And...
He also thinks we're all male.

Those of us who work in IT are shouted at from morning to noon until night. We are the scum of the office, we aren't invited out the the pub, nobody wants to be our friend simply because of our career choice. We're the bottom of the food chain and, to add insult to injury, the users so often treat us with contempt and disrespect. We're the type of people who have been bullied all our lives and now, when we turn up at our office, we're bullied again. What's our option? A defense mechanism - we preempt you hurting our feelings by clawing at a simple sense of superiority. We've been called every name under the sun, you're getting away lightly if we're only slightly condescending, if all we do is go on the internet and say, "Snarf, users are a bit dumb."

Now, maybe I'm being a big girl softie here, but hardly a day goes by where somebody doesn't do their best to make me cry because they haven't got the good sense to learn how to do a mail merge. Users are a bit dumb, but they threaten us because of their lack of knowledge.
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 11:58, 1 reply)

oh lordy lordy!!!!
OK my dear angry Support people, you all appear to work for complete twunts, for which you have a big basket of the freshest sympathy harvested from the sympathy orchards deep in my heart. No actually you do...

Did I mention that I lived with a real life Lady Support Monkey? Nearly married but I ended up suffering from a slight mental illness that ruined us both, so ner to your implication of sexism. (I did mention it, it's further up and everything. Apparently according to tech support at work I have to use that pad thingy at the front of me netbook to go up the screen)

There seems to be a little bit of a "Can dish it out but can't take it" kinda vibe today. Virtualy every post is calling users a group of unpleasant, stupid, angry, loons who are moments away from exploding scanners style.

Well I'm a user.

Be nice to us and we'll be nice to you TA DAAA :-)... hang on I'm typing this to justify a gag on a message board.

Dear lord, what have you turned me into?

Yup, it's frankensteins idiot...
(rockers74 killed a man in Reno just to watch him die., Tue 29 Sep 2009, 18:57, closed)

Most people...
...have had the experience of the slightly whiffy man with too much facial hair and abhorrent social skills espousing on the benefits of antivirus software.

I'm nice to everybody, I'm funny and I do my best not to condescend. Most people (a great majority) assume that we're all like the aforementioned social cretin and come at us with all guns blazing. I can pet their heads and whisper sweet nothings as much as I like and they'll still want to stab me in the temple.

Also, people only speak to us when they've got a problem, so their levels of stress are somewhere between Gordon Brown and a chihuahua when they come to us. We're trying to help, stop calling me a c*nt. Also, we're not omnipresent and we can't mind-read, so please don't call us 'useless f*cks' when we haven't been able to act as your IT guardian angel.

Be nice to us and we'll be nice to you. You'd be surprised how few people come to IT standing on a firm basis of nice. I can fully understand how those less inclined to patience might retaliate by calling the users 'idiots or, heaven forbid, handing out a bit of the medicine they get every hour of every day.

We treasure nice users and give them free stuff, including beers.

Nowadays, we prefer to be called 'Lady Support Primates'.
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Wed 30 Sep 2009, 10:53, closed)

you make lots of good points.
The support are usually in a different room, so they are strangers to the rest of a company, and yes you do suffer from the police syndrome. My dad was a copper for 25 years and said the worst part of the job is that you only see people when there day has gone to shit and you are the only one that can solve everything. Like support. So strangers you have to rely on that are going to confuse you with things that you don't understand, with the worry that all your work is going to go into the ether... no wonder we get tense with each other.

I really do understand!

I am a radio presenter, so please also understand that I have 2 hours counting down to show time. I present and produce, and need to be composed and briefed before I go on air other wise 100,000 people are going to turn off and I'll get fired. If I call support with 15 mins to go with something that is broadcast critical no shit I'm stressed.

I love the 2 broadcast engineers IT gods, seriously, without them I am nothing, cus they built it all, and they know the problems that we face.

We have out-sourced off site IT support... they don't know.
(rockers74 killed a man in Reno just to watch him die., Wed 30 Sep 2009, 17:35, closed)