I Really Am Their IT Department

My LinkedIn profile title includes “accountant” and “IT support.”

I’m not even joking, I really am IT support at my company. I’ve been there long enough for my co-workers to realize that a) I can often fix their computer problems, and b) even when I can’t, I often know enough to quickly diagnose their computer problems and help them find a solution. So now when someone has computer problems, they come ask me about it. If I can’t fix it, then we call the tech support company.

Monday my office mate booted her computer and was greeted by a virus. You know the sort, the fake “Your computer is infected, click on this totally legitimate link to download our totally legitimate antivirus program” virus that won’t let you do anything else until you download their malware.

There are differing theories as to how it got there. Freda thinks the cleaning lady may have let her kids play on the computer over the weekend. I think the virus is on the server, and keeps re-infecting all the desktops. Alpha Geek thinks our IT guy never properly cleaned the virus the first time it showed up, and it’s been hibernating and re-appearing as a result. My money is on Alpha Geek.

Rather than call our IT guy, and pay him $150-200 to come out and remove the damn thing, they waited for me to return to return to work today and asked me to give it a shot. I did exactly the same thing the IT guy does: I Googled the virus and followed the directions for removal. Presto, her computer worked again.

Last week I also asked the boss if I could splurge and spend $30 on some RAM for my computer. It was on my desk this morning, so I popped it in. I’ve doubled my computer’s RAM; the improvement in its performance is noticeable.

The boss also asked me to see if I could install a check scanner for another computer in the office. (Easy enough, download drivers and run them.)

…and asked if I could set up some e-mail addresses for another company he just acquired.

I shit you not, I spent most of my day doing IT support, and maybe two hours doing the job for which I was originally hired.

Alpha Geek points out that people doing the kind of work I’ve been doing get paid a lot more than I’m getting paid. Well, yeah—I am looking for a new job. He thinks I should ask for a raise, that even if the boss says it’s not feasible, I’ll be putting the idea into his head that I should be getting more money. Alpha Geek feels that the boss could swing a higher wage for me if he thought he needed to.

Alpha Geek is probably right (he usually is), but I don’t think I have the political wherewithal to swing it. I know the boss has fired people with no warning in the past, and we can’t afford to lose my income right now. So I’m still working on the “find a new job” angle, because I don’t have a lot of faith in my ability to do the “convince boss to give me a raise” angle.

Personally I’d like to get into one of the bigger accounting packages, like Dynamics GP or SAP. Which would also require getting into a larger company that can afford such things, and would also be able to afford a nice luxy salary for me and some health benefits and a 401k.