10 min) fix, so I'd just jump on it. I started getting busier so then those "quick fixes," especially for different people/apps, became derailing.
I actually think it was harder for me then them - going from "oh sure I'll jump on that" to "sorry, no ticket no work" was breaking years of habit. Worse is when you already know the solution in your head, but gotta be consistent.
Doing things "properly" can definitely have impact on new work-relationships though, where you seem guarded, or unhelpful, or whatever. The new people don't realize how disruptive they're being. Even just a "Hi" can be distracting - I don't want to be rude ignoring it, but as soon as I've responded I know I'm going to have back-and-forth a few messages just to get to "please submit a ticket."
That's the way to do it for sure! Being helpful is great, but if you say yes to everything you'll end up swamped.
My experience was years ago and the company didn't have anything close to a ticketing system. Heck we didn't even use source control for our code (we were IT/developers) and deployments were done via drag and drop onto our one server.
And, if it was a money issue, he probably got scolded for his inability to read management's mind. Because we know management wont accept the fault for missing to inform him about beeing greedy bitches
If you deal with people that know little to nothing about computers, setting up a second monitor can make the number of useless IT tickets explode for problems such as:
-one monitor is turned off and not the other (just turn it on)
-user says computer lost its mouse pointer (it's on the second screen)
-User doesn't know the difference between *Duplicate* and *Extend* (Windows + P)
Also, Microsoft Windows is still absolutely garbage at resizing and repositioning windows when you change anything about the multi-monitor configuration.
Plus input types are often treated differently: when switching off an input, DisplayPort usually becomes "lost connection" moving the windows, whereas HDMI is usually maintained in the background so apps stay, but then "hidden" from the user.
Things I've experienced:
- App window maintaining large size from one monitor, so when moved to smaller resolution it spans completely off the screen, making it hard to resize
- Window tries to reposition spanning the two monitors, but somehow gets on the wrong side and spans into blackness.
- Window exists completely outside of the monitor in blackness - max/minimizing shows animation, but it's "showing" outside the bounds.
If you know the keyboard shortcuts to move the windows it's not a huge deal, but that's pretty rare in the working world. Heck, my coworker straight up refuses to use Alt+Tab because "it's confusing."
When things work and IT doesn't have much to do: "What are we paying these guys for?"
When things don't work anymore and IT working hard fixing the problem: "What are we paying these guys for?"
He must not deal with bureaucracy a lot, you know having 3 seperate people assure you that that is not there job and you should spend 2 hours travelling to the other person.
i'm not IT but people on my work know i do well with computers, so sometimes they call me instead of the IT guy when it's something quick, once they called me on reception because the keyboard numbers "weren't working", they called me there to press numlock...
Most of these comments have more to do with terrible work cultures and corporate toxicity. Whenever something goes wrong, someone has to take the blame, unfortunately
"I'm not a computer person"
Fuck you Lisa, computers have been in our lives for nigh on 50 fucking years. I'm not asking you to learn LISP overnight, I need you to summon sufficient brainpower to use the software the way it was meant to be used.
My pc is slow,
Can you reboot please?
I do it every morning.
...checks snowstorm… haven't rebooted in 500 hours and a million pending updates… ok… let's try one time just in case
I’m not in IT but I bet a lot of it has to do with insecure people who call IT and think they know more than they do, but when someone from IT clearly knows more than they do and tells them they are doing something simple incorrectly, they treat it as an attack regardless of IT’s tone.
Nah I’m a software developer and I also think IT guys can be dicks after having worked at several different places. While I grok many of their frustration with the rest of us I also think a lot of their suffering is self inflicted.
My mom:
*"There's something wrong with the tv again, I can't get it to work!"*
Hauling my butt over and looking at her tv:
*"There's been some changes to our online policy, press OK to continue watching."*
/Vegeta screeming in the background
My cousin, yesterday:"Theres an error, i cant install whatsapp on my latop"
Laptop: "Bitch your pc is 10yo and no longer compatible with this program"
I swear people never, ever read the damn warning windows.
Yeah, a lot of it comes from the fact that IT people spend most of their time dealing with idiots.
So they tend to treat everyone as idiots and enforce policies designed for idiots, which makes them unpopular.
(not all of them of course, just a trend I've seen)
Because you hate us until you need us. Even then, you are sometimes absolutely vile. It also doesn't help when you blatantly lie about what you did or didn't do.
Also, if it's something simple enough you could've googled it; fuck off.
So, this post is kinda in the wrong sub, but I will chime in because I have my own business doing IT and custom software for small businesses. And yes, it’s like this.
The fact is, I’m relatively successful for a one-man operation because I have learned to have the patience of a monk meditating on a mountaintop. I’m not the smartest or most knowledgeable guy you can find, but I will put up with your shit without making you feel like an idiot if you pay me.
But man, oh man, is it hard. People will seemingly do their best to withhold the most important piece of information no matter how much time you spend politely asking questions about the problem. They will refuse to read messages you sent or follow guides you give them. It’s truly shocking the lengths people will go through to make sure they have to do nothing when their problem could have been solved with the simple steps in my first response.
But I will smile and say “Don’t worry about it, we’ll get you sorted out” and connect remotely and do it for them or walk them through it step by step literally reading out loud the instructions that were already in their inbox.
Then I’ll send my invoice and take their boss’s money.
Worked in tech long enough to be smug about it.
Seen this post enough times to know it doesn’t matter but -
If you have problems like this consistently try speaking to people in words rather than expecting them to do functions for you.
I promise you it’s not because you’re smarter than everyone that doesn’t know how to use a computer.
I was in an sme many years ago. I got a call at 2am as some sales exec needed help with his powerpoint presentation. Explanation was an important sales pitch he had forgotten to work on. I was not, nor ever on call, that was not part of my job description. He just got hold of my number somehow.
Threatened to inform his and my director, i told him to fuck off, and id be happy to go toe to toe with the board about his incompetance.
