Dear IT,
First and foremost, allow me to establish a little geek cred.
My favorite book is Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time.
I knew what the phrase “Winter is coming” meant long before HBO did.
I occasionally say “Bazinga!”
I know SCRUM and agile and how to run a sprint for two weeks.
I grew up on Daredevil and like to pretend it was never turned into a movie.
Sometimes, at random moments of the day, I’ll think about Jar Jar Binks and get mad.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I need to confess something.
I need to apologize because, you see, Christians aren’t supposed to lie. The Bible is clear about that one. There’s no fuzziness about that particular idea. Getting angry and causing a fuss? We kind of have to pretend that whatever we’re angry about is exactly like the situation where Jesus ran through the temple with a whip. Anger takes some creativity to get around.
Lying? That one is hard to argue with.
That’s a no brainer. Simple as sin.
Which brings me to every phone call I’ve ever had with IT.
Whenever I call you with a computer problem, you always ask me the same thing:
“Have you rebooted it?”
At which point I say, with mild disgust that you would think I forgot to do such a simple thing, “Of course!”
But the truth is, I haven’t. I never restart my computer before I call you. That doesn’t even make my top 5 things to do when my computer breaks, which are:
1. Ask anyone sitting within earshot if their computer is broken too. There’s strength in numbers, and I’m always hoping it’s a network issue, not a Jon issue.
2. Refuse to look at the list of common computer problems most companies have conveniently placed on the Intranet.
3. Blow on my keyboard like I used to on my copy of Contra for the Nintendo. (The 80s & 90s were very dusty decades.)
4. Ask the people sitting near me to “Please double check you can get online right now. Are you sure you’re not having problems with the internet?”
5. Call you directly, thus completely bypassing the very clearly communicated way to file an IT ticket online.
Then you ask if I’ve rebooted my computer and I say “of course!” But I haven’t. Instead, I usually try to drag out the words “Offfffff Courrrrrssssseee” long enough for me to turn off my computer while I am answering your question about turning off my computer because I feel like that makes it a little true. Or kind of true. Or sort of true. Whatever one means “Not wicked bad.”
But, as far as I can tell, there’s no “kind of true” listed in the Bible, so I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
And perhaps more importantly, when iTunes does one of its billion updates next week, please help me with that. It says I need an admin password, and you are the keeper of those.
Question:
Be honest: Have you ever lied to IT?
