It’s an overused joke in tech support that any time your computer (or your router or your phone) starts acting wonky, and you ask them for help, they’ll tell you that you need to turn your computer off and then back on. In one of my favorite shows, The IT Crowd, the tech support guys answer the phone with, "Hello, have you tried turning it off and on again?"
They won’t help with any other solutions until you have performed this step.
For several months, when I had a different cable provider — it’s one we all know and is famous for its terrible service, both customer and otherwise — I would call to complain that my router wasn’t working.
"Did you try restarting it?"
"Of course, because I knew you would ask me to do it." I really did, because I already knew that trick. I was calling because this time the trick didn’t work.
"Too bad, do it again."
"But I did it already!"
"Yeah, but I get paid by the hour, not the call. Do it again."
Then, I was forced to make small talk with this guy while I had to wait for their stupid router to power down, eat a snack, have a mid-life crisis, and then start up again.
Except when it was done, the problem wasn’t fixed. The guy said, "Huh, it looks like there’s something wrong on our end."
"No kidding? So that thing that I told you was actually true? Have you tried turning the company off and on again?"
He didn’t think that was funny; I didn’t care.
But, there’s something to be said about turning your computer off and on again. I know I tell people to do that whenever someone asks for my help with their computer. I’ve also started saying it to people who own Teslas. They don’t think that’s funny either.
Invariably, the computer owners argue with me that they don’t need to. (The Tesla owners argue with me, too, but for entirely different reasons.)
"I haven’t rebooted this computer in six months!" they declare. "It always works."
"Yes, I know. Yours is probably one of those special computers that never fail, but do it for me anyway."
Five grumpy minutes later, after listening to them grouse about how this is stupid and a waste of time, I start to understand how the cable tech support people feel. Except then I hear, "Oh, it’s working now. I wonder what happened."
Me, too. It’s a real mystery.
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| Sometimes, you just need to reset yourself. |
My IT friends are no doubt slapping their foreheads right now because that’s a terrible metaphor, but this is why I don’t do tech support and why you don’t write humor. Let’s just stay in our respective lanes and stick to what we know.
Having said all this, I forget the reboot rule sometimes. A couple days ago, I was trying to make an application work on my phone, but it kept shutting down. I blamed the app and downloaded a different one, but the same thing happened.
I got so angry that I yelled at my phone to reboot, which it did.
(It’s a voice-activated command these days, I’m not screaming at appliances.)
Once it restarted, it was like I had a whole new phone again. Everything worked the way it was supposed to, like when I got it two months ago.
That’s when I realized I hadn’t rebooted my phone in the last two months.
It’s like that with people. We need to reboot regularly, too — to turn ourselves off and on again. Or sometimes we need to eat something and then go to sleep.
Snack and a nap. We all need a snack and a nap at times. It’s even biblical.
In 1 Kings, Elijah was on the run, fearing for his life. He sat down under a bush and prayed to die.
"I have had enough, Lord. Take my life," he said, and fell asleep.
An angel woke him up twice and made him eat bread and drink water because the keto diet wasn’t a thing yet. Afterwards, he told Elijah to travel 40 days and nights until he reached the mountain of God.
Snack and a nap, bay-bee! If Elijah had to "turn it off and on again" twice to journey on foot for six weeks after he wanted to die, then whatever is making you all cranky and uptight could be fixed with a 20-minute nap and a ham sandwich.
So, reboot your phone and laptop once a week, and while you’re waiting for them to power back up, just lean back and close your eyes for 20 minutes, because whatever is going on is a problem on your end, and I’m not getting paid by the hour to deal with your nonsense.
My new humor novel, Mackinac Island Nation, is finished and available from 4 Horsemen Publications. You can get the ebook and print versions here.