Hello again, Gentle Reader. Today I was reading Slashdot as I scarfed down a burger, and I came across a long-standing complaint from a relatively new IT worker.

The title of the post was “How Do IT Guys Get Respect and Not Become BOFHs,” and the guy who wrote it seems to be in a bit of a quandary.

This is one of those long-standing “complaints” that IT whiners… err… staffers have, and I gotta tell you, it makes my blood boil. There’s a line from one of my favorite movies (Grosse Pointe Blank) where John Cusack says, “If I show up at your door, chances are you did something to bring me there.” Similarly, I want to point out to all of my IT brethren, “If people are treating you like something that’s stuck to the bottom of their shoe, there’s a damned good chance that your own attitude caused it.”

This is not to say, of course, that there aren’t jerks in the world, and it’s certainly not to say that we don’t encounter them. The nature of IT is such that if you have one jerk in your company, you are eventually going to have to interact with him or her. Put your best foot forward, and do your job.

On that note, I’d like to offer 10 humble points and pointers for my brethren.

1. You don’t know everything; stop acting like it.

You didn’t go to law school, graduate school, nursing school, college on an athletic scholarship, paramedic training, screenwriting seminars, business school and the seminary. You might have gone to a couple of those, but you know what? You don’t know everything. The fact that you can defragment a hard drive does not give you the right to treat someone else with disrespect because they do not know how to do so. I guarantee in most cases, that person knows more about their job than you do.

2. It’s not usually the user’s fault if they get infected.

Often I’ll hear IT folk complain about having to clean a machine from a virus, and usually derogatory comments about the user are made during this tirade. Alright, guys, really, c’mon. Most infected machines happen that way BY ACCIDENT. When you denigrate a user for something outside their control, you are really only asking them to avoid you in the future, and, trust me, you REALLY want your users coming to you at the FIRST sign of trouble, not after they’ve been infected for six weeks.

3. If there weren’t issues, you probably wouldn’t have a job.

IT folk often complain when they have to solve problems that are well within their job descriptions. I’ve never really understood that. I see it as a 2-pronged situation. First, well, I’ve got something to do. Not that, in my particular job, I’m usually lacking. I’ve worked hard enough and long enough that I’ve entered into a position where it’s also my job to be proactive and steer our company through upcoming hurdles prior to encountering them.

IT, however, is by nature a pretty reactionary field. Much of our time is spent reacting to problems. That brings up my second prong. Look, mom, job security! You see, it’s the rare company that’s going to employ you full-time if they have no problems. My suggestion would be stop complaining and understand that it’s your job.

4. They’re users, not losers.

This is very similar to point 1, but it’s a bit more subtle. The problem is that IT folk who understand subtlety probably don’t often make this mistake anyway. You see, by making jokes about your users, by calling them dumb, by bitching about them after work, you’re fostering, in your own mind, an Us vs. Them mentality. There’s an Eastern philosophy that translates roughly to say-do-think. The idea behind this is that if you say something long enough, and if you start to do things to back up what you say, eventually your brain will believe it, and it will become true. If you constantly refer to your co-workers as idiots, you’ll start to do things that reinforce this, and you’ll start to believe it consciously and subconsciously. This will not make you welcome at the company picnic.

5. By the way, it’s losers, not lusers.

Stop using stupid tech speak. It makes you look, at best, aloof, and at worst, lazy, stupid or geeky. Spell words out properly. Somewhere along the way you were presumably taught things like grammar and spelling, comma-splices and capitalization, alliteration and repetition. Use these things. Communicate professionally. This means using actual words, not 3l33t speak. If you wouldn’t write it that way to your grandmother, don’t write it that way to anyone else. If you cannot spell, use a spell check utility.