12mo ago

IT support work be like

207 comments

"The computer forgot my password" is new to me. lol good one.
- I'm not IT, just a college instructor, but you'd be amazed at how many Gen Z students have told me that they can't log into their email because they don't know their own password. Not even forgot; they don't even know it in the first place because every device remembers everything for them.
  
  To be fair that is basically what we are trying to get people to do though. Use a good password vault with a single strong password and two factor authentication. All other passwords should be a uniquely generated password for that application.
  
  Caring about that has been beaten out of them by increasingly absurd password requirements over dozens of systems. They won't memorize it, won't write it down physically, and use the web browser to save it.
  "But my system is different, I..."
  Nobody cares. The password is just a speed bump in doing the thing they actually want to do.
  
  I'll be honest as an IT professional of 25 plus years I don't know .y passwords either but that's because I let a password manager deal with it for me.
  I have had people older than me complain the comp forgot the pass in my desktop days.
  There was also it's cousin. I am definitely meeting the complexity requirements why isn't it saving
  
  If they use a password manager and randomly generated passwords, then it's acceptable.
  
  Like others have said they're probably using Google as a password manager. When you're making an account for anything while in the Chrome browser it recommends strong passwords for you such as UjafUif&i$ureT6hj9gzq5hvc$tcgo0be3. Would you memorize it?
  
  My girlfriend (millenial) is like that as well and it is infuriating. I tell her time and time again, just use a password manager that isn't the browser's password manager and you are golden. You just need to remember one "complicated" password, i.e. something with more than 8 characters and that's it.
  The many times she doesn't know her password to important account is mind boggling.
  
  ironically I think tech literacy is going down with future gens thanks to so many functions getting automated. Kids aren't learning how their computers work because it does all of work for them
  
  I'm GenX and I don't know my email password...
  Though I'm 99% sure it's in keepass somewhere.
  
  My kid sister is the same way. Bought her a quest 3 for her bday. Took 3 days to get up and running because a) she had no idea what her meta account passwords were... had always just logged in on her phone... and b) none of the forgot password functions worked because she never cleared her Gmail mailbox so it had filled up and bounced previous facebook emails landing her on their internal do not send list.
  I was livid.
  
  I've had the same issue with gen z to gen x. It hurts my soul each time
  
  I know people who don't use a password manager so every time they have to type in a pw they have to go through the reset process.
- Gonna have to actually use this one next time I lock myself out of my computer.
- "My computer hates me" I've heard that one

"My computer is broken, it won't turn on!"
"Are you sure it's plugged in?"
"You think I'm stupid? Of course it's plugged in! It's broken!"
"Sometimes the plug isn't in all the way and then it won't work."
"I know how to plug in a plug, it just won't turn on because it is b-r-o-k-e-n!"
"Are you sure the plug is all the way in?"
"It's all the way in. My computer is broken!"
"Im coming down there and if the plug isnt all the way in, I'll be pissed and mock you."
"IT'S BROKEN!"
Goes down there and plugs the plug all the way in
Computer starts
- Never ask them if it's plugged in. Ask them to unplug it and plug it back in. Make something up about contact patches on the cables getting corrosion. That way they can see that it's not plugged in without feeling ashamed for not checking it.
  
  If I'm ever doubtful that someone has unplugged something, I'll ask them to describe something that may or may not be on the plug.
  Color
  metal type
  "can you please read me the serial number stamped on the prongs of the power cable"
  "what color is the plastic inside the plug" Etc.etc.
  Have not had it fail yet
  
  I've used the, unplug it, touch the ends of the plug with your fingers to release the static on the line ans plug it back in line more times than I care to count.
  
  If you ask them to unplug it and plug it back in, they'll lie and say they already did that, though.
  And if they were ashamed at all, they'd have remembered the last time the exact same thing happened.
  This sounds like I hate end users which I really don't. Their expertise lies elsewhere and I respect that. Still, sometimes it makes for funny/exhausting situations.
  
  A buddy of mine used to like telling the users that sometimes fat electrons get stuck in the prongs, so you have to occasionally unplug it and shake it out.
  
