Scott Kurtz Blasts Comic Strips on Tech Support

J. FoxGlov writes "Scott Kurtz, creator of the game-centric comic strip PvP, released his first rant with the new domain. It's his view on comic strips about tech support, and specifically names User Friendly and Absurd Notions as examples of strips that just aren't funny. 'Folks, a tech making fun of someone learning how to operate a computer is like a school teacher making fun of a child learning how to read. It's just plain wrong.' Read the rest of the rant here." I fit many people's definition of a clueless (Linux) user, but I still find User Friendly funny. Do you? Or do you think Kurtz is right that it's not nice to knock people who call tech support, even in fun?

Comments

Technological Illiteracy vs. Just Plain Dumb

[FauxPasIII]

There's an important distinction between making fun of people having trouble operating computers, and people who do colossally STUPID things with computers.

I work in a computer cluster here at Georgia Tech, and I'll give you an example I've seen. A fellow in his mid 40's or so was working with M$ Word in the cluster, and trying his damndest to get a printout of something he had brought in on disk. I watched him poke around for a good 20 minutes, and then come ask me for help. He explained that he wanted to get a copy of what he had on the screen, and had been selecting 'copy'. Later on, he asked my help again to enlarge the fonts, he had been zooming into the document and couldn't figure out why it was the same size.

Now, many people would be tempted to laugh at this guy, but honestly, I think he was making some pretty intuitive guesses for someone who probably had zero previous experience. I was pleasantly surprised, and glad to help him out.

The other noteworthy group, and those who warrant ridicule, are those who abandon all semblance of common sense when it comes to computers, or worse, they actively seek to avoid learning or trying to learn, because, in all honesty, it's considered fashionable by many to be clueless about computers. A customer of mine a few years ago brought his computer in for repair no less than 4 times, because he had tried to cram a CD-rom into his 1.2mb floppy drive. I asked him why he had gone to so much trouble to force it when it clearly didn't want to go in that slot, and he said he thought it was supposed to be hard for some reason. *sigh*

At any rate, there's a big difference between people who are clueless about computers, and people who are just stupid as bricks. Stupid people, since stupidity is usually a voluntary state, are always fair game for a little ribbing.

Re:Technological Illiteracy vs. Just Plain Dumb

[X]

I think you're missing the point about humor like Userfriendly. First of all: don't think that EVERY profession doesn't have it's fair share of insider jokes. Teachers most certainly do.

The thing is with such jokes the point of the humour isn't "some people are so stupid". The point is that, "someone who has no knowledge of a subject will say and do things that are absolutely HILARIOUS to those who DO have knowledge of the subject." This is the basis for the fish-out-of-water comedy routine archtype. It's the basis for one form of ironic humor.

Sadly, a lot of people need to feel superior about themselves, and they take this sort of humor as an oppurtunity to prove it to themselves. That's a shortcoming in the person who's reading/listening/seeing the joke, not in the comedian. Instead, you should be laughing at the irony of the situation.

A classic example are teacher jokes. When the joke has some 2nd grader makes some silly statement about some topic he/she is just learning, you don't laugh at the 2nd grader for their ignorance. Generally speaking you think, "aw, kids say the damndest things!!!" and laugh about the irony of the kid's statement.

Wrong on Several Counts

[ReadParse]

The "child learning to read" analogy is way off base. The two are totally different, primarily because adults are expected to use the common sense that they've been building up for years, and many fail to do so when they're learning to use computers. It doesn't make them stupid, but it is funny.

Yes, I used to work tech support and, yes, I'll admit that it is not a difficult job and most anyone could do it. I'll also say that I took enough ridiculous calls to write my own comic strip, if so moved. They were funny.

You're right that your plumber doesn't make fun of you... at least, not to your face. But I assure you there are Plumber calendars all over the place that make fun of all of us. You would be surprised at the industrial humor market. For just about every career in existence, there are cartoons and jokes that poke fun at their customers, coworkers, managers (Dilbert, for example). And they're funny.

