Be Nice to Your IT Guy (or Girl)

As a general rule IT people have big egos and the longer they've been in their current position the bigger that ego grows. Just like college professors.

One of the things I've learned being on both sides of the fence is that you don't want to make IT people mad at you. Some examples of how you can make IT people mad at you are:

• Calling or emailing them directly for every issue that you have when there is a process or a central place to launch an inquiry.
  
• Pretending to be smart about technology and/or asking them a hundred questions about how they plan to/or did fix something.
  
• Asking questions for which there is no easy answer (why is my computer running slow) and then snorting or rolling your eyes when they tell there is no easy answer
  
• Yelling at them.
  
• Sending nasty emails to them.
  
• Getting your managers manager to yell and/or be nasty to them.
  

I could go on for days.

Recently I was forced cheerfully agreed to take over the "PC Coordinator" (yes, the title is as demeaning as it sounds (at least in my eyes)) duties for my department. Taking over for an inept man who can now concentrate on his real job as International Mandatory Offers Processor. Exciting.

I like to call this man "Hopelessly Suppressed Still in the Closet Living in Denial Who is Prone to Various Outbursts and Other Aggressive Behavior". Not as catchy as "Kip" but what can you do.

Anyway, he put in this request to get something done almost 2 months ago. Of course, I am cleaning up after him, so I contact the Help Desk who tells me to contact this person in IT, so I send her an email nicely asking whats going on with it.

She replies back shortly telling me that the request was denied on 12/4 because it was on the wrong form. She kindly attached the proper form, and told me that when I filled it out to send it back to her directly and she would get it done ASAP. Cool.

Quickly scanning over the form I realize its all French to me, meaning, I don't understand one word of it other than "Associate Name." Like an IRS form.

Well, who better than to ask for help filling out this ungodly thing than Hopelessly Suppressed Still in the Closet Living in Denial Who is Prone to Various Outbursts and Other Aggressive Behavior, so I forward the email to him, and simply ask for a little guidance in filling out this DMV style form.

He does the unspeakable thing of launching off on a tirade sending her a vicious email about everything from David Beckham's wife's breast implants to how his Diet Caffeine Free Dr. Pepper is flat. He uses the email that I forwarded him, and CCs me. So now I'm horrified because I think that the IT person is going to think that he and I are like the Ambiguously Gay Duo of Corporate Actions. Not only that, but I'm thinking that this request will never get done now and I am going to be black listed from IT and never be able to get a job there or get ANY of these stupid requests done in a timely manner. (IT people have loooong memories).

I told him he shouldn't have done that. When he asked why, I simply said if you have to ask why then you just don't get it, man.

After a few days, I filled out the IRS form by myself, called her, told her a few jokes about guys with chintzy beards who drink Diet Caffeine Free Dr. Pepper and rednecks who call into local radio stations during the morning commute, and said I was forwarding the request to her.

We'll see how long it takes to get done.