  Ooh, manager material right here!
  You are so right though 😁
- my brain sees "I'll be pissed and mock you" and read it to me as "I'll piss on you".
  Not a bad punishment for people don't plug their plugs all the way in.
  
  Pissing on a plug is a punishment for the person who pisses, not for the person who didn't plug it all the way in
- I myself had this problem with my monitor when I first bought it. It has weird touch buttons instead of normal buttons, I plugged it into the computer and kept hitting the power button and it wouldn't come on. I was getting annoyed that it was broken... Then I realized I only plugged it into the computer and forgot the freakin' power cable when I was about to pack it back up and take it back to the store. 🤦‍♂️
  
  I can top this.
  I was running hackintosh along side others OSes. Keep in mind it was working fine until it wasn't. So this hackintosh one day started having a problem. After some time of inactivity, the monitor would sleep. Once it did, it wouldn't come back up. Only a reboot would help. Eventually I thought it was incompatible with the DVI output since I saw similar hackintosh issues online. I bought a new monitor that would support display port. When I was disconnecting everything I notice that the DVI port wasn't fully plugged in. 🤦‍♂️
  
  My Monitor used to turn off randomly for no reason. Until I noticed it turned off every time my mini fridge kicked in, move mini fridge plug to a different wall port and issue resolved.
  Make sure you aren't overloading your wall sockets people!
  
  This reminds me. At work, I've had to help during rapid consultation procedures for surgeons while they are performing a surgery. It involves you cutting tissue microscopically thin with a very sharp blade within this specialized machine.
  Well one day I am cutting and cutting and I just can't get anything to work. It's making a mess and fucking everything up.
  I look down and realize I didn't even have the blade in the machine lmaooo. I was trying to cut with blunt metal. What a goober move.
  Brain farts happen!
- And thus, the The Bastard Operator from Hell was born…
- I had this with a person who said their screen stayed blank no matter what they did. I came down, saw the power light on the monitor was off, saw the plug was not plugged in, and fixed it. She was very embarrassed.

“When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all”
- You were doing very well until everyone died.
- Yes most management falls into this category. If you ain't running a prison with the staff something is wrong as we can't possibly trust these people!
- They'll still wonder why they're paying you though sadly.

Here's some more pixels
https://i.imgur.com/5izytWM.jpeg
- it looks fine on my end
- Thanks for the extra scenario!

I actually want to get into IT. I like tech, don't mind dumb situations, and enjoy helping people, and doubly so if it's sarcastically helping people. Fucking shame every company wants like fourteen degrees and your first born for a level 1.
- I like you. You have the right mindset. The main motivator for working IT support is helping people. The tech usually takes a back seat to soft skills.
  On top of that, you'll figure out that, as long as you know the fundamentals of how things work, all the details are something you can google. Figure out the fundamentals and you'll be able to work on anything. Convincing prospective employers of this skillset is a bit more difficult.
  I wish you luck and I hope I have the pleasure of working with you some day.
  
  I've been dealing with hardware and software issues since my first computer years ago. Like many of us it was either do, or take the PC out back and mourn its passing. I do lack the certifications, even if the knowledge is there. It seems I have some work in front of me.
  I do appreciate the words of encouragement. Barring the rare toxic frequent ticketer, most people who have issues just don't jive with tech well and are yet forced to use it, oh and the stubborn ones. That majority who need legitimate help are the ones I like most and even more I enjoy the challenge of finding ways to explain things to them in a way that clicks. Maybe save a support ticket in the future.
- Certifications certifications certifications. Get your A+ or net+, apply for shitty remote help desk jobs like support.com. They will suck and you'll get back to back calls, but keep your ears to the ground and a few months experience should be all you need to hop to something else. A lot of places are desperate for competent techs. Degrees don't prove anything, I'm fact it seems like kids are graduating with these technical degrees and zero actual practical knowledge.
  Source: My decade long IT career off just an associates degree.
  
