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.

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.

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

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.

What do you mean? I already believe I do magic. Granted, I'm not IT, I'm a dev, but I literally type words and runes and the lives of thousands of people change.

The customer will call me and say "I need to do this, I have this problem, help" and I either say "it will be done" or I tell her to go through a series of arcane actions, maybe asking for strange sequences of actions or ask for special numbers I leave around that mean nothing to anyone aside from me and my coworker

I literally sometimes say "this feels fucky, can you restart X or Y for me?" And my team lead is just like yeah, ok, that makes no sense let's try it. And vise versa

You have no idea how superstitious you get as a senior dev. And it works. It's just better and faster to accept rituals that work than to dig into every problem

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.

Not as much as we hate Microsoft.

Praise the Omnisiah.

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?

A few guys at my work actually just asled us what we wanted from the cafeteriawhen we were doing long fixes on their laptops (I work in a uni)

"I tried to turning the server on and off again, but that didn't fix the problem"

IT-guy:

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.

What do I get for a zip and some Adderall to top it off?