In fact, I distinctly remember a teacher that I had in high school who was very proud his copy of the "Far Side" episode which featured a kid pushing as hard as he could on the door that was boldly labeled "PULL". It was funny.

Perhaps you're getting my theme now. It's funny. Perhaps you get it, perhaps you don't. You know what? I don't even like "User Friendly" that much. There are some good ones, but it doesn't do it for me the way Dilbert does (perhaps because most of my silly memories have to do with silly managers).

Anyway, we certainly have enough to do in this world without telling each other what we should or should not find amusing.

That's my take.

RP

Everyone is dumb at some point

[banky]

Part of Scott Adams point is that everyone is dumb at some point or another. He relates a story of the time he took his pager in to have it fixed, after he was SURE it was broken. All that was wrong with it was he put the battery in backwards. I just spent an hour looking at code that had a single typo, and it was holding me up. Point being, we're all stupid at some point or another. Don't be thin-skinned. I for one have never read UF and thought to myself, "Yeah, those (l)users are so clueless".

Bah.

[Trepidity]

I don't see a problem with it. The Darwin Awards make fun of people who got themselves killed, so I don't see how people who merely can't operate a computer have more of a reason to complain.

Has he never heard of "irony"?

[Chas]

Scott seems to miss the point entirely on his way to his politically correct rant. We're not laughing at the "dumb" user. We're laughing at the comedy of the situation itself. The sheer outrageousness of the moment.

I'm sure he's offended, on behalf of women and minorities, by "All in the Family" because of the Archie Bunker character's overt racism and sexism.

I'm sure he's offended, on behalf of people with low motor skills, by Chevy Chase's "Saturday Night Live" pratfalls.

I'm sorry, but I'm offended by hyper-sensitive people who over-moralize everything.

We're not laughing a new users. We've all been "new" at one time or another (unless someone has discovered a way to imprint complete educations on a fetus prior to birth). Everyone who's worked tech support has gotten at least ONE really wierd situation (though I doubt anyone's used a permanent marker on a CRT screen in a good long while).

We're not picturing that other person. We're picturing OURSELVES in this situation. Like a guy who's assmebled computers for a living for years having absoloutely no luck getting a computer to boot up, only to find out, after severe, agonizing troubleshooting, that he's forgotten to plug the power supply into the motherboard.

One one level, people are going:
"Yeah, I've been in that techsupport position."

But, on a deeper level, they're usually thinking:
"God! If I were that user, I'd just DIE!

Again, not lauging at the person, or even the stereotype. They're laughing at THEMSELVES. Now if you cannot laugh at yourself, can you laugh at anything else without being a hypocrite?


Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

We laugh so we don't cry.

[hey!]

I understand the sentiment, and if you can keep it up, more power to you. I believe in respect for every person, no matter how inept. People can't always be good at everything, and people can be at their best every day of the week.

However the users don't always have that attitude.

Users treat tech support people like an inanimate component of the computer system -- actually worse because most users know better than to damage a valuable piece of hardware; however they think nothing of repeatedly abusing a valuable person who is trying to help them. In the end it is very hard to keep a person who is facing dailiy emotional abuse productive.

When I got my first job as an MIS director, I reoriented our budget from development to training and support. I hired the best people I could find for tech support, with real skills, both technical and personal. And you know what? They burned out.

Finally I hired a woman to run my training and support who, while nice enough personally, was a total bitch-on-wheels when it came to people who weren't learning what they were supposed to. I got complaints, but as far as I was concerned the people who were complaining had used up their credit (the people who got along with the new trainer were the people who got along with the old ones -- the complainers were just getting a taste of their own medicine). When I hired people who were unfailingly nice these users emotionally abused them and didn't take advantage of all that training they said they wanted. After I hired a strong woman they may have fought with her, but they learned the things their supervisors said they needed to know and they got better at their jobs.

