Things your IT guy/deparment wants you to know

Originally posted @ Programminghelp.com

1. If you ask me technical questions please don’t argue with me because you don’t like my answer. If you think you know more about the topic, why ask? And if I’m arguing with you…it’s because I am positive that I am correct, otherwise I’d just say “I don’t know” or give you some tips on where to look it up, I don’t have the time to just argue for the sake of it.

2. Starting a conversation by insulting yourself (i.e. “I’m such an idiot”) will not make me laugh, or feel sorry for you; all it will do is remind me that yes, you are an idiot and that I am going to hate having to talk to you. Trust me; you don’t want to start a call that way.

3. I am ok with you making mistakes, fixing them is my job. I am not ok with you lying to me about a mistake you made. It makes it much harder to resolve and thus makes my job more difficult. Be honest and we can get the problem resolved and continue on with our business.

4. There is no magic “Fix it” button. Everything takes some amount of work to fix, and not everything is worth fixing or even possible to fix. If I say that you just need to re-do a document that you accidentally deleted 2 months ago, please don’t get mad at me. I’m not ignoring your problem, and it’s not that I don’t like you, I just can’t always fix everything.

5. Not everything you ask me to do is “urgent”. In fact, by marking things as “urgent” every time, you almost ensure that I treat none of it as a priority.

6. You are not the only one who needs help, and you usually don’t have the most urgent issue. Give me some time to get to your problem, it will get fixed.

7. Emailing me several times about the same issue in the same day is not only unnecessary, it’s highly annoying. Emails will stay until I delete them, I won’t delete them until I’m done with them. I will typically respond as soon as I have a useful update. If it is an urgent issue, let me know (see number 5). Plus the more you email me the longer it takes me to resolve your issues if I have to keep reading your emails!

8. Yes, I prefer email over telephone calls. It has nothing to do with being friendly, it’s about efficiency. It is much faster and easier for me to list out a set of questions that I need you to answer than it is for me to call and ask you them one by one. You can find the answers at your leisure and while I’m waiting I can work on other problems.

9. Yes, I seem blunt and rude. It’s not that I mean to, I just don’t have the time to sugar coat things for you. I assume we are both adults and can handle the reality of a problem. If you did something wrong, I will tell you. I don’t care that it was a mistake, because it really makes no difference to me. Don’t take it personal, I just don’t want it to happen again.

10. And finally, yes, I can read your email, I can see what web pages you look at while you are at work, yes, I can access every file on your work computer, and I can tell if you are chatting with people on an instant messenger or chat room (and can also read what you are typing). But no, I don’t do it. It’s unethical, I’m busy, and in all reality you aren’t all that interesting. So unless I am instructed to specifically monitor or investigate your actions, I don’t. There really are much more interesting things on the internet than you.

And always remember "An emergency on your part, does not constitute one on mine!"

 

11. Time I spend talking to you is time I'm not working on fixing your problem.

12. You may say you "haven't changed a thing" but I bet you have, even if you don't think it's relevant to your problem.

 

I love this, thank you for posting these rules, everyone should read.

I always love asking people "Can you retrace the last few things you've done on your computer" and they start going into how they "haven't done anything" to their computer. Well you obviously did something to it, or it wouldn't be broken. After about 30 min I usually get it out of them, but it is like pulling teeth sometimes because people want to try to tell me -the guy helping- that they didn't do anything wrong. I don't care what you did wrong, just let me know what it is so I don't spend all my time figuring it out when you could have just told me in the first place. Man, egos I tell ya, they get in the way.

nuffsaid420

 

Agreed. "I didn't do anything" = I screwed up big time. Every time.

 

I really do like this thread.

13. I told you not to disable the virus scanner or this would happen.

14. It is not necessary to buy a new computer just because Windows XP deleted itself.

 

15. If you're internet account is with Telstra Bigpond, you probably should be talking to them.

 

I am so printing this up and posting this in my cubicle. This is priceless. I'll definitely need a copy of this when I go for that Net Sysadmin position after I get my certs.

 

actually i like these parts...
so many people ask to me about their problem, but they're agued me... so, why ask if they think they are know more than me...? *LOL*

for the no 2, lot of people have calling them self with an idiot or stupid... whereas they ask to fix their viruses problems on their computer, yes they are really really stupid if they have asked for the same problem 4 times within a year...

for the no 3, they have will always lying to me just because they doesn't want to make me angry... *LOL*

 

Absolutely classic!!! This is going to be emailed to every one in my office!!!

 

O with credit given of course