FATHER P. CLIP

Bringing hope, peace and unity to the good brethren of business supplies

All offices have that IT guy that comes to save the day, with none of us having a clue how they fixed our computers, right? Well, the good Father certainly does...

E

very so often something goes wrong with our emails, or the software, or the general computers in the office, and that’s when someone automatically puts a call through to the IT guru and man of mystery called Bob Sturgess.

Mrs O’ Reilly, who looks after our distribution, warehousing, HR, EORI numbers and catering, called him the other day when one of the letters in her keyboard came out. Instead of just ordering a new keyboard we ended up paying Bob’s usual high fee for him to tell us to order a new keyboard.

He arrives at the office carrying a Star Wars light sabre, adjusts his Scooby Doo tie, orders a coffee, opens his laptop and sits looking at it - usually for most of the day - while the staff tip toe around him for fear of interrupting whatever it is he is doing. We’ve grown not to ask him what the problem was, or how it was fixed, because whatever he has done will make no sense to us whatsoever and too much of that information has caused some members of our staff to hyperventilate and collapse on the spot, while Bob continues his explanation unperturbed.

Bob has been around for a long time, and I reckon there are very few office supplies dealers who haven’t been confused, at one time or another, by what he’s done to their system. At the end of the day, he always fixes the problem and gets a round of applause from everyone in the building - but I often think that it would be great if he shared a bit of his knowledge in normal, simple terms.

Perhaps that’s how IT people really make their money; if we all knew what they were doing we could do it ourselves. Maybe it’s really simple and they know that if they were to explain it they would be out of a job... maybe their real talent lies in making up new words and objects.

We’ve got a new software system that Bob recommended under the explanation that it would make things simpler and easier for everyone. It hasn’t; it has made things more difficult and longer to do. We can’t really tell him that, though, for fear of looking stupid and receiving the famous withering look we’ve all got from an IT person who finds it really easy and can’t understand why the rest of us are so thick.

Thank goodness, though, for Bob and his ilk; wouldn’t things be more boring and simpler without him?