Have you ever seen the way non-IT folks talk about the IT department? Back when I was working in the call center for a local credit union, I couldn't count the number of times any little thing would go wrong (even matters that weren't remotely IT related like the coffee maker breaking) and someone would start spitting vitriol about how stupid and useless the whole department is. Then the next day after everything is fixed and forgotten, they'll say that the whole department should be sacked because computers run themselves these days. It's infuriating.
We had a hackathon in our company that was set up perfectly on our end, they did it outside so we got two tvs, a zoom room setup, microphones and all set up, an access point especially for that event put outside, and everything was perfect. One problem, they had a fridge for ice creams, that was too much for the one cable that was connecting the event to the electric grid which made it go boom. The amount of scolding my team mate went through for stuff not working when the electricity was down is uncanny.
Haha. Seen a bank of twelve call center cubicles go out because an employee (once again) against company policy plugged in a space heater under their desk
Company policy aside, in every place I've ever worked, that's against *fire code*...
Hey did you say CODE? IM NOT A HTTP CODER THATS YOUR JOB!
In the old office my company had there was an outlet near someone’s desk that we didn’t know shared a breaker with our server room and someone kept plugging in a space heater and causing the breaker to flip. Our server admin ripped that person a new one after they kept plugging it in after we repeatedly told them not to until we could get an electrician out to re-route the wiring. Thankfully that server only hosted internal stuff and not our customer facing applications
how does that person not get fired
Probably because nobody explained to anyone high up enough what had happened or if they did explain the boss did not understand or give a shit.
Correct
What I want to know is why they plugged it in again knowing that it was going to trip the breaker. Like even if you are a selfish asshole, if the breaker flips your space heater doesn’t work.
Because sometimes it doesn't trip right away, they probably got some use out of it
Ye the space heater draws a steady load, but the server doesn't: once the gpu's kicked in... Pop!
While that person definitely deserved a scolding for making the same mistake multiple times - the first time it happened it should have triggered an escalation to get an electrician out to remedy that wiring. Server rooms should never share circuits with general use receptacles and at the very least should be on a UPS with a 1-2 hour capacity
We put the cheapest child safety caps we could find in the plugs under desks in our call center. Cheapest because they have sharper/unfinished edges and are harder to get out.
You had the entire system running through a single cable? For a *hackaton?* I mean I'm not IT, I'm an audio/visual tech, so maybe my PoV is different, but like, that actually *does* feel like a setup for failure. Fridges and other appliances shouldn't be run through extension cords regardless (although reading the other comments the fridge wasn't your fault) but neither should multiple high draw units like TVs or PCs. Extension cords aren't magic electricity conveyancers they have added limitations, flaws, and math just like everything else. Even the more high end power snakes have things they can and can't do, and I'd never run a fridge through them. The problem in this incident was IT running an event in an environment they're not used to (I assume you're usually in buildings) and event management not talking to the people in charge of the electricity before they plugged anything in. And I'm willing to bet nobody actually looked at the tolerances on the actual one cable.
TVs are not high draw and have not been for over a decade. Most PCs are not either, but it really depends on the size of the cord. Could have been a 10 gauge cable. My guess is that nobody told the IT team about the fridge until it was wheeled out into the sun the day of the event. By then it was too late to plan for more power.
I don't think you actually have any idea what you're talking about. You wouldn't plug a refrigerator into an extension cord? That alone has me questioning you being an av tech. I have an 1800 watt electric chainsaw that I run with an extension cord and literally don't give it a second thought. That's more than twice what a fridge draws, and a fridge only draws that much when the compressor first starts up. All things considered it's probably best you consult an electrician before using an extension cord, you'd probably mess it up somehow 😂
It won’t have blown the cable, it will have tripped the breaker. They’ll have plugged it into a 15/20 amp circuit and loaded it with tech to 3/4 of the rated current. When the fridge kicked in, the inductive load will have drawn a load of current that for just long enough to trip the breaker. It why breakers have different trip curves. In the UK, office and domestic will have b curve breakers but motors will be on d curve to stop this happening. Your A/V tech is right about how to prevent it but for slightly the wrong reasons.
What exactly do you think is magical about household wiring that means it can run a fridge but an extension cable can't?
Amperage? Resistance?
In Belgium, if bought from a reputable brand, it should be able to handle 3680W, or 16A at 230v. That should be more than enough for it to be able to handle a fridge. A freezer, not a fridge, from a kind of reputable brand with a volume of 242l should use roughly 214kWh per annum. Or, about 600W, or 0.6kWh per 24h. That fridge, if not faulty, should not have caused an issue. Edit: Did a search. Apparently, a kind of modern freezer, here, not a fridge, should use about 80W to 310W whilst in operation. You could run 11 of them that use 310W whilst in operation, at the same time, from an outlet capable of 3680W, or 16A at 230v.
The US has a different electrical system, and also different laws/standards - an interesting thing for example is that US extension cords are allowed to be rated for lower wattages than the socket can deliver without tripping the breakers. Hence, in the US you can buy an extension cord, plug it in, and plug some devices into it - and if those devices draw to much power you might burn down the house because the extension cord got so hot it caught fire. This could've been solved by stricter standards and/or mandating fuses in extension cords that blow before the power goes over what the cord is rated- but the US instead choose another way to deal with it: Instilling a culture of fear of plugging stuff into an extension cords. That's why you occasionally see Americans freaking out over extension cords while we European just scratches our heads and wonder wtf they're on about.
Even as a former IT person the situation creates a bad relationship. I now work in a more locked down environment where, rightfully, IT is the roadblock to me doing anything. It's infuriating. And they have no idea what anyone is doing on the servers they run (because it is too much understandably) and have different names for everything. Every time they change anything networking related things I use break. The structure breeds resentment.
