deejay - 12:13 am on Jun 14, 2004 (gmt 0)

The IT guy has my DEEPEST sympathies.

yeesh... pass mine onto him too.

...or when their home email sends what looks like a virus to their office email.

See.. that's what I call a perfect opportunity for subterfuge. Next time somthing looks a little dodgy... make it look a WHOLE lot dodgy. He'll need to practice looking paniced and anxious.. wringing of hands looks good... if he can manage to break out into a sweat, all the better. Wearing running shoes helps - so he can RUN, not walk, to pull the plugs on the servers before that damn virus infects the whole network.

Signficant amounts of muttering is essential, and if it's not too outside his character or the workplaces, an occasional expletive can really punch the point home.

Of course the whole network will need to be pulled down... but essential users can be brought back up fairly quickly once their machines have been cleaned and cleared. Make sure to leave the bosses for last as you work your way around the office disinfecting every machine before reconnecting it to the network.

By the time you do the bosses machine, you'll be looking suitably tired and harried anyway... he'll be ticked that it's cost him time without his machine... not to mention the whole business, and you'll be able to sigh despondently, look him straight in the eye and say 'you know, the really silly thing is that none of this need to have happened... if only all the mail was kept to company addresses and went through our virus protection and firewalls. We really do need to look at this, because these things are only happening more frequently these days'.

Deejay
Acting Coach Extraordinaire