I still sport my old Think Geek T-Shirt: ‘No I Will Not Fix Your Computer’ to family functions.
The IT guy plight is real.
My go to was once it turned into troubleshooting I said “$55 an hour, that’s my rate”. If they said “why so expensive?” I’d follow up with “because I don’t want to do it.” Usually got a laugh and if they were actually willing to pay then they actually needed help, not just “why computer no computer gooder”
Probably made me look like an ass a few times, but I’m at the cookout, I don’t wanna work on your busted-ass Chromebook from 2013. I want to hang out, eat a burger, drink some beer, and not work.
“Haha that shirt is funny. Anyway I have this brand new 7 year old HP laptop and suddenly it’s all sluggish and when I try to open another chrome tab it freezes for a few minutes.”
Shoot
First me then the printer
Printer first. Let the guy die with some sense of satisfaction. What are we? Monsters?
Eh I never minded. I preferred printer problems. Fixing the default printing source made me cool. Downloading a driver or pointing a user to the right network printer made me a hero. Replacing a roller or a fuser so the printer stopped jamming elevated me to legendary. Much more relaxing then fixing someone’s janky SQL “formula” because their “excel is broken.”
Yup. “My excel is broken” is nightmare stuff. Fixing a printer can be as easy as unjamming some paper or replacing a toner cartridge.
And when it‘s really bad, you at least know that you for real can‘t do anything and have to wait for replacement parts or a technician. So no procrastination about how to fix it while you should be doing other things.
