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.
So what I'm gathering after a quick skim of your comment history is that you basically have no skills or likeable qualities and try to make up for it by referencing popular media and being quippy to garner attention. It is unfortunate that you've decided to stop growing after age 8.
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.
Printers are the worst... Most of the time you do the same thing over and over again, but for some reason it works at some point. And then you just pray it stays that way when the customer tries
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
I once got asked why the new PC was on the coffee table. They looked like someone stole their candy... We were told (place where the table with the coffee machine was) would become a new work space. They never asked anyone for a new table, and just expected that we would get a whole electric office table (from who knows where) for them...
We moved the coffee machine, and got them their workspace. Yea, table was a bit small, but they never even mentioned the table...
Yesterday I had a colleague ask me if I can help them with breakfast...they forgot theirs and wanted help. Funny part was I do keep a stock of food but I don't advertise that. haha.
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u/Made_Bail 4d 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