Ooh I need to start using this

I wonder if I can get away with saying this to a client

Just the coffee then? Black, no sugar

When I worked for a small business MSP, my boss had an off hours call about an issue, walked the guy through rebooting their server. He was monitoring the uptime so he saw it go off. Then he told them to turn it back on. The guy said he did, but my boss never saw it come back online. He asked him if it was lit up, the guy said yes. He said "are you sure", and the guy, annoyed, said "yes! I see lights". Waited a bit longer and it never came online. He called another person at the business to check, and they too confirmed that it was lit up. So he drove 35 minutes to go to their office, walked in their network closet and hit the power button, and magically it turned on. They were seeing the lights on the router, an entirely different machine sitting on top of the server and thought it was on. The issue was fixed by the reboot alone and my boss drove home very very annoyed.

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.

Are you ABSOLUTELY SURE it's plugged in?

I know even more that don't know how to log off....

You should just reboot the second you log in and say that's how the system is set up

Yeah, my job didn't pay for any of that fancy stuff. This was a wmic command.

This is why it is not at all unreasonable to envision future IT people as basically being Comstar or the Mechanicus. People already think we do magic, just wait a hundred years and we can convince them of anything.

Not just laptops, or desktops, but I've had it work on Printers, though you had to unplug the cable from both ends for it to work for whatever reason.

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.

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.

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