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I’ve seen a lot of articles lately about people being surprised their job include odd tasks. I understand IT can be consuming, however, in my experience, if you do things right you end up with time on your hands. If you’re always running with your hair on fire, you need to assess either your environment or your abilities.

I have always seen down time as a negative in a job. I’d rather fill those times with any task (helping move offices, fix the tv, learn another task). These actions make you a more valuable employee to the organization as you are seen as needed in multiple areas. So when you are asked to help with the furniture move or fixing the bosses home wi-fi, take them up on it. It’s not about being a brown noser but showing you are willing to be a team player and do what it takes. I’ve seen IT budgets (operational and salary) get cut before others, you don’t want to be on the block when that happens. Hopefully they would see your willingness to learn new tasks and put you in another area.

That’s my two cents, for what it’s worth…

17 Spice ups
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There needs to be a balance , I worked in places where you are busy all the time just fire fighting. Where I am now , the infrastructure is of a high standard so it is BAU. Most of my time is spent researching new technology and developing myself as well as bit of Spiceworks.

I am not adverse to helping out in area outside IT , as it is a great way of building link outside of the IT silo but you have to draw the line when it becomes expected for you to carry out these tasks.

4 Spice ups
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Every job is unique and everyone filling said role is also unique. I’ve worked in places where I am happy to assist or help with pretty much anything - setup a new TV, help someone change a flat tire, create an internal powerpoint display for company events, etc. But that is only when I have the time and the work environment is good. I’ve worked at other places where I was “expected” to do things not in my job description/realm of skills simply because the boss felt it was “IT”. Those tend to be toxic environments and depending on my standing, I’ll either begrudgingly do the task (while polishing my resume) or stand my ground and refuse to do it. If the job market is poor, it means I have to suck it up while doing a task that isn’t something I should be doing. If the job market is good, I can make that stand and if it gets me fired, it just means I have some severance in the bank when I start the next job soon after.

I find it cathartic to vent in forums like this about the silly/odd tasks that seem to fall under the “IT remit”. I’m pretty certain most others find it cathartic as well.

4 Spice ups
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I love keeping busy but I put my foot down at doing nonbusiness related work for anyone, i.e. working on the boss’s home Wi-Fi.

2 Spice ups
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I love staying busy. so the good is you get to touch a whole lot of different technologies. The bad is you don’t get to master all of it. You end up being a General practitioners rather than a specialist (which isn’t always a bad thing).

2 Spice ups
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It’s a balancing act.

Personally, I feel working on employees’ personal devices is a great, huge, whopping “OHFN”. There are far, far too many questions about liability that need to be answered. If the “boss” is also the owner, things tend to blur a bit. They shouldn’t, but they often do. As long as you’re doing work at the boss’s house on the clock during normal business hours, yeah, fine. Score the brownie points. After work? Yeah, that’s also an OHFN.

As for assembling furniture? I’ll argue that if you have time to regularly be doing any thing outside of your primary job responsibilities, your job is in danger of being outsourced. Helping out in an “all hands on deck” situation - particularly in a small business - is a far cry from being the go-to person to assemble furniture every time someone orders a bookshelf. If you’re worried about budget cuts, regularly doing things that aren’t your job is not how to prevent them.

Case in point? Our student services folks regularly take pictures of staff and students for ID cards. Two years ago we completely replaced the entire photo setup, including the rolling shelf that everything is on. I assembled the shelf and made the appropriate modifications to mount the camera - mostly because I knew how, had the time, and neither department really wanted to burden the maintenance folks with the request. The entire process took less than an hour, from unpacking to final setup, the new system was in place faster, and IT scored points with Maintenance. Everybody won. That was the first and only bit of furniture assembly I’ve performed in 3 years. It likely won’t be the last, but they’re few and far between.

3 Spice ups
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If the guy who signs my check wants one of his highest paid employees farting around with trivial/stupid things, gas me up. Remember the golden rule “he who has the gold makes the rules.”

4 Spice ups
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I really only have a problem if someone wants me to do something unrelated to my job when I’m legitimately trying to fix a IT related fire. That’s when I say “I would love to help you out, but I have to do this”.

Otherwise, we’re a small company, and someone has to do it, so I don’t mind at all.

With all the threads going on, I was thinking that the thing I love about my job is that I get to mix it up with so many different things, that it’s never boring. I would have to be in a big company, and be the guy who creates account in active directory, and that’s all I do all day.

Of course, a lot of it goes with the environment, where I’m at, I feel appreciated, and therefore I enjoy it. If they asked me to do it because they thought I was scum, then not so much.

1 Spice up
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I see some good points in here. However, I was simply trying to convey the point of make your self indispensable. If it comes down to eliminating someone who has one talent they can offer the company and you who can help with the IT needs and have learned some other business (or non-business) needs that the higher ups see as a value to the company, you’re set.

1 Spice up
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IT’s are usually creative thinking studs which is why we get roped into so many other tasks IMO. We have a ton of unskilled labor running around so I don’t usually get stuck performing feats of strength outside of the normal but if its got a power cord and doesn’t work then its probably going to land on my desk. I’ve worked on everything from refrigerators to TV’s to industrial farm equipment here and I love it, but my actual job description has to come first. When presented with an IT and a non IT task there are only about 5 people in the company who can override my decision on which to work on first and I make sure they know the ramifications if they want me to pull away from the IT task to concentrate on the other. If they are good with it then so am I. I work for a family run business and I do the home IT for that family but that is factored into my salary. Everyone else can try their luck with Best Buy or their Aunt’s friends kid who likes video games.

1 Spice up