It would be fair to say for the most part I hate my job. Somehow, as the company lost staff, I have morphed from a coder into a free roaming role as a programmer come IT Support Monkey, with more focus on the Support Monkey elements. It now means I have to personally deal with some fucking stupid retards on a daily basis. People who should be sent back in time to be banished to pen and paper for the rest of their existences. In fact, some of these people probably can't even tie their own shoelaces yet they're allowed near a computer. Essentially people with more teeth than brain cells.

If only IT Support was as easy as "have you tried turning it off and on again" and playing video games. I'm sure some people in IT Manager roles it probably is; unfortunately we support too many sites for there to ever be a quiet moment.

On the == side (it's not a plus side) I do have some tales of real stupidity that have got nothing to do with being IT Literate and just to do with the PEBKAC on the other end of the phone. If you're thinking of a job in IT I recommend taking in the following list before proceeding!

1. "Where's my e-mail?????"

No matter how many times you try and explain the concept of a spam trap to people, they always respond with "well I've never had this problem before!". Well fuck me mate, you must now know more than me about IT support... here, have my fucking job!!

I don't know what it is about email and just because someone can send one, they know more about its arrival than you do even when you try and give them a perfectly legitimate reason why it might not arrive instantaneously.

Cunts of all ages question me about this, whether it be the snot nosed twenty-something with his A-Level in IT, to the 72 year old crow who types with one finger, will only surf the web with her AOL browser and is an expert thanks to her NVQ Level 2 in Computer Literacy. They're all able to tell me more than I do about why their email should've got there.

You can tell them every trick in the book; zip attachments, don't use capitals or ambiguous titles for you email header, send me the address to whitelist, get the recipient to whitelist you, the list goes on obviously but for some reason they all think that by telling you their emails have arrived before this one should too.

2. "I can't print!!"

Supporting as many sites as we do, our clients have all sorts of shitty equipment. The best from our companies’ perspective are the ones who scrimp and save by using budget USB printers. We try and advise not to, telling them that in the long term it's actually less cost effective because they're a fucker to support. Do they listen? Do they bollocks!!

One such site could've saved themselves 100 hours of contracted support time (at £60 an hour) last year if they had only spent an extra £40 or so per printer by buying the network versions. What also doesn't help is that no matter how many times they're told, they never attempt to follow the cable back to the computer it's plugged into and turn that on before calling you. What's worse is you also continue to trick yourself into thinking they can't possibly have not turned that PC on again... but you'd be dead wrong!

3. "It wasn’t my porn that virused this machine…"

I have no problem with you surfing for porn whilst you're at work as long as you do it in Mozilla Firefox with Adblock Plus. You can even leave your history up and I’ll cover your tracks if and only if your machine is virus free. Do not, not, not, not, not expect any favours if you’re spending your lunches looking at trannies in Internet Explorer and then blame someone else for your machine being slow as fuck! Believe it or not, there are plenty of fuckers that do!

Of course none of them actually admit to it, but thanks to Internet Explorer leaving more clues about your porn tastes than the evidence against OJ Simpson, we can prove you’ve been downloading goats and midgets going at it. Again, it’s not like we’re bothered, it’s just to justify the inevitable hours of scanning, saving files, rebuilding and the other bullshit that goes with it.

4. Talking to people you hate
After a few months in the job you'll build up a list of people you hate with a passion. Whether they be The Whiner, The Expert, The n00b, The Bitch, The Snot Nosed Fuck, or The "I want this fixing right now!" Do You Know Who I Am Fuckwit, you'll start to recognise their voices and die a little more inside every time they call. Almost every job involve dealing with people you don't like, I just think in IT Support you get more pissed off because you have to actually help these cunts then they still treat you like something they've scraped off the bottom of their shoe.

