As a Surprise to Absolutely No One

It turns out that organizational psychologist Billie Blair is a total cunt. I'm not saying that some of her observations aren't accurate, but I take issue with her general attitude and her fuel-to-the-fire biased statements like "[IT managers] just want people to bow to them as they come into the room."

What a stupid bitch.

She seems to appreciate that the job demands constantly dealing with people who neither understand the services you perform nor offer any appreciation for your doing it, combined with an ever-growing list of restrictions and responsibilities that, due to the ignorance of the faculties of our jobs, is usually the last to get much-needed resources and headcount.

She has one valid point: IT people aren't people people. We typically are the worst folks you can imagine to have to deal with customers or to focus on high marks on user satisfaction surveys. We are simply too socially retarded — and busy — to worry about how you feel while we are fixing whatever you've done to fuck up your computer, or the network file share, or the company website, or whatever. People don't seem to complain about how the janitorial staff just walk into the office and empty your trash cans without a smile or a simple greeting. They're just trying to do their jobs.

Am I comparing IT to emptying trash cans and scrubbing toilets? Yeah, sometimes it's like that. And it's unfair to treat your IT team similarly to a facility service yet expect them to act like chipper public relations staffers while they do it.

We're just people. We get extremely burned out when we only ever get called when something is on fire. At times we feel like janitors, and the rest of the time we feel like paramedics. Folks only pick up the phone and call the paramedics when something is gravely wrong. They never have good news and they never call earlier asking for input on taking preventative measures.

People don't have a problem understanding how emotionally draining it is to work in a hospital ER or on a trauma team stitching people back together after they've lost a fight with a freight train and such. The plights in the IT world usually aren't quite so life-threatening but they can be just as negative, and that serves to do little more than slowly erode a man's soul.

The job is so much better when the users aren't involved.

I used to really enjoy working Saturdays at the Science Center when the upstairs office was closed. This meant I had a near-zero chance of having to deal with user complaints and, instead of having to field questions like "Does Windows 95 double-click?" I could focus on actually doing maintenance work on the servers and on the networks. Isolation in a server room actually getting to fix shit was practically a vacation by comparison. It's not that IT people hate the users, at least not at first, but you can't help but grow to resent the people who make your life miserable, even if they're the reason you have a paycheck.

It happens to everyone in IT at some point. There are really good folks out there who may not know the first thing about computers, but when something breaks they treat you with an ounce of respect, answer your questions seriously, and listen when you advise them how to avoid problems in the future. You start feeling good about your public service role, but someone inevitably picks up the phone and expects you to be psychic, know what the issue is, and fix it without them having to ever get involved or lift a finger. It's the mentality of "IT is like the phone company" that doesn't do anybody any good and it makes you really unhappy about having to deal with that person in the future. And of course it's never their fault because IT people are naturally hard to deal with, right?

So like I said. Billie Blair is a total cunt.