The Server Upgrade Uncertainty

I am often asked what it is like to work in IT Support. Most people assume that it is a geeky and uncool job. Others believe it to be never ending fun; playing with gadgets all day long and never doing any "real work". The rest are usually amazed at the flashing lights, and the unidentifiable, yet intriguing components that lay about the office, and believe it to be a glamorous, and trouble free profession. Most never see what we do in the background, unable to appreciate the hard work we do: The early mornings, the late nights, the endless progression bars. Failures and down time are fixed in their memories like the 1966 world cup, but our successes are usually forgotten almost instantaneously.

Occasionally, but not very often, the frustrations of the IT world come not from the users, but from the systems themselves.

The New User Influxation

The place is in chaos, the servers are maxed out, everybody is stressed, tensions are high and no one can remember their password, date of birth or even their name. The same time every year we get a huge influx of new users: More users to report problems, more users to create them. Each one has to be registered on the system to get their vital computer user accounts, and then have to go through a long, gruelling induction by our highly trained specialists.

I say gruelling, as it is more taxing for the inductors than for the inductees. From the stories they have told me it resembles a cross between the London riots, and the Krypton Factor for the technologically afraid.