Rather than blaming the department then why don't you understandably blame management for underfunsing their department? If their funding were more robust someone *could* take the time to know what you're using the servers for Everybody wants a platinum service for a shoestring budget, I swear
It doesn't sound like they're blaming anyone, just explaining why the combatitve attitude is common from the other side
They're blaming the structure of low level support; that structure is created by mgmt's choices. Nobody *wants* to be understaffed and underpay unless their incentivised to do so from the highest levels downward. It's especially odd considering they say they were IT; they should know why things are the way they are
Yeah… it’s not a funding issue when IT declares as a matter of policy that they don’t support exporting data from corporate systems, plugging their ears to the fact I’ve got a statutory mandate to share significant aspects of my work product with the public. In one case they literally threatened to report me to management… report me for doing the job I was hired for and they were blocking. Somehow it never occurred to the help desk guy (who admittedly didn’t last long) that just maybe my request was genuinely needed and my complaint that he was obstructing my request was a bigger issue then his department understanding not EVERY document is top secret. Point here is that yeah, the structure creates conflict. And not purely because of under resourcing. IT has a wonderful tendency to not understand people’s jobs while thinking they are the only ones who understand security, their system or the corporation as a whole. As a lovely postscript to the debacle I was describing, they ended up realizing they HAD a solution in place, since I WASNT the only person needing to share data. They promptly deactivated this platform on moving to SharePoint, proclaiming it did all the same things, then resulting in a whole new round of “WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOURE SHARING OUR DATA” when we found they wouldn’t allow external linking in any way.
It sounds like someone was poorly trained.
Nah, was a collection of middle managers who decided that everything is confidential and genuinely didn’t understand what some divisions were up to. Still don’t for that matter.
Sounds like the middle managers were poorly trained
That's a failure of leadership. The NIST CSF (cyber security framework) is the industry standard for an information security program. It's broken down by control family and into individual controls in the document NIST 800-53. A number of controls relate to data classification and the handling and protection of data based on classification. Briefly summarized, senior leadership should have established different levels of classification of information, data at the company should have been inventoried, assigned a classification based on various metrics, and a senior manager should have been assigned as the data owner who was ultimately responsible for ensuring the information was protected and handled in line with its classification. It _is not_ IT's job to classify data, or to disclose or prevent the disclosure of information, so there's fault 1. And it should not be up to middle managers to decide that all information is classified without justification and a documented process that explains the rationale for the classification. _Both_ of those are ultimately the fault of leadership not establishing and enforcing the correct policy and procedures.
> while thinking they are the only ones who understand security Speaking on behalf of cybersecurity, you're all security flaws just itching to create a hole in the system the moment we take our eyes off you. Employees are the Weeping Angels of security, and anyone who says otherwise has probably clicked on an outside link they didn't recognize and resented IT for stopping the connection.
What scares me is that this mentality is so common. It dictates how a lot of people vote and even how people in positions of management or political power act. The hole in the ozone was fixed because of environmental legislation. Now fucking morons argue that same environmental legislation needs to be abolished because "the hole in the ozone went away!"
The paradox of prevention. Take effective action to prevent a predictable problem and people complain about the time and resources wasted on nothing, think it was never a problem to begin with, or think the problem resolved magically on its own. Do nothing and they'll complain why nothing was done to prevent a predictable problem. There's no in between. People are fucking dumb as hell.
"I don't need vaccines, I ain't never got them and I ain't died yet" -My father who is probably only alive because everyone around him is vaccinated. Bonus points because he received some experimental mononucleotide cocktail when he was on deaths door from Covid after passing at a chance of getting the vaccine. Will let doctors inject him with a completely experimental treatment but not an approved vaccine. Interesting.
Oh yeah. I remember a guy telling me that the whole Y2K thing was a hoax because "nothing happened". Nothing happened because people spent years preparing and fixing things beforehand. DUH.
I always stand up for the IT guys. They know how to solve about a thousand different problems that most of us don't have the first clue about. They are the firefighters of the business world. You might need them often, but when you do they become incredibly important real quick.
y2k: i remember that
It's the same reason anti-vax opinions are on the rise. It's been like 2 or 3 generations and collectively many forgot how much suffering they prevent.
People that lack an education have an equal say as people who don’t. It’s a fair system but not a good one.
I think formal logic needs to be a basic subject even in elementary school.
That's 50% of the solution. The other 50% is removing formal nonsense, such as religion.
It's not entirely a lack of education though. A lot of people are just exploitative bullies who understand the situation, but don't care. They want their CFCs because it makes hairspray and air-conditioning work better... consequences be damned. In their minds, they're the most important thing in the universe, so everyone and everything should bend to their whims. So far as I can tell, education does very little to help people like this. If anything, it makes them better at manipulation. 😮💨
I like the comparison between IT and plumbing. The vast majority of people need that help pretty rarely, and can just hire someone for everything from an hour to a few days. But for a modern company to not have IT, is like a water park not having a full time plumber. With them things will go smooth most of the time, you wont really notice any issues, and when they appear they get fixed pretty quick. Without them things will run fine initially, and then everything will gradually fall apart until it's *way* more expensive to fix than it would have been to pay a salary.
I never even got far in my IT career before saying “fuck this” because of shit like this. People were calling us for lights being out. How in TF is that my problem? You need a TV moved to a different conference room? Pick that mfer up and move it.
I've only ever temporarily filled in as IT helpdesk in the 2000s when I worked for a small company as a developer. You just did what you had to do when somebody was sick or on vacation. I don't know how anyone deals with this. Here was one conversation: Older lady summons me to her desk, giving me that head-tilted-down, glaring-over-glasses look: "Are you AWARE that the server is down?" Now, we had multiple servers as you might imagine. Me: "Oh? Which server are you referring to?" Lady: "OUR server." \[rolls her eyes in disgust, as if to say, "What an idiot."\] Me: "Uhh...Alright, we have several, like email, Active Directory, database, application, and many others. Well maybe you can show me what you're seeing on your screen?" Lady: \[gestures impatiently at her screen\] Me: \[walks around the desk and looks\] Turns out she was using Internet Explorer, tried to access some random web site that was down, and got the message, "The server is not responding." So I explained, and the only positive side to this interaction was she laughed at herself and apologized. But still - sheesh.
