When you work in IT, you often have to try to figure out how to fix problems that you aren’t technically responsible for. Fortunately, sometimes they are really easy.

What would you do if someone in the physical security area reported that their system wouldn’t let them log in, but you weren’t in any way responsible for that system?

That is what happened to the IT guy in this story, but when he looked at the system, he saw that it was letting him log in, but it was minimized so he couldn’t see it, so the fix was simply resizing the window.

The security camera system won’t log me in automatically anymore!

Yesterday something happened at work that reminded me of this story.

This can be a great job.

So, I work in shifts as a technician in a datacenter.

Outside of office hours there is only me and some security guards on site.

IT troubleshooting is often very siloed.

While IT related problems are usually not for us techs to deal with, as we have an IT department for this stuff, we technicians are often the first line of fire when an IT problem surfaces because we are always on site.

Yesterday was a national holiday, so no one on site except me and the security guards.

Well, that is a problem for his job.

One of the guards calls me and says his security camera system won’t log him in properly anymore and shuts down immediately when login is done.

I explain that I have no clue about the IT side of things, but I can at least take a look to see what’s up.

Hey, at least it was a simple fix.

It turned out that somehow he had minimized the camera system on his desktop to such an extent that once it had started up, it “disappeared”… all it took to fix his issue was to maximize the program from the task bar..

Hope you enjoyed, thought this would be a nice story about “user experience” vs reality 🙂

Those simple fixes can be so very satisfying. And make you look like a hero.

Read on to see what the people in the comments think about this story.

Exactly right.

This type of thing happens all the time.

Problems are so often the cause of the simplest things.

This is a really good tip.

LOL, Facts.

Users are often their own biggest enemy.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.