July 10th, 2009
The System 244
Don’t let them know you’re good at something you don’t like doing, or they’ll keep making you do it. This happened to me with “making a website to put on a CD”. That is not a skill, I just googled what you needed to do and did it in 5 minutes. Of course, now I am the go-to person for such things. Why can’t I be the go-to person for eating cookies? I’m good at that too!
Share your “things that have become your responsibility” stories below!
July 10th, 2009 at 11:59 am
- Anything beyond the basics in any MS Office package, i.e. mail merging.
- People here can’t figure our how to burn discs either.
- Unjamming the color printer.
- Copying the text from an InDesign file into Word, so it can be edited by somebody, and then having to retag and flow the whole thing.
July 10th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
that's basically my job
July 10th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
What do you do at your job that you have become the de facto expert?
July 10th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Sorry Ross but this guy already claimed the cookie eating position…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye8mB6VsUHw
July 10th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
This happens to me all the time. I stumbled it!
July 10th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
mine is BURNIN DVDS.
July 10th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
The answer to all such inquiries is a link to http://lmgtfy.com/
For instance, http://lmgtfy.com/?q=put+a+website+on+a+CD
July 10th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
i'm pretty much the only person who is familiar with anything internet or computer related beyond basic word processing/spreadsheets and internet surfing
recently i figured out how to create google earth maps and then embed them in a webpage
i'm also the only person with a full version of Adobe Acrobat and Photoshop, I think, so i get all of those tasks as well
i'm also the first line of defense when a computer breaks before we call in our tech support contractor
i was really only hired for maintaining and cleaning up the website
July 10th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
people can't burn their own damn dvds?
July 10th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
amen, sir.
July 10th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
oh yeah, i have to burn cds all the time too for some reason
July 10th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
1. "IT"
2. Excuse me but I don't know how to use Word…
3. Twitter
4. Facebook
5. Can I just put this cellophane / greasy sandwich wrapper / lightbulb in the recycling?
6. Flattening boxes
7. Collecting and taking out the recycling
I'm a graphic designer.
July 10th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
I've become like the twitter office person now. And no one knows how it works, they just want me to somehow make money through it. AND they're forcing me to do a "twitter webinar". Yay. =_=
July 10th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Tell me when! I'll totally attend.
July 10th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Haha this is almost the exact same predicament i am in also
July 10th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
There is one large format printer in our department and I seem to be the only person that can continually print to it successfully. To the point that the rest of the department has taken to calling it my printer. Which ain't bad when I want to use it but if anyone else does I become printer tech support (or I get sent the job and asked to print it out).
July 10th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
This is so me - turning word documents into PDFs - such a skill!
July 10th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Why complain? You've got a job and you're the " it " person for a simple task. The goofs you work with won't want to let you go anytime soon. Nice work if you can get it. Only downside is if you're real work is hurt by the extra do-nothing activity. Think of it as training for when you decide to become a self-employed consultant.
July 10th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
At some point I even stopped helping my Mother with her PC. I've told her (and thousands others…) a thousand times to follow that "Windows for beginners"-course. If they don't follow such a course then I won't help 'm anymore, what ever the importance of their request.
July 10th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
This is basically any IT-employee at any company that has less then 200 users. Anything that has to do with computers and its your 1) job to help 2) responsibility if it breaks, or stays broken 3) duty to become target of endless frustration over things you cant control, like retarded users that delete shit they dont want to have deleted, and then ask you if you can fix it (which you kind of can but dont EVER TELL USERS THERE IS A WAY TO RECOVER DELETED FILES!)
Thankfully, my workplace outsourced their first line support, so i just direct everything to them. Also, as a consultant, you will almost without fail be asked to clean or do inventory since you have a fraction of payed time that you are not doing anything (even though there is always 5 fulltime dicks laughing their asses of to youtube for an hour straight and then having a 2 hour lunch and then working for 1 hour, AND THEN taking an early friday.)
Sorry, had to went, crap friday :P.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
whats to complain about… It's called job security. I got hired with another person who was supposed to be tech savvy.. It was sort of like a competition in my mind.. which I won… What I didn't know is that it really was a competition and she did not end up keeping her job.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
I who know very little (well, a small amount), and you know how much I know or don't know by the number of frantic e-mails/phone calls you receive, was considered the "computer guru" at my last place of employment. And sad to say, in comparison w/everyone w/whom I worked, I truly was the guru.