  I can confirm this. I was able to get a decent job right out of highschool with my certs I got at a technical college. Really as long as you can prove that you're a fast learner, passionate about tech, and have the skillet to back it up it's not hard to find a job. In my experience at least, which to be fair is only 6 years
  
  Absolutely correct. Every single place outside of giants like Google take equivalent work experience instead of a degree. I dont even have an AA but I have 16 years experience and 11 certifications and make low 6 figures.
  
  I vouch for that. That’s how it is done. Good job laying down the steps; want to add that job hopping is important too early on.
  Get a phone help support job 1.5. Keep applying to get other better paying support job, within or outside the company
  Work in parallel getting trained and certified in A+ etc 2.5. Keep applying to get other better paying support job
  Get more certificates 3.5 Keep applying to other jobs of interest and desired pay
  Repeat step 3.5 until retirement.
- I have had an IT role and been a controls engineer for many years now. There is a fair amount of overlap in duties and you only need one degree for that. Basically, a lot of it is IT for machinery. I have a hell desk support team who keeps most of the basics at bay and every time they all get sick at once I remember why I love them.
  
  I like how you skipped the preludes and just call them the hell desk. I am 100% sure that isn't a typo and I'm never going to check to see if you edit it just in case.
  
  What machinery do you mean? Industrial machinery of some kind?
- So I'm going to go against the grain here and say to get some college under your belt. A 2 year degree and a cert or two (which can even be part of your degree program, or sometimes will allow you to skip some classes saving you time and money) will easily get you into a helpdesk job, and from there you can go into whatever specialization ends up tickling your fancy.
  I'll also say, helping someone with their nth password reset doesn't have to suck. Sometimes there's a root cause that you can help with which makes you far more helpful than the tech who just helps them reset it 10 more times. One of my proudest achievements in a previous role was successfully teaching all of our users who'd email us a scan of a printout of a screenshot of an error message how to send us the screenshot directly, and we went from 1 ticket like that per week to none for my final 6 months. All it takes is some compassion and meeting the users where they are without judgment for the common goal of getting both of our jobs done a little easier.
  
  Unfortunately I'm already dealing with student loans and two degrees under my belt. So certifications and a shotgun approach to applications might be my least stressful path. I've always been tech support for friends and family, have built several computers, and good lord the micro Chernobyl event that was a PC I left with my parents and younger sister when I went away for several months. "Oh that? It just stopped working one day." Did you know that back on I think Win7 you can bypass some start up errors by mashing the backspace key like you're a triple expresso'd up Sonic? Cause that was the only way it'd even let me scoot into the actual boot process once I did what I could in safe mode.
  Anyway, I digress.
- The majority of people are genuinely thankful for your help. Sometimes they put off asking for help until they are very frustrated and you catch some of that heat but they calm down quickly. They also really like it if you have to sit down and work on their computer because it means they have an excuse to not work and have some coffee. There always seems to be that one person though that you dread helping because they are always pissy and sarcastic and blame you for everything.
- I'm a hiring manager for a tier 1 help desk and soft skills and being able to deal with users who are bad with technology are way more important than any certification at that level. I can teach someone to do the technical stuff if they have a good attitude. If they have a shitty attitude and get frustrated on every call where the user has trouble following instructions there's not much I can do for them. Don't let your lack of certs/degree stop you from applying. You may end up someplace that's desperate to get asses in seats (usually for good reason) for a bit but once you get some experience on your resume you'll have an easier time finding someplace better.
  
  I have zero issues helping people, I love it. What I won't do it help people with the same issue over and over because they won't pay attention and refuse to learn. Nothing pisses me off faster than repeating myself over and over and having to keep resetting your password and setup your VPN because you keep going into the settings and fucking with it instead of just connecting like we did when I taught you how.
  Currently dealing with a guy with 2 Mac's, a mini and pro and everyday one of them isn't working because he keeps going to the VPN and changing shit rather than clicking "connect" from the task menu. Jesus fuck it's annoying.
- Others have said here but for a help desk job it's definitely more based on customer service ability. I came in from an admin job with a very long time in customer service prior to that but no other actual certs other than just being the person that people go to in the office for help and was told by my hiring manager it's much more about ability to handle clients.
  Now the next steps in my career I'm more worried about because it's all very competitive at least where I am and everyone seems much more involved and knowledgeable of technology than I am. I know I can learn but it is pretty overwhelming.

