This rant was triggered by a client who really pushed the boundary of decency this morning. If you are an IT guy I am sure you can relate, and if you are a person who deals with IT read the story of what happened this morning, and then take note as to how properly treat your IT people.

What Happened?

Short story – this morning at the office started with a bang. We had a huge thunderstorm last night and when we got to the office this morning several of our servers where dead (the power backup seemed to have failed last night at some point and at least one UPS has been nuked) and one of our developers PC’s where dead.

To schweeten the deal the boss skypes me and asks me to quickly have a look at one of the IP camera’s in the office – being the guy he is I had no problem making that a priority for him.

In the middle of all this a client rocks up at reception without an appointment. They share an office block with us and several other companies. Now our tech team really endeavour to see people by appointment since people randomly dropping off computers to “quickly have a look” tend to mess up our workflow and people who DO have the decency to make appointments have their work pushed back.

I quickly run over to reception and hear all about “I was working and suddenly it asked for a reboot and I did and then it wouldn’t start up and our IT guy had a look and he said it might be the harddrive and I so hope you can recover the data because I have not made a backup…”

I explained to the lady that I cannot look at it immediately, and that they can bring it upstairs to have it checked out in a day or so.

The lady went back downstairs.

Fifteen minutes later a colleague calls me aside “the IT guy from downstairs complained that you were rude with the lady and expected her to carry the PC upstairs herself. He wants you to go downstairs NOW to check because they have a crisis…”

WHAT THE HECK!

I have three questions to ask this IT guy:

1. HAVE YOUR ARMS FALLEN OFF!?
   I was not in a position to run downstairs to get the pc at that time. If they had asked I would gladly have gone and fetched the pc later today. There are several men working in that office – CARRY THE PC FOR THE LADY IF YOU WANT IT BROUGHT UPSTAIRS IMMEDIATELY FOR GOODNESS SAKES!
2. HAVE YOU GOT ANY WORK PRESSURE AT ALL?
   It is great if you work in an environment where you can drop everything immediately and give attention to every random person who walks into your office at any given time. I DON’T.
3. WHO SUPPLIES YOUR “I AM IMPORTANT” PILLS?
   I would sure like a helping. Really. I would LOVE to be able to ask anyone to do things for me and expect them to jump.

How to REALLY handle your IT

Approach your IT support as you would your Doctor. He is busy, we are busy. Make an appointment and treat us with a modicum of respect. That is all IT really want. Time and respect.

If your IT really IS an ass, and yes there are some of them who are, treat the matter professionally.

There is a perception that IT people are there to serve the general populace, that is not accurate. IT guys are generally professionals with years of experience and training that equipped them with the skills to cope with you not making backups, or having a virus running rampant through your computer, or your Ipod not synching.

/rant

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