Here’s a little bit of advice for those jerkoffs in the bowels of the company. THE FUCKING COMPANY DOES NOT REVOLVE AROUND YOU!!
You are there to make sure us client service professionals who actually generate revenue can continue to generate the revenue that pays your salary. You are not there to play Halflife and Doom while shit needs doing.
Someone wasnt told which one the Anykey is… 
I’m not playing Halflife and Doom. . . I’m reading the SDMB. And hey, try generating revenue without me saving your ass on a regular basis.
Let me guess, ‘The internet was down’, and IT chuckled when you called?
Oh, the system’s down? Which system are you trying to log into? Oh, you don’t know the name of it. Yes, I am pretty sure if the system was down that I wouldn’t actually be logged into it along with…<taptaptap>…two hundred other folks. It might be a mirage, though, thanks for the heads-up! Goodbye.
The floor printer doesn’t work anymore? What’s that printer ID? Sure, give a call back when you find that out. Oh, hello again. ID, check. Let me just take a look here. Well, the remote utility says here the front panel’s probably displaying “out of paper.” Oh, it IS displaying that, isn’t it? Yes, printers DO tend to work much better when they have paper in them. Glad to help!
You can’t log in anymore? My goodness! And that very same password always worked before! Yes, something MUST be wrong with the planet-spanning system that no other of the thousands of users have noticed! It’s IMPOSSIBLE that you forgot your password! I believe you! Tell you what, I’ll just reset the password anyway, 'kay? Yeah, great. Bye now.
It sounds like you’ve all met the Bastard Operator From Hell.
The worst is when you reset thier email password and discover that they haven’t successfully checked their email in 2 years and now have 600 messages from the year 2000.
The most annoying are the ones who cancel thier Novell login and wonder why network printers don’t work, and then claim that the printer is “broken.”
Then there is the woman who was very pissed off because the IE homepage on her new PC is set to something other than whatever the hell her old computer was set to.
Oh well, its better than working at a fast food place.
Corollary to the BOFH: stupid tech support stories.
While I don’t know what company for which you work, I must take exception to the idea that since IT doesn’t “generate revenue” they’re somehow less important than your department. It’s possible that you’re saddled with a group of itinerant fuck-ups whose desktops are cluttered with pictures of naked women with impossibly large breases who don’t suffer from the foibles of gravity interspersed with glossy spreadshots of geek porn (read computer innards and game screen captures), but that’s not the norm anymore.
As lainaf mentioned, you can’t even do your job without us anymore. To say that we don’t contribute to the bottom line is disingenuous at best and completely fucking ignorant of the realities of the business world at worst. The mentality that you express while venting your spleen and parts of your lower GI tract is the reason you’re still pecking around on a PII-266 instead of a system that can boot within the half-hour.
It’s the reason it takes you 45 minutes to sent the 100 mb powerpoint presentation to the rest of your workgroup, since the management doesn’t feel that IT infrastructure pays for itself, why change from the 10 Mbit network you’ve got in place, even though every desktop and switch in the company could run at 100 mbit if they’d just run the fucking fiberoptic backbone and switch it on.
That mentality is the reason it takes a couple of hours for the desktop support guys to make it to your actual desktop. They’re not playing Half-Life in the dungeon, there’s only 5 of them for all 1,200 desktops and it takes a while to figure out that some idiot who learned a trick or two from his juvenile deliquent son the “'leet haxor” in a misguided effort at bonding actually managed to bork his system by fucking with the registry. Not only did you have to wait an extra hour and a half, but this moron is now out of business for a day and a half while we rebuild his system.
Maybe you’re not event that lucky, perhaps upper management is so leery of spending money in a “non-revenue generating department” that you don’t even have tech support at your location. Sure there are 3 other guys in the basement just sitting at their desks all day. 'Cept they’re on the phone with the rest of the locations in the country, trying to fix computers without actually being able to look at them, depending on moronic users who’s best attempts at explaining what went wrong was “I didn’t do anything different, I don’t remember what the error message said, was that important?”
That mentality is the reason that management decided to cut back the hours for the server operators from rotating shifts 24/7 to 9 - 5, five days a week. Oh, by the way, one of the resource servers just ate a hard drive, did you hear? Yeah, well, normally it’s in a hot-swappable RAID array, you know, five drives and one spare. If one of the drives goes bad, the other one comes online and the info rebuilds itself. Yeah, except that they already had one drive go bad, but because there’s no one in there anymore they never noticed. Sure, it only takes 10 minutes to remove the bad drives in and slide in their replacements, it is hot swapable. Of course, the last full back up was sometime last month. Yeah, they started it on Monday, but it won’t be finished until Friday afternoon sometime.
