In case of IT emergency, break out the chocolate

We all have ways of coping with our jobs. Mine is chocolate. You see, I work in IT support, which often means I’m the proverbial punching bag for frustrated users. People only call when there’s a problem, and every incident automatically escalates into an emergency that’s all IT’s fault. After so many negative encounters, these blowups can be difficult to shrug off.

For example, did you know IT is responsible for changing fundamental Microsoft code? According to an associate who came in one time, that was all on us.

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It was a simple problem: His system asked him for a password and he couldn’t figure out why. He brought his laptop over to show me this issue, demanding to know what was wrong — his password had worked just fine the day before. I took a look and informed him that his password had expired, and he needed to change it.

I figured he was a seasoned laptop user and would know how to change his password; he’d feel insulted if I helped him, so I stepped back. He got into the interface, entered his old password, clicked in the New Password box, typed his new password, and hit Enter. His computer didn’t like that and said the passwords didn’t match — which of course they didn’t since he only typed the new one once and had ignored the place where he was asked to type in his new password a second time to confirm it.

He tried it again. And again. After the third failed attempt, I gently reminded him that he had to type the new password twice before the computer would accept it.

“Well, when did you all change that?!?! It never asked me to do that before!!! Why didn’t you send out a memo that we now had to do that?”

Yep, that’s what he said. I stood there, dumbfounded. Microsoft had been requiring a confirmation of a password change for years, and this was Windows XP. Finally, he successfully changed his password and departed, but not before huffing and puffing about how I didn’t know how to do my job. I’m just glad that it was long enough ago that I can laugh about it now.

I hit the chocolate that day and many other times. Then there are those interactions when I’m reminded why I’m in this profession in the first place: I enjoy working with technology, but I also like helping people. At those times, the chocolate stays in the drawer.

A little gratitude goes a long way

One day, at 10 minutes before quitting time, I got a panicked call: “Are you still at work?” That question in itself was unusual, since most users don’t even think to ask.

The user explained that he’d spent most of the day working on a very important Excel spreadsheet and had even saved it periodically through the day. But now all his changes were gone, and he was growing more panicked and frustrated every minute.

I remotely connected to his machine, and he explained where the file was located. It was an attachment to an email. I explained why it’s never a good idea to work off an attachment to an email and to always save it to the computer and work from there. He showed me a file that he had saved to his computer — two weeks before.

I started the task of trying to locate his recent file changes. I zeroed in on the Outlook temp folder by opening the registry, finding the mentioned registry key, copying the folder path, and pasting it into Windows Explorer. I opened that folder and saw four copies of the file in question. I copied the files in question to a new folder on his desktop and opened the biggest, most recent version. All of a sudden, the stress level on the other end of the phone changed. “Wait, I think… yes… maybe… yes!! This is my file! Thank you, oh, thank you so much!!”

I left a little late, but with a spring in my step. It’s great to end the day on a high note, and I didn’t need any chocolate that time.

It’s the little things

One recent morning, one person told me I was her hero (I walked her through changing her email password on her iPhone), and someone else said I’d made his day (I helped him get a shipping program on his computer running correctly). I was on my way to another natural and non-chocolate-induced high, and I’d been at work for only an hour.

Then I got an email from a manager at a remote office; he was irate because his employee didn’t have a cellphone. The employee had started two months before, and the new hire ticket stated that he was supposed to have received a cellphone on his first day. Why hadn’t we sent it yet?

In my email response, I stated that I’d ordered a new phone and shipped it out to him two months before. I attached the order confirmation email, along with the tracking information, when it had arrived at his location, who signed for it, the device ID, and its activation status.

I followed up my email with a phone call to make sure he’d gotten the information and didn’t need anything else from me. He said he’d look around — that the employee who signed for it, who was his boss, may have set it aside.

Twenty minutes later, he sent another email with exactly two words: “Found it!”

I rang him to follow up on the details. When he answered, I asked, “Where was it?”

His reply: “In a pile of stuff on the corner of my desk.” The cellphone had been sitting there for two months, which he might never have known if I hadn’t kept all the documentation.

The user finally got his cellphone, the manager was no longer mad at me, and he was motivated to clean his office — which might mean one fewer panicked phone call to IT about other missing items.

In my job, I usually get blamed for problems, so it’s a welcome change when an issue is resolved and the user simply doesn’t point fingers. But on the rare moments when someone tells me I’ve made their day, this whole mess of an IT job is worth it. And my waistline is grateful for those days when the chocolate stays in the drawer.

Send your own IT tale of managing IT, personal bloopers, supporting users, or dealing with bureaucratic nonsense to offtherecord@infoworld.com. If we publish it, you’ll receive a $50 American Express gift cheque.

This story, “In case of IT emergency, break out the chocolate,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more crazy-but-true stories in the anonymous Off the Record blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.