OK, here's my take.

Is it funny? Maybe...If it's ALSO funny when the same IT guy has no clue how to give someone a haircut, wait on tables, balance the company accounts, win a lawsuit, process payroll, ie, do the job his customers do every day.

I work in IT. It's a CUSTOMER SERVICE position. No, really, it is. The customer is not expected to know how to do the job, that's why they're a customer. Does HR mock you for not knowing the ins and outs of worker's comp? They'd be fired if they did. So why is it OK for IT people to be asses because someone else doesn't know how to do the job? Am I really supposed to empathize with this kid because he had to put down his Halo game to actually help someone?

These kind of things just annoy me.

Ahh Maven, I think their are some differences. I work in IT too, and I don't expect management to know how to do my job. But the difference is that quite often management THINKS they know how to do my job, and will tell me to do things even when I have repeatedly told them the dangers of it. Quite often they get an idea in their heads and completely ignore any contradictory information that I give them, then a week later they come to me with "oh this is broken, what the hell" and I have to tell them that I warned them about this and then go back and do it my way.

Dunno if that made any sense, lol

I get that too. Anyone who is in IT will get that. But that doesn't mean it's not a customer service position, where manners are expected. Chuckling about it, or sharing it with JUST IT friends, sure, but this? This is making the IT guy look like more of an ass than the user, IMO. It's not the story, it's packaging it as a "look how great I am--I can play video games at work until some moron interrupts me." I don't like the phrase 'luser' either. Insulting your customer strikes me as a bad idea, no matter what your business.

And then IT people wonder why their users don't like them.

I'm with you on this. I stepped away from the headset a while back, but had this guy been one of my minions back when I had minions he wouldn't have stayed a minion very long - there are basic standards of behaviour that guy failed to meet.

This story is kind of a mixed bag.

I don't claim to know what the author's true motivation was to show, be it elitist IT guy, thumbing his nose at the lowly users, or the Hard working Sales guy who doesn't get the help he needs from the IT Jerk (I seriously doubt this).

I can see it from somewhere in the middle, meaning that neither was the 'better' point of view. The IT guy was a lazy jerk, and the user was trying to show off his 'knowledge' of how the computer systems work by telling the IT guy how to solve the problem.

I don't work in IT now, but I have in the past, and I have worked closely with the IT department in the organization I am with now. I've seen all kinds of situations there, clueless people needlessly overburdening the IT department. Elitist IT jerks. Someone dissatisfied with pay dumping a database on the way out the door. Overworked IT guys, underworked IT guys.