IT is like having a warranty...

A user on Reddit by the name of cacotechny put into words some simple points that I believe every user who works in a business that has its own IT department needs to understand. It is also useful for home users, but in a business it can save the user having their paycheck garnished, being fined for destruction of private property (Because if your work provides a pc for you to do your work on it belongs to the company, NOT you.), or being fired.

"Sure I'm no genius, but I don't dismantle my entire car because it rattled."

"To continue the reference, having IT support is like having a warranty. It did something weird? Call the people responsible. Just, do not tinker, do not tinker under any circumstance."

His/her comments were a response to a story shared on the Tales from Tech Support subreddit, which I included below because it further illustrates why it is best to let IT take a look at something when it stops working or making funny noises and not try to fix it yourself.

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I give up - by FoldingUserFerrariic on Reddit

Short story, long and painful memories

Back when I was an intern, I heard that there was a specific user that caused a lot of trouble to our IT department. Normally simple things such as plugging in certain peripherals such as keyboards. However in this case, something remarkable happened.

It was akin to jesus coming down from heaven and making it rain hundred dollar bills

The user submitted a ticket.

Now you might be asking yourself: Isn't this standard procedure? What makes this so special? Well in this case our user submitted the ticket in the correct category. Before she would submit tickets under: URGENT, IMPORTANT, THE WORLD IS ENDING, however, this time she submitted a ticket under the happy term of REQUEST ASSISTANCE.

Our happiness was short lived. It seems she did not need assistance from us, but from a literal God of IT. When my leader and I approached her cubical we looked down at the ground in shame.

There, on the table, lay an open HDD, and a slightly upset user.

We asked her what caused her to open up her computer and rip out the storage of her PC. She took a good long look at us, shook her head, and looked back at the HDD and said: 'It was rattling'.

She didn't understand why we couldn't fix it.

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Now, that being said, this generally just applies to if you think something may be wrong with the hardware. I generally am more lenient with users trying to fix software issues as long as they aren't going through deleting files or trying to change system settings.  If your Word document starts not formatting something right and you go in and change a setting in Word. I probably won't care. If your tower starts to randomly shut down and turn back on over and over again. The most I would suggest a user doing is unplugging it and plugging it back in. Other than that, don't go opening the case and trying to mess with your pc's innards.