Very, very sad.
July 10th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
At a foster care agency I got to be the tech person (despite having an IT dept on-call in main office). I became really good at telnetting into the cable modem and resetting the IP
July 10th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
oh yeah - my other specialty (in addition to my regular job) was telling my co-workers the reason their computer shut down and would not start back up was because they had knocked the power cord out of the wall.
One day I got sick of explaining this to my boss, who had done this no less than 5 times THAT DAY, and who didn't understand the phrase "it's unplugged" (always earned me a blank look). The 6th time she did it I told her to call IT and tell them that she needed to re-boot the mainframe and reinstall a rootkit. Yeah, I got yelled at by IT for "making fun of the simple folk," but last I heard "reboot the mainframe and reinstall the rootkit" had entered the department's slang
/also needed to vent
July 10th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
It's nice to have job security, but the problem is that these types of tasks are in addition to the regular job. From my experience, bosses come to expect their competent employees to not only do the job they were hired for, but also the jobs of the fools around them who can't figure out how to print, format ppts, turn docs into pdfs, etc. If the competent employee gets behind in their regular work because of all the special requests, well, that's not good; but if they don't keep up with the special requests, then they're accused of not being team-players.
It's job security, but it's also the sword of Damocles.
July 10th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
I think you've touched a nerve!
July 10th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Did this at my last job. One of my many many duties. But we also had intense copyright rules. So people usually came, and soon walked away as well.
July 11th, 2009 at 5:12 am
I work(ed) as a beach lifeguard, and got put on a special assignment to update the main boss's Excel time-sheet. I became the computer guy for the beach, but one of the other bosses got pissed that I was doing special assignments and so I got fired for insubordination for working with incompetent assholes.
July 11th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
The system will rip your head off and bury it deep in feces
July 12th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
that's our new slogan. i've decided.
July 13th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
story of my life. the office got sharepoint. i went to the same training as everyone else. apparently, after training the program completely morphed so that i was the only one who could figure out how to use it. i'm now the sharepoint girl.
and my boss calls me a "geek" because I know how to use excel and powerpoint.
July 18th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Oh yeah, that's me. It's not easy being the son of an IT engineer. When people think you know stuff, they'll be ready to risk their whole day's work on the belief that you know how to do magic with a system they can't be arsed to learn to use in the first place.
But hey, I'm not complaining. I'm currently typing with a 2-yo home entertainment laptop I was ordered to take with me after installing two new ones at a friend's parents' place. The previous owners had diagnosed the machine permanently dead , which turned out to be just some simple Windows crashes after repeated battery failure. Now I'm dreaming of a lightly seasoned ThinkPad… Anyone?
July 29th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
this rocks man!
July 29th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
please visit my site.. tnx
August 9th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
At my job, sending packages to Kentucky.
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:46 am
I so relate to this. In any position i've held im the only one that seems to be willing to learn software. As soon as i put the time in to play with something i become known as the "go to guy". I put it down to the general laziness of others and the fact i love figuring stuff out!
Learning how to learn is life's most important skills.
October 2nd, 2009 at 7:56 pm
I work in IT, however, where I work, IT seems to include TV's, VCR's, Laminators, Phones, Copy Machines, anything made after 1920 that uses electricity.
Being inquisitive and learning to teach yourself things seems to be a lost skill in 99% of the people out there.
December 8th, 2009 at 3:28 am
I made the ultimate mistake… I'm known around the office as the guy who figures things out. I have become the metaphorical junk drawer for every strange/impossible/ridiculously big request that gets tossed out by clients. My current jobs include Business Analysis, Forecasting, and Scheduling.
December 8th, 2009 at 4:17 am
I don't even know what half those things mean.
December 21st, 2009 at 3:09 am
This is so true! I just had a friend basically tell me the same thing yesterday. He sees me as a total expert, because I can do a few things on the computer.
December 23rd, 2009 at 6:57 pm
[...] is a pseudo-followup to The System’s take on Powerpoint, as well as a followup from Monday’s on “Downtime Round the [...]