Now that I am older and, hopefully, wiser, I realize that I probably should have made it my job to come down extra hard on abusive users. Back the when I was young and idealistic, I thought that people should be trusted to come to a reasonable accomodation on their own. I didn't realize back then that when sweet reason fails, you have to kick the shit out of someone -- and that's the boss's job.

Unfortunately, people doing tech support at a place like an ISP don't have this option, and the users know it.

We laugh, so we don't cry. And, some of the things that the more naive users do are funny! Like the time one of my buddies diagnosed a balky mini by figuring out that it was plugged into a dimmer switch that was turned up half way. Respect is how you handle the customer. Finding what the customer says or does to be funny is not fundamentally disrespectful, so long as you handle their problems professionally.

Difference between ignorance & stupidity

[Eric Green]

Folks, there's a difference between ignorance and stupidity, and that's the difference that User Friendly etc. make fun of.

Obligatory story: I've worked my share of tech support in the past. In this particular case, I was working tech support for a school administrative system. I got a call from a school technology coordinator. "My middle school can't get their data to me via modem", so I said "okay, have them make a floppy". Shortly thereafter, I got a call from a school counsellor. "My disk drive is spitting out my hard drive," she said. So I spent five minutes verifying that a) she was trying to make a disk at the middle school to give to the high school with her graduating students for next year, because her school's modem was on the fritz and the central office told her to make a disk instead, b) she was talking about a 3 1/2" floppy disk, and c) her computer actually had a 3 1/2" disk drive (don't laugh, many of the school administrative computers dated back to the early 90's and had Xenix on them, and not all of them had 3 1/2" drives). Finally, I verified that d) she was not putting the disk into the tape slot. I said "There's two slots on your computer, one for the disk and one for the tape. The one for the tape is the big one, the one for the disk is the little one. Are you sure you're putting the disk into the right slot?" She said "Of course I am! I'm not stupid, y'know!".

So I sat there holding a 3 1/2" disk in my hands (I'm 100 miles away from the lady in a call center, of course), trying to figure out what she was doing wrong.

"There's a little wheely-looking thing on the disk. Are you putting it in with that facing DOWN?"

"Of course!" she replied.

I stared at the disk a bit more, turned it backwards, and pushed it into my floppy drive. Voila, it popped back out!

"There's a little slidey thing on one end. Do you see that little slidey thing?"

"Yes."

"Are you putting that end in FIRST?"

A slight pause. "Oh! Nobody ever TOLD me that that end goes in first!". A little more pause. "Don't tell anybody about this, okay?".

Of course I told the technology coordinator, when she called me back and asked what the counsellor's problem had been! And of course the technology coordinator repeated the story at the next user group meeting. And thus I got my revenge for putting up with stupidity for forty-five long excrutiating minutes.

That's right. Stupidity.

When I encountered my first 3 1/2" drive, I didn't know which way it went in either. I tried it sideways. Didn't work. I tried it upside down. Didn't work. I tried it backwards. Didn't work. FINALLY I tried it the way that DID work. No problemo, I was ignorant. I wasn't embarrassed or anything. I learned.

But the point is that I was *NOT* stupid. And the lady with the backwards 3 1/2" disk was, for not trying some other way to put the disk in when her first way didn't work.

I always treated people with respect if they made calls that occurred because of ignorance. I was always supportive of intelligent people who called me with questions that made them feel stupid, saying that's okay, you'll get the hang of this, etc. Sometimes they did some pretty stupid-sounding things, but I'd look at the documentation (typical sucky documentation), shake my head, and note that I'd make the same mistake myself if I didn't know about computers and was trying to go by the documentation.

But occasionally I got someone online who was a real candidate for the Darwin Awards (i.e., the world would be better off if they were removed from the gene pool). Isn't it better to make fun of them instead of going postal and seeking them out with an assault rifle and forcing the Darwin Award For Person Who Should Not Breed upon them?

