About to dial the IT Help Desk because something on your laptop or phone isn’t working?! Mike – who has worked in IT for the last 25 years – wants you to try something quick first…
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Mike works in IT and has done for 25 years – he’s worked at a big tech company, a small family-run business and everything in between.
He says the number one thing he wishes people would do before they call him wanting very urgent help.
“Honestly?” he says, “I would say nine out of ten times people just need to restart their computer or phone. That’s it. That’s why most IT help desks ask you to try it first before we go any further. Everyone groans when we say this. Then you try it, and your problem is resolved. It’s the most tedious part of the job.”
Mike says it’s a frustrating part of his job – “particularly when the person has restarted and is too embarrassed to say it fixed the issue, so pretend it hasn’t. That’s the worst scenario and it happens fairly regularly.”
He says the problem with that too is that it adds to the log of issues that need to be fixed, “It’s the worst when you see someone has been waiting half an hour, doing nothing, when they could have just spent a minute or two restarting.”
Mike says that if you’re ever stuck waiting a long time to fix something on your computer and a restart hasn’t fixed it, there’s something else you can try.
“Just Google it,” he says, “Whatever your issue is, someone will have had the problem before and asked the internet about it. My caveat would be though to not click on anything that someone suggests deep in reddit that’s going to compromise the security of your device. And on that subject. If you’ve opened an email and clicked a link that was a scam, or you’ve gone to website and done something stupid, just tell the IT desk. We don’t care. We do care if you try to pretend you haven’t and are making stuff up and we have to waste our time trying to get to the bottom of it. Just be honest. We’ve all seen people click on stupid stuff. Some of us have fallen for it too.”