Opaque Lucidity

Rules From Helpdesk Guy

One of my job responsibilities is to answer the helpdesk line. There are only three of us in the IS department, so there is no designated helpdesk attendant; it is a shared duty. The busiest time for the helpdesk is early in the morning when most of the employees arrive and boot up their PCs for the first time. That's the time when you find out that you forgot your password or your hard drive has died. Wonderful.

If you work for a company that has a helpdesk line, please allow me to pass on some pearls of wisdom I have learned. I'm not trying to sound harsh. Rather, I'm trying to make the experience more comfortable for you and the over-worked IT guy with whom you are speaking.

1. Less talking, more listening. Chances are very, very good that I know what's wrong with your PC within 10 seconds of your call. Thus, once you have given me the symptoms, please stop talking and listen. I don't need to know every detail of what you were doing---if I need more info I'll ask. On the other hand, don't speak as if every word costs a dollar and the money is being withdrawn from your paycheck. Phrases like "My PC don't work" does nothing for me and makes me less than enthusiastic about solving your problem because you obviously don't care.

2. Do it anyway. If I ask to you to restart your PC, don't interrupt me by saying that you've done that eight times already. You are exaggerating. I'm telling you this in an attempt to fix your problem, not make your life more difficult.
If you had fixed the problem, you wouldn't be talking to me now.

3. This is not the complaint line. I don't care which e-mail client you used at your old job---if you like it soooo much, please go back there and leave me alone. I don't write software, I only make sure it runs on the server and the client end. No, I don't know why that button was placed there instead of on the far left. My guess is that the developer smoke a spliff during lunch that day and thought the placing the button where it is was the greatest achievement ever accomplished by man.

4. Leave home at home. If you didn't receive that 78 MB home movie of your grandson being The Cutest Grandchild Who Ever Lived, that's because it was caught by our filter and I deleted it. You can't look at videos at work for a number of reasons, mainly because it's a waste of time. Look at it when you get home and stop calling me wondering why you didn't receive it. We have real, work-related problems to deal with down here.

That's it for now. I'm not mad about any one incident, but it seems to me that there is a growing rudeness among the people to whom I speak every day. Part of it may be summer and the fact that the kids are home on vacation. But you know what? You birthed 'em, not your IT guy.