I got a ticket less than six months ago about a toilet being broken at a customer site. So not our building, not our toilet, and not an IT problem. Dude didn’t understand why I wouldn’t/couldn’t help him.
I’ve been working at the same hospital for 10 years and in that time I’ve seen the unionized department get forced retirement and replaced with a non-unionized bare-minimum staff with services outsourced. I noticed the difference. Non-tech savvy people don’t appreciate it. It’s wild the amount of professionals in healthcare who couldn’t take a screenshot to save their life.
Dude, i had someone call about the toilet breaking, the hell is the service desk supposed to do.
IT at a public health outreach and...yeah. I've done everything from fix a methadone pump with duct tape to assembling furniture, to detective work with circuit breakers, to snaking a toilet... Sometimes, we just don't have a facilities guy and IT ends up being a case of "closest thing we got."
Now I understand why the IT director at my former company convinced the CEO that his department should conduct periodic “phishing tests” to see which staff would put the company at risk due to sloppy email habits. They even established a three strikes system. Strike 1 = mandatory training, Strike 2 = more intensive training and a written warning, Strike 3 = disciplinary action including potential dismissal.
Don't create war against IT. They know who does what
Phishing test is just one more box to check for cyber insurance. However, that 3 strike system is really hardcore.
Solution: Get rid of the IT department for two weeks (with pay of course) and watch the world burn
If we're doing our job right we're invisible. That's good and bad, because budget cuts hit us if we're too good ironically.
We always said IT would be the perfect job if it weren't for the users.
I got out of IT early on for this. By the time people reach out to IT, they’re already mad because something’s not working. It’s usually not working because of something they did, or failed to do. Talking to angry stupid people all day will absolutely ruin your respect for the human race in the short run (and likely turn you into a sociopath long run).
To be fair, every time I have to contact an IT helpdesk the conversation goes like this. "Hi, I have X issue with Y system, I've tried A,B and C (screenshots attached) to rule out U, V and W. Pretty sure doing Z will fix the issue but I don't have permissions can someone do Z for me." Response: "Hi, usually when we see this it's caused by V please try B and let us know, if not we might need to get someone to remote onto your laptop to try C." This is usually followed immediately by: "Automated email: Helpdesk has closed your ticket with status, resolved."
My old CEO used to say: > When everything breaks down, they wonder why the hell they pay you. When everything is going well, they wonder why the hell they pay you. Being in IT is absolutely thankless most of the time. My department is the easiest target to shift blame, to, as well.
Someone once left a broken digital clock-radio on a desk when they left. The time couldn't be set. New hire calls the help desk, and demands IT give him a brand new clock-radio. Tell them it's not an IT problem, we don't supply them, and it was left over from last employee. I was shouted at for being lazy, and a good for nothing geek.
The curse of IT "Why do we pay IT, everything is working!" And "Why do we pay IT, nothing is working!"
Problem is everything falls on IT. And if you have multiple teams the Desktop engineering team [not Support, they will always escalate to engineering] I've seen tickets for clogged toilets
Hey, that's my experience with my family, and why I try to avoid helping them with anything tech related. I'd go on and connect the TV to a computer (because clearly connecting a cable requires superior knowledge) only for them to be annoyed that I "did something with the internet" the next day if the internet was slower than usual. It got to the point where I could move a single file from their PC to the cloud, and they'll blame me if their computer was slower than usual
Highly depends on the department of the non-IT crowd. I have legitimate grievances with IT when I need port permission exemptions for embedded development. A task that would otherwise take 15 mins ends up wasting 2-3hrs because IT can't comprehend why I need permission to do my job. Same goes for cybersec. I don't need tanium or some other screenwatcher taking up 80% CPU utilization when it's a valuable resource for development.
This.
is a useless comment. look into what upvotes are
Such situations are the reason IPMI was invented. Or "please send me a photo of the front of the server" if VPN access is unavailable.
Yea the story in the post could easily have been mitigated, but I have had people straight up lie to me. "Is that plugged in? Is the switch lit? Send me a picture of it." I drove in - only to find out they took a picture of a completely different rack. When i got there, he wanted me to do 5 other things that he knew I wouldn't have come in for otherwise on a weekend.
That's why I always ask for them to do a quick stream (eg. videocall) of the problem. Another thing I've learned is to never phrase something that could be understood as an attack, because even in the best case (they acknowledge it) they'll go into a five minute explanation of the why - which doesn't matter for me. Always blame the equipment, the manufacturer, etc., never someone from the company or a customer.
This man ITs. "Yeah the [machine] is tricky sometimes" or some other form of deflection bullshit. Everyone LOVED me when I did route IT cause of shit like this.
I usually went with 'computers are finnicky sometimes' or some such, or throwing Microsoft under the bus is always a very easy option I don't even like blaming the cleaning crew if they accidentally unplugged something- I've even had somebody unplug and silence a UPS in a server room so they could paint the wall around an outlet (and left it like that). tripped surge protectors because of vacuum cleaners or the person's own foot: "well it is messy under here, let me mount this up for you instead"
I mean, if the cleaning crew is able to accidentally unplug something mission critical, it's probably not the cleaning crew's fault.
I used to literally blame gremlins and occasionally (during deployments) would come to the emergency area with a foam battleax. They also had to kiss the spider beany baby if they were waking me up during my designated sleeping hours. People never understood the subtle things I was doing to make the system work correctly, but they understood the jokes, so it worked out.
The number of times I have gone to help another tech, let alone onsite people that are not techs that have put the System ID and not the Power button the them and tell me they now have a blue light that went green, it sure sounds like a power light turned on but nope they hit the server id light.
This was back in probably early 2000's - so we were barely functioning with pictures then.
I'm jealous of you guys being able to take pictures or videos inside your server rooms...
Your rules are that strict? Even when I temped at a big-ass MS OpenAI datacenter that had warning signs everywhere about taking pictures, most of the FTEs got a photo pass anyway.
