In any organization, your IT gal or guy is important. They’re the person you go to when your computer freezes up, or you need a file recovered. But not all of them are made equal.
If you hear them uttering these words, it’s a warning sign that you might have a flakier-than-normal IT ‘professional’ on your hands.
1. “Ignore those errors.”
Errors come up for a reason. It’s because the makers of the hardware, software or service is trying to tell you something is wrong.
2. “We’re going to take the chassis cover off your machine so it gets better ventilation.”
A time-honored solution for an at-home PC gamer who doesn’t want to fork out for a decent cooling system. A highly questionable decision for a workplace desktop or a server.
3. “Let me just email you both the username and password. Or wait, do you have Skype?”
Transferring your emails via an insecure channel is a lazy move. This is one of those “it’s fine until it isn’t, and then it really isn’t” things.
4. “I hate it when that happens.”
… So why does it keep happening?
5. “I don’t know what the problem is, so I can’t fix it.”
It’s not expected that an IT professional knows every single error code for every piece of software in your organization off the top of their head. What is expected is that they google it.
6. “I was reading through your emails. I see you’re going to a party this weekend.”
Just because an Administrator can access all your emails and folders doesn’t mean they should be without just cause.
7. “I deleted those files to free up server space. What do you mean, you were still using them?”
Those video files they thought weren’t business related? Turns out they were part of the company’s new marketing campaign. Uh-oh, spaghettios.
8. “Uh, we don’t have backups of that data. It’s gone forever.”
Translation: “I really should have put in an automated backup plan to make sure that never happens, but I didn’t, and now you’ve got to suffer for it.”
9. “Those backups of your data were corrupted. It’s gone forever.”
Translation: “I should have run test restores of those backups, but I didn’t, and then I assumed it would all turn out okay, and it didn’t.”
