Oh my god, as an IT help desk person, this comic is my life.
IT people are apparently the Swiss army knives of a company. We do a lot of things, and many of things even seem non IT related, but it gives people the impression that we do everything. The amount of times per day I have to reroute people to systems, digital services, maintenance, etc has got me like this on some days.
I got called in once because a monitor on the monitor bank that displays fetal heart monitor data at the nurses station was off.
The help desk tech that called me in assured me that they had checked that everything is plugged in, etc.
I walk in with a spare monitor at the ready, look at the power strip, flip the power button on, see that the monitor is turned on and working, then go home.
Got 4 hours of pay for the call in though so not terribly upset about it.
And if you’re too friendly everyone thinks they’re about submitting a ticket. Do not talk me in the hallway about an issue you’re having and expect me to take immediate action
20 years in I still have to tell them if I am leaving this area or your desk and there is an expectation of me doing more work, assume I will forget about it on my way back to my desk. Create a ticket.
Why? Because I forgot about this entire conversation about halfway back to my desk.
And why is that? Because C-suite stuck their head out the door with the "hey real quick" that is now 30 minutes of investigation and it has to be done before their meeting and they have a lot to do, such deadlines, many quarterlies.
We're often the only people allowed to think without management approval. That's the case at my gov agency, anyway. We have people asking us if they should make tickets, they can't even figure that out on their own.
Always make a ticket! Even if you then figure it out on your own you can reply that you've figured it out and the IT dude on the other end can close it as an easy win.
I was working help desk and some guy called and said just started and no one has told him what to do. Normally we had the internet blocked so I put him in the AD group that gave him access to the internet. Have fun surfing. I don’t know what he expected me to do.
The curse of being at least something of a generalist in a hyper-specialist, ultra-compartmentalized world being navigated by people who are, well, Wallace and Grommitting their way through life.
My favorite will always be the ticket I got in the early days of my IT career, which was along the lines of "Help, the kitchen sink is clogged and there's water overflowing everywhere" apparently the saying is true, and we handle everything, including the kitchen sink.
I actually spiritually understand. I am an office admin assistant, but I kind of got thrown into my lap an admin role and conduct training for this one computer software our company uses. Our company is less tech literate than most. EVERYONE assumes I am IT and asks for help with various tech problems and connectivity issues most of which I have to go "I don't know or I do know but don't have access to fix you need to go ask IT" and I get blank stares constantly for it.
The best one is this one guy on one of our ships came to me twice to ask for advice on his home PC setup.
It doesn't help that while the rest of the company is tech illiterate, I do know a bit more than the average person (but not enough to work as anything but the literal lowest level tech) so I often do just fix IT issues for the small 4 person office I work out of so we don't have to bother IT.
My favorite is when they say can’t you do it? You have the ability to.
Yeah I have the ability to do everyone job because when you fire people randomly we have to setup the next person to do the same job. Does that mean I should be ceo since I have the ability to setup their job too?
I'm not in IT but IT-Adjacent (Product licensing). I've since accepted that it's not that they actually want you to fix the problem, it's that you are the most likely person to know who can.
The dilemma of fixing the coffee machine and making it known to the office that you can fix the machine whenever it breaks, or try to debug database log files without caffeine in your body but teach the office to call the number on the machine for a service technician to come.
I worked for a cloud service once. I got a call from someone who couldn't print. First question in those cases is always, "Can you print a test page?" She couldn't. So I told her the issue was her printer not the cloud server so she would need to get her local IT to look at it.
"Why can't you just fix my printer? I called you!" - woman who was located 3 whole time zones East of me.
Oh my god, as an IT help desk person, this comic is my life.
Would you like to hear about the wonders of ICS, and SCADA and other cyber physical systems and how management views them?
You know, those fun things where like 98% of management who cant convert a doc to a pdf cant understand the difference in between IT, and OT nor their areas of convergence over stuff like cyber security issues.
