In This Case, “IT” Stands For “Idiot Tech”

My employers are SUPER stingy with money, and our IT guy is a conceited, arrogant jerk who believes himself to be God’s gift to the IT field. This combination means that we haven’t gotten new electronic equipment in at least ten years, because management would rather shut down the department and let [IT Guy] tinker around for hours on end trying to patch together a repair, instead of buying new, functioning equipment.

I’m sitting at my desk one day, plugging away on my Windows Vista laptop — in the year 2020 — while [IT Guy] is busy working under my neighbor’s desk, trying to figure why her printer won’t work. Suddenly, my laptop is yanked off my desk, crashing to the floor.

Desk Neighbor: “WHOA! [My Name], what was that?”

Me: “I don’t know what happened. My laptop just flew off my desk. Did someone trip over the power cord or something?”

IT Guy: “I might have grabbed the wrong cable. Let me get it plugged back in, and you’ll be good to go.”

[IT Guy] hands my laptop back to me without looking closely at it, and I immediately notice a problem.

Me: “Hey, [IT Guy]… not to bug you about this, but… um… do you have the other half?”

IT Guy: “Haha, [My Name]. It’s plugged in, so shut up and let me get back to work down here.”

Me: “No… seriously. My laptop broke in half. I’m missing the monitor. All I have up here is the keyboard.”

IT Guy: “Nice try, [My Name]. I’ll take a look at— OW! What the f***? Okay, who spilled a bunch of glass down here? Very funny, people.”

Me: “Is there any chance that glass came from my monitor? Because I still don’t have a monitor up here.”

IT Guy: “Yeah… looks like there actually is a monitor here. I’ll get that fixed for you when I’m done with this stuff, [My Name].”

Try as he might, [IT Guy] could not get my laptop fixed, so I finally got upgraded… to one of the “backup” laptops, running Windows XP. I also got written up by management because [IT Guy] — even though HE ADMITTED to being the one who accidentally yanked my laptop off my desk — claimed that the entire incident was somehow my attempt at tricking management into shelling out for a new laptop and that he was a hero for having a backup laptop ready instead.