And finally: I nominate for the Darwin Awards *ANYBODY* who says that working tech support is something that can be done with little training and no prior knowledge. Yeah, you can do tech support that way if you think that customer service is what a stallion does to a mare. But such a "tech support" person would a) not had a clue, and b) never been able to diagnose the problem through that big long decision tree that I went through to figure out what she was doing wrong. The idea that "anybody can do tech support" is why the only answer you ever get when you call Microsoft tech support is "reformat your drive and re-install Windows".

-E

Re:Complete Agreement

[Squid]

Granted EVERYONE in Dilbert is a complete dolt at one level or other. I "switched" to User Friendly because it's a bit more positive, at least there are some actual "heroes" in that strip, unlike Dilbert where no one but Dogbert actually has enough marbles to control the situation. Dilbert is a strip that's about conflict - but who are we supposed to root for?

I worked in tech support off and on for a couple years. I learned a lot about user interface design (a million and one things wrong with the Start menu, for example), a lot about patience, and a lot about how other companies conduct THEIR tech support. But I also learned the difference between the "good" caller and the "bad" one.

Good callers may not be easy to solve, but by the time they're off the phone, your headache is caused by their PROBLEM, not THEM. Good callers are calling you because they know it's your job to help them; they understand their place on the scale, they're a little intimidated by the computer but will actually absorb information if you explain things on their level. The best ones are the ones where you say "exactly!" after they finish your sentence for you. We may joke about the technical problem they have, or the description they give of the problem if it's particularly amusing, but it's hard to joke about the person.

Bad callers are the ones you'd probably hate if you met them in ANY situation. You know - the people who tear down "out of order" signs because they block the pop machine's coin slot, then complain that it ate their money. The people you'd expect to find stranded on the roadside, on the cellphone demanding that Chrysler replace their car because it ran out of gas. The people for whom the "do not submerge hair dryer" warnings were written.

Who WOULDN'T satirize the following true events:
- people who call because they're lonely?
- people who call and open up with a stream of profanities so you can't even get a word in edgewise? (We hung up on him after 30 seconds.)
- people who are clicking a dozen steps ahead of you while you're trying to walk them through something?
- people who INSIST that this Mac disk must work in their PC or vice versa, and fifty explanations later simply refuse to believe you?
- LAN administrators who don't know how to create new users? (this guy wasn't supposed to be calling us anyway, we didn't offer support for Windows NT at the time)
- people who spend half an hour ignoring all your subtle and unsubtle hints to get to the point, while they tell you the long and detailed story of WHY they bought the computer in the first place?
- people who are on free accounts (we used to donate accounts to the schools) and abuse the account somehow? like take a school account home, camp out on a modem, or call tech support constantly with obnoxious demands?
- people who refuse to admit a mistake? "that says winsock dot D I L L" "no, that's D L L" "no, it says D I L L, it says it right here!"
- people who just flat out LIE? "is your username entered correctly?" "of course it is! you think i'm stupid or something?"
- and then get mad when you can't solve their problem?
- and when complaining to your boss about your inability to figure out their lie, REVEAL that they lied?
- people with no memory?
- people who honestly believe "it doesn't work" is as much problem report as you deserve?
- people who, despite having teenagers, don't understand that they can't use the modem and the phone at the same time? I don't care if they know the WHY, I'd just be happy if they'd notice the *click* *click* *click* and GUESS the rest.
- people who GET ANGRY if you walk them through a control panel because they think you shouldn't make them do technical stuff? (for some reason we got a lot of Mac calls of the form "dammit, I bought this Mac so I wouldn't HAVE to mess around in thuh System Folder!" I'm a Mac owner too, which makes it that much worse to see someone making the right purchase for the wrong reasons.)
- people with Amigas calling, for any reason, period? (as soon as they say "Amiga" expect to be on the phone two hours minimum)
- people on their second or third Packard Bell?
- people who cannot comprehend that a cheap-brand PC makes a difference?
- people who refuse to believe there might be trouble with the phone lines? (which was a problem for us since Ameritech was the local carrier...)
- people who call you for tech support on things you don't support (general Windows support, other programs, hardware issues unrelated to Internet access) and REFUSE to take no for an answer?
- people who blame you for EVERYTHING that goes wrong after they install your product? ("why doesn't my MIDI sequencer work anymore since I installed Netscape?")
- people who throw rank at you? ("Do you know who you're talking to? I happen to be the executive adviser to the Mayor! Now FIX THIS!" Every case so far has been user error.)
- people who verbally abuse you? ("You stupid catraping sack of shit! Why the fuck can't you get your head outa your dickhole long enough to understand what the hell I'm trying to tell you, you heaping mound of semen?" solution: hang up. No job could pay me enough to take that.)
- people who wreck their system by sheer arrogance?
- people who aren't observant enough to realize an onscreen message is meant for THEM?

