Folks, I mentioned last week we’d be looking at why different departments can’t just get along. We’ll be talking about it with Jeff Wuorio- MSN.com’s Tech and Small Business columnist. Why he’s gracing these humble pages lord only knows…at any rate, we’ll be talking about why we mere mortals in middle management can’t seem to get along with the IT department. Here’s why….

Dear Cranky Manager Guy:

Why does everyone in my company hate the IT Department? We’re good people and we make everyone’s life easier, but they make jokes about us all the time and treat us like we have a disease.

Kyle

Dear Kyle,

That cute admin turned you down again, didn’t she? Don’t worry about it. She doesn’t know she’s just lost out on a good thing- and you probably lost out on a sexual harassment suit, since one more email with a winking emoticon probably would have hit your permanent record like that SAT you should have aced but choked on. In the end, the Ivy League’s loss is the office fantasy league’s gain.

I’m going to tell you something that no one else has ever said out loud, and it’s not just because you helped me erase those, uhhhhh, questionable files from my hard drive before the last backup:

People make fun of IT folks for the same reason we make jokes about politicians, attorneys and blondes- we actually fear them and the power they hold over our lives.

We don’t fear you physically (well, except when you stand over the admin cubicles breathing through your mouth and telling them how much they look like Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager). Rather, we know that you are in touch with forces we cannot comprehend and possess the power to make our lives easy or more complicated and in the end, there’s not a darned thing we can do about it. You see, you in IT are the modern shamans.

Think about it. There are a lot of similarities between the folks in IT and the Medicine Man (or healing crone) in an aboriginal culture:

Both possess arcane knowledge passed down to each other but not shared with the tribe as a whole:
Both speak to an invisible world in language mere mortals don’t understand
Both can use their powers for good (healing, healthy crops, spam filters) or evil (curses, war, voicemail systems you can’t navigate)
Both are part of the tribe but are distinguished by their unique wardrobe (Buffalo robes or Def Leppard T-shirts, it doesn’t take a genius to pick the IT guy out in the cafeteria)
Both are an important part of the tribe, but are always socially separate. No one wants to be drinking buddies with the medicine man- one wrong word and they could wake up with boils the size of bocce balls

Here’s a hint- not everyone eats, sleeps and dreams technology like you do. For most human beings, the technology at work is designed to accomplish a task. We don’t want to know how it works, we don’t want to see the cool things that happen when you hit F6, we just want the #$%%#$% thing to work. When it doesn’t the world is a scary place. Ever see a sales weasel when the email server’s down? It’s like watching an Irish Setter with an empty food dish, they just keep nudging their laptops and whining pitifully til someone takes pity on them.

Show us why we need the technology. Show us what it can do to make our world a better place. Show us how to use it then make sure it works. Accomplish those things without looking at the rest of us like we took the short bus to a special school and we’ll get along with the IT folks just fine.

By the way, if I wanted to keep stuff on my laptop that NO ONE would ever find…where would a guy do that?

Just asking….

WWT

Listen to the next podcast and see what Jeff Wuorio from MSN.com has to say!

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 18th, 2005 at 1:22 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.