We hate everyone, because you people only bring us your problems 99% of the time and no one cares about our problems
I bought my IT guy an Excel mug that said something like Freak in the Sheets. He had been helping me transfer files from one computer to another (old computer had an expanding battery issue) and said he appreciated novelty mugs. He was being a real pal about it. So, I got him a mug. I didn’t solve any of his problems, but I did let him vent some about them.
Protip if you bring your IT guy an eighth of weed, he’ll give you admin privileges on your PC for a few days.
What do I get for a zip and some Adderall to top it off?
We also hate everyone b/c when the encounter the tiniest bit of friction in their device usage they run to IT without even trying to think of what the cause may be. Maybe, just maybe, trying to put 35GB of pics on a 16GB USB drive is the problem, and not some major computer issue.
there’s an even bigger issue there - file size (or file systems) are not taught anymore. Hell the ipad doesn’t even expose a file system to its users. I work in schools and teachers and students are both as bad as each other
The number of times I had been remoted into a user’s system while they were “rebooting” is too damned high. Also, a lot of them got upset with me for then restarting their computer because they had unsaved work up.
Always fun to have that conversation with a supervisor, most of them don’t like that their people wasted time and lost work because they were not following directions AFTER BEING TOLD TO SAVE YOUR SHIT AND REBOOT.
You should just reboot the second you log in and say that’s how the system is set up
“I tried to turning the server on and off again, but that didn’t fix the problem”
IT-guy: 💀
you know what’s funny about turning it off and on? my home isp had a problem. the uplink packets were dropping very often, downlink was fine. I called tech support.
as usual they said the ‘IT hello’. I said already tried. the guy made me restart everything on call. nothing changed. soon they sent two guys. they came all the way to turn the optical interface off and on and tp change the dns to isp one (obviously I never use that). they soon realized the problem isn’t here and called the isp. after some furious cussword exchanges they told the isp the IT mantra. and voila! they restarted their switch (cutting off internt to an entire locality lol) and everything went normal. that day I knew the true power of that mantra.
IT guy here:
If I ask you if you turned it off and back on and you say yes, I tend to believe you. But if I look and I see that the uptime for the computer proves that you lied, this is the look I give you. And then I’ll reboot and there’s a good chance that the problem will be solved.
I’ll have enough grace to say that maybe we had different ways of describing what you intended to do when “rebooting,” but inside I know that you lied to me because you believe that IT people recommend this step because you think we’re lazy and trying to make you go away. No. We suggest it because it often works. And if you’d try it before you called the helpline, that’d cut our calls in half.
I love IT, but my pet peeve is when others institutionalize my troubleshooting skills as the de facto solution to their issues.
At work I’ll often tolerate it - it can be sometimes argued that it’s what I’m paid for.
But in personal or family life the rule is the base price for my assistance is the story of what you tried before reaching out to me, and the price of my services is based on how “well told” that story is.
Tell me something unique and interesting and my services may likely be free. Tell me of your your attention to detail, and I’ll settle for a meal or favor. Tell me you couldn’t be bothered and I’ll tell you I can’t be afforded.
That’s fine. If we do a whole bunch of stuff with no results, but then I try reboot/power cycle and it works, I’m telling your supervisor.
IT in general isn’t more important than you, but we have responsibilities that are. If I’m dicking around with your PC because you couldn’t take a minute to reboot when asked, you’re the reason I’m putting down for why other things don’t get finished.
I check your system uptime anyway. Users usually don’t know that shutdown and restart do different things based on system settings. And sometimes they lie too.
Are you ABSOLUTELY SURE it’s plugged in?
I am Jacks pervasive sense of doubt
also you didn’t log out and then back into teams so you still have an active session and your restart means nothing
But even after all those, have you tried to upgrade to Window 11?
At my job I deal with IT a lot for one of our server rooms since one of the computers I use that runs an entire floor is linked to that server. It often goes haywire and needs a simple reset.
I kid you not every time I call I tell them this is common and all I need them to do is reset the server remotely (I can’t get in cuz the room is locked by IT which surprise works from home). They proceed to ignore me and pull out their bullshit checklist and run through 20 different troubleshooting protocols before finally getting to the last one(reset the server) and it finally works.
Like I would think a simple reset would be the first thing they try.
Checks the system uptime… 97 days.
You restarted it, right?
Had a company tell us we needed to get our ticket numbers up, but we didn’t have any open tickets to close. We were told users shouldn’t have their machines up for more than 5 days without a restart because updates and such were pushed and w.e bs reasons. Just started running reports for uptime and had each tech ping 10 users and tell them to restart or kick off a restart if the machine had no logged on users on it. Poof 150 extra tickets a week from our office. When there is 75,000+ computers on the network… There are always computers that haven’t been restarted in a week.
