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Fed-Up Techies
A message from your company’s computer help desk: Go out for lunch, people. A recent survey of 150 IT managers conducted by Sunrise Software, a British maker of programs that track help-desk activities, identified printer issues as the most common reason for a help-desk call. But it also revealed that in a typical one-month period, 56% of tech workers had to troubleshoot at least one food-related computer mishap. The things they encountered: everything from potato chips in a CD drive to desktops stubbornly stuck to a desk by unknown substances. In the U.S., keyboards are regularly rendered unusable by crumb buildup, spill-related stickiness, and foul odors from decaying food, says Jon Aumann, a field-agent manager for Best Buy’s Geek Squad, which serves small businesses and home offices. Aumann’s scariest memory: “I once found a sandwich inside a computer tower,” he says. “With a bite out of it.”
–Ben Levisohn