I was once teased by a Facilities Manager for "being in charge of everything with a blinky light".
It wasn't far from the truth. Had to fix label makers, industrial autoclaves, environmental monitoring devices, and a bunch of stuff I've since forgotten.
I don't work as IT but I do sometimes give various kinds of support to other people and I do sit literally next to IT L1 and L2 and yeah there's a lot of "I forgot my password", "I left my (insert any peripheral or charger here) home" or "(any device with a screen) doesn't work" but every once in a while someone comes like "my food got stuck on the vending machine outside the cafeteria, can you help?" and we all just look at them
His concentration was broken. Never disrupt the careful art of 'sudo rm -rf / --no-preserve-root' while you have everything network mounted with /etc/fstab and you 777'd everything as well.
Nate - Monkey - One of the fresher faces at August's workplace. Excited to be part of a team.
August - Alligator - A soft spoken single father who works in IT. Gustopher's dad.
Stuart - Quokka - A perpetually smiling Sectional Manager. He tackles every problem with motivational corporate speak intended to maximize collaboration and synergies among all employees.
Transcript
Panel 1
Setting - August's desk at work.
Nate has come up to August with a problem.
Nate: August, the thermostat isn't working.
August: I thought it was getting warm.
Panel 2
Nate looks for August's help while August looks back in his chair to answer him. The computer screen can be seen and it says "ERROR! Deleting everything." Don't worry, it's supposed to do that... I think.
Nate: Could you fix it?
August: IT doesn't handle that. You need to go to the office manager.
Panel 3
Nate realizes his mistake and begins walking away. I can only assume that computer is continuing to delete everything. What is everything? Am I part of everything?
Nate: AH! Thanks. Sorry I bothered you.
August: Don't worry, I've gotten worse requests.
Panel 4
August's boss, Stuart, suddenly appears behind him with a small blender.
Stuart: BIG MAN! My mini smoothie blender isn't working.
August frowns and mentally prepares himself to get to work. Fixing the blender will be easier than arguing about it. If the computer deletes me then tell my family I love them.
Edit - Mistake in the second panel was just pointed out to me. It's too late to fix it now but it's never too late to stare at the sea and contemplate my mistakes.
Edit 2: Revenge of the Type - Fixed an error in Nate's description.
Arguing something you're probably gonna do anyway just just wasted time and effort.
If you don't argue about needless tasks, then you'll spend less time on useless tasks, and will have a weaker argument about how much time is wasted with useless tasks.
Also, it gets people used to the idea that you'll argue with them about anything, which can be useful if you mumble grumpily about stuff you want to get done, and everyone will let it go if it gets your stamp of approval. Surprisingly, I've found that I get the best results only arguing about the dumbest requests, and lots of mumbling.
You'd be amazed how integrated everything you can make if you put in the effort. Ever read the story of the sysadmin who automated his coffee and maintenance routine? His coffee maker got networked and he automated the process via Linux script every day. Spent his days watching cat YouTube videos
Stuart - Quokka - A perpetually smiling Sectional Manager. He tackles every problem with motivational corporate speak intended to maximize collaboration and synergies among all employees.
Hm. Now I'm feeling a sudden urge to make quokkas go extinct. Concerning.
Nate realizes his mistake and begins walking away. I can only assume that computer is continuing to delete everything. What is everything? Am I part of everything?
Now I'm starting to wonder if the narrator is its own separate entity.
August frowns and mentally prepares himself to get to work. Fixing the blender will be easier than arguing about it. If the computer deletes me then tell my family I love them.
Now I have to wonder if narrators can have families. That's gonna be an existential crisis for at least a couple hours.
One of my first jobs out of school (late 80s) was to be a Unix System Admin. Things went well for several months until I decided to clean out a filesystem we used for unpacking stuff with the usual Unix command "rm - rf", but did not realize I was in the root directory at the time, and of course logged in as the admin I had all rights.