Only job I’ve ever had to create busy work at. And it was solely because they forced a return to office, so instead of supporting 60,000 employees we were small groups supporting far less (maybe 100 in my building).
Horribly inefficient
goes on to show, pressing the monitor button on and off
See! Not working!Literally every single time!
My father did this.
I was giving him a PC tutorial and I asked him to turn off the PC and he turned off the monitor.
One of my users locked her Windows session and then signed in again, there, I rebooted.
I told my kid he needed to turn off his computer at night when he’s done. He said “ugh…I always do”. Then proceeded to lock it as if proving me wrong.
groan
We’re about to have a generation of people become adults who never had to connect a dvd player or cable box or whatever to a TV, because the smart tv was the actual video source. Turning off the monitor and not the computer is going to be so common now…
One of my users locked her Windows session and then signed in again, there, I rebooted.
Not bad, some people these days don’t know to lock the windows session.
I know even more that don’t know how to log off…
Asked to restart, sees restart and shut down, chooses lock instead.
Windows+L
Zero chance she knew about this though.
When I used to LAN at my friend’s house his sister would try poking around my PC when I went to the kitchen for something, told her Windows and L opened some secret menu, boom, locked her out.
Exactly
My esteemed coworker, if the computer is off, then how are we still skyping?
My record was 18 months from a user who swore they restarted 3 times.
At a previous job, I was not doing IT support but another role and I noticed a coworker had a red dot on the Windows Update status bar icon.
Told him I don’t think I have seen that before, normally it is orange.
So he tells me that he is trying to see how long he can keep it going before something happens. I recommended against this, and also I normally recommend against using the desktop to store files. The laptop goes up in flames, so do your files. We have OneDrive for business, I know people hate it, but at least your stuff is… relatively safe. Backed up at least with version history.
A few weeks later I was chatting to someone else who sometimes shared my desk, and somehow I mentioned this encounter. A while later, his manager sitting ahead of us is on a phone call and we hear he is getting upset. He hangs up and turns around, tells us.
Him and one sales guy had spent hours on some proposals, worked out all the values and timings and it’s gone. All that work gone. His laptop rebooted because Windows updates.
He mentions who… it is the same guy. I tell him I was just telling my desk buddy about him and how he intentionally left his laptop running for months to see what Windows Update would do and clearly he did not take my advice about rebooting and using OneDrive.
The rest of the day… this guy did not stop. Every 30 minutes or so he’d just go “All that work, gone. Why?”
We’d be walking to get lunch, talking about other things and again he’d just switch back to that and turn gloomy again.
I mean… I don’t doubt this happens. But, even though I hate Windows with the fire of a thousand suns and don’t use it, this is what Group Policy is for
I don’t know how our IT system was set up, I had no access to poke around.
But I think it was a bit relaxed, we knew some users were downloading movies in certain office locations. Told to stop rather than clamping down.
So I think everyone was just left to deal with the update schedule themselves because there were maybe… 2 or 3 desktops in the entire office. Everyone was on laptops and didn’t leave them running overnight.
Ahh ok, that makes more sense
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That only applies to shut down. Restart will always do a proper reboot.
We don’t hate you. We hate everyone
Not as much as we hate Microsoft.
Understandable
“I don’t hate you specifically… My hate is universal.”
We installed remote access on all employee computers. Among other details, it allowed us to see machine uptime.
I would tell certain people/liars that I’ll fix their problems over lunch and to make sure they save all work before leaving.
Then as lunch came along, I’d just remotely reboot their computer.
Fun fact. “The IT Crowd” is actually a documentary.
Hah! I’d do that when they were reboot recalcitrant. I’d let them know, but if they were really a pain in the ass, lunch reboot.
“No idea why it rebooted. Maybe it caught an update?”
(No, I managed updates.)
You could also change nothing and make up an excuse to restart.
“Ok I checked the regedit HSKEY_LOCAL to ensure [company software] exists and has correct values, now we should just reboot to apply new settings.”
I miss my IT days, they were fun. I once saw a USB flashdrive taped to a postcard. It was the old owners friend who had sent him pictures from a meet up.
I loved it. The old guy wanted to send pictures. And send them he did.
Also did my last favor for a guy who needed a long ethernet cable for something at home, I said sure, but we need it back by next week. He never returned it. So I told him “I’m not gonna argue, either it’s on my desk tomorrow or I’ll send your department an invoice so we can buy a new one.”
It was on my desk next day in a tangled pile.
