The computer just trembles at the IT dude’s aura and does what it’s supposed to do because they know what they do to printers that step out of line.
I used to call that the “Techy Curse”
Fear keeps them in line.
If you ever feel like you are losing your touch as an IT support person, destroy a computer on purpose.
That’ll bring the rest of them in line.
If you can’t win with love, fear is just as nice and will suffice, to misquote Robert Frost.
It’s part of the class package. We auto-resolve issues under a certain level of difficulty just by being nearby. Pretty nifty.
We should sprinkle IT people around the offices like wifi routers. To project their aura of auto-resolving constantly throughout the workplace. As a programmer I have more of an aura of auto-breaking any system that I’m near so hopefully they cancel out
I call it the blue thumb.
I work in IT support.
A solid 80% of all issues magically disappear the second I show up.
There’s a very simple explanation for it – Clarke’s Fourth Law:
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.It’s the whole reason why IT wizards are exempt from the usual office dress code.
The long hair, beards and flowing robes (or baggy pants and XXXL T-shirts) are vital parts of the ritual.This is the actual explanation, and I do tell people when they get frustrated enough. I have the aura, I am a natural tech witch. Just call me and I’ll stand by your PC, scrolling on my phone, while you discover it now works. Bye bye now. Don’t forget to tip your IT guy.
In my experience, random failure with random auto-fix is exclusively a windows feature. Turning it off and on fixes the majority of windows glitches.
It’s the same with all machines. When I worked news production in television it was the same thing. Something breaks, call in the engineers, now it works once they show up.
Car making a noise. Get to mechanic. Stops making the noise.
Today I (backend) asked my teamlead (frontend): “Can you help me, ‘npm run dev’ isnt running for me”
She said: “Have you 'npm install’ed?”
I hadn’t, so I quickly ended the conversation right there.
What kind of system are you using where that’s not immediately clear from the error message?
The tried and tested old system of not reading the error messages
You know how slackers tend to make more of an effort to at least look like they’re doing what they should be when the boss walks by?
This is the same relationship between the computers and the IT department.
And the real truth may be somewhere in between. The user may suddenly regulate their behaviour and take extra care, or at least act sufficiently differently, when the IT person is watching over their shoulder.
They don’t do the thing that makes the computer complain. Everything looks normal. IT person goes away. User reverts to original habits. Computer complains.
Or else the IT person uses the computer themselves, but does not emulate the user sufficiently well, so the computer behaves.
I know it’s not always this but it goes a long way to explaining how tech aura became a thing.
One time, I was staring at a piece of code for a solid 10 minutes or so, and could not understand why it gave me a compile error.
So, I ask the senior for help, start explaining what I’ve been trying to do, scroll down to show some other code snippet, scroll back up and the compile error was gone. My IDE simply had not re-rendered properly. I have rarely sweared as much as in that moment.Magic Fingers.
I worked in IT for 25 years and this was true for a large majority of calls I got over the years. I called it the IT intimidation rule. LOL
It’s a bit of a curse, so often I come in and things magically start working… But that’s hardly satisfying, and the person that needs help just knows it’s going to bite them again… So I get to guess why it broke before it behaved for me and hopefully figure it out and fix it despite it currently working right now.
You embarrassed the computer back into working. Pat yourself on the shoulder.
Sometimes you just have to book a doctor’s appointment to break your kid’s fever and make the slapped cheeks appear.
