Be Good to the Geek

If there is anyone in your life that you should hold in the highest esteem, (other then your family, mentors and spiritual entities), it is your IT or computer technician. In fact, the amount of respect you give should be inversely related to how computer literate you are. Meaning, the less you know about computers and their peripherals, the more regard you should have for your technician.

Think about it this way, anytime you have a tech fix a problem with your computer it is like handing over the keys to your house to a total stranger. What they do with your keys in hand is entirely up to them. They may straighten up your house to make it ship-shape, or they may decide to rob you of everything in it. The techie could do the same to your computer, either fix it or use the data it holds to their advantage.

Whether it is your work machine or your home computer, chances are you have very personal data contained within the bowels of the hard drive. It could be from accessing your bank account online, personal letters written to various recipients, emails sent regarding specific events in your life, or even logging onto Facebook. Any of these actions can leave footprints which, in the hands of a skilled computer technician, can be found and then used in a variety of malicious ways.

Luckily, we do not hear many news stories of rogue techs running off with people's personal data. For the most part it seems those in the IT field respect their jobs and the power that comes with them. Despite the constant presence of "idiot users", IT techs appear to have a level of patience that is second to none. If they didn't, we would all need to watch our backs!

This is not to say that techs do not do anything other than fix your computer. Mind you, the techs are human too and within the workplace many are prone to playing practical jokes upon the unwitting user to amuse themselves and their fellow co-workers. The pranks that are used most often are very simplistic in execution, but create the highest level of panic in the victim. Things such as making the screen appear cracked, fake BSODs (Blue Screen of Death - occurs at a critical error in Windows), fake virus infections and plenty of other situations, many of which are accompanied by loud sound effects which the user can't figure out how to stop.

While these pranks are harmless in that they don't steal data from the user, it just goes to show that a tech could do practically anything to your computer when your back is turned. It only takes a little bit of imagination to understand that this means you have a vulnerability that will bring you down, just like every superhero has a weakness that can be exploited.

Now that you realize how much control the tech has over you, think twice about yelling at the nerdy looking kid behind the computer repair counter. Try not to swear at the help desk representatives, refrain from getting into the face of the IT manager and never profess to a tech that you know more about your computer than they do...that's like issuing a challenge for them to do something to it. Of course, you'd never know it was them, because they could time it to occur months down the road.

All this should also make the younger generation realize that you should be nice to the geeks at school as they may be your IT tech someday. Adults should handle relations with techie co-workers, friends or acquaintances with kid gloves because you won't like them when they get angry.