TITLE The Bastich By Hart
PANEL 1 (BASTICH approaches a short-haired man in a T-shirt who is sitting at a computer with a large monitor.) BASTICH: Hi there. Is this where I go to interview for the Helpdesk position? SENIOR ADMIN: Who wants to know?
PANEL 2 (The man, a SENIOR ADMIN, turns toward bastich.) BASTICH: I do. I went to join the ranks of the techno-elite. SENIOR ADMIN: Ah, you must be "The Bastich." We were expecting you. Let me finish writing this deliberately cryptic MAN page, and we can start the interview. BASTICH: Cool..!
PANEL 3 (BASTICH sits down and confidently puts his hands behind his head.) SENIOR ADMIN: All right, I have a few simple questions to ask you... BASTICH: Okay, I'm ready when you are... what's first? UNIX stuff? PPP remote access? HTML? I've got it all covered...
PANEL 4 (The SENIOR ADMIN raises his index finger.) SENIOR ADMIN: First Question: Have you ever successfully carried out an entire conversation with a non-computer user? BASTICH: Well, yes.
PANEL 5 (BASTICH answers and the SENIOR ADMIN continues to speak off-panel.) SENIOR ADMIN: Second Question: Did you manage to complete this conversation without severing any limbs or causing other bodily damage to said techno-illiterate individual? BASTICH: Of course..!
PANEL 6 (The SENIOR ADMIN and BASTICH face each other.) SENIOR ADMIN: Well, that makes you the most qualified applicant so far. When can you start? BASTICH: Aren't you going to ask me about my tech skills? SENIOR ADMIN: Trust me, you wont need those where YOU'RE going.
CREDITS Bastich (c) 1997 Joshua Adam Hart
Commentary
The Helpdesk saga begins!
This thread is semi-autobigraphical. I worked at the Helpdesk of the CSU Chico's College of Engineering, Computer Science & Technology (ECST). The very first Bastich Strip was created at that desk between support calls. Later on, the role was expanded and I was patrolling the halls and keeping the peace throughout the various computer labs in the building.
By the time I got around to this story, I was already working part-time for Hewlett-Packard and no longer working for the school. But I still haunted halls of O'Connell as I carried on with my Computer Science coursework.
My actual interview for this job wasn't quite like this, but it wasn't far off. Our boss at the computer lab knew that the actual tech stuff was pretty easy for any run-of-the-mill computer nerd to figure out. The real challenge was dealing with the people who walk through the door. We served the entire student body, not just computer-related majors, and internet access in the mid 1990s was still anything but user-friendly. Just being able to answer "stupid" questions without condescension was far more important than knowing exactly where to thwack the line printer when the pages stop feeding.
Things are much more user-friendly nowadays, but not being a jerk to people still seems like a pretty handy job skill.