In defense of 'the computer forgot my password' guy I'm sure we've all experienced the following sequence.
Incorrect password
Go to change password
New password cannot be the same as the old password
- I would interpret 'the computer forgot my password' as someone accidentally getting logged out of their password manager
- Truly maddening
- **
  Go to change password
  They also don't know the password of the email address the reset email is sent to
  *idk how to format
  
  This struggle is real. Except I forget which email address I used because I use a lot of aliases.
  Normally my password manager would handle it but sometimes there’s re-branding and a new domain and the password manager can’t figure it out.
- I've had this happen with a password manager too so I know its not just me.
  
  I'm sorry to tell you this so hastily but everyone else is a bot, it is just you and everything you've experienced is completely unique to you.

Fun story, I worked IT for an American Telecom company. One day I recieved a phone call from a guy who was setting up his router. We were maybe five minutes into troubleshooting. He asks if he can eat his dinner while we troubleshoot and I say "no worries". Within thirty seconds, I hear a bang and panicd screaming. He informs me he dumped soy sauce and rice all over his router and work space. I sent a field tech to replace the router and set it up.
Edit: This comic is the norm not the unusual...
- Were you talking to Frank Reynolds?
- I hope they installed the waterproof version

I highly recommend the original Bastard Operator From Hell stories, for those who read this comic and just nod yes with their heads and mentally go "Yeah, that's how it is".
- Damn, I haven't been reminded of BOFH in a while. Those are due for another read through, along with maybe the Jargon Files too.
  
  And for the other side of it, the chronicles of George
  
  I still have fond memories of the episode where his excuse calendar comes up “solar flares” and he proceeds to explain to people how their devices aren’t working because magnetic interference from the sun is moving the bits on the hard drive around.
  
  BOFH is still semi-regularly updated over at El Reg. It's not the same (way different from the Striped Irregular Bucket days), but it's still enjoyable.

Wind-proof router, here you go
- Funnily enough, i think this might actually work to a degree
  
  Just make sure your on one side of the room.

You don't need to be in IT, you just need boomer parents.
- Fun thing is,.. the cycle repeats.
  ~20% of Boomers had good working knowledge of the technologies of their age, similar to today.
  
  Ill never lose touch with tech. Except fucking ticktock. Or temu. Or that other one.
  
  Idk. I'm not in IT, but I've always seemed to have a tendency to try to troubleshoot tech problems.
  I help out my coworkers, parents, and even my younger sibling on occasion (he's in his early 20s). If it's solely an age thing, then you'd think I wouldn't be doing it with those similar to my own age or younger than me.
  At work I even figured out why our headsets (vital to our job) would intermittently fail and stop working, absolutely destroying our workflow. Our IT department couldn't manage to figure it out. But I eventually found that it intermittently conflicted with a program on the computer (Microsoft Teams).
  I'm absolutely no genius and my knowledge is probably rather minimal. But I think it's a difference in attitude and affinity for the stuff.
  
  Yeah no. Most of em just decided they don't have to learn anything anymore and have this learned helplessness with technology. I have seen 70 year olds trouble shoot a computer like champions but a dude in his 50's just "isn't good with computers" and can't change the font size in word without his hand held
- I see it as a fair deal. They paid my absurdly high phone bill as I fell for dial up scammers in my youth while experimenting with fresh new internet, and so I abandon all hope of lazy free time and help them with their unresponding printer now.