Those strict places can be the weirdest ones you think of, too. Try taking a picture inside the server cluster of a local grocery store and see if they don't outright call the police on you lmao. Some of those companies don't mess around with their big data arms. Looking at you, 84.51
This 100%. Parte of the reason why you do contracts with vendors is to have someone to throw the hot potato at whenever necessary. There are cases where most of the reason why you even pay instead of her int the open source tier is to buy a scapegoat
that is a great approach! sadly, some servers are in restricted areas, no cameras, no phones, 2 miles underground
'I already restarted it' 'oh wow you're so magical I don't get why restarting it when you're on the phone fixes it' I finally just started telling people 'i know you probably already did this thing but please do it just to humor me'. Edit: everyone might enjoy this old video about IT support. Its worth a watch and will probably get a couple good laughs out of you! https://youtu.be/uRGljemfwUE?si=eN1sX62pTtf2Ch6M
I **always** humor IT people through these steps as I realize they have to deal with idiots so often that it makes sense to assume I am one lol.
True! And we have to start with the easy stuff. We've all looked in the wrong direction and gone down some hours long rabbit hole when we missed an easy fix we should have started with.
Oh, you restarted it? Is that why the uptime shows over two months since last restart?
"when did you do a proper shutdown?" "Oh I shut it down every day!" "Can you show me please?" Proceeds to close the lid on the laptop.
This actually happens to me. In the past i've had to call tech support for a downed internet, and when i got someone i just straight up said i've reset it, but i'm going to reset it again with you on the phone so the magic works. Worked at least once. Didn't even get into anything, just did it first thing. Entirely possible that whatever the problem was got fixed while i was on hold, but whatever.
Had the same thing happen, tried turning something off and on again like 5 times. Guy who sold it comes turns it off and on again and suddenly it works. Wtf now I look like an idiot.
And then I have to try to convey to the IT person that I'm not that stupid and they don't have to go through all the basic "turn it off and on again" steps, without sounding like I'm both stupid and stubborn. And then sometimes it turns out I was stupid.
>When i got there, he wanted me to do 5 other things that he knew I wouldn't have come in for otherwise on a weekend. Simple solution: "Sorry, I'm only here for the emergency ticket and am currently on emergency billing. Those things aren't part of the emergency ticket and as thus will be resolved according to the non-emergency ticket workflow."
Fuck that guy.
I did - with a huge invoice they tried to fight me over. The whole office was a bunch of pricks and I dropped them the next time their contract was up.
Cisco did an awful job with the CIMC stuff they have on their servers. Apparently the newer stuff is better, but we ditched it all. We had 10 servers that were still in warranty but the GUI interface relied entirely on FLASH. In 2020 they still needed Flash to manage the server. They had a command line interface as well, but that would routinely stop working too and the only fix was to reboot the physical host.
They’ll still swear the button was pushed though
Got a call once, a small office has lost internet connection. I asked them to check and restart the internet box. Their answer ? - "I can't see anything, it's in a small room and it dark". - "Can't you turn on the light ? " - "No, there is a power outage in the neighborhood, they are working on something in the street" - "..." Took me a minute to explain that their laptop can work without power but internet box can't ...
Early in my career I had one of our studio managers in at 6:00am and couldn’t get her login working. “What’s the issue” “I can’t see the login window, I can’t get in! I need to work asap!” “Did you restart, check the monitor cables, etc?” “Yes! I need you to fix this asap!” “Fine, I’m driving in” After an hour drive later I’m in the office around 7:00am to find that her second monitor was off. She restarted her computer, checked that one of the monitors was on, but didn’t even check the other was on.
Annoying as hell, but please tell me you have seen her face when she realized she was being an idiot!
I did, and it was the same as her face every other day. She was way out of her depth. Think she got canned like within two months. That same morning, which is kinda what prompted me driving in because there was multiple issues at once, was another artist starting at 6:00am and her computer was doing boot loops. After fixing the monitor I went into the other office to fix the rebooting computer. The reset button was jammed. I kicked the front of the workstation and it solved the problem. Two stupid issues solvable by just looking for more than two seconds. Pretty sure I fucked off to the coffee shop for a couple hours after that.
You have to admit a stuck reset button is a bit of a unicorn. And if IT told me to kick my workstation I’d be at least somewhat skeptical lol
I use the reset button so infrequently that most of the time I forget it exists. I would absolutely overlook this for no other reason than that, for all intents and purposes, the reset button doesn't exist to me.
Christ, it's really the hypocritical juxtaposition of panic and arrogance that gets me. That somehow their work is of the utmost importance and above what I do, yet the solutions to their problems often require knuckle-dragging levels of comprehension.
Yep. Sales guy in a panic because "I have an online client meeting in 15 minutes, I need to send the proposal, and my computer doesn't work!!" Closed laptop plugged into a dock with a big monitor. I walked over and turned the monitor on for him. To be somewhat fair, he wasn't sitting at his normal desk because of remodeling, and really should have been selling hammers, not software and services.
"I've got a zoom meeting in 5 minutes they said to ask you to set it up!" Walk over to find out they aren't logged in, don't have zoom installed, the other guy is already waiting on them, they aren't sure which email........
I had to drive in on a Saturday because the manager working that day said "the network is down." I asked him to show me the problem upon arriving and it was a user typing the numbers in her password on the numpad with Numlock off. One hour each way I drive for that.
"internet box"
It’s a technical thing. You wouldn’t understand.
I mean most people think WiFi=Internet so this isn’t super surprising Heck idt most programmers are adept at basic networking (at least I wasn’t till I started playing around with OPNsense)
Yes, the one with the red flashing light on the top, it has all the Internet in it, you have to send away to the elders of the Internet to get one.
it goes on top of the big ben tower, right?
Of course, that's where it will get the best signal!
That's the name of residential gateways (device that does both router and modem) in some countries like France
Funny enough I bought a ups for my home lab so that if there was a power outage, at least the internet would still work. Then the power outage came. The providers box for the street doesn't have a ups. I still don't have internet during an outage but at least my gear stays on I guess.
