And they run the entire accounting department.

Posted by MundaneMaybe@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 62 comments

I'm not technically IT, I just have half a brain and more than 3 functioning brain cells. Which is more than I can say for a lot of people who work for my company when it comes to technology. I often get asked to help my coworkers with fuzzy screens, lagging programs, printer problems of all shapes and sizes, etc. most of the time I don't mind but every now and again I do question my existence.

Recently, I started to take lunch. We've always been able to, I just never have due to being busy and really dedicated to corporate abuses. When I take my break I make sure to block out the time and label it "lunch" on my calendar. All my calls are forwarded, and I tell my direct counterpart where I'm going. Only then do I peace out for an hour.

Today, just after getting to my car, I got multiple phone calls from our CPA on my cellphone. I seriously thought about answering but chose not to as I'm not the only person they could call in case of emergency.

Upon returning from lunch the CPA accosted me in what had to be less than 3 minutes. They were absolutely frantic. Apparently, the owner of the company had called them into an unexpected client meeting and the computer was not working. I was practically dragged to the conference room where a comedy of errors presented themselves.

First, the computer had not been turned back on from over the weekend.

Second the monitor had been unplugged when the cleaning crew was vacuuming but never plugged back in. The plug is EXTREMELY obvious.

Third, the wireless keyboard and mouse were being charged and had been switched off.

I sighed, plugged the monitor back in, turned on the computer, set up the mouse and keyboard, and got the meeting back on track in record time.

The CPA easily makes 3 times what I do but sometimes I wonder if they know how to breath without referencing an illustrated diagram.

Apologies for formatting as I'm on mobile.

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Xibby@reddit

I’m in IT and honestly… I call the specialist for conference room stuff. Teams meeting rooms are great when working properly. When they’re not… you want the person who knows the setup.

Back in the day when I dealt with conference rooms we had to add security cables to every dongle and whatnot or someone would procure themselves a spare. All they had to do was put in an IT request for whatever adapter and they’d get it, but naw stealing from conference rooms was easier.

And when something didn’t work let’s just start unplugging stuff, yanking on panels, move the table and break the cables that went to the floor trench.

The company who prided itself on hiring adults suddenly had to post a long list of rules that would get you written up because of the tens of thousands of dollars people were doing to the conference rooms when something didn’t work.

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fixit858@reddit

I worked for a large software company as a conferencing tech can can validate every word in your post.

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Xibby@reddit

My best conference room story is the facilities manager who got tired of people procuring themselves a new office chair from a particular conference room. He got all new chairs for the conference room. They were upholstered in a whimsical zebra print. 😂

The unspoken message was “If you have a zebra print chair at your desk you will be written up.”

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joule_thief@reddit

Had someone climb onto a table to "adjust" the projector. Dude almost removed himself from the gene pool when he fell off of the table.

I've been in IT for ~27 years and I have to say that was a first.

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rbad8717@reddit

God I remember those days. As IT we were not only responsible for the projectors, computers, etc but we also had to do table and chair setups too

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Warfieldarcher@reddit

Had similar conference room woes when I was working. One that comes to mind was when we set up a new conference room at my school. 75 inch screen, coffee machine, comfy chairs, the whole thing. One nice touch was a local wireless connection point to the screen. When turned on, the screen showed a code which allowed users to remote onto the screen. Not a cheap thing but really useful and everyone loved it. Got called to the room one day as the 'magic box's wasn't working. When I got there, the box was missing. I got the meeting going the old fashioned way with cables. It turns out the person who used the room most often had removed the box to use in his own office so he didn't need to fiddle with cables. He was quite upset when told to put it back and no, he couldn't have his own

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zaro3785@reddit

Clearly he just wasn't high up enough in the ladder

economic-salami@reddit

This is more of a corporate culture problem imo. It probably isn't that this guy didn't know how to turn on a PC, it would be that he doesn't have that authority to handle mundane IT troubleshooting episodes. Consider for a second what would have happened if that guy plugged in and something unexpected happened. Who would be getting the blame?

TraditionalTackle1@reddit

I’ve been in IT over 20 years and this is the norm, boy do I have stories.

And this is the place for them

We had a lady at a previous company working in finance that literally made 3 times as much as I did. She worked remote a lot and when she would have to reset her password from home she never did it the right way and would always end up locking herself out of her computer. There were days where she would call us 3-4 times to unlock her account. We had endless training sessions with her to no avail. And then all of a sudden it stopped.

We were curious as to what changed so we asked her, she said that when she works from home she keeps her cell phone (which had her company email on it) in a different room. We all looked at each other like she was crazy and said Ok well if that works, great news.