You also get the arseholes that want to be your friend and try and spark up idle chit chat whilst you're clearing Tubgirl off their machine. Unless you're trying to tell me you're going to college to study computers and this will be the last time you call me, just fuck right off and die in a fire. Maybe this is just because I'm used to being able to growl at people when they interrupt me whilst coding and it pisses me off I have to humour these cretins. Maybe it's just because I'm the massive cunt. Who knows...

5. Indigo Papa Charlie Oscar November Foxtrot Indigo Golf
The amount of times I say this phrase in a day is ludicrous. It's also ludicrous the amount of people who still manage to typo a phonetically spelt out word.

6. "My Internet's going slow..."
What is it about being in a place of employment that makes people think their internet access should be the same or faster than they have at home? Is it that people think because they're "plugged into the internet" it is the same speed where ever they're connected?

Do these people sit in a traffic jam ringing their car manufacturer and say "well I usually drive down the street at 30mph.. why can't I during rush hour!?". This is the simile I use every time I get some imbecile ringing me between 12 and 2pm complaining of slow internet access. Every cunt is on Facebook you moron, not just you! Just be grateful we haven't blocked access to it and have some patience...

7. Being an Instant Expert on all software
There are several bits of software I run into from time to time that I despise. Norton Internet Security, Incredimail and Opera are all pretty major offenders of Crimes Against Software Engineering but my biggest pet peeve is Sage Line 50 and it's partners in crime. The worst part of this software is almost always the cunt on the other end of the phone...

"I'm an accountant not a computer expert... that's why I've called you!"

I've actually had some mother fucker say that to me in the past because I couldn't resolve an issue with Sage doing something "funny" his Purchase Ledger. Firstly there's nothing funny about Accountants, nor is there anything funny about the software they use. I'm actually more surprised the software still doesn't run in an emulated Windows 3.11 16-bit mode of some description... we all know how you don't like anything with a bit of extra flair that isn't needed, even if it is in the buttons and layout... using Sage in Vista must be like hell for you guys!

Just because I can "fix your computer" doesn't make me an instant expert in every piece of software on the market, and it especially doesn't make me an instant expert in software designed for specialist jobs like Accountancy or Graphic Design, nor does it mean I understand your bookings system or till. Before calling me, try the software manufacturers own technical support, or if you're not wanting to speak to an Indian Call Centre, try Google...

8. The Holier Than Thou Apple Mac User
Fortunately, over all the sites we support there are only a handful of Sameheads that use Macs. Contractually, just like Windows Vista, we are not required to support any system with it on so if we do get a Mac user with a problem I can just hang up on them, or even better, give them something evil to do in the terminal just to fuck it up even further. rm -rf / usually does the trick...

I get most frustrated with the smug overtone they have over PC users whenever I'm onsite fixing something. You know the one.. the "oh that wouldn't have happened on a Mac" voice. You know what Mac Users? The reason no one writes exploits for Macs isn't because they're so great or it's difficult to hack, it's because they're used by uninteresting n00b cunts. No one is interested in having a backdoor to a load of gay porn or pictures of unicorns on the hard disk of some Gaylord Mac Fan Boy when they can be attempting to crack a Windows or Linux server. You also know why there are no native Mac OS web servers (Apache on OSX doesn't count)? It's because they'd look pretty and be fucking useless.. ran by smug twats with Fine Art Degrees who wear tweed. They'd be secure though... again, only because no one would want access to a server hosting Unicorn Appreciation sites and pictures of George Michael...

The bottom line is IT Support is the bottom of the Computing barrel. If you're currently doing an IT qualification after being tricked into believing the average salary in it is £37k well quite frankly you deserve to deal with this shit on a daily basis. Just have a look on any job website and you'll see plenty of IT Management type jobs on sub £20k (or the classic £16-£30 depending on experience. Expect £14k and a pay review after 3 months that never happens!), if you didn't look at this beforehand you're an idiot. Fortunately for me I'm a Software Engineer and I'm only dipping my toes in this tepid pool of afterbirth of a job. If Id've trained especially for it, man.. I'd been looking for a shotgun right about now!

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