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Many of us who have worked in the service industry know that it takes a special kind of person to deal with rude people day in and day out, in what is widely regarded as a thankless job bereft of any real intrinsic value.  If you’re a waiter at Applebee’s in some boring-ass rich white-bread suburb, you’re not exactly doing God’s work.  Unless that is, you’re putting crushed glass particles into some shithead’s Cajun chicken pasta.  That’s like giving God a layup.  But I digress…

Any of my comrades in the IT field know that this job is as thankless as it gets.  Not only are you considered to be a cost center rather than a revenue generator, but you are constantly asked to do more with less, amongst other things.  As if that weren’t enough, on a daily basis you’re being shit on by anyone who knows as much about how to use their computer as they know about how to not use the speakerphone in the middle of a cube farm to inquire about nail caps for their cat.

“What do you mean I got a virus on my computer?  How could I download a virus if I was on YOUR NETWORK?!?!?!  Don’t we have a firewall and stuff, GOD”

That said, I think we’ve all dealt with the occasional IT/tech support who is a complete prick.  If you haven’t yet, you will.  These types of people are *usually* good at what they do - and they’ll let you know all about it while completely stripping you of whatever human dignity you had left, leaving you with a feeling in your gut about as empty as Whitney Houston’s voided bowels*.  

Oh, okay, sorry.  Michael Jackson’s voided bowels.  Happy now?

Anyway, we’re going to describe 3 types of each of these shitmongers.  These are people I have personally dealt with in my 12-year career in IT, across many organizations and many industries.

Asshole IT Guy 1: The Braggart

This is an IT person who may very well fix the problem you need to have fixed, if only they would stop patting themselves on the back long enough to do so.

“You know, I work with Debian Linux all the time.   This is such an easy problem to debug, but of course it’s easy to me, because I remember one time there was this particularly hard problem where I haZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ”

Asshole IT Guy 2: The “Oh, just do _______” guy

The scene: You call your helpdesk because you have a problem with your screen.

Helpdesk: This is Bruce, can I help you?

You: Hi, my monitor’s not working.

Helpdesk:  Okay, just turn it on.

You:  Well…. it’s on.  The green light is on, the screen’s blank.

Helpdesk:  Well, just reboot and it’ll be fine.

You:  Uhhh, I did reboot, and it’s not.

Helpdesk:  Alright, well if you’d just install the latest network drivers you’ll be fine.  Just go on the internet and find those drivers.

You:  My….. screen….. is….. blank.

Helpdesk:  Sir, just go on the internet and find those drivers, thank you and don’t forget to take our survey *click*

You:  ::MASSIVE ANEURYSM::

Everything is “just do _____” with this piece of human garbage.  The only way I know to counter this type of tactic is to make sure you have two lists handy:  one being a list of troubleshooting steps you’ve already tried.  The other list would be ways you’re going to make this miserable son of a bitch suffer after you’ve jumped his sorry ass in the supply closet. 

Asshole IT Guy 3: The Tough Guy

Watch out, we’ve got a tough guy here!  This guy’s got administrative rights and he ain’t afraid to use ‘em!  You pissed him off by storing 1.1GB of documents in your home directory, but your quota is at 1GB.  So guess what he did to teach you a lesson?  He deleted that directory and then all of your other directories that had data in them, anywhere else in the company.  That’ll show you, jerkass!  So what are you gonna do, buddy?  Oh yeah, you can’t do anything, because you’re not the ADMIN!  Oooooh!  That’s right, tough guy right here!

This pantload was just a miserable failure at life from the start.  Being dropped at birth and beat up all through school culminates in his now being beaten by his wife at home.  It all manifests here in the form of him being your digital daddy, because hey, at the end of the day it’s not like you’re going to dump scalding hot Spaghetti-O’s all over him when he asks you to please get him a fork.  No sir, that’s the job of the absolute behemoth that he married just to convince his parents that he wasn’t gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

What else can you do to this complete disgrace of a man other than, as you pass by each other in the hall, make a quick lunge in his direction, convincingly enough so that you can see his pupils constrict and hear him literally shitting himself.

This is all by no means a comprehensive list, but these are people who I’ve had the displeasure of dealing with personally.

Next up:  The 3 Types of Asshole End-Users.  

Au revoir, freaks.

*full credit to steddie-patches-stringer-von-bule

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I’m not a writer, by any stretch of the imagination.  I have no idea how to construct a good story.  Ask anyone who knows me well; I tell the worst stories, and any sort of joke that stretches beyond 5 sentences is going to be a miserable disappointment.  Stand-up comedy won’t be my lot in life, so whatever, I’m not losing sleep over it.

Recently, I signed up for the writing workshop at Cracked.com, thinking, “hey, I’m moderately funny, I can write for these guys no problem!”  You see, Cracked does have a staff of regular writers, but they pop out articles like Michelle Duggar launches kids out of her baby cannon; thus, they pay regular Joes and even regular Mikes to come up with new ideas and articles to display on their front page.  The editors and even some of their best writers draw open the curtains on what makes their articles work: Write an introduction that’s funny and/or clever; Keep your references timely; Cite your sources; and so on, and so forth.  ”Well, what’s the problem,” you ask?  Simple: in the process of creating an article, the joke you’re shooting for is vetted thoroughly by an unending cadre of editors, staff writers and regular writers (even people aspiring to write an article like me).  At the end of the process, as a writer, your joke has been beaten, bloodied, and maimed beyond belief.

Such is the life of anyone who writes anything for public consumption, or so I’m told by my smart friends who actually do write for a living.  Not wanting to subject myself to the brutality of a process that, for me, sucks the funny out of jokes by over-analysis, I did what any enterprising young gent would do - I started my own portal of inanity.  Actually, most of the enterprising young gents I know actually might have started a business or focused their energy on something more worthwhile, but hey, what the hell do I know?

In closing, Cracked is a fine website, one I’ll continue to read every day.  Their process for bringing an article to the publishing stage is what I imagine to be typical of any editorial process; it’s just not for me.  Thus, now you’re stuck with the unedited inner workings of my unused brain.  I figure, if I’m going to be told I’m unfunny or something I’ve written sucks and I should just off myself already, then it should at least be a friend or acquaintance*.  So I hope you will enjoy my blatant format rip-off of Cracked.  Feedback is encouraged.

*by the way, if any of you do tell me this, you’re dead to me and you can fuck off forever