TheLazySamurai4@reddit

I still never forget my classmate back when we were in the network technician program in college. They managed to get one of the 2 available student IT positions, and one of their calls was to turn the lights on to the classroom, for a prof that had been there for 10 years

PM_ME_YOUR_REPO@reddit

I'd love to hear some of them. Are there any subreddits for sharing stories from that field?

Evlavios@reddit

You are IT.

Congratulations on your unpaid promotion!

xyzzytwistymaze@reddit

If it has a power cord, blinking light it is now your responsibility. Coworkers will call your name as you walk down the halls. Lunchtime will be the best time to seek you out. Also if you come early to the office, coworkers will be waiting at your office door.

Numerous_Release9273@reddit

I worked in IT developing SCADA software. It was used for monitoring and control of pipelines, power substations etc. Early on we were developing a system for an oil company in Calgary and one day their PM told me that they had scheduled a demo for upper management. I.e. the PM's boss's boss and others at that rank.

I came in early to make sure the system was working OK. It was not. The computer booted OK, the console showed everything was working perfectly but the plant operator's screen was completely blank. I tried this and that and the other but noting changed. I was beginning to panic. Strangely, the customer's PM seemed perfectly calm. Which was unusual because he had a Type A personality.

Finally, in desperation, I called our home office in the hope that someone would be there and able to help. Got in touch with our support engineer and described my problem. His comment was "Did you check to see if the plug had fallen out on the back of the operator's screen."

I was a really good programmer and trouble shooter. That hadn't occurred to me. So cut the guys some slack over the monitor being unplugged. Please. It happens to the best.

Geminii27@reddit

Did you ask them why they didn't call IT?

HelpfulPhrase5806@reddit

If it is set up like ours, IT is 45 minutes away by car and do a good job as long as they can remote in; however, they cover an area of 16,434 km² so getting them to come on location is a pain. Probably set up for next week when they take a swipe of that area.

Getting a PC turned on is not something you need credentials to do. You dont have to know IT, only have common sense. Smart managers keep one of two of those on the team just to keep it up and running. Or at least a spare laptop they know how to set up to keep going until emergency IT arrives in a week or so.

It's still not your wheelhouse. Either the employer provides better IT responses, or the staff in general get trained to handle minor IT issues. Neither of those things results in one person being an unpaid tech for an office.

chrash@reddit

In the 90s, I worked IT at a hospital where nurses didn't know what "load legal" on a laser printer meant. These were younger nurses who had graduated in the last 5-7 years. There was no way I'd trust them to put drugs in me.

MidowWine@reddit

To be fair, I don't know either what "load legal" on a laser printer means.

NotTheOnlyGamer@reddit

Put in 8.5" x 14" paper.

Ok, that explains it. I'm German. Closest thing to legal paper would be "A4"-paper - I guess. It has almost the same width, but is not as long.

That is indeed something someone handling a printer should know.

You're welcome. A4 is closer to Letter size, actually. You don't really have an equivalent to Legal, because A3 is closer to Ledger.

MyFavoriteInsomnia@reddit

Load legalize paper

sharonna7@reddit

I would. They went to school for that. At no point does their curriculum cover paper sizes. I'm 37 and just recently learned what the "pc" in "pc load letter" means. I don't assume someone doesn't know how to do their specialized job just because they haven't had to learn what legal size paper is.

lastwraith@reddit

Maybe they should, I don't know, hire a fucking IT person?!

How are these CPAs who, you'd think, would understand the value of money, but don't realize they need actual IT.

Ridiculous.

NotYourNanny@reddit

And then you can get someone like the contractor we just showed the door for some stores we bought. The several months we had to deal with them to get certain equipment transferred to our control, the only skills they demonstrated were cashing checks and ignoring tickets. They did manage to actually do something once, but it was to get in the way and knock the entire store offline.

Nothing is going to fix awful hiring practices, but I can assure you that things will go terribly if you have NO professional IT staff when something bad actually happens.

Nothing is going to fix awful hiring practices,

I disagree. We fixed it. By showing them the door. Took a change in ownership, but it worked.

commentsrnice2@reddit

I would argue it wasn’t the firing that fixed the hiring practice, it was changing the owner who was doing the hiring

We haven't hired anybody to replace them. (We do it all internally.)

lesethx@reddit

Having worked at an MSP, a lot of smaller companies don't have a dedicated IT person, even at 200 employees sometimes. They either have someone who knows computers enough, or hire 3rd party (MSP) they can call or have visit weekly

sir_mrej@reddit

The CPAs understand the value of money and are keeping it.

Having unofficial IT is great until it isn't and then everything is down or worse (ransomware, etc).

Tarlonniel@reddit

They don't need actual IT if they can get away with not paying OP to be not technically IT. Even better if it's on their lunch break.