For every "I'm the bottom 10% of tech users" there is another 70% of the user base removed about inept prioritization and service desk people who couldn't troubleshoot process issues if their life were dependent on it.
Different people different skills.
- As someone who works in IT support, I have yet to find any significant number of support people who can't troubleshoot process issues. What I have found in spades is management making it impossible to make any meaningful process improvements.
  There's a nontrivial number of management type folks that just want it done a specific way, regardless of how that impacts worker performance or how difficult it makes my job.
  The number of times I've suggested improvements only to be told that the existing methodology works, is too damn high.
- My first fucking thought. I'm still waiting on helpdesk to respond to an issue I've already chased down to a registry key because I'm not allowed workstation admin privileges. 🙄. Which I'm fine with but more than a week to respond to a ticket? Come the fuck on
  
  How many seats are they responsible for? Could be understaffing.
- Googling problems with Windows I find the majority of the results are MS support telling them to reset the OS. No attempt to debug the issue just nuke it and see if that fixes it. Then you read the next comments and inevitably they say "Nope, didn't fix it". I really dislike scripted responses like this.
  
  Yeah the MS support forums are very hit or miss. And even the hit ones usually start with a response that doesn't appear to understand the question very deeply, followed by a "that didn't work", "I said in my post that I tried that and it didn't work", or maybe a "that's not what I'm trying to do, I want to do x", and then a reply with useful links.
  Though to be fair, problems can come from software the user installed or fuck ups they've made to settings along the way. Or quiet sabotage from another user.
  Once upon a time I provided phone support for Comcast and had a caller call in unable to access Facebook. I did the usual script and found her internet was otherwise working. Narrowed it down to a dns issue. I was aware of the hosts file because I was using it for ad blocking at the time so had her open that up on a whim (which I would have gotten in trouble for since it was off script). Sure enough, it was there. Someone didn't want her accessing it.
  Who knows what kinds of methods people have used to discourage other things on shared PCs. Is edge really broken or did the user's kid get tired of everyone clicking "make it the default browser" when it begged each time it was opened so they wrote a small program that kills it as soon as it starts?

"Why doesn't Uber specific hardware that the vendor DEMANDED be put on a switch that we don't have credentials for not work seamlessly with the network?!?"
"Because it doesn't confirm to the standards of TCP/IP, and requires a dual NIC solution because God forbid they design their system to allow basic routing."
"You just don't know what you're doing!"
"No, I'm just not going to volunteer myself to learn FCoIP so that your one special system has the support it needs until we deprecate it in six months."
- All they hear:
  You just don't know what you're doing!"
  "No, I'm just not going to volunteer myself to learn

At one point in a former life, I was one of the trainers for the incoming helpdesk technicians. One of the practical exams we put them through involved us doing creative things to fuck with their computers before they came to class, and then having them figure out what was wrong and how to fix it. Plugging the mouse from one computer into its neighbor's USB port and vice versa was one of my favorite tricks. For whatever reason, it had a 100% success rate in effectively fucking with them.
- That’s lame and easy to figure out.
  Switch to wireless mice. Maybe Logitech Unifying. Then one day pull all the dongles out and put them in a bucket.
  First person to figure out how to download and install the unifying software and re-pair their mouse without using it gets a bonus.
  But most people nowadays are lost without mice so they’d probably cycle through all the dongles on the laptop plugged into the projector and all move their mice until they figure out which is whose.

I worked at an office once where the wifi legitimately got worse when it rained. It was because the buildings internet used an antenna instead of being wired, and the building was just barely in range of the source signal. When it rained, it was enough added distortion to make it noticeably worse.
- Oh, so the WiFi was fine, but the internet sucked when it rained. Cool.
  WiFi != Internet.
  
  Ive had to explain this soo many times to users that I've gotten tired and just roll with them with the misconception
  
  I have to constantly explain to my wife that if she can't reach a website it is likely on their end and there is nothing I can do until they fix it. I explain there is a chain of connections involved and me sitting and staring at her laptop for an hour isn't going to fix it.
  
