No Tech Ever Asks This Question

Back before Zoom and Teams existed, my work involved in-person tech support. A call from a client meant ten minutes of preparation before I ever touched a keyboard.

Not ten minutes of Googling. Ten minutes of walking.

I’d hang up the phone, grab my notebook, get a drink of water, maybe use the restroom, and then spend the five-minute walk to their office doing something nobody could see: fixing the problem in my head. Every mouseclick. Every typed command. Every location on the computer desktop I’d need to access. I might not go directly to their office on that walk — I might sit down on a bench or nearby chair to run the whole sequence before I engaged with their computer, because the alternative was arriving unprepared and hearing a voice in my own head say, “You walked all this way and you don’t know how to fix it. Now they think you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I read something a long time ago that stuck: Success = Preparation + Opportunity. I wanted success in my job. So I prepared for it in my mind, on the walk over, before the opportunity arrived.

The result was that the fix was usually fast. Six minutes fast. I’d knock on the client’s office door, they would get up to greet me, let me sit in their desk chair to do the fixing, and if I saw them showing interest I’d narrate what I was doing. Then it was done. That six-minute visit was efficient. It was also a little awkward. I walked ten minutes each way for six minutes of work. My work calendar was blocked off for one hour with this client. Twenty minutes spent on walking. Six minutes doing the fix. That left 34 minutes unaccounted for.

At some point, I started asking the question.

“So what else is bugging you about your computer?”

The look on their face was something. Part bewilderment, part surprise, part actual thinking — like they were scanning a mental backlog they’d forgotten was there. Nobody in technology support had ever asked them that before. The question didn’t compute at first.

Most of the time, the answer was cordial and brief. “Not much. I’m good.” And that’s fine. They got a free refill of coffee before they left the restaurant. The opportunity was there; they just didn’t need it that day. No harm done.

But sometimes — and these are the visits I still remember — a conscientious faculty member would pause, and something would shift. They’d actually think about it. And out would come the thing they’d been quietly living with for three months. The printer behavior they’d chalked up to mystery. The shortcut that stopped working. The software some other tech installed on their computer and didn’t bother to introduce them to how it worked. The thing they’d decided wasn’t worth bothering anyone about.

It’s worth bothering about. It was always worth bothering about. They just didn’t know anyone would want to know.

There’s no script for this in the technology support world. The institutional incentive runs exactly the other direction — close the ticket, clear the queue, submit the TPS reports. The question I was asking had no place in the system. It was entirely off the books. What I was doing, without having a name for it at the time, was treating a faculty office like a table at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Not because there were tips involved. Not because I was angling for anything. Just because that’s the level of attention I thought the person deserved.

Here’s the part I didn’t fully understand until later. I wasn’t only giving something in those moments. I was filling my own tank.

Technology support receives a remarkable amount of misdirected anger. Stressed clients, impossible deadlines, problems that aren’t your fault being handed to you as though they are. You must learn to take the high road. You must learn to stay professional. You must learn not to be unkind in return, even when unkind would feel very satisfying.

What nobody tells you is where the fuel for that comes from. It doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from the visits that went the other way — the client who was genuinely appreciative, the faculty member who lit up when you asked what else was bothering them, the look on someone’s face when they realized they’d been heard. You carry those moments. You draw on them later when you need to stay human in a job that occasionally tries to make you stop being human.

The backlogged questions were never just about fixing computers. They were about the refill nobody asked for, offered anyway, because some people are worth the extra five minutes.

Most of them are, actually.

More later...