The big IT worker's bug bear

Looks like I’m not the only one to have problems with friends and family wanting help with their computers. I’ve talked about this before and, whilst my own problem has been much reduced, plainly a lot of people in IT have problems associated with people expecting unreasonable amounts of help with their home electrical equipment.

In many ways the problem isn’t close friends and family, it’s when friends and family start farming you out to their friends and acquaintances.

You end up doing favours for people you don’t know, who you’ll never see again unless there’s another problem and from whom there is absolutely no hope of any future reciprocation.

I know a lot of IT people who, when asked what they do at work, lie utterly in order to avoid the inevitable request to help with their home PC.

One of the big misconceptions many none-IT people have is that anybody in IT must have a wide knowledge of PCs, every version of Windows yet produced, every printer etc etc. IT is a very broad application domain with a massive set of skill sets. Diagnosing and fixing PCs is not something many of us do regularly or well.