Memos (Not Sent) From Your Information Technology (IT) Department

Once upon a time I was crazy enough to change careers (temporarily) to that of IT Support. This posting is in support of their daily adventures of office life and hopefully an eye opener for those who see things they may have done once…or twice… or every freaking day!

• Don't write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages from our magical IT crystal ball.

• When an IT person says he's coming right over, go for coffee. That way you won't be there when we need your password. It's nothing for us to remember 300 + passwords.

• When IT support sends you E-mail with high importance, delete it at once. We're just testing.

• Send urgent E-mails in all uppercase. The mail server recognizes it as an emergency and screams at us until we stop drinking cola, eating M-n-Ms and playing World of Warcraft – which is what we do all day long waiting for you to have an emergency.

• When the photocopier doesn't work, don’t try anything such as turning it off and than on again – it only wastes time. Call computer support because that is obviously our job.

• When you're getting a NO DIAL TONE message at home, call computer support. We can fix your personal telephone line from here. We’ll also fax you a sandwich while your waiting.

• When an IT person tells you that computer screens don't have print cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument.

• (To male users) Please contact a male IT person when you change all the settings on your computer and for your internet connection which prevents you from working, women ant know nothing about computers or what makes them work – I’m just here to make the department look pretty.

• When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes. When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to all 68 printers in the company. One of them is bound to work.

• Don't learn the proper name for anything technical. We know exactly what you mean when you say, "My thingy blew up."

• Don't use online help. Online help is for people that can read.

• If the mouse cable keeps knocking down the framed picture of your dog, lift the computer and stuff the cable under it. Mouse cables were designed to have 30 lbs. of computer sitting on top of them.

• When you get a message saying, "Are you sure?" click on that Yes button as fast as you can. Hell, if you weren't sure you wouldn't be doing it, would you?

• Feel perfectly free to say things like, "I don't know nothing about that computer crap." We don't mind at all hearing our area of professional expertise referred to as crap.

• When you need to change the toner cartridge in a printer call computer support. Changing a toner cartridge is an extremely complex task much like open-heart surgery.
  

• When something's the matter with your computer ask your secretary to call the help desk but don’t give her / him any details on what is wrong. We enjoy the challenge of having to deal with a third party who doesn't know anything about the problem.

• When you receive a huge, 3GB movie file, send it to everyone as a mail attachment. We've got a galaxy of disk space on the mail server for exactly this reason.

• When you bump into an IT person at the grocery store on a Saturday, ask a computer question. We do weekends – for free!

• Don't bother to tell us when you move computers around on your own or swap computer components with anther co-worker. Computer and equipment names are just a cosmetic feature.

• When you can't find someone in the phone book, call computer support. Why not? We do everything else for you!