Three Things Your IT Person Isn’t Telling You

If you don’t have a designated IT person, chances are you have an ‘IT Guy or Girl.’ These seemingly omniscient beings know how to coax a malfunctioning computer back to life, persuade a printer to perform, and get all devices on a Wi-Fi network on speaking terms. Without them, you’d be sunk—or at least, you’d be hiring someone else, probably at a considerable expense, to walk you through finding the place to plug in your USB cable.

Guess what? There are some things these smart people aren’t telling you.

Three Things Your IT Person Won’t Tell You

Speaking as a long-time domestech (the unpaid go-to IT support person for family and friends), there are a lot of things I don’t say while I am helping people solve their PC woes. These range from “Come on, we’ve been over this about 10 times already!” to “Why didn’t you tell me that smoke was coming out of your DVD drive?!”For the most part, the problems unofficial IT-support folks get are fairly run-of-the-mill, although some may have us scratching our heads as much as a Neanderthal confronted with an iPhone.

So, next time you call in your IT-support person, know that he or she just might be thinking something like this:

1. Don’t Take Your Frustration Out on Me! We know that you want to smash your computer into exactly 1,365 little pieces, and you are exhibiting commendable self-restraint by not shoving your fist through the monitor. But we really wish you could calm down enough to tell us coherently what the problem is. Declaring, “Fix this thing! What does this box mean?” when we are still across the room doesn’t help us resolve the problem. So kindly call us in before you hit the red zone, and tell us what’s irritating you while you still can form complete sentences.

2. I don’t really know what the problem is, but I’ll fix it anyway. Lots of times your IT person has two or three ideas why your computer is behaving badly. Just as often, they may have only a foggy clue as to the source of the problem. Know how they fix it? They research it, typing the symptoms into Google. There’s a good chance that other people are having the same issue. Forums, knowledge-base articles, and blog posts usually have the information needed to make an educated guess. Once the problem is identified, we can follow the steps to fix it.

Could you try this process yourself? You could, but because of the complexity-slash-potential-for-error involved, we’d only recommend that those whose techno-savvy has reached at least an intermediate level attempt this sort of thing.

1. I Really Hope This Works! (And I’ve got a fail-safe set up, just in case it doesn’t.) Few of us are so confident that we can try a new recipe, drive in a new city, or speak our first few words of German without a qualm. Your IT person feels the same way before embarking on a fix—even if it’s one they’ve handled before. The potential for unexpected problems is always there, as every professional and semi-professional computer person knows.

As your company grows, you may even consider hiring a full-time IT professional, or at least hiring a company to be on-call for your complicated computer problems. Coincidentally, that’s what Techspert Services does, so keep us in mind when your IT person needs a hand!

Featured image credit: 123rf.com