  No one said that wtf
- You could just get a rain-proof router! /s

As somebody who did IT support - the last two seem perfectly normal to me:
Computer "forgot passwords" - obviosly the man is using different browser than regular and it ain't filling in his passwords. Maybee diferent profile in the same browser? Is he using the same account as usual?
Wind blowing away wi-fi. She is likely connected to the internet through a point-2-point wifi connection and there may be a tree or something along the way messing not wifi signal in her house but her connectivity to the outside. I'd refer her to her ISP, just instruct her to formulate the question a bit better.
- The password one is also when they're on the wrong site and now they've just typed all their passwords and account names into microsoftoffice365.scammer.ru
- And many Americans seem to call their cellular internet connection "wifi" and that can definitely be affected by the weather.
  
  How does an indoor wireless connection get affected by wind?
- This meme seems to be from the times of WinXP, when browsers didn't remember passwords.
- Even the first one.
  The mouse is moving. It's potentially the mouse-pointer that is not moving.
  Seriously.
  On a side note, love you IT guys 💖 and it seems that if you ask nicely if they have time, they'll listen and if you try to do your best they'll be all over it to help you out the best they can.
- I worked at a software developer, occasionally doing support. Had a call from a customer following up on a ticket, I looked at the record and the salty dude who took the original call had written:
  Caller asked me to tell him where he saved his file. I told him "well if you can tell me where I parked my car this morning, I might be able to help you."
  Quality wasn't a big thing with our software, the senior developer was a stoner who was off his head most of the time, others were either clueless or too busy on side hustles to give a fuck. Amazingly we developed engineering software that was used by amongst others, the atomic weapons establishment in the UK and Buckingham Palace. Happy days.
  
  Hey, at least your bugs didn't result in the prosecution of 700+ sub-postmasters. Silver linings and all that.

My coworker had a customer shoot his router. So, yes alot of American small business owners are Frank Reynolds.
- "My computer says no wifi, so anyway I started blasting." Such Murica lol

I've been on both sides of it. One of my favorite IT moments was changing to a new phone. I couldn't access my email until I did a two factor auth process. Of course they emailed me my code to access my account to unlock my email. Good thing I also had a pc at home with access to my email.
Then I was supporting a lab. One woman was clearly aggravated when she called. She said no matter what she did her screen was blank. I head right over and just look at it for a few secs. I check the lowest hanging fruit solution first and see the power light on her monitor isn't on. I see it is unplugged, plug her monitor in and problem solved. I've never seen a more embarrassed person than her. lol
Networking has to be the most thankless job in IT. You are invisible when the system is working, which is 99% of the time. It stays up like that because they are monitoring it and maintaining it behind the scenes. When it fails though the failure can be catastrophic for everyone, we literally cannot do any work without it. Then everyone's eyes, and criticism, is on them.

Love these. Reminds my of the CD drive cup holder and my personal favorite at my shop was the computer was afraid of me. Every time I came near to fix the problem they were having it went away. I was told the computer must be afraid of me and knows when I'm coming
- The number of people who fail to recognize what it (typically) means when an issue magically disappears while Simone is looking over their shoulder is absurd.

'One thing is broken' is usually prefaced with an email explaining why a service is down but it doesn't stop people.

I love the artwork !! Who is the artist?
- According to my googling, they may be by Li-Anne Dias? But the artist's website is so bad you're better off reading the comics when they're reposted elsewhere
  But these are so classic they even mention Windows XP

I can see the pain in the eyes of the support fella.

I asked a guy for his host name today and he straight up said "No" wtf man what do you want from me then?

Boomers shouldn't be allowed to touch computers. That generation needs to fucking retire already.
- Gen X ain't much better.
- Agreed. I recognize it is the Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and The Woz generation. But the technology is so far beyond what they created, even though we use what the Boomer generation created every day, and I get that.
  
  It's the Jobs, Gates, and Woz generation, but until they step out of the way we won't get a new generation of pioneers in technology. It used to be the dream was to create the next big thing, now the dream is to make something that gets you bought up by Google, Apple, or Microsoft.

I'm not even IT and yet I feel this

This is why I only work for MSPs that have a closed client list, who pay the MSP for their services. They pay us to be the experts and generally we are treated as such. If a client does end up being unruly or rude, we fire them.

bruh you cut out half the story

I remember the pain. Luckily I don't have to deal with customers anymore. I felt a chill down my spine...