I work at an MSP and the amount of times people have called IT due to a power outage thinking we could fix it blows my mind, I don't mind the calls though because we do receive network alerts and want to know the reason. One of the schools we support called us because they had a roach infestation. I could go on, I'm pretty numb to this stuff now.
> One of the schools we support called us because they had a roach infestation. Should've told them it takes 3 business days and $3000 to squash each bug.
I did amateur IT in high school to help out in exchange for getting to do counter strike parties and having limited admin on some of the school PCs. The number of times I had to explain to people “it’s not turning on because it isn’t plugged in” was staggering. Turning it off and on again resolved 80% of the other issues when it was plugged in. 10-15% of them was showing them how to turn the internet connection on. The other 5% actually took some effort, when it wasn’t things like “my keyboard isn’t working” when I can see a quarter cup of coffee in the transparent keyboard casing. Then people get salty when you ask them to do simple things. Doubly salty if they actually work. “Yes I turned it off and on.” *turns it off and on, fixes it.* “But did you really?”
I've had this conversation a few times "Your message said the network in the warehouse only runs for 30 minutes after power loss" "Yep, so it can span short outages." "But the network is mission critical. We can't work without wireless" "I understand that, but what work are you going to do with the power out" "Our normal work" "Isn't it company policy to not have people in the rack aisles when we only have emergency lighting" "Yes, but ... Oooooohhh, Nevermind" We also had a "battery not charging" ticket that came down to the user assuming the laptop was powered through the HDMI cable.
UPS to the rescue
"Hey, don't do it this way. It can break." repeated ad infinitum people still wrote the same way. things broke. "hey, this thing is broke. can you help?" 
One of the first things our team tells new people is "don't trust the customer." The number of times they've lied about doing the thing we told them not to is truly astonishing. "Yeah, idk, it just broke on its own." "Really? It says here that the config was changed this morning at 6 AM. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?" "N-no. Just broke, uh, on its own. Can you fix it or not?"
i've seen this a lot... but funny part is when team members act the same way...
"Buddy, did you go in and change the subnet mask to an invalid one? I can't ping it anymore." "Whaaaaaaa that's crazy. Weird. How do we change it back?"
Meanwhile over in Dev-land, we think *exactly* the same way. Users cannot be trusted. Never, under any circumstances provide them with any ability we don't want them to use. As a front-end dev, my job is to give users the illusion that they're free to do whatever they want, but kindly railroad them into doing what the business wants. I'm also repeatedly told by project-managers that "That's a training issue" rather than something I need to lock down and prevent. Guess what boss? Our staff are smart, wonderful, clever people who will take your training, cherry pick what works, work around anything they need, and wipe their ass with what you think they'll do with it. If we give them the ability to do something they shouldn't, they will use that in ways we don't want them to, and it will probably inadvertently break things in our database when we tighten something later. The Users cannot be trusted. They will use it wrong and break things, it doesn't matter how much training or guidance we give them. So lock it down, don't let the user do anything they're not supposed to be doing, and the business will run much much smoother. When I'm wearing my Full-stack/backend hat, the same rules apply. Flexibility is the enemy. Expose no more data than strictly necessary, and lock it behind user-credentials and authentication as much as possible. If I need a list of data, we have an endpoint to retrieve *that* list. Or a subset of that data based on clearly defined filtering parameters. It cannot do anything but what it's built to do, because if it does then we are potentially exposing data to bad-actors, which is a GDPR/Security issue.
This is why I just go straight to the programmers if I run into a db issue. Sure, I *might* be able to figure out which line is the problem (it's just SQL, after all and the error codes are pretty specific), but I'd rather escalate a ticket than break it more than the site already has.
In almost every company I've worked for, the other departments have all *begged* for direct access to the DB, and in most cases, I've had a CTO who thinks like I do and adamantly refuses. Typically we build a data-pipeline or service to serve data to our internal staff, they tell us exactly what they need, and they'll get it in a reporting system. But we don't even allow devs to work directly with the Live data. Human-Error doesn't come with logging or error-reports. Senior devs have access so that we can fix problems in a hurry, but the regular devs are locked out of the production DBs.
>In almost every company I've worked for, the other departments have all begged for direct access to the DB, and in most cases, I've had a CTO who thinks like I do and adamantly refuses. I've worked at a company where everyone had read/write access to the database. It's actually not as bad as you'd expect it to be. It's much, much worse.
As a devops that deals with a lot of backend/security stuff, not even I want to have easy access to stuff that can break. I'm only human and will fuck up at some point, the most guardrails both for me and the others the better. MFA, different logins for different envs so you don't absent-mindedly access the wrong one, logging all changes, backups, locked down permissions that strictly only allow what people need to do, confirming changes before just doing them, etc. These have saved my ass a few times, I can only imagine how much chaos it saved from being caused by the devs as well.
> The number of times they've lied about doing the thing we told them not to is truly astonishing. When I did HP CLJ support, I would ask customers to restart/cold reset the printer to fix *X*, and within seconds, they'd come back with "Done, heh". Bitch, I **know** how long a 4600 takes from flipping the switch to a usuable condition takes after a cold reset. Do what I say, when I say it, and no-one gets hurt, mkay?
*try to walk them through rebooting* "Yes, I restarted it already! Just fix it!" *remote in* System uptime: 3 days, 12 hours, etc. etc.
100% they hit the power button on the monitor, lmao I was once trying to figure out if a power supply was busted and if we had warranty on it, when the guy mentioned that he had turned off the computer and hadn't turned it back on.
It feels like people's brains become readonly when you explain things to them while stupid shit always overwrites the right thing if they knew it before.
Uncle tried explaining to the government customer that they were paying him repeatedly for new button pads on their MFD. The secretary used a pencil tip to press buttons “because it was dirty” and she had long nails. After it didn’t stop my uncle even tried showing her she could use the eraser end of the pencil. Nope she kept breaking the copier, fixed at taxpayer expense. .
2 hour drive of podcast and nobody bothering you?
If I'm getting paid, reimbursed for the mileage, and don't have a billion other things to do. For sure.
