TimWoolery.net Documenting the Journey and the Learning Curve

#73 – I Hate You, Nick Burns

#73 - I Hate You, Nick Burns

It happened again today.

I was griping at the security officers about the pager I carry around for the Emergency Response Team. It digs into my hip when I'm at my desk; gets to be annoying after a while. While I'm there, the other security guy hits me up with a quick request – he can't get to the company web page. Simple problem; he doesn't have his proxy set up for Internet Explorer. I go through the motions with him to get it resolved. I'm a little testy at having to do this – they're supposed to be going to the other Tim for this stuff. In the middle of doing this, one of them gets this look on her face like she's suddenly discovered plutonium. "Hey, you ever watch Saturday Night Live?" she asks the other guy. "That guy…you know the one that fixes computers…and he's always grouchy."

"You…you…you…" I say, almost too angry to form words. "You compare me to Nick Burns and I'll kill you." They all laugh, suddenly recognizing the name. Sometimes they even sing the "Nick Burns, your company's computer guy" theme song. It's almost more than I can bear; I want to see a sinkhole suddenly open under their feet. Drop them screaming into a steaming hell where they only show re-runs of Full House with extended freeze-frame time devoted to Dave Coulet's face. Yes, friends, I am victimized by the stale wit of my co-workers. I could stand it if it only happened at work but the fact that I get this from a variety of directions leaves me no choice but to document the problem and (what I think to be) the solution.

The Problem:

Yes, I fix computers. Yes, I get testy at being required to constantly regurgitate stuff that any half-wit user of said computer should know. There's just no excuse for this crap, in my opinion. It's like knowing which side of the street you drive on. Despite all my personal drawbacks and stuff, I think there's a profound difference between me and the average surly desktop support geek. But maybe you can understand my/our frustration. We've fixed this problem before. We've fixed this problem a thousand times before. Yet, as many times as we've crossed this path, we're never quite free of it. Because you (meaning the user community) never quite grasp the concept. You never feel obliged to learn anything about these machines that define your fiscal existence because you can always reach out and grab one of us. "Just a quick question," you say. Yeah, I've heard that before. Then you pull me into the cube for 30 minutes on a problem that should have only taken 45 seconds to resolve. Suddenly I take on some sort of magical properties and I must help you with IE and Outlook and your printer and your USB keychain and what's this funky little purple monkey over here? He just showed up one day, I swear I didn't do anything!

Needless to say, after 9 years of answering the same questions, you get a little bitter. Bitter like that guy in the Post Office who was really tart with you when you went to get your passport. He feels no obligation to make things easy for you, you're going to go away and be replaced by some other faceless moron asking the same stupid questions that were answered on the website and jeez, you'd know that if you could stop being a selfish lummox for five minutes and just read it.

So yes, the frustration is difficult to mask. We can mask it, but it's a limited ability. We tend to save it for people who really need it, like the guys who sign our paychecks. Or the people who golf with the guys who sign our paychecks. Or approve their budgets. Or their cronies. Or their blood relations. People who, in general, wield some sort of political, fiscal or physical control over us. A group we'll call "The people who could get us back". We know who they are…we aren't as dumb as you like to think we are. If you aren't of the aforementioned group, you aren't worth the time it would take to muster the emotional control necessary to avoid garroting you in your seat with your own phone headset cord. We've got to let the steam off somehow, so the veiled condescension because something of a habit. We're human, we need to cope and you have that funny rule about not drinking at work.

I think at one point Jimmy Fallon worked IT. All of the Nick Burns' jokes are technically accurate. If you've worked in IT, you've worked with someone like Nick Burns at one time or another. I'm working with someone like that now. And yet, if we can all accept that not all junkyard people are like Fred Sanford. If we can accept that not all bars are like Cheers, not all coffee house people are like Jennifer Anniston and not all record store employees are like Jack Black, surely we can all come to realize that NOT EVERY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY GUY IS LIKE FRIGGING NICK BURNS??!!

I HATE YOU NICK BURNS – IHATEYOUIHATEYOUIJUMPINGUPANDDOWNONTHEFLOORHAAAAATTEEEYOOOUUU!!!!

While I lie on the floor in emotional exhaustion, let me share you a few other revelations about IT and Nick Burns. IT people will watch the Nick Burns sketches but we will never compare each other to him. It's like every lawyer comparing themselves to LA Law or Law & Order. You just don't do it; you know that the job isn't really like that. It's fun to imagine that you could actually get away with talking to people like that but for most corporate MIS folk, they know that a consistent stream of vitriol and verbal abuse is a guaranteed one-way ticket through HR. We may think it, we may make cracks behind their backs but we never do it. We know we won't get away with it.

It never stops the unwashed masses from making that grim connection. "Hey! Hey, I just realized! You're like that guy Nick Burns! Haw haw haw haw haw!" Hey, I'd make the same comparison but there's no SNL sketch for a mental defective in Accounts Payable who thinks that Thomas Kinkade is the epitome of art and lives in a sham of a marriage with his secretly lesbian wife. Yeah, I'm talking to you, Jim.

But offices are full of stale wit and this is why I'm proposing the following solution to lift us up out of the doldrums of humor. I'm acting out of self-preservation and out of the need to do something to make life around the job just a little more interesting.

The Solution:

1. The Stale Wit Posse - We need a posse of people. Give them all super soakers and have them stalk randomly around the building. When they are exposed to something that's considered "stale humor" (examples would be: Jokes about "A case of the Mondays", jokes about a person's name or physical appearance ("Hey, Joe – whattaya know? Yukyukyuk"), etc) they spring into action. The offender is spritzed (but not soaked) without a single word of warning or explanation. Think Sam Jackson in Jackie Brown. Then walk away; if this works on puppies it should work on intelligent humans. At least we can hope.

2. Enforce Good Humor – Burn the Ziggy calendar. Leave some Dilbert cartoon books lying around. The message will be: "I don't care if people think life is like Dilbert. If we start to look like Dilbert, I'll know we're doing something wrong." Hang posters on the wall of something besides the product lines. You don't have to offend anyone to be edgy. I hung an Edward Gorey poster in my bathroom so you can read it whilst you pee. Man, I've never seen a poster get more compliments.

3. Achieve the Next Level – It'd be nice if we could all get beyond that middle-school, first-grade mentality that prevails an office. The one where you don't allow anything that offends people. Behave like an adult and treat people the same way. If something isn't funny – call 'em on it. I secretly wish for a little buzzer that, instead of buzzing, has a recording of John Cleese going "Zat's not funnee!" I like things that are edgy in the way they make you think.

4. Quit Whining About Your Co-Workers and Get Back to Work – Oh wait…that one's really for me…

Okay – Solutions been suggested and I feel a little better. I think I'll be over to John Brown's cube. I hear he's got some similar stories to tell.