We’re in a dark and dank dungeon. It smells of sweat, drying milk, and ozone. A server ticks and hums one room over — did you hear something rustling in there?

You get a call from “upstairs.” Before they have a chance to tell you what’s going on, you say, “have you tried turning it off and on again?”

This probably sounds familiar. Not because I.T. departments actually look, sound, smell, and taste like this, but because it sometimes feels like that.

So, let’s take a look at the ultimate parody of the I.T. department and find out what Moss, Roy, and Jenn can teach us about running an I.T. department.

1. People Are Absurdly Predictable

It’s now such an old-hat joke it’s not even funny anymore. “Did you try turning it off and on again.” But it’s really the go-to fix for a lot of computer problems.

We all understand how a memory cache works and 99% of devices use one. Even if a client doesn’t understand the *how*, they still know to try restarting.

But for some reason, it escapes literally everyone’s mind.

This is why it’s most efficient to use a bot to free up 90% of your time dealing with I.T. problems in a business.

Roy’s solution was a taped recording. Comedy gold. But we now have the technology to outsource common Q&A to a machine. Simply set up a bot chat program on every computer and your clients can fix the simplest problems through that. This will leave you plenty of time to catch up on the last season of Mr. Robot.

2. Nobody in Your Office Understands the Network

You’re probably like Ross in that you get frustrated when people mess with the settings on their workstations turning off their “bloody firewalls” and such. But you’ve got to remember: most people don’t understand the network and how it works.

You’ve had education and experience in network services. Few others have.

You’re of course not going to convince a Jenn doppelganger that some black box is the internet, but you can explain why certain things are necessary in simpler terms. If you want people to follow network hygiene protocols, you have to explain why they’re there. And you have to do it in a way people will understand.

If someone doesn’t have a reason for a rule, they’re less likely to follow the rule.

3. Don’t Be a Giddy Goat: Fix Problems Early

You may think a problem is small. Deal with it later, you tell yourself. But often a small problem in the network might be indicative of a flaw in the process.

If you don’t examine the whole system and fix the bug now, it could become a larger debacle down the line. The whole network could go down or you could find yourself with a mess of corrupted data or local storage drives.

Also, don’t just fix the problem, figure out why it happened. Always source to the root of the problem.