Rant: IT department
Dear Mark:
Your machine needs a rebuild of the operating system as it is incomplete. Back up all your document files and then leave a message on ext ******* indicating a time when I can have the device for a couple of days. Will reformat the hard disk blah blah blah
signed,
You friendly IT dude.
How is that an acceptable course of action when I complain about a BUSTED COOLING FAN?! Seriously. I need my machine and I don’t want it taken away and fucked up by IT while I sit and scratch my butt. All it should take is fifteen minutes and a screwdriver, but no. We can’t have that. And when they take it, I bet they won’t even fix the fan.
The IT people here - screw it, IT people in general - are a pack of lazy misanthropic tools who would rather spend all morning tinkering with a perfectly functional OS that doing what they’re asked to do. (This is why I need a Mac - if they don’t understand how it works, they’ll probably stop trying to fix it.)
In fact, I’m not going to call IT support. So what if my desk catches fire?
11 Comments »
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Yeah. Let the bastard burn. There’s nothing like fire in the work/study place. Unless it’s anthrax, of course, that can be fun too. But things that explode and catch fire are much more fun I’m told. Happened here yesterday. And I missed it. Damn.
Comment by nailpolishblues — Tuesday July 26 2005 @ 5:49 pm
maybe if you made them chase red herrings all day??? “well I did get 10 emails from the IT department including something called sasser? I deleted them all.. is there an issue with your computers?”.. :P
Comment by tmz_99 — Tuesday July 26 2005 @ 7:11 pm
Mark,
There is bound to be a dead PC lying around somewhere. Grab a screwdriver and get a fan, then pull your computer apart and put in the new fan yourself.
When they show up to collect it, tell them they took so long/were so stupid/didn’t understand, so you just did it yourself. That’s bound to piss them off.
Comment by Graeme Sutherland — Tuesday July 26 2005 @ 7:37 pm
as manager of the IT contract at my work (we outsource…), i spend hours upon hours shielding my boys from unbridled (and often undeserved) criticism (as well as flirting wildly with… well.. pretty much all of them). Maybe it’s different where you are, but the people that I work with are a pack of fucking idiots, who can’t seem to tell their keyboard from their motherboard, and indeed, often struggle to even spell THEIR OWN NAMES correctly.
anyway, i love the helpdesk coordinater doubly so, because today he spent the afternoon uploading mp3s to our ftp site so i could listen while i worked, and pretending to be helping me with “critical support files” so i didn’t actually HAVE to work, and could instead just sit and listen.
hey wait… maybe this is the apathy that makes people like you hate people (you know, it geek by proxy) like me….
Comment by mc — Tuesday July 26 2005 @ 8:28 pm
I blame Bill.
But really, just get a copy of Linux on CD, wipe that windows right off the hard drive and install a proper operating system.
Come on, you know you want to. Put those Windows geeks back in their box and take contol :-)
Comment by Morgan — Wednesday July 27 2005 @ 12:06 am
IT at my work think the sun shines out of their arse’s therefore that means they dont have to do any work. Like hell! Fuckers. Really shits me of.
Comment by Tash — Wednesday July 27 2005 @ 10:40 am
Nails - we really need to make use of all these fire drills, don’t we?
TMZ - Hmm, you might have an idea there…
Gra - I’ll have to get myself one of those wrist-strap static thingos, won’t I? Might be an option.
MC - Some IT guys are okay, like your ones. But some are patronising and useless. It’s not apathy - they’re keen on their job, but can’t seem to do it with style or even competence. (I must be a geek too, if I think you can do IT support with ’style’ - but you can.)
Morgan - We’re networked here, and I don’t know if I can match up the security systems. I should try a run-from-CD version and find out…
Tash - Abso-freakin-lutely.
Comment by Mark — Wednesday July 27 2005 @ 2:24 pm
Back up your document files is poor advice. Also back up your templates, fonts, macros, emails, signatures and favourites.
Comment by The voice of bitter experience — Thursday July 28 2005 @ 12:19 am
Morgan - We’re networked here, and I don’t know if I can match up the security systems. I should try a run-from-CD version and find out…
I actually tried a Mandrake Move live CD on our computers at work and it actually allowed me to connect to the internet through Konquorer. I could see the network drives with Samba but as I didn’t have the passwords.. And I couldn’t write to the local drive as it’s formatted NTFS. Mind you, a quick use of fdisk and mkfs.ext3 will fix that little problem…
Comment by Morgan — Thursday July 28 2005 @ 4:31 am
Remind me again which uni you’re working @ ? Coz if it’s “Club Mac”, then the IT staff are indeed particularly useless, and have been since the days I started my BA there a decade ago !!!
Probably longer … they were probably useless back in the 70’s too !
Comment by DisappearingBoy — Thursday August 11 2005 @ 2:07 pm
Exact location is under wraps - but I do indeed know your frustration. This guy, for some reason, was preoccupied with spyware and viruses, and would talk me through everything he did, as if I didn’t know what was what. And then he would pick a random bit of paper off my desk and write notes on it. Tool. At least he left eventually.
Comment by Mark — Thursday August 11 2005 @ 2:17 pm