That's up until the point where OP gets in way above their pay-grade and then business grinds to a halt.

I can't imagine that's cost effective to hire emergency IT in that situation who doesn't know the environment at all, but maybe that's why I'm not a genius CPA at this location.

LupercaniusAB@reddit

If you have your calls forwarded, how did he call you?

MundaneMaybe@reddit (OP)

I forwarded my work phone but they called my personal phone

LesbianDykeEtc@reddit

And this is why I never, ever give out my personal number at work.

Ah, thanks.

ozzie286@reddit

Probably meant the office phone, not their personal cell.

Timmibal@reddit

Depending on phone, provider and software, some forwarding options will still show the missed call.

SignalRow0@reddit

I feel your pain, brother. Some people shouldn't be allowed to touch anything electronic. Period.

do_IT_withme@reddit

Ok now calculate the companies finacials and prepare the report for the SEC. An employees value isn't always in knowing how to plug in a monitor.

Been there on the lunch thing. I recall 1 of the larger clients forced me to take lunch outside their building otherwise I never got a break, and even then my lunch was offset from everyone else's because they would drop off a laptop then go on lunch themselves, expecting it to be ready when they got back. I swear, a lot of people think of IT as robots not needing food or breaks.

RayEd29@reddit

As a CPA that provides IT services I say this is why you should never put the accountants in charge of anything other than accounting - even then, be careful how much power you give them because they are NOT good with it. That's not to say there aren't any people out there with accounting skills that DO have a brain cell or three to make good decisions.

Just, in general, don't let the bean counters run the business if they don't have a thorough understanding of the operational side of things. I've seen countless stupid policies put in place in the name of financial responsibility that completely ignore the issues and concerns of the business those policies are meant to support.

As an accountant you are OVERHEAD! Business decisions should be made to support revenue generation not overhead. The definition of revenue generation is your customers and those in your employ that directly work with and for the customers. Look at where the money comes from and make things easy on those folks. F**K the accountants! They get paid to figure things out - make them actually do their job instead of kowtowing to them at the expense of your revenue generation folks.

spaceraverdk@reddit

Case in point. Mercedes Benz. Before 1995, the company was run by engineers and they produced some of the greatest cars ever made. After the bean counters got a foot in the advisor board, they tanked the reliability index. The company took a huge amount of flak for switching to water based painting and environmentally degradeable wiring looms. The company was close to bankrupt in 1999, the cars didn't sell, and those that did were fixed at cost by the company for inferior quality. They managed to get a joint venture with Chrysler for a decade and kept innovation up. Now they are sinking again due to building mandatory EVs.

the_truth_lies@reddit

I'm not IT either but I'm the go to at our office. The amount of computer illiteracy in this world is staggering and terrifying. Having to show a full frown adult how to restart a computer was uhhh odd

sjdc-pos@reddit

I support accounting software. It never ceases to amaze me how they put the absolute dumbest person(s) in charge of the money...

MalkavianReddit@reddit

I can so relate to this post. Worked IT for over 20 years and really wonder how some people function in daily life.

>I'm not technically IT

Then for the love of all that is holy stop doing it. Some shit in a suit is going to get a promotion out of laying off whoever your current support contractor is "because MundaneMaybe already does it for free" and then it's going to be your problem when something catastrophic DOES go wrong.

Local user experts have their place, an unofficial service desk is not that place.

Harry_Smutter@reddit

Exactly this!!

herewegoagain2864@reddit

I’m not IT but my husband is. I’ve absorbed some knowledge from him over the years. Once my bosses found out I have some computer knowledge, I’ve become the point of contact when electronics aren’t working correctly. But it’s definitely NOT my job.

castlerobber@reddit

Conversely, my husband (now retired) wasn't in IT, but I am. He ended up being first-line help desk for his 4- or 5-person department, because he worked for a state agency and it could take their IT department several hours to respond. He could handle simple stuff, but their computers were locked down just enough that he might know what to do, but didn't have authority to do it.

I just wondered how they made it through nursing school without having used a printer.

vtopping@reddit

At that point you’re response “should have been sorry you need to submit a ticket to IT.”

The CPA is paid way more than you to do way more important stuff.

Welcome to reality.

I'm not doubting that at all, they deserve what they are paid. But the lack of basic knowledge or common sense is astounding.

katmndoo@reddit

Coins be they just think “that kind of menial shit is beneath me”.

relentlesshack@reddit

Congratulations/sorry this happened. Welcome to IT.

I had a conversation today with a store manager who could not figure out how to attach a spreadsheet to an email in Gmail (which she's been using for at least five years).

I had to remote into her desktop to walk her through it.

(Aside from tech, she's actually a pretty good store manager. But . . .)