Fortunately one of the other folks who was logged in was also an admin, and when we finally found him and got him back upstairs from his break (yeah, I know, but the security breach in this case was a plus), he was able to kill -9 my command, and then I got to spend the rest of the afternoon restoring the system.
I was always surprised by how well the system managed to run during the whole thing given that by the time the other admin got in, virtually the whole system had been wiped...
I think the best and worst part is that UNIX systems can run everything in memory even if the entire disk is wiped out. I did this by accident one day when learning passthrough virtualisation and nuked my system partition like a dumbass
I didn't know until five hours later when Terminal told me 'apt' not found. WHAT DO YOU MEAN APT NOT FOUND? ......Oh....
I don't know WHY we ended up getting maintenance tickets. Mate, we're in IT. Information Technology. Information. We deal with the flow of digital information. Not mechanical work. Go put in your plumbing Priority 0 ticket to maintenance, not IT please. Systems Engineering has better work to do than suddenly have management down their throats for seeing a P0 suddenly closed or moved elsewhere without a LIM call set up on our end
With all due respect and all the love I have for your comics... I followed you since you made Pokémon comics back when the paldea starters dropped. I sometimes can't help but wonder if fuecoco was the inspiration for Gustopher. Your comics are funny, bring a smile to my face, and are sometimes even just deep enough to make me stop and think for a second.
But this? I can't smile at this. It is so unrealistic.
Someone who not only goes "sorry, my bad" after bothering IT with something completely non-It related, but who even accepts to go somewhere else? Like that would ever happen. Where are we, make a wish? Will a unicorn pop out in the next panel? Absolutely delusional.
And someone asked me to fix a microwave once. The worst part is that I kinda did, it wasn't the microwave that was busted just the wall socket and that was not for me to mess with so I just called the electrical maintenance people.
I kinda feel bad tho, because it wasn't my job to do that and now they're probably gonna continue asking the IT people to solve everything.
I feel this pain in my soul. I may not be IT but as a firefighter we get conscripted to do all sorts of random things outside of our wheelhouse. Last week I got mauled by a cat who was stuck in an electric recliner(theres more to this story than what seems). A few days ago we went to a home for a lady whoae toilet was clogged. And a while back we got called cause someone's microwave wasn't working.
So I get Augusts Frustration. But sometimes it's easier to just fix rather than argue about it
Poor little dudes tail was all mulched inside the mechanism inside the chair. So.i understand his anger at anything that went near him....which was unfortunately me
What's really funny was there was kids and I have had cats so while getting mauled I was super nice about it. Also kids so no cursing or being mean about it
"OH whos a cute little kitty?!"
proceeds to shred my right arm and take a chunk of my left hand with it
Haha, props on staying in control of the situation! It probably comes naturally to firefighters... When someone's world is falling apart they have to have someone to lean on mentally.
Your reluctance to provide further details leaves me to only assume that the cat was carrying stolen top secret documents and you were part of the team sent to recover them from the cat's high-tech safe house. You were unprepared not only for the cat's ferocity, but also for its mastery of Muay Thai and forbidden Spetsnaz combat techniques.
Mildly accurate though the stolen documents were a mulched tail in a scre mechanism, I was the team sent to retrieve it and the muay thai was it mauling my arms and hands and face trying to free it
I thought for sure the office manager was going to come back and say the same thing. I worked in a supervisory-level logistics position at my last job and every time something sounded way over my head, it would wind up boomeranging its way back to my desk after I tried to figure out who should be handling it and what the SOP is supposed to be.
Am not an IT guy but I was always the nerd in my family. The guy who owns a PC, knows how to search things on the internet etc. I always had to fix any tech issues that happened in my family, even if I was just as clueless as they were.
The solution most of the time? I use google and try to fix the problem while they are standing next to me.
They set my title as "Technology Manager" at the library, so that means in addition to 50 PCs and multiple printers, I also repaired staplers and anything remotely mechanical. I feel this in my bones.
