Ode to IT Friends

There are so many benefits to working from home, including avoiding rush hour traffic, putting on sweats at 7am and staying in them all day, going to the grocery store in the middle of the day, and walking around neighborhood lakes on a beautiful afternoon.

However, I miss my IT support. I miss being able to call Mike, Ken, or Steve to rescue me when a program isn’t responding, or my computer freezes, or I can’t network to the right printer. These are the true heroes of any office. You may have an important presentation or report or proposal to write and print out, but you won’t do it successfully unless you and your computer are in perfect harmony. Whether you are in creative, finance, marketing, production, or human resources, your computer is your lifeline, your link to the outside world and within your company.

We are so accustomed to sending a meeting reminder, checking for updates on a project, sending a weekly status report or submitting expense reports online, on our computers, at the comfort of our desks. But when things aren’t working properly (or working at all) it feels frustrating and I feel helpless.

I am not a tech geek (I mean that in the most loving and respectful sense), so I try my best to muddle through. I read the online help FAQs. I call the customer service number when necessary. I search Google for similar situations and solutions. And very occasionally, and many hours later, I’m successful.

More often, though, I feel like a complete moron.

I have been reminded of my admiration for all those IT and tech support gurus I’ve worked with over the years as I’ve switched my phone and Internet service from Verizon to Comcast recently. It’s time to save money and look at bundled packages…plus the fact that any time it rained, the Verizon phone service decided not to work. People couldn’t call us and we couldn’t call out. (I have been completely flummoxed at how telephones in the year 2010 – 133 years after the telephone was invented – would not work properly day to day. After all, I live in the suburbs of Washington, not in a remote, mountainous region of the world.)

So, out with Verizon and in with Comcast (well, not completely, so far). The Internet stopped working after a few days, my wireless router has yet to arrive (11 days after ordering it from Comcast), the telephone has an odd beep (as though the line is bugged), and the tech person at Comcast, although trying to be very helpful, didn’t know anything about Macs. So 11 days after all my communication problems should have been solved (according to my perhaps too high expectations), I am still not technically in the 21^st century. At least Verizon had dedicated Mac specialists to walk me through DSL and connectivity issues – they get an A for tech support!

I currently have one little Ethernet cord in my unfinished basement, where the Comcast internet connection lives, through which I can connect with the outside world while sitting in a too-small child’s chair at a makeshift desktop. It’s not comfortable and it’s not what I expect but at least the Comcast Internet works (currently). Perhaps the wireless router is on the way; I remain hopeful. Yes, I bought one anyway but Comcast won’t provide tech support for anything except their own equipment.

And don’t even get me started on my new printer issues and its inability to print when I hit the print key nor to have any help topic related to the error message I receive.

I have longed for my own IT Mac guy to wander up to my door and know exactly what to do…I have dreams that once again we’ll be able to network all of the laptops and printers in my home and that the wireless will work with blazing speed from any room. To all the tech support people I know and have been fortunate to work with over the years, I salute you. You are my heroes.