Don’t yell and don’t swear, if you want me to take your request seriously and not dump it at the bottom of my list of things to do then talk to me professionally. I have things to do and you have things to do and it only exacerbates things when you raise your voice when I explain that it will take some time to get to your request. There are 50 other people who called before you and gave me the same story.

We all think we’re important people. Whether you are the mail room attendant or CEO, you think you are the most important person in the world. News flash for you — You’re not! It’s never easy to deal with multiple problems coming in at one time. One call for a printer down, one for email not working and yet another for the simple reason that the phone doesn’t ring loud enough (get a hearing aid). It’s even harder to deal with an angry, cursing, loud-mouthed person who has a problem and it generally leads to hurt feelings and tears shed later on.

A simple, email (if email is available) or phone call to the help desk is all that it takes to get the ball rolling. The job of the IT gurus at the receiving end is to take it all in and prioritize. Obviously the sprinklers going off in the main network closet is a much higher priority than your printer not spitting out the latest Sunday comic. So deal. That over worked, sometimes underpaid and never over appreciated IT guy will fix your issue. Just cut them a little slack — they are probably also understaffed.

Post from: EveryJoe

Patience is a virtue

Don’t lie to me when you need help with your computer. I don’t judge you if your PC messes up, these things happen but don’t think to lie your way out of it. I need to know what you were doing when the problems happened. If you spilled a coke on your laptop tell me, we all make mistakes.

Now, we have all come across the issue of lying about silly things — more often than not it was back when we were still in diapers but there is an upward trend of telling little white lies about mishaps happening at the work place. Take for example, a Blackberry administrator and his lovely end-user.

One day, Miss I love my Blackberry and would never do anything to harm it (Ilmyb for short), comes up and exclaims that her device stopped working last night. Being the smart IT person that this gentleman was, he examined the device, took the battery out and noticed that it was a bit damp inside. This was a tip off that the device most likely did not just “stop working”, something happened to it.

Fast forward 5 minutes later, the conversation turns to Miss Ilmyb saying, “the device may have become a little wet but that was not when it stopped working.” Feeling a bit underwhelmed, the IT guy took the device and decided to take a look at it later. To his surprise, the inside of the device was covered in orange juice. After cleaning the entire device out with alcohol and sealing it back together (which voids the warranty), VOILA, it worked. Miss Ilmyb finally fessed up to her child spilling orange juice all over the table and it may have gotten into the device.

In the end, the truth came out and the only thing that came out of this was an untrustworthy relationship between the nice ‘ol IT guy and the lady for the next time an issue came up. So please, be kind and be honest. The problems get fixed much faster and we all thank you for it.

Post from: EveryJoe

Lying never got you anywhere