Yeah, we don’t contribute to the bottom line… but without us, you’re just standing around in a circle jerk wondering what to do to pass the next six hours of utter uselessnes.
Way to bash mssmith, guys. Yes, there are a lot of moronic computer users out there. Guess what? THERE ARE A LOT OF MORONIC IT WORKERS OUT THERE.
I work for a major university and it took my lab two months to get 2 new IP addresses for our computers. Every single person who we called in the IT department claimed that it was not their job to give out IP addresses, and they could not take the time to figure out whose job it was. Eventually, I stormed into the director’s office in person and wouldn’t leave without those IP addresses.
Yes, computers are necessary for modern business - or education - or whatever. Yes, if the computers go down, this fucks up our work. That does not change the fact that the IT department is SUPPORT staff. Vital, often well-trained and intelligent, but your role is still just to allow the rest of us to get our work done. So stop acting like it’s such a goddamn interruption in your precious life when the rest of us call up with a question!
mischievous
Communication is the key folks–the IT department’s job is to build and/or maintain the electronic infrastructure that the company needs to stay in business while the rest of the company is out there either providing the service or ensuring that the IT dept. doesn’t have to interact with the customers. They’re both essential cogs in the machine and need each other to function.
So both sides should shut the hell up. Don’t make me stop the Internet and come back there! 
[qoute]lainaf
I’m not playing Halflife and Doom. . . I’m reading the SDMB. And hey, try generating revenue without me saving your ass on a regular basis.
[/quote]
It is YOUR JOB to fix the computers around the office. That is what they pay you for. Don’t act as if you are doing some huge favor by installing the RAM cards or software in my laptop that you should have installed in the first place.
[qoute]Brutus
Let me guess, ‘The internet was down’, and IT chuckled when you called?
[/quote]
Yeah… I guess its pretty funny when the Internet goes down. Especially when 90% of your legitimate work requires access to it.
BWA-hahahahahahahhahahaha!!!
Thank you for making his point so perfectly…
Let me assure you, the Internet did not go down… That’s exactly what he was joking about, users call us up and say “The Internet is down!”, ummmm NO!
Users make completely wrong statements like “The Internet is down” not even realizing that such a statement makes them sound like complete idiots… And then these users that just made a totally asinine statement, get pissy when we let out an accidental snicker…
Think of the cdw.com ad that says “Fred, I think I crashed the Internet”… If you don’t understand why that is funny, then you have no place sounding indignant as to why he thought it was a joke… learn some more about computers and networking before you think we aren’t doing our jobs…
the internet is down… <snicker>… sorry, I couldn’t help it… wait, BWA-hahahahahahhaa… oh I’m sorry, really I am…
Eh. I don’t know about that. I use the phrase “the Internet is down” quite often, because, on my particular machine, at that particular point in time, I cannot access the Internet. Down simply means “unavailable to me,” and to a lot of other people too, I suspect. It doesn’t mean I think that every single router on the Internet went dead at one time.
If I was sitting at my computer right this moment and lost my DSL connection, without assessing any other factors or applying any troubleshooting techniques (which an average user doesn’t know how to do - otherwise they wouldn’t be calling you), I’d say the Internet was down. It’s quicker than saying “I cannot gain access to the Internet.” What the hell makes that so fucking funny? Even the stupidest user knows the Internet isn’t a local printer or something.
bobo: yeah, that’s almost as idiotic as…oh…say…IT workers who take employee complaints about “the Internet being down” as meaning anything other than “I can’t access the Internet.” :rolleyes:
Newsflash, bucko: Non-IT personnel are not paid to “learn about computers and networking” except to the minimum extent necessary to do their jobs. And if something isn’t working (and it isn’t the result of them doing something you’ve told them not to do) and it isn’t remedied promptly, they have every right to think IT isn’t doing their job.
The lawyers at my law firm (including me) aren’t paid to think about computers and networking. They’re paid to think about complex legal problems presented by our clients and to come up with solutions to those problems. I’d suspect that the older lawyers would make the same “mistake” in reporting a problem to IT if they lost Internet access, and I’d bet many of the younger lawyers would use it as shorthand to communicate the problem. That doesn’t make them sound like “complete idiots” any more than would some IT schmuck saying he was “found guilty” in a civil suit.
