If it hadn't been called The IT Crowd, I wouldn't have known what these people did for a living. There was practically no reference to their work in the whole programme. It could have been any department in any company. I was waiting for them to come up with some ludicrous techno-garble, the kind of stuff you hear in Hollywood movies such as The Net or Swordfish, but there was nothing.
The character of Moss, the one with no social skills whatsoever, calls himself an IT consultant. Having worked in this field for 15 years, I will admit that there are some people who are genuinely inept at social interaction - but you don't usually find them in support, because support has to deal with customers. The real Moss types tend to be hardcore developers, the ones with pasty skin and beady eyes who sit in a basement all night, drinking coffee and trying to hack into government installations. It's a stereotype, but they do exist. I'd be the first person to say they are a bunch of geeks.
We're not always locked in the basement, either. It would be fantastic if we were: it would protect us from all those people who have a "tiny problem" with this or that, a problem that inevitably turns out to be an hour-and-a-half job. I work in a technology company, the hardest place to provide IT support. People come to you for help, but they still think they know better.
There was one moment in this show when Roy, the main character, was summoned up to the top floor to open the lid of his boss's laptop, and I felt his pain. In my last job, I was asked by a lady to reboot the internet for her. I told her I wasn't that clever.
Michael Rodrigues is an Internal Systems Operations Team Leader at Conchango.
The IT Crowd is on Channel 4 at 10pm on Fridays.