Mav's Funniest Moments as IT Support — Part 1 The Printer That Was Not Plugged In

 

The Printer That Was Not Plugged In

Let me tell you about my job description.

Officially: Program Technical Staff, in a National Agency. My primary role is to assist MSMEs with product development and promotion — packaging, labeling, FDA compliance, branding. I am the person who designs product labels for shrimp paste, garlic chili oil, cane vinegar, pork tocino, etc.

Unofficially: I am also the IT support.

Technically — it is partly in my job description.

I am a BS Information Technology graduate. When HR processed my designation they saw the degree and added Assistant IT Officer to my responsibilities alongside the Technical Staff role.

So yes — the IT support is official. It is designated. It has HR paperwork behind it.

What HR did not fully anticipate is that "Assistant IT Officer" in a provincial government office with no data center, no NAS, and no dedicated server room means something very specific: you are the entire IT department. Not assisting anyone. Just you, a switch, two ISPs, a collection of aging desktop units, and a Photoshop file you have been trying to finish since 10AM.

The degree said I was ready for this. The degree was not wrong. The degree just did not mention the printer. 😄

This is Part 1 of the IT Support Chronicles. Real stories. Real fixes. Real Filipino government office energy.

The Printer That Would Not Turn On

Severity level: Critical (for the user). Actual severity: Zero.

I received a distress call from a colleague.

Her printer would not turn on. She had tried everything. She pressed the power button multiple times. She waited. She pressed it again. Nothing. The printer was completely unresponsive. Dead. She was convinced the printer had finally given up on life.

I walked over.

I looked at the printer.

I looked at the power cable.

The power cable was plugged into the printer on one end. The other end was sitting approximately three centimeters away from the extension cord socket — close enough to look plugged in from a distance, not close enough to actually make electrical contact with anything.

I pushed the plug in fully.

The printer powered on immediately. All lights. Startup sound. Ready to print.

I turned to my colleague with my most professional, neutral, non-judgmental IT face.

She covered her mouth with both hands.

"Ay sir, sorry kuuys!"

I told her it was completely fine — which it was — and walked back to my desk to continue the label design I had paused to make a fifteen-second trip across the office.

I did not say anything else. I did not need to. The printer said everything by simply turning on. 😄

Lesson learned: Before calling IT — check if the device is plugged in. Fully. Both ends. Into a power source that is switched on.

This sounds obvious. It is not obvious when you are stressed, rushing, and the printer was working fine yesterday. The brain skips the obvious checks when it is already convinced something is broken. This is not a critique of my colleague. This is human nature. I have done versions of this myself with other devices.

The plug check is always Step 1. Always.

The Reality of Government Office IT Support in the Philippines

For context — because I think this context matters for readers who might be the unofficial IT person in their own office:

Our setup is what most provincial government offices in the Philippines actually look like. A local area network running through an unmanaged switch. Desktop computers of varying ages — some from procurement cycles five years ago, some older back 2011. Two ISP connections. Printers shared across departments. No dedicated server. No domain controller. No enterprise helpdesk system.

Support requests arrive through:

• Someone calling my name from across the office
• A direct message on Meta from a colleague in another municipality
• Someone appearing silently at my desk and standing there until I notice
• My supervisor asking if I can "just quickly check something" which has never once taken less than thirty minutes

And I handle all of it in between Photoshop layers and Canva artboards. Product label open on one monitor, network diagnostic running in the background, printer cable in hand, prayer in my heart. 😄

This is the job. Not just one job — both jobs, simultaneously, in the same building, on the same chair whose foam gave up years ago.

Part 2 coming soon. Follow Mav's Corner so you do not miss it. 😄

Before I Close This Tab

Someone asked me once what the most common IT problem in a government office is.

I thought about the network loops, the BIOS settings, the fiber breaks, the Group Policy configurations, the disk space migrations, the ISP failovers.

Then I thought about the printer.

The answer is: the plug.

Not always literally — but the principle is always the same. The problem is almost never as complicated as it feels in the moment. The most stressful IT emergencies usually have the simplest causes. A cable in the wrong port. A setting no one told anyone about. A plug three centimeters from where it needs to be.

The skill in IT support is not knowing every complex fix. It is being calm enough to check the simple things first — before you assume the worst, before you start reinstalling drivers, before you call the supplier to complain that the printer is defective.

Plug it in. Restart it. Check the cable. Then — and only then — get complicated.

That is the whole curriculum. 

Note: All stories in the IT Support Chronicles are real incidents from my actual work experience as IT support staff. Names of colleagues are withheld to protect the dignity of everyone involved — especially the printer incident. You know who you are. The printer knows too. Lol!