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“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”
— Roy Trenneman, The IT Crowd
If you’ve ever called your IT help desk and felt like you accidentally dialed into an episode of The IT Crowd, you’re not alone. The show’s iconic line—“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”—isn’t just a punchline; it’s a painfully accurate reflection of how many employees experience outsourced IT support. You’re not looking for a tutorial. You’re not trying to earn a degree in printer troubleshooting. You just want someone to fix the problem so you can get back to doing your actual job. But instead, you’re stuck in a comedy of errors that’s only funny in hindsight.
Much like Roy and Moss, the hilariously unhelpful IT duo from The IT Crowd, many outsourced IT providers are more focused on their internal metrics than your external experience. Ticket closure rates, average handle time, and first-call resolution are the holy grail—but they often come at the cost of real problem-solving. You can almost hear Roy’s voice as you’re walked through yet another scripted checklist: “Have you tried plugging it in?” Meanwhile, your productivity is circling the drain. The support team might be closing tickets, but they’re not closing the gap between your problem and a real solution.
When users lose faith in official support, they start looking elsewhere—usually to that one coworker who “knows computers.” This is how shadow IT is born. It’s the digital equivalent of asking the guy in the next cubicle to be your emergency dentist. Suddenly, your sales team is swapping out network cables, your HR manager is Googling BIOS settings, and your office starts to resemble the basement of Reynholm Industries. It’s chaotic, risky, and inefficient—but when the help desk feels like a sitcom, people stop calling and start improvising.
The biggest danger of this kind of help desk isn’t just the frustration—it’s the accumulation of unresolved issues. When IT support is more focused on closing tickets than solving problems, those problems don’t disappear. They linger. They resurface. They multiply. Printers that never work right. Software that crashes weekly. Network drives that vanish like ghosts. Over time, these persistent issues chip away at morale and productivity. It’s like living in a never-ending episode of The IT Crowd—funny on screen, but maddening in real life.
Now imagine a different kind of IT experience—one that doesn’t feel like a rerun. You call in, explain the issue once, and the engineer says, “Got it.” They ask a few smart questions, remote into your machine, and fix the problem while you take a well-earned break. No lectures. No digital scavenger hunts. Just results. It’s the opposite of The IT Crowd—a world where IT support is proactive, competent, and invisible in the best way. Your employees stay focused on their core work, and your business keeps moving forward.
The IT Crowd is hilarious because it’s true—but it’s also a warning. Roy and Moss are lovable, but they’re also a cautionary tale about what happens when IT becomes disconnected from the people it’s supposed to help. If your support team is more interested in scripts than solutions, you’re not just wasting time—you’re eroding trust. And when trust breaks down, so does productivity. If you haven’t seen the show, it’s worth a watch—not just for the laughs, but for the insight into what not to do.
If your IT experience feels more like a sitcom than a solution, it’s time to change the channel. Your employees deserve more than canned responses and half-fixes. They deserve real support from real people who understand that their time is valuable and their work matters. So, the next time you hear, “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”—ask yourself: is that the help desk you want representing your business in San Antonio?
And if you haven’t watched The IT Crowd, do yourself a favor. It’s funny, it’s sharp, and it might just help you see your IT help desk in a whole new light.