Quick Fix – Gator Days (OC)
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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I am *swimming* in job security where I work. You know what they say: teach a man to fish and he’ll forget how to do it in 90 days when he needs to fish again.
As a field tech, this is my life.
“Here’s how to fix the thing, so you don’t have to call me back and wait.” “It broke again!” “I’ll be there tomorrow, or here is how to fi..” “See you tomorrow!”
Sigh
I seem to have the opposite problem at work. For context I’m a janitor. I seem to be the only one doing small detail work, like polishing the stainless steel elevators so they don’t look permanently grimy with all the hand (and for some reason, shoe) prints on the walls. The people in the area I clean notice this and thank me. My actual boss? I literally had to ASK for them to come look at a job I was really proud of, and they STILL DIDNT. So my boss doesn’t understand how wildly competent I am compared to my peers, and I don’t understand how they don’t understand that part of being a supervisor is supervising your workers, which inherently means SEEING THEIR WORK.
I wish my boss saw my work and had me fix simple things by myself.
I once did an internship at a company that offers courses for unemployed people, working in their IT department. We constantly had to reset the computers of the course participants because they kept changing settings they shouldn’t have had access to. At some point, another intern and I discovered that the local IT boss was using “Pa$$w0rd” as the master password…
The admins were furious, and it almost led to a physical fight. lol
“August, it’s happening again!”
“It’s my day off, Stuart, I’m taking Gus and his friends to Real-Life-Con today.”
“Sounds fun! It’s a good thing you still have a job to afford these fun outings, *haha*”
Job security but at the cost of your sanity
As someone with older relatives:
I have zero experience with this program. I haven’t even looked at whatever instructions prompted you to try to uninstall and reinstall it. I have no idea if my attempt could end up screwing up the license or something.
(Poke around for about five minutes)
Ok, I think it’s good now.
August’s life outside of his kid makes me sad.
On the upside August has a job for life fixing easy problems caused by ignorant people. On the down side he has a job for life… dealing with ignorant people.
This was the exact dynamic my coworkers had to making office coffee until recently. But like the whole time there were printed directions in the cabinet where we keep all the supplies…
I had a moment today. I couldn’t reached the server and asked the support. I was connected to the wrong network… I felt pretty dumb.
“August! Come back!”
That’s how I feel every September. Also, it took me a while to figure out who August is; I’m tired.
Thats why August isn’t allowed any homeoffice… (Bonus: He can sit with Iris on the floor)
That quote about insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome is a bit too on the nose when you work in tech support.
Would August’s boss even recognize him without his glasses on?
I used to work a data entry/data analysis office job where I was everyone’s go to person to ask questions. I kept getting the same questions over and over again so I made up a cheat sheet. It included a bunch of useful keyboard shortcuts and screenshots with highlights and arrows that answered and explained all of the questions I got asked the most.
People put that sheet in their desk/threw it away/lost it under stacks of other papers and then pulled me away to ask the same questions anyway….
It was annoying but hey, at least my peer reviews were always glowing.
It’s how they say:
Buy a man eat fish
He day,
Teach fish man,
To a lifetime
But has he tried turning it in and off again?
But did he try turning it off and back on?
At least he knows he will never be fired
People I’ve worked with have often times been secretive with professional knowledge, believing it provides job security. However, in my experience, it’s the exact opposite. When people don’t know what you’re doing, they either assume it’s easy or not as valuable as what they do. I figured out years ago to explain exactly what I did and how to do it themselves. People either go cross-eyed and decide they will always call me to avoid the hassle, or they were already pissed about having to call me, and now they felt like I wasn’t totally ripping them off.
Anyone who’s ever worked IT support felt that one
I do tech support at a law firm with a lot of folks that went to college in the late 1900s…. this is my life. Thank you for this. Made me laugh.
me when I have to remind my mom to press the red X button in the corner of the screen to close a tab:
I’ve worked in IT for 20 years now. IF there is one thing I’ve learned, some people just don’t want to learn or know why. They simply want it fixed and don’t care whowhat caused it.
Usually, it’s them and their *wilful* ignorance, but it’s kept me employed.
I would unplug keyboard and mouse cables then spend all day fixing them. Then ask them what the hell they were doing to break the keyboard/mouse. That was a good 3 years income.
I have tried to teach my users how to restart a print spooler, but it just never sticks. It takes literally 15 seconds and is fully remote, so I don’t really mind.
That “big fella” is infuriatingly condescending.
This is why I always tell friends and family that I can teach them but I will not do it for them. People tend to get snippy at first but I am still technically offering them good service, just not what they wanted. Either they learn how to do it or they know I’m not going to do it for them every single day. Win/win.Â
Obviously for work it’s a different story but coming at it from a perspective of learning can be very helpful regardless. The people who genuinely want to learn will be grateful and the people who absolutely refuse to learn will be shamed when they are forced to admit that you gave them this exact lesson last week and twice more the week prior. Ironically the types who want to weasel out of work are almost always the same people who are most afraid of admitting they don’t know how to do something. But if you’re doing them the favor at work, that should be written down as you are assisting your coworkers, and that can be referenced for the future.
Is Stuart’s mouth just frozen that way?
My mother, prior to retirement, had some shades of this. She was one of the longer-serving members of her branch and regularly had co-workers interrupt her work because of some minutia that they should have had committed to memory by that point – putting new paper in the photocopier and such. One of the last things she did before leaving is make a big list of how-to instructions because they relied on her THAT much. Still, they valued her and gave her a wonderful retirement party.
Literally me in retail