Holy resolution, Batman.

Needs more JPEG!
- ONLY GOT 3 PIXELS. NEXT.
  
  NEEDS MORE PIXELS, IT'S FOR A CHURCH HONEY! NEXT!!

The empty eyes are so relatable

(panel 1) is this is just 4-eyes taken to the end-user level?

Couldn't the wind thing be true? Moving air rubs on stuff, gets charged and provides a less resistant path for the em waves
- Theoretically, but probably just as likely as goblins sneaking into your router and eating all the 1s in your binary
  
  I knew it! It was goblins all along!!
  
  Meaning very likely.
- No. RF is not affected directly by air movement. However, it can be indirectly affected, by moving the antennae positioning, moving other objects in the way, or causing rain or snow to block the path of the RF. Source: Network Engineer for 10 years
- I doubt that would affect Wi-Fi, but what does affect it (at least 2.4 GHz frequencies) is microwaves. They operate at the same frequency and interfere with the router's output waves.
  My wife refused to believe me until I had her run a speed test and watch the signal drop when I started up the microwave, then rise again when I turned it off.

Major “my computer is too slow after I installed 20 search bars” energy.

Somehow, my phone number got printed on an ISP provided router that services like trailer parks in Arizona. So I get calls randomly asking "Hey is this ____ Internet?" & I go "No sorry, this is just some dude. But hey, where did you find this number? I just wanna know why people are keeping calling me"
And fuck if it isn't like pulling teeth. I literally just want to know where it's printed.
"Uhh, so this isn't Blank Internet?" Click
"It's the Internet number" "yeah but like where are you reading it from?" "The internet" "Oh like a website?" "No, like the internet... so you can't fix it?"
Voicemail: "Hey this is Joe Oldman. I live at 113 blank drive. My social security number is 0000005. Can you send someone down to fix my internet? Thanks"
Finally someone under the age of 40 called me and finally said "this is the number on the back of the router" but even when I asked "So what router is it? Like where is it printed?" "Idk". Like dude, you literally just read this number and typed it in your damn phone. What are you looking at.

My experiences with IT across multiple organizations is that they're understaffed and not hiring particularly competent people.
The competent people they do have are generally egomaniacs because they're the only person or persons in a department full of idiots, and they deal with idiots all day, so they assume everyone is an idiot.
Additionally, IT is SUPER territorial. Like, noticeably so. They have 1-2 people that know what they're doing, but their whole staff acts like they're as smart as their smartest person, which they are, unassailably, not. I give a lot of respect to the competent and knowledgeable ones, because I realize they're also managing a bunch of idiots that don't know they're idiots.
Across three different organizations, I've watched five members of IT fired for their arrogance. If you're interested in doing this, simply hire an attorney, bring the smart person into the room with the arrogant idiot, and make it clear that someone in that room is not going to work for the organization in two weeks, and then explain the situation.
If you feel attacked by this, you're one of the idiot IT staff. I'm good friends with our current CIO and security lead. I hate to break it to you, but they don't like you either. You are described as "cannon fodder for grandpa."
Easy to fire, easy to hire. This cartoon adequately captures the level of questions that incompetent people working in IT can feel superior about. But they're not serious IT issues within a large organization.
That's why you hire kids that graduated with "computer degrees." So they can make cartoons and catch all the bullshit, while the real professionals do the real work.
- It's good to have people like you around because we can always trust that your views perfectly reflect reality and are pretty much universal truths.
  
