IT guy here:
If I ask you if you turned it off and back on and you say yes, I tend to believe you. But if I look and I see that the uptime for the computer proves that you lied, this is the look I give you. And then I’ll reboot and there’s a good chance that the problem will be solved.
I’ll have enough grace to say that maybe we had different ways of describing what you intended to do when “rebooting,” but inside I know that you lied to me because you believe that IT people recommend this step because you think we’re lazy and trying to make you go away. No. We suggest it because it often works. And if you’d try it before you called the helpline, that’d cut our calls in half.
“I tried to turning the server on and off again, but that didn’t fix the problem”
IT-guy: 💀
That’s fine. If we do a whole bunch of stuff with no results, but then I try reboot/power cycle and it works, I’m telling your supervisor.
IT in general isn’t more important than you, but we have responsibilities that are. If I’m dicking around with your PC because you couldn’t take a minute to reboot when asked, you’re the reason I’m putting down for why other things don’t get finished.
I love IT, but my pet peeve is when others institutionalize my troubleshooting skills as the de facto solution to their issues.
At work I’ll often tolerate it - it can be sometimes argued that it’s what I’m paid for.
But in personal or family life the rule is the base price for my assistance is the story of what you tried before reaching out to me, and the price of my services is based on how “well told” that story is.
Tell me something unique and interesting and my services may likely be free. Tell me of your your attention to detail, and I’ll settle for a meal or favor. Tell me you couldn’t be bothered and I’ll tell you I can’t be afforded.
We hate everyone, because you people only bring us your problems 99% of the time and no one cares about our problems
We also hate everyone b/c when the encounter the tiniest bit of friction in their device usage they run to IT without even trying to think of what the cause may be. Maybe, just maybe, trying to put 35GB of pics on a 16GB USB drive is the problem, and not some major computer issue.
there’s an even bigger issue there - file size (or file systems) are not taught anymore. Hell the ipad doesn’t even expose a file system to its users. I work in schools and teachers and students are both as bad as each other
I bought my IT guy an Excel mug that said something like Freak in the Sheets. He had been helping me transfer files from one computer to another (old computer had an expanding battery issue) and said he appreciated novelty mugs. He was being a real pal about it. So, I got him a mug. I didn’t solve any of his problems, but I did let him vent some about them.
Protip if you bring your IT guy an eighth of weed, he’ll give you admin privileges on your PC for a few days.
you know what’s funny about turning it off and on? my home isp had a problem. the uplink packets were dropping very often, downlink was fine. I called tech support.
as usual they said the ‘IT hello’. I said already tried. the guy made me restart everything on call. nothing changed. soon they sent two guys. they came all the way to turn the optical interface off and on and tp change the dns to isp one (obviously I never use that). they soon realized the problem isn’t here and called the isp. after some furious cussword exchanges they told the isp the IT mantra. and voila! they restarted their switch (cutting off internt to an entire locality lol) and everything went normal. that day I knew the true power of that mantra.
The number of times I had been remoted into a user’s system while they were “rebooting” is too damned high. Also, a lot of them got upset with me for then restarting their computer because they had unsaved work up.
Always fun to have that conversation with a supervisor, most of them don’t like that their people wasted time and lost work because they were not following directions AFTER BEING TOLD TO SAVE YOUR SHIT AND REBOOT.
turn off monitor
count to 10
turn on monitor
“Nope, didn’t work”
PEBCAK
It’s always a layer 8 issue.
Ooh I need to start using this
I wonder if I can get away with saying this to a client
We installed remote access on all employee computers. Among other details, it allowed us to see machine uptime.
I would tell certain people/liars that I’ll fix their problems over lunch and to make sure they save all work before leaving.
Then as lunch came along, I’d just remotely reboot their computer.
Fun fact. “The IT Crowd” is actually a documentary.
Hah! I’d do that when they were reboot recalcitrant. I’d let them know, but if they were really a pain in the ass, lunch reboot.
“No idea why it rebooted. Maybe it caught an update?”
(No, I managed updates.)
I miss my IT days, they were fun. I once saw a USB flashdrive taped to a postcard. It was the old owners friend who had sent him pictures from a meet up.
I loved it. The old guy wanted to send pictures. And send them he did.
Also did my last favor for a guy who needed a long ethernet cable for something at home, I said sure, but we need it back by next week. He never returned it. So I told him “I’m not gonna argue, either it’s on my desk tomorrow or I’ll send your department an invoice so we can buy a new one.”
It was on my desk next day in a tangled pile.
You could also change nothing and make up an excuse to restart.
“Ok I checked the regedit HSKEY_LOCAL to ensure [company software] exists and has correct values, now we should just reboot to apply new settings.”
Most likely the IT guy thought you were either lying, or are too stupid to actually turn your computer off and on again. Because both is pretty typical for end users. Working in IT with direct contact to “non technical” end users will make you lose your faith in humanity very quickly, because you get to look straight into the deepest abyss of human malice and stupidity all day every day.
What do yo mean "the shiny flat square on your desk isn’t your computer’?
My initial thought is “I don’t believe you” if they claim to have already restarted the PC. Sometimes they Think they did but only put it to sleep or something, and sometimes they are just lying to seem less stupid.
Too many people think that just turning off the monitor is what you want them to do. They’re usually the same people that refer to their entire desktop PC as “the hard drive”. At least that was my experience about a decade ago.
And claim they need ‘more memory’ when they run out of space on the local drive because they’re storing all their important files in the recycle bin.
Once I had a user swear up and down they restarted the computer 3 times, and asked if I thought they were an idiot.
I said, “No, I’m not saying you’re an idiot, but your computer is saying it’s boot time was 18 months ago.”
Spent too long in tech support - The trick with people like this is to move the goal to something that they certainly haven’t done before yet still accomplishes the same goal. Here I would honest to God ask the customer to check the pins on the power cable to make sure they’re straight. I don’t give a damn about those pins but they have to unplug the computer to look.
I used to tell them I was checking something and open up cmd and get system uptime right after asking that.
The number of people shocked at being called out for having their PC on for over 60 days straight is enough to make anyone lose faith in humanity.
Though soon to no longer be IT, i guarantee that if you bring them cookies and coffee theyll start to love you :)
Corporate sent me a laptop that kept not talking a charge, so I get on with an IT guy and we go through a bunch of steps then he has me open WSL and I’m like “oh this is just the terminal”. He instantly went from “this is a chore” to upbeat. After that he was super helpful and even called in a RMA for the dock that we figured out was the issue (we usually have to call in our own RMAs), then once I got it he called back and walked me through flashing it to the latest firmware, rather than just emailing the instructions.
Checks the system uptime… 97 days.
You restarted it, right?
goes on to show, pressing the monitor button on and off
See! Not working!My father did this.
I was giving him a PC tutorial and I asked him to turn off the PC and he turned off the monitor.
One of my users locked her Windows session and then signed in again, there, I rebooted.
I told my kid he needed to turn off his computer at night when he’s done. He said “ugh…I always do”. Then proceeded to lock it as if proving me wrong.
groan
We’re about to have a generation of people become adults who never had to connect a dvd player or cable box or whatever to a TV, because the smart tv was the actual video source. Turning off the monitor and not the computer is going to be so common now…
One of my users locked her Windows session and then signed in again, there, I rebooted.
Not bad, some people these days don’t know to lock the windows session.
Asked to restart, sees restart and shut down, chooses lock instead.
