What your computer person really thinks of you

1. When a tech says he/she's coming right over, log out and go for coffee. It's no problem for us to remember 2700 network passwords and we'll certainly know what's wrong by the brief, incoherent diagnosis you gave us before getting thre.
2. When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and Popsicles. We don't have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.
3. When tech support sends you an email with high importance, delete it at once. We're probably just testing out the public groups or sending around one of those insipid chain letters.
4. When a tech is eating lunch at his/her desk, walk right in and spill your guts out and expect him/her to respond immediately. We exist only to serve and are always ready to think about fixing computers.
5. When a tech is at the water cooler or outside having a smoke, ask him/her a computer question. The only reason we drink or smoke at all is to ferret out all those users who don't have working email or a telephone line.
6. Send urgent email ALL IN UPPERCASE. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.
7. When you call a tech's direct line, press 5 to skip the bilingual greeting that says he/she's out of town for a week, record your message and wait exactly 24 hours before you send an email straight to the director because no one ever returned your call. You're entitled to common courtesy.
8. When the photocopier doesn't work, call computer support. There's electronics in it, right?
9. When you're getting a NO DIAL TONE message at home, call computer support. We can even fix telephone problems from here.
10. When something is wrong with your home PC, dump it on the tech's chair with no name, no phone number, and no description of the problem. We love a good mystery.
11. When you have a tech on the phone walking you through changing a setting, read the paper. We don't actually mean for you to DO anything; we just love to hear ourselves talk.
12. When we offer training on the upcoming OS or line of business application upgrade; don't bother. We'll be there to hold your hand after it is done.
13. When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently just disappear into the cosmos for no reason.
14. When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to all 18 printers in the office. One of them is bound to work.
15. Don't use online help. Online help is for wimps.
16. If you're taking night classes in computer science, feel free to go around and update the network drivers or any other software for you and all your co-workers. We're grateful for the overtime when we have to stay until 2:30 am fixing them.
17. When you have a tech fixing your computer at a quarter past one, eat your lunch in his/her face. We function better when slightly dizzy.
18. Don't ever thank us. We love this AND get paid for it!
19. When a tech asks you whether you've installed any new software on this computer, lie. It's nobody's business what you've got on your computer.
20. If the mouse cable keeps knocking down the framed picture of your dog, lift the computer and stuff the cable under it. Mouse cables were designed to have 45lbs. of computer sitting on them.
21. If the space bar on your keyboard doesn't work, blame it on the mail upgrade. Keyboards work much better with half a pound of muffin crumbs, nail clippings, and big sticky drops of Coke under the keys.
22. When you get the message saying "Are you sure?", click on that "Yes" button as fast as you can. Hell, if you weren't sure, you wouldn't be doing it, would you?
23. Feel perfectly free to say things like "I don't know nothing about that computer crap". It never bothers us to hear our area of professional expertise referred to as crap.
24. When you need to add paper to the printer, call tech support. Changing the paper is an extremely complex task, and Hewlett-Packard recommends that it be performed only by a professional engineer with a Masters degree in Materials Science.
25. When something is the matter with your computer, ask your secretary or cubical neighbor to call the help desk. We enjoy the challenge of having to deal with a third party who doesn't know a thing about the problem.
26. When you receive a 30-meg movie file, send it to everyone as a high- priority mail attachment. We've got plenty of disk space and processor capacity on that mail server.
27. Don't even think of breaking large print jobs down into smaller chunks. God forbid somebody else might get a chance to squeeze into the print queue.
28. When you bump into a tech in the grocery store on a Saturday, ask a computer question. We work 24/7, even while at the grocery store on weekends.
29. If your offspring is a student in computer science, have him or her come in on the weekends and do school projects on your office computer. We'll be there for you when their illegal copy of Visual Basic 6.0 makes your Access database flip out. (See #19)
30. When you bring us your own no-brand home PC to repair for free at the office, tell us how urgently we need to fix it so your son can get back to playing DOOM. We'll get right on it because we have so much free time at the office. Everybody knows all we do is surf the Internet all day anyway.
31. Since we do nothing all day, we have plenty of time to listen to you babble about how talented your offspring is with computers (yea, installing AOL is a REAL challenge). I'm as confident as you that your kid will be the next Bill Gates... really. Here's a thought: How about getting them to fix your computer!