  Agree. Anyone who expresses opinions or experiences so confidently/authoritatively may be more closely aligned with the problem than its solution.
- Yeah a place I worked for had managers that thought that way. Then something broke and since the guy who knew how to fix it was fired a long time ago... well... I was already long gone by then. But their system was down for nearly a week.
  Now if the managers established any kind of process then personality conflicts wouldn't be an issue, everything would be documented in advance (ie. planning) and the IT would just be following an agreed upon plan. Both management and the staff know everything that's happening and why it's happening. And if there's staff turnover it's no biggie because everything is documented and the management knows where the documentation is.
  But that requires work... by management. So in many places it doesn't happen.
  The reason why you have arrogant IT staff is only because they know that you don't know how anything works and they do. They know that if you fire them you'll be fucking over yourself because if something breaks there's a good chance you won't know how to fix it and it may take their replacement a long time to figure it out because you never gave the IT staff an adequate amount of time to document anything.
  Sure when you fire these guys things won't break immediately. It might be a year, even several years before that critical thing (that you never required to be documented, no time for that) breaks and the system is down for an extended period of time.
  The IT guys are arrogant because their boss is too stupid to know how to manage things properly to know how things are set up. Some managers are too stupid to even know why their IT guys are arrogant. They're arrogant because they know that by firing them, the manager is fucking himself over. They're just underestimating how stupid their manager is.
  If you feel attacked by this, you’re one of the idiot IT managers.
- Across three different organizations, I’ve watched five members of IT fired for their arrogance. If you’re interested in doing this, simply hire an attorney, bring the smart person into the room with the arrogant idiot, and make it clear that someone in that room is not going to work for the organization in two weeks, and then explain the situation.
  I don't understand this. What happens when you do that?
  
  Things get ironed out very quickly.

Serious question.
Why is the venn diagram of furries and tech bros a circle?
- IT workers != tech bros
  But I don't know either.
  
  Tbh I don't see the difference but that's just me

Also IT guys:
I have no idea why things don't actually work and when presented with a core dump or any previous debugging the user did I panic like a little girl, so I restored to a previous system restore point, because fuck the changes you made since then and the fact that if you do them again the issue will come back, I'm just supposed to close this ticket, not actually fix things.
Yeah, I don't call IT anymore.
- and the fact that if you do them again the issue will come back
  Damn, answered your own question. Have you tried not doing the thing that breaks the computer?
  
  Yeah, let me not do my job anymore, so you don't have to do yours.
  Goddamn IT, man. Every single time.
- The implied problem you aren't understanding is scope. Restoring your machines functionality and determining that if you do blank the universe breaks IS AN ACTUAL SOLUTION TO YOUR PROBLEM that is in scope and highly efficient. The company probably doesn't pay you to piddle fuck around nor does it pay the IT guy to make you piddle fucking around work out.
  Digging in to the problem and figuring out an exact reproduction of the bug so that a bug can be filed with the appropriate owner of the whatever code and a fix instituted at some point would be far more interesting and fun, even more so if its in code you actually control and you can actually fix it but its likely not actually productive unless you can make a strong case for it.
  The cost of fixing your stuff in 15 minutes and having you back in action is about $12.50. The cost of spending 3 days on it is $1200. Surely you understand why it works the way it works.
  
  The company paid me to do exactly the actions I did before the system restore, which I had to redo after the system restore, and then I had to continue debugging and fixing the issue myself. Your cost analysis is fair in some cases, but it doesn't really apply here. It wasn't a "undo the changes so they can get back to work" situation, it was a "fix the issue so they can continue working" situation.
  Also, restoring the machine to a previous state was not a fix for my issue. I wasn't in a position where I did not have access, nor was I in one where I couldn't revert the changes myself (even without the system restore). This was a lazy/incompetent tech, who finished their ticket and went home for the day having done nothing but inconvenience me even more, and cause me to spend even more time on the issue.
  I only wish this was the only interaction I've ever had with IT where they proved to be more trouble than it's worth, but sadly that's not the case.
  
  The implied problem you aren't understanding is scope. Restoring your machines functionality and determining that if you do blank the universe breaks IS AN ACTUAL SOLUTION TO YOUR PROBLEM that is in scope and highly efficient. The company probably doesn't pay you to piddle fuck around nor does it pay the IT guy to make your piddle fucking around work out.
  Fucking THANK. YOU.
  This is exactly what I'm talking about, we don't get hired so that we can accommodate some bullshit that an individual user just thinks they need. We are hired to keep your machine working in the capacity that your job requires it to work. Nowhere in our job description does it say that we have to be your little errand boy making your fuck-ass decisions function in our environment.

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