IT User Manual

1. When IT say they're coming right over, log out and go for coffee. It's no problem for us to remember 700 network passwords.

2. When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and children's art. We don't have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.

3. When IT send you an e-mail with high importance, delete it at once. We're probably just testing out the public groups.

4. When an IT professional is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and spill your guts out and expect him to respond immediately. We exist only to serve and are always ready to think about fixing computers.

5. When an IT professional is at the water cooler or outside having a smoke, ask him a computer question. The only reason why we drink water or smoke is to ferret out all those users who don't have email or a telephone line.

6. Send urgent email ALL IN UPPERCASE. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.

7. When you call a helpdesk engineer's direct line rather than the helpdesk number, press 5 to skip the greeting that says he's on holiday for a week, record your message, and wait exactly 24 hours before you send an email straight to the director because no one ever returned your call. You're entitled to common courtesy.

8. When the photocopier doesn't work, call computer support. There's electronics in it, right?

9. When you're getting a NO DIAL TONE message at home, call the helpdesk. We can even fix telephone problems from here.

10. When something's wrong with your home PC, dump it on a chair in IT. Leave no name, no phone number, and no description of the problem. We love a good mystery.

11. When you have a helpdesk engineer on the phone walking you through changing a setting; read the paper. We don't actually mean for you to DO anything; we just love to hear ourselves talk.

12. When we offer you training on the upcoming OS upgrade, don't bother. We'll be there to hold your hand after it is done.

13. When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently just disappear into the cosmos for no reason.

14. When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to all 68 printers in the office. One of them is bound to work.

15. Don't use online help. Online help is for wimps.

16. If you're taking night classes in computer science, feel free to go around and update the network drivers for yourself and your co-workers. We're grateful for the overtime when we have to stay until 2:30am fixing them.

17. When you have an IT person fixing your computer at a quarter to one, eat your lunch in her face. We function better when slightly dizzy.

18. Don't ever thank us. We love this AND we get paid for it!

19. When a helpdesk engineer asks you whether you've installed any new software on this computer, lie. It's nobody's business what you've got on your computer.

20. If the mouse cable keeps knocking down the framed picture of your dog, lift the computer and stuff the cable under it. Mouse cables were designed to have 45 lbs. of computer sitting on top of them.

21. If the space bar on your keyboard doesn't work, blame it on the network/mail upgrade. Keyboards work much better with half a pound of muffin crumbs, nail clippings, and big sticky drops of Coke under the keys.

22. When you get the message saying "Are you sure?" click on that 'Yes' button as fast as you can. Hell, if you weren't sure, you wouldn't be doing it, would you?

23. Feel perfectly free to say things like "I don't know anything about that computer crap". It never bothers us to hear our area of professional expertise referred to as "crap".

24. When you need to change the toner cartridge, call the helpdesk. Changing a toner cartridge is an extremely complex task, and Hewlett-Packard recommends that it be performed only by a professional engineer with a master's degree in nuclear physics.

25. When something's the matter with your computer, ask your secretary to call the help desk. We enjoy the challenge of having to deal with a third party who doesn't know anything about the problem.

26. When you receive a 30-meg movie file, send it to everyone as a high-priority mail attachment. We've got plenty of disk space and processor capacity on that mail server.

27. Don't even think of breaking large print jobs down into smaller chunks. God forbid somebody else might get a chance to squeeze into the queue.

28. When you bump into an IT person in the supermarket on a Saturday, ask a computer question. We work 24/7, even while at the supermarket on weekends.

29. If your son is a student in computer science, have him come in on the weekends and do his projects on your office computer. We'll be there for you when his illegal copy of Visual Basic 6.0 makes your Access database flip out.

30. When you bring us your own no-brand home PC to repair for free at the office, tell us how urgently we need to fix it so your son can get back to playing DOOM. We'll get right on it because we have so much free time at the office.

Couldn't blog for a while, that's why wrote this today ...