Jerry Baum's Living Room

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 children's art. We don't have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.

Don't write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages from our video recording.

When an IT person says s/he's coming right over, go for coffee. That way you won't be there when we need your password. It's nothing for us to remember 300 login passwords.

When IT Support sends you an e-mail with high importance, delete it at once. We're just testing.

When an IT person is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and spill your problems right out. We don't even like eating food, we exist only to serve.

Send urgent e-mail all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.

When we do something as a favor in our own time at our own expense, feel free to criticize us.

That's OK, we don't expect you to lift anything or get under your desk. Manual labor was part of our IT degree.

When the photocopier doesn't work, call Computer Support. There's electronics in it.

When you're getting a NO DIAL TONE message at home, call Computer Support. We can fix your telephone line from here.

When something's wrong with your home PC, dump it on an IT person's chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem. We love a challenge.

When an IT person tells you that computer screens don't have cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument.

When an IT person tells you that he'll be there shortly, reply in scathing tone of voice: "And just how many weeks do you mean by shortly?" That motivates us.

When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes. When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to all 68 printers in the company. One of them is bound to work.

Don't learn the proper name for anything technical. We know exactly what is meant by "my thingy blew up".

When you call someone in to fix a problem - but don't tell them about the other 10 problems until they physically arrive. That's OK - we can clear our schedule for the rest of the day.

Don't use on-line help. On-line help is for wimps.

When your application can't do what you want... blame us, we write all the software that runs on your PC and can customize it on the fly. Bill Gates lets us do this.

Remember the IT guy doesn't need to think - he has seen every problem before.

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 20 kg of computer sitting on top of them.

If the space bar on your keyboard doesn't work, blame it on the mail/software/network upgrade. Keyboards are actually very happy with half a pound of muffin crumbs and nail clippings in them.

When you find an IT person on the phone, sit uninvited on the corner of their desk and stare at them until they hang up.

Feel perfectly free to say things like "I don't know nothing about that computer crap." We don't mind at all hearing our area of professional expertise referred to as crap.

When you need to change the toner cartridge in a printer, call IT Support. Changing a toner cartridge is an extremely complex task, and Hewlett-Packard recommends that it be performed only by a professional engineer with a Master's degree in nuclear physics.

When you think the network/e-mail/office application is going slow, call us as we have a button to press that makes it go back to it's normal speed.

When something's the matter with your computer, ask your secretary to call the help desk. We enjoy the challenge of having to deal with a third party who doesn't know about the problem.

The instant you call us (on our mobile) - we can see what's happening on your screen and can solve it instantaneously.

Be aware that IT people don't need to use the toilet. So you have a right to be upset if we don't answer the phone.

When you receive a 30MB movie file, send it to everyone as a mail attachment. We've got lots of disk space on that mail server.

When an IT person gets in the lift pushing ?100,000 worth of computer equipment on a trolley, ask in a very loud voice, "Good grief, you take the lift to go DOWN one floor?"

And finally, always remember.... we were sitting there waiting for your call.. The whole day!!!

Love,

The IT Department