(L)Userguide
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Whatever you do - don't write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages from here.

When Tech Support say they are coming right over, go for a coffee. That way you won't be there when they arrive.  It's nothing to us to remember 275 screen saver passwords.

When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, pictures, stuffed animals, and trophies. We don't have a life and find it deeply moving to catch a glimpse of yours.

When you call the helpdesk, state what you want, not what's keeping you from getting it. We don't need to know that you can't get your mail because your computer won't power on.

Don't put your phone extension in your e-mails to the help desk. We need to keep an eye on the address book performance.

When Tech Support sends you an e-mail with high importance, delete it at once. We're just sending out test messages.

When a member of Tech Support is eating lunch, walk straight in and spill your guts right out. We exist only to serve.

When a member of Tech Support is having a smoke outside, ask them a computer question. The only reason we smoke is to ferret out those clients who don't have e-mail or a telephone.

Send urgent e-mails in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.

When you call a member of Tech Support press 5 to bypass the bilingual greeting that say's he's out of the office for a week, record your message and wait exactly 24 hours before you send an e-mail straight to the director because no-one ever returned your call. You're entitled to common courtesy.

When the photocopier doesn't work, call Tech Support. There's electronics in it, right?

When you're getting a NO DIAL TONE message at home, call Tech Support. We can fix your line from here.

When you have a dozen VGA monitors to get rid of, call Tech Support. We're collectors.

When something is wrong with your PC at home, dump it on a Tech Support technician's chair, with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem. We love a good puzzle.

If you hate your mouse, get some other pointing device and discard the manual. We know all the keyboard accelerators.

When a member of Tech Support tells you that computer monitors don't have cartridges in them, argue.  We love a good argument.

When you get a message about insufficient disk space, delete everything in the Windows directory.  It's nothing but trouble anyway.

When you get a message about hard disk controller failure, and then you reboot and it looks O.K, don't call Tech Support. We'd much rather troubleshoot it when it's as dead as a doornail.

When you have Tech Support are on the phone talking you through changing a setting, read the paper. We don't actually mean for you to do anything, we just love to hear ourselves talk.

When a member of tech. support tells you that he'll be there shortly, reply in a scathing voice: "And just how many weeks do you mean by shortly?" That'll get us going and keep us motivated.

If you have a 14" monitor that says VGA on it, set the display properties to 1024 X 768, true colour. You won't have to worry about people reading confidential files off of your screen again.

When we offer training on the latest software upgrade, don't bother. We'll be there to hold your hand after it's installed anyway.

When the printer doesn't print, send the job at least 25 times. Print jobs frequently disappear out of the ether.

When the printer still won't print, send the job to all 47 printers in the office. One of them is bound to work.

Don't learn the correct name for anything technical. We know exactly what you mean by "my wotsit is jammed".

Don't use on-line help. On-line help is for wimps.

If you're taking night classes in computer science, feel free to go around and update network drivers on all of the computers. We enjoy the overtime money.

When a member of Tech Support has sweets on his desk, help yourself while he's checking out your access rights. We usually keep chocolate in the top drawer, too.

When you have a member of Tech Support fixing your computer at lunch time, eat your lunch in his face.  We function better when slightly dizzy.

Don't ever thank us. We're getting paid for this.

If you're a temp, feel free to bring in all of your friends from college and have your Dad complain to our
boss when we won't let them use the scanner. We had no friends when we were at college, that's why we're bunch of tight-assed gits.

When a member of Tech Support asks you if you've installed any new software on this computer, lie. It's nobody's business what you've got on your computer.

When a member of Tech Support finds AOL shortcuts in your Recycle Bin, tell them you've never seen those before. We couldn't tell bullshit if it kicked us in the face.

If you're a developer with Windows NT granted with Admin rights, feel free to change the local Administrator password to "lesbian" and promptly forget it. We like installing Windows NT.

If the mouse cable keeps knocking down the framed picture of your baby, lift the computer and stuff the cable under it. Mouse cables were designed to have 15kgs of computer sitting on top of them.

If the space bar on your keyboard doesn't work, blame it on the MS Office upgrade. Keyboards are actually very happy with half a packet of crisps and 4 months worth of sandwich crumbs in them.

When you receive the a new music CD for your birthday, shove it into any slot on the front of your computer. We like getting physical with 5.25" floppy drives.

When you get a message saying "Are you Sure?" click on that 'yes' button as fast as you can. If you weren't sure, you wouldn't be doing it, would you?

When you find a member of Tech Support on the phone with his bank, sit uninvited on the corner of his desk and stare at him until he hangs up. We don't have any money to speak of anyway.

Feel perfectly free to say things like "I don't know nothing about that computer crap". We don't mind at all hearing our area of professional expertise referred to as crap.

When you need to change the toner cartridge, call Tech Support. Changing the toner cartridge is an extremely complex task, and HP recommends that it be performed only by a professional engineer with a master's degree in nuclear physics.

When you can't find someone in the Phone Book, call Tech Support.  Due to budget restrictions we double as Directory Enquiries.

When you have a lock to pick in an old filing cabinet, call Tech Support.  We love to hack.

When something is wrong with your computer, ask your secretary to call the helpdesk. We enjoy the challenge of having to deal with a third party who doesn't know anything about the problem.

When you receive a 30Mb Movie file, send it to everyone via email as an attachment.  We've got lots bandwidth and loads disk space on the mail server.

Don't even think of breaking large print jobs down into smaller jobs.  Somebody else might get a chance to squeeze a letter into the print queue.

When a member of Tech Support gets in the lift pushing £15,000 worth of computer equipment on a trolley ask in a very loud voice: "Good God, you take the lift to go down one floor?"

When the people in finance are printing a 100 page spreadsheet on the HP Laser, send your black and white print jobs to the colour printer. We get the black toner for free.

When you lose your car keys, send an e-mail to the entire company. Other people in the company like to keep abreast of what's going on.

When you bump into a member of Tech Support at the supermarket on a Sunday, ask a computer question.  We also work weekends.

When you see a member of Tech Support having a drink with a member of the opposite sex on a Friday night, walk right up to them and ask a computer question. We don't do dating, the reason why we have that horny look on our faces is because we are discussing the latest Intel Processor.

Don't bother to tell us when you move computers around on your own. Computer names are just a cosmetic feature of Windows, they won't be doing anything useful until the next major release.

When you can't access some self-mapped shared directory on your boss's machine, just tell us that you've lost your F: drive.  We know all that shit by heart.

If you need to buy a computer for your daughter in college, feel free to pick our brains while we're taking a leak.  We're good at talking shop with our dicks in our hands.

If your son is a student in computer science, have him come in on the weekends and do his projects on your office computer. We'll be there for you when his illegal copy of Filemaker Pro makes his Access 2000 database file screw up.

When you bring your own personal home PC for repair at the office, leave all the documentation at home. We'll find the jumper settings on the Internet.

The correct location to store important files is the Recycle Bin. It's just like a real office, where you keep your tax receipts in the brown can next to your desk.

If you miss Windows 3.11, find the line that says shell=explorer.exe in your SYSTEM.INI file and replace it with shell=progman.exe. It makes troubleshooting infinitely easier when we ask you whether you have a Start button at the bottom of your screen and you truthfully answer us that you do not.

If you curse every morning when you start to type your password the Virus Shield screen pops up, disable the Virus Shield. This is just like real life, if you don't like condoms, don't use them.

If you hate PC's, get on the Internet and download one of those desktop enhancements that make your
computer look just like a MAC, right down to the sad faces replacing error messages. We find it refreshing to troubleshoot the nuisance in that sad little face instead of some cold forbidding hexadecimal value.