The Support Team’s Lament
The Unsung Heroes:
The shoutout in our last blog to IT support alongside the benefits of regular updates led to a little groan session in our weekly team meeting. If you work in support you know what we mean…so to make the world a bit better for you unsung heroes, let’s talk about the struggles and the wins.
Who are the support staff really?
We’re often shown as geeky, nerdy, and socially awkward. Just read the Wikipedia article on the popular TV series, The IT Crowd which uses most of those words to describe the main characters!
We prefer to compare support staff to wizards – except with less fancy robes and more frantic keyboard mashing. Think about it; like wizards, support staff use mysterious phrases like: “Have you tried clearing your cache?” or “It’s a permissions issue.” These magic words ‘save the day’ but the boss/king gets all the credit – not the hardworking wizards. Support staff fix impossible problems—recover lost work, bring back databases from the edge of death—but the user says, “Oh, it just started working again.”
And just like wizards, they fight invisible monsters that no one else sees. They stand against hidden threats only they understand, tackling sneaky coding errors, tricky database problems, and software updates that threaten to undo reality itself.
The similarities are striking! And robes as an alternative to tracksuits definitely have an appeal.
How Did You Save the World Today?
What amazing fixes are support wizards called on to perform? They dissolve evil enchantments with the famous spell: “Have you tried turning it off and then on again?” or the simple charm: “Are you sure it’s plugged in?” Simple magic, but necessary.
They face the challenges of the ticketing system:
🟢 The Disappearing Users: People who vanish after you solve their problem, never confirming if it worked.
🟢 The Multiple Ticket Problem: One issue, seven tickets. Like a WhatsApp rant in single sentences, but worse.
🟢 The Time Confusion: (Monday morning at 10:25) “I logged this last week!” (Checks… It was Friday at 16:59.)
🟢 The Mind Reading Request: “Can you just check this for me?” Check what exactly? The meaning of life? Whether Moodle is working?
🟢 The Screenshot Mystery: If I’ve attached a picture that explains everything, and you still ask, I have the right to scream inside.
🟢 The Late Responders: When someone brings back a ticket from months ago and expects you to remember what the issue was.
They are the last defence against printers and their evil plan to destroy global sanity one paper jam at a time.
More seriously, they stand like Gandalf before the Balrog, protecting users from the flaming cyberattacks, broken updates, and internet problems that happen in IT every day.
The Specialized Support Team:
A small but important group of wizard specialists are the content creators and developers. They are experts in making the impossible happen.
Their particular set of impossible tasks include dealing with client requests that make most people question reality.
One common request goes something like: “Can you just quickly make this five-hour course interesting with animations, quizzes, and voiceovers? Oh, and there’s no budget.” (Sure, let me just summon a team of animators and perform a miracle.)
These support wizards must make complicated things look simple, like a skilled magician showing you things you didn’t know were there. They need to turn boring theory into engaging stories, changing plain text into something students actually want to learn—like turning ordinary metal into gold, but with PowerPoint slides.
How Do We Cope?
Overworked and invisible until we’re needed, we find ways to manage. Coffee is the magic potion – the comfort, the support, the must-have ingredient for keeping us going.
A collection of funny memes also helps: because some things can only be expressed through humour and a well-timed SpongeBob image.
Well-timed sighs are another important coping tool. (Really, studies show that sighing is a good way to reduce stress and isn’t just showing your frustration).
And as you can probably tell, daydreaming also helps. We dream of the day when users read the instructions before submitting a ticket.
There are Joys too:
Despite the many challenges, most of us enjoy what we do. There’s a special satisfaction in bringing order to chaos.
There’s the teamwork of working with fellow support warriors—connecting over shared struggles and the occasional chance to save the day and enjoy five brief minutes of appreciation.
It’s so rewarding to solve something complicated or create small miracles. It’s encouraging when we receive well-written tickets which we can quickly solve. Working with the one user who actually follows instructions is always something to look forward to.
Those rare but deeply satisfying “Thank you, you’re amazing!” moments can make it all worth it.
Conclusion
And so, we carry on—unsung but determined, armed with coffee, memes, and the quiet satisfaction of knowing that without us, the digital world would stop working. We may not wear robes (yet), and our magic may involve more troubleshooting than teleporting but make no mistake—we are wizards. We create order from chaos, turn confusion into clarity, and, on the best days, even get a heartfelt “Thanks!” to keep us going through the next crisis. So, to all the support staff out there: may your servers stay up, your tickets be clear, and your printers… well, let’s not ask for the impossible.
Sian Hill
Content Creator and General Wordsmith
A staunch Moodler and grammar maven, with an unshakable need for structure, her obsessive attention to detail can be mildly annoying—but the wonderfully tolerant and supportive Learning Studio team has been putting up with her for 10 years.
She also moonlights as a support wizard, and trainer sharing Moodle’s many wonders with anyone who will listen.