Words a System Administrator Never Wants to Hear

Underappreciated, yet held to superhuman expectations. Rarely thanked, but always called upon in moments of panic and hysteria. The hero who takes every cry for help, even if it’s from a jerk who just irrationally ripped him a new one last week.

The nature of his job is to keep calm and collected (externally) in a circumstance when everyone else seems to lose their sh*t. His mission is to fix anything and everything that comes his way, despite the negligence and reluctance of his coworkers. Sometimes his fellows commonly mistake him for a stress management coach or even a wizard (which would actually be pretty sweet).

He is so highly skilled, that no one else even knows what he is doing. He is the company’s REAL fire extinguisher.

No, no… it is not Chuck Norris. He is even better. He is your system administrator.

Sure, sure, he gets it. You have work to do, you are busy, you cannot waste time and you have to get this problem resolved immediately. Well, did you ever consider that he has work to do and he is busy (as in walk 60 other people through the same problem he is helping you with)? Or consider that he cannot waste time and he would like this problem resolved immediately as well? If he could fly across the country and do it for you he would! So zip it, let him do his job and maybe you can both save time! As if searching for a higher speed internet connection, more reliable hosted phone system or moving the entire company’s applications to cloud isn’t time consuming enough!

We see enough blog posts, articles and commentaries on the “things you never want to hear your system administrator say.” Well, have you ever thought about the things that your system administrator never wants to hear you to say…?

Just for kicks, we want to shed a little light into the unseen perspective of sys admin. Here are a few phrases you should consider filtering out of your vocabulary BEFORE calling your sys admin for help.

1. So… I just tried fixing it myself…
2. I know I’m supposed to put a ticket in the helpdesk, but you don’t look too busy.
3. It keeps giving me some kind of error. No, I don’t remember what it said.
4. When will this be fixed? I have a meeting in about 5 minutes.
5. One quick question for you…
6. (Monday morning) I sent you a few emails over the weekend. Haven’t seen a response, did you even get them?
7. It still didn’t work! I’ve tried printing it 30 times now.
8. No, I haven’t tried restarting it yet.
9. The IT guys at my last job were so good.
10. So… why isn’t it working?
11. Ever since you guys made that change…
12. We are out of coffee.

All in all, it’s important to remember that we are all on the same team, facing similar challenges and trying to do the best we can. The IT guys and gals are here to help you, ALL of you.

So try your best to be nice and considerate of their time. Just like Batman doesn’t cause the crime in Gotham, it’s not the sys admin’s fault you have an IT problem. These ladies and gents are just the ones who you call upon to fix it. Acknowledge them for the hero they are – and if you used a bat-signal, that’d be pretty friggin’ sweet.