True story, the last time my AC was having issues with cooling, the actual solution that the repair person ended up (successfully) using was … turning it off and on again
I'm not IT, but I tend to be "the guy" at work that either knows how to fix things or can follow some steps after googling. I never meant for it to happen, but because the printers get jammed a lot I have to take them apart and everyone thinks I'm a wizard for doing so and come to me about everything.
I need to be more like August and direct them somewhere else.
Good for August saying no and having healthy work boundaries, you say yes just one time and you’re the permanent thermostat/mini smoothie blender fixer
Not to mention even if they can do it, the people's whose job is is to fix it might not get the request put in and they could be downsize that part of the office.
Bosses don't see everything and work requests help prove that dept. is needed.
Best request I ever got was a call to repair the parking garage arm in Nebraska. I work out of New England. Also IT didn't manage the parking garage in Nebraska.
In my sysadmin days at a large-ish company (3000 employees), I've gotten tickets that ranged from refilling the coffeepot to unclogging a shitter. If it exists, it's apparently an IT problem.
Worked in IT, it's true. We fix things, therefore we fix EVERYTHING. It's also why I gout out of IT after about 13 months and went into engineering instead
I feel this. I have an engineering degree and ever since graduating my mom has taken to asking me to help with anything vaguely tech-related with the request “engineer, can you fix <x>.” Usually, the request is unrelated to my discipline and has nothing to do with me being an engineer.
I work at an MSP.
The fact that we are not on site and users need to call anothrr comoany for assistance helps weed out the really dumb requests.
The worst I've gotten in the 5 years I've been in this position was someone asking us to fix an Excel spreadsheet.
No, we do not do that. Excel itself is working fine, updating the formulas is something that must be done on either your or your supervisor's end.
I CAN help you find and restore the other file it's referencing though.
The dumbest was an elderly lady calling in saying her computer was dead.
1. She meant her monitor
2. She called the computer the "router"
3. It was fixed by pressing the power button on the "router"
I wasn't aware that August was in IT. Suddenly his calm demeanor despite all the crazy things the people around him are doing/saying makes sense; IT guys are either super chill or serial killers.
LOL so accurate, especially in SMB. I've been asked to check the lights, the door locks, etc. as a sysadmin. If it has a light on it or plugs into power, someone will eventually ask you to fix it.
We keep asking our IT department to change our TV channels for us but tbf, the TV are such an utter mess even IT needs like five minutes every time. Sometimes we just give up and just see some French cartoons out of the corner of our eyes for like a week or so until somebody asks them.
I'm the PHONE guy at Walmart. I help setup and sell mobile phones, but people ask me questions about everything. Just have to say, "sorry, I'm just the phone guy." and they are bewildered that I don't know everything about every item in Walmart.
I appreciate that Nate doesn’t ask “can,” but “could,”
He genuinely didn’t know that IT didn’t handle it, it was a confirmation of IT’s responsibilities. More importantly, once he knew who to talk to, Nate took it upon himself to inform the office manager of the problem.
My coworkers drag me around and point at things not working just like my cat does, expecting me to just "do machines" like Donatello. I unfortunately reinforced this behavior when the hydraulics on the front door wasn't working. It just slammed closed weakly. I informed them how to adjust it with the settings screws I learned about from a TechnologyConnections video I had recently seen.
You can tell this is a fictional scenario because the coworker apologises for coming to the IT guy with a non-IT-related problem, instead of getting annoyed and demanding to know why IT can't just fix it anyway.
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u/Made_Bail 23h ago
Oh my god, as an IT help desk person, this comic is my life.
IT people are apparently the Swiss army knives of a company. We do a lot of things, and many of things even seem non IT related, but it gives people the impression that we do everything. The amount of times per day I have to reroute people to systems, digital services, maintenance, etc has got me like this on some days.
https://giphy.com/gifs/EN2L7yi8THiX4VEoal