Working with the Public

Every single job that I have had in my life was around the general public and was very customer service oriented.  Starting this job over a year ago I knew going in that it was going to be largely customer service based.  I was okay with that, actually it was one of the only things that made me confident in learning and pursuing more responsibility.  That being said, my mind has changed.  It is possibly a cliché how IT is thought of by people that need them and how IT is viewed internally.  Every time I answer a call I could face someone who knows nothing about technology and is irate that their computer won’t start or a perfectly nice professor that is dealing with malfunctioning equipment.  Either way these years that I have been working with the public has made me very cold towards people.  I have figured out that if you greet people as an IT person with a smiling face and a friendly attitude they will always view you as what they preconceive a IT person should be viewed as.  Whether that be as a helpful member of their institution or that person that tells them that everything is wrong and we don’t know when it will be better and we don’t know how long it will take because surprise surprise we don’t know everything!