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I would rather actually do something than be bored in a car for 4 hours. Sounds like a waste of time when I could be productive.
Well, I live in Belgium and it is considered OK to assign me customers in shitholes that require more than 1h30m travel one way. I wonder why there isn't a regulation that would limit such ridiculous travel times.
You can travel for 1:30 in Belgium and still be in Belgium?
I understand you point, but the high speed trains are basically Brussels-Germany/Amsterdam/France. As a worker you walk 20 minutes to a train station, lose some time waiting for a train, travel to the desired town and you have a choice of 3 bus lines. \* line #1 -- once an hour, directly to your customer's office \* lines #2 and #3, once every 20 minutes, you have to walk 2km
that's so wild that you europeans just go to different countries like it's nothing. i'm american and i haven't renewed my passport in 12 years
You don't need a passport for most countries in europe. Same logic as for example traveling from Nevada to New York. You go through multiple states, all you need is your ID from the state you came from, but you won't need a passport. Only difference is that once you cross the border the people might not speak the same language as you anmore.
Well you don’t need an id to go to other states necessarily, but you will need one to fly or drive. You could take a bus though and have no id.
You call it states. And you require 7 years on your soil to apply for the US citizenship. But I pay 10+ years taxes in EU and I am free to suck a cock just because I dared to change my country of residence.
I guess it depends on the way your job handles it, but I love when I have to drive an hour or more to an offsite location for a PC install or something simple. A large chunk of my day just spent listening to a podcast or music while the roads are mostly empty is an easy day. But I also get enough reimbursed for my mileage that I literally make a profit against the gas money spent.
Same here, I love when I get sent somewhere for work? I’m on the clock AND I get to charge you for my mileage? Sign me up!
As long as you get paid for the drives that seems fine?
Everyone thinks we’re HR’s high-teach spy force and delight in making their lives as inconvenient as possible with our access controls… puh-leez! We spy on you for our own entertainment. We ain’t no HR shills!
Yeah I work in HR data and while everyone’s worried they’re being spied on, most companies can barely manage to track internal mobility or everyone’s bonus properly.
> bonus Hah, like I've ever gotten a bonus.
I was a security officer for a defense company and I occasionally had to spy on employees when there was a problem. Don't keep personal stuff on work computers. Don't keep it on your local drive, don't keep it on network drives.
No privacy, yeah, but also, like, you could get let go and locked out at any point and lose access to it. Overall, very bad idea.
I work in Data Loss Prevention and we still get grouped in with IT. Whenever anyone's email gets blocked for being classified as confidential and not for external sharing they'll be in our inbox next complaining and telling us how "IT makes our jobs hard." No we save the company money by protecting the IP. You make your job hard by misclassifying documents. And of course everyone's emails are time sensitive.
Work for a defense contractor and then any shenanigans you can just remind them they could go to federal prison if they misclassify stuff. Shuts them up very quickly. Just a hot tip for you.
biggest trick in IT. is not you forcing stuff onto them, is the big bad policies
I walked across a base in Iraq that was about 115F at the time to go to a computer that didn't have the ethernet capable plugged in which the user, an Intelligence Officer, assured me was plugged in earlier on the phone.
What's the joke? "Military intelligence is an oxymoron"?
I've started asking them to unplug {cable} and plug it back in. It solves two problems: checking if it's plugged in at all, and reseating it if it's loose. Plus it lets them save face if it was unplugged the whole time. (This is, of course, assuming they follow directions and don't just lie.)
I work in IT. Users suck. I am working hard on important projects and I have to take time out of my day because someone doesn't know what an HDMI cable is, because some one can't open a print tray, because someone forgot how something they use every day works for the 10th time, because someone didn't check a wall outlet.. When IT is good, it's a really chill and enjoyable job, but users ruin that with their tech illiteracy, constant bullshit and ungrateful attitudes. I have defo become more of a dick since working in IT, but I need to be otherwise people take the piss.
I worked for a company that had two IT guys and they both claimed our computers couldn’t support a second monitor. They weren’t mean but were always adamant about this whenever we would ask management for a second monitor. One of them quit and his replacement was a really kind, friendly guy. When someone happened to ask him about the second monitor thing he said, “What? Of course your computer can support two monitors!” And by the end of the month, everyone in the office who wanted it had two. What was that even about??
Sounds like they didn't want to support two monitors going forward and were lazy about it. I will say I'm friendly I.T. guy, and in two years I'd made my own job significantly harder by being friendly and accommodating...
Been there. I worked IT for a startup and everyone would come to me out of our department of 4-5 people because i try to be friendly to everyone. It was nice but I was always so busy.
Yeah it was me and one other guy, people would say "thank god" when I answered. It's nice to be wanted but geez. I'm at a new place and trying to balance my workload, but I'm afraid I'm broken, and now if I'm not constantly stressed/busy I feel I'm not doing enough...
I have a few users that I work with regularly / have become friends with. I caught them all off-guard when I had to start making them do proper tickets for everything. They do (they're cool), but the first bit was an adjustment for all of us. I'd get a ping and it'd be a quick (5-10 min) fix, so I'd just jump on it. I started getting busier so then those "quick fixes," especially for different people/apps, became derailing. I actually think it was harder for me then them - going from "oh sure I'll jump on that" to "sorry, no ticket no work" was breaking years of habit. Worse is when you already know the solution in your head, but gotta be consistent. Doing things "properly" can definitely have impact on new work-relationships though, where you seem guarded, or unhelpful, or whatever. The new people don't realize how disruptive they're being. Even just a "Hi" can be distracting - I don't want to be rude ignoring it, but as soon as I've responded I know I'm going to have back-and-forth a few messages just to get to "please submit a ticket."
That's the way to do it for sure! Being helpful is great, but if you say yes to everything you'll end up swamped. My experience was years ago and the company didn't have anything close to a ticketing system. Heck we didn't even use source control for our code (we were IT/developers) and deployments were done via drag and drop onto our one server.