**
Yeah, we know it’s our job and most of the time we’d be happy to do it. At least, 90% of the techs I know don’t actually enjoy sending out computers that are shit. One of the reasons that a lot of us got into the business has to do with the fact that we’re enthusiasts. Sometimes it has its own pitfalls, which bobo is helping to illustrate perfectly. But one positive outlook tends to be that we like building good computers, when we’re given the opportunity. I’d be willing to bet a goodly amount of cash that the reason you didn’t get the card you need originally was because the purchasing department or accounting wouldn’t give their approval for the expense. Its not necessarily the IT department’s fault that they didn’t have the card or that now, six months later when you finally did get permission you now have to give the laptop back for a half a day before you can finish your work.
Oh, and everyone please ignore bobo’s smug and superior reaction. Most techs know that our job is to support IT infrastructure and users, it’s usually right there in our job titles. No matter how frustrated we get by the idiotic manner in which we may be forced to go about it, it doesn’t always cause us to lose track of the end goal. I don’t really care that most users don’t know the jargon that we use, why should they? You don’t normally expect to know the jargon the doctors use between themselves either. Our job is to figure out what you mean and then fix it. The arrogant reaction of some to the less technical explanations are one of those pitfalls I mentioned earlier.
I don’t even mind “idiotic users” as described by mischievous. You’re not supposed to know every little detail of the system, that’s our job. Admittedly, I do have problems when I’ve fixed something that a user has done several times in a row, accompanied by a careful and polite explanation which has the semantic content of “don’t do that anymore, it’s bad for the computer” Being called up six times in one month because a user thinks that the computer is frozen and shuts it off with a hard boot while it’s just trying to connect through the labyrinth of servers does wear on you after a while.
Instead, what really bothers me, and most of the people I’ve worked with are not the users who don’t really know the technical details but those who don’t know them but either think they do or simply won’t admit to not knowing them. I don’t care if you happen to be mister (or miss) whizzbanghotshit when it comes to Oracle databases… you don’t know dick about operating systems. Don’t download some buggy piece of shit beta test software from the Net and install it, then come crying to us because the reliability of Windows on your production box is in the shitter. It doesn’t matter that you’ve tweaked your system at home until it’s running lick a cheetah with a bad case of ass itch, you don’t know this operating system. Windows 98 (or even XP) at home is not the same thing as running a secured and locked down build of NT 4.0. (I wish it were, god how I wish it were, but it’s not.)
Nor am I thrilled with people who treat us like menials, there to clean away the dishes. We are, for the most part, fairly well trained in a highly technical field. There are exceptions, of course, lots of them. But nothing is worse than being confronted with some new hire who just majored in projectile vomiting at Assfuck A&M getting all high and mighty because we’re “just support wonks”.
Know what’s fun? (This happened last week)
I can fix pretty much any computer/network problem that comes my way. But, I have to wait for IT to fix it. I’m not allowed to repair the computer that’s entrusted to my care because it’s against policy.
So, what do I do? After submitting trouble tickets that get either ignored, closed for non-discernable reasons, or for problems that there’s really no pre-defined category for, I walk the damn thing up to IT, and sit there and tell the person what to do to fix the problem.
Then, three hours later, I go back, and find that it’s still broken. My directions on what’s broken and how to fix it ignored while the IT worker tries everything else. So, I have to sit there and basically nag the guy into doing what I say will fix it until he does it, and fixes it.
Do I look down on ALL IT workers? No. Just cut me some fucking slack. When someone comes to you with the problem and solution, don’t be That Guy. Humor me. ESPECIALLY when I’m telling you that the reason I can’t use the application I need to is because I don’t have sufficient rights, and need a user level adjustment. That’s a ten second change, hoss.
I know jack shit about the central air system in our office but when its 30 below zero in the building, the HVAC guy doesn’t give me attitude when I tell him “the air conditioner’s broken”.
And naturally all you alpha money making people could continue to make money without IT?
Maybe if you actually told people what IT did to annoy you so much you might get a bit more support but if it’s just the usual non-IT person bollocks about how they only play games and fuck around you’ll get fuck all simpathy.
yojimbo: IT and currently looking forward to a nice LAN game of Halflife ON MY LUNCH BREAK
The HVAC guy probably curses you under his breath as he removes last years christmas decorations from the outlet pipe of the air conditioner.