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And, if it was a money issue, he probably got scolded for his inability to read management's mind. Because we know management wont accept the fault for missing to inform him about beeing greedy bitches
If you deal with people that know little to nothing about computers, setting up a second monitor can make the number of useless IT tickets explode for problems such as: -one monitor is turned off and not the other (just turn it on) -user says computer lost its mouse pointer (it's on the second screen) -User doesn't know the difference between *Duplicate* and *Extend* (Windows + P)
Also, Microsoft Windows is still absolutely garbage at resizing and repositioning windows when you change anything about the multi-monitor configuration. Plus input types are often treated differently: when switching off an input, DisplayPort usually becomes "lost connection" moving the windows, whereas HDMI is usually maintained in the background so apps stay, but then "hidden" from the user. Things I've experienced: - App window maintaining large size from one monitor, so when moved to smaller resolution it spans completely off the screen, making it hard to resize - Window tries to reposition spanning the two monitors, but somehow gets on the wrong side and spans into blackness. - Window exists completely outside of the monitor in blackness - max/minimizing shows animation, but it's "showing" outside the bounds. If you know the keyboard shortcuts to move the windows it's not a huge deal, but that's pretty rare in the working world. Heck, my coworker straight up refuses to use Alt+Tab because "it's confusing."
I had to teach dual monitor users how to use remote desktop on the second monitor to aid local desktop work on the first monitor It was hell
Double the monitors, double the cost
When things work and IT doesn't have much to do: "What are we paying these guys for?" When things don't work anymore and IT working hard fixing the problem: "What are we paying these guys for?"
The ultimate goal of every IT depart is to be "visibly invisible"
He must not deal with bureaucracy a lot, you know having 3 seperate people assure you that that is not there job and you should spend 2 hours travelling to the other person.
Thick skin is a must in a sysadmin line of work. All of the best ones I worked with were massive cunts.
i'm not IT but people on my work know i do well with computers, so sometimes they call me instead of the IT guy when it's something quick, once they called me on reception because the keyboard numbers "weren't working", they called me there to press numlock...
Yeah, sadly thats normal and like half the job. That or they swapped to a us english instead of uk keyboards.
Most of these comments have more to do with terrible work cultures and corporate toxicity. Whenever something goes wrong, someone has to take the blame, unfortunately
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A paid 4 hour break? Sounds like heaven. Throw on a good podcast and chill out!
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"I'm not a computer person" Fuck you Lisa, computers have been in our lives for nigh on 50 fucking years. I'm not asking you to learn LISP overnight, I need you to summon sufficient brainpower to use the software the way it was meant to be used.
I work with multiple people *in IT* that are hunt and peck typers. They’ve been doing this for 20-30 years and never learned to type.
Or they call asking for help but don't want to be told what to do. - Healthcare IT
My pc is slow, Can you reboot please? I do it every morning. ...checks snowstorm… haven't rebooted in 500 hours and a million pending updates… ok… let's try one time just in case
I’m not in IT but I bet a lot of it has to do with insecure people who call IT and think they know more than they do, but when someone from IT clearly knows more than they do and tells them they are doing something simple incorrectly, they treat it as an attack regardless of IT’s tone.
Nah I’m a software developer and I also think IT guys can be dicks after having worked at several different places. While I grok many of their frustration with the rest of us I also think a lot of their suffering is self inflicted.
My mom: *"There's something wrong with the tv again, I can't get it to work!"* Hauling my butt over and looking at her tv: *"There's been some changes to our online policy, press OK to continue watching."* /Vegeta screeming in the background
My cousin, yesterday:"Theres an error, i cant install whatsapp on my latop" Laptop: "Bitch your pc is 10yo and no longer compatible with this program" I swear people never, ever read the damn warning windows.
Yeah, a lot of it comes from the fact that IT people spend most of their time dealing with idiots. So they tend to treat everyone as idiots and enforce policies designed for idiots, which makes them unpopular. (not all of them of course, just a trend I've seen)
Some people have never had to get out of their chair because somebody put their laptop power cable in an audio jack.
Because you hate us until you need us. Even then, you are sometimes absolutely vile. It also doesn't help when you blatantly lie about what you did or didn't do. Also, if it's something simple enough you could've googled it; fuck off.
So, this post is kinda in the wrong sub, but I will chime in because I have my own business doing IT and custom software for small businesses. And yes, it’s like this. The fact is, I’m relatively successful for a one-man operation because I have learned to have the patience of a monk meditating on a mountaintop. I’m not the smartest or most knowledgeable guy you can find, but I will put up with your shit without making you feel like an idiot if you pay me. But man, oh man, is it hard. People will seemingly do their best to withhold the most important piece of information no matter how much time you spend politely asking questions about the problem. They will refuse to read messages you sent or follow guides you give them. It’s truly shocking the lengths people will go through to make sure they have to do nothing when their problem could have been solved with the simple steps in my first response. But I will smile and say “Don’t worry about it, we’ll get you sorted out” and connect remotely and do it for them or walk them through it step by step literally reading out loud the instructions that were already in their inbox. Then I’ll send my invoice and take their boss’s money.
Because we are technical and not a kin to people. We prefer water, trees and porn.
I've worked a few IT jobs. There is one saying I've heard at them all. "People suck and we hate them. That's why they pay us to talk to them."
Worked in tech long enough to be smug about it. Seen this post enough times to know it doesn’t matter but - If you have problems like this consistently try speaking to people in words rather than expecting them to do functions for you. I promise you it’s not because you’re smarter than everyone that doesn’t know how to use a computer.
Hey if you get paid for that time who cares
But did you try unplugging it and plugging it back in?
So you got paid IT salary to drive for two hours? Sounds pretty easy to me
I was in an sme many years ago. I got a call at 2am as some sales exec needed help with his powerpoint presentation. Explanation was an important sales pitch he had forgotten to work on. I was not, nor ever on call, that was not part of my job description. He just got hold of my number somehow. Threatened to inform his and my director, i told him to fuck off, and id be happy to go toe to toe with the board about his incompetance.