And I could go on and on.

Re:What ever happened to RTFM?

[Tom Christiansen]

When I started doing helpdesk and sysadmin work, users were expected to read the manuals. We would always answer their questions, but we also included a polite reference to the appropriate documentation. After a few examples, we only got calls about the obscure stuff. ... When did users decide they didn't need to read the docs, not even the brief field descriptions on the screen?

Problem #1: ENOMAN

Here's what happened, in a nutshell: more often than not, there no longer is a manual!

This is a grave problem. It widens the gap that separates the clueless user from the priesthood of gurus. It returns us to the bad old days when only the sacred priesthood held the keys to the arcane lore locked away in hidden tomes and passed on through oral tradition. The Unix philosophy of putting all reference manuals online in one definitive location (/usr/man), accessible with either a dedicated tool (man) or with generic ones (grep string /usr/man/man?/man.*) has been lost to us.

Instead of coherent, unified, and centrally located reference manuals, we are stuck with lame help buttons; make-shift, per-tool documentation in an infinite variety of different locations and formats; and, more often than not, no manual whatsoever.

You won't find one single scapegoat here: there's plenty of blame to go around. Here's a partial list of the guilty parties, in no particular order:

• The non-Unix systems that never embraced the notion of unified, online documentation.

• The tech support staff who assume that `the manual' has a well-known meaning to the listener, and that this suffices for explanation.

• The numerous new Unix users who, coming from a non-Unix (or even, non-computer) background, were never told that the complete programmers reference manual was sitting right there online, waiting for them.

• An emphasis by Unix types on programmers' reference material over users' tutorial material, which, of course, aren't the same thing at all.

• The authors of software systems who completely disdain the need to produce reference documentation. Think of how many libraries and programs you install these days whose functions are undocumented.

• The users who are expecting giant monolithic bloatware, and therefore think that all help information should be available from within a program.

• The programmers who seek to appease the previously named users, and thus cut everyone else off. They often invent a different layout design for each major subsystem.

• The authors of software systems who, unhappy with existing mechanisms, decide to `innovate' and so invent a completely idiosyncratic doc standard. That means that you can no longer use generic tools to access all docs. This doesn't scale, because for each new tools, you have to learn how to access its documentation.

• The authors of software systems who do not translate their program-specific documentation into a generic format to be integrated with the rest of the system. This means that you cannot use generic searching or printing tools anymore. All you have is a random patchwork system.

• The distribution providers (read: providers of Linux-based operating systems) who disavow any responsibility for creating a coherent system. They sell systems "as is", and claim that it's free software, so there's nothing they can do. They like to play responsibility-avoidance games, such as:
  • Sometimes these distributors try to shunt their responsibility to the authors by saying that they can't force authors of free software to write documentation. That's true, but they have no business installing undocumented software on their distributions.
  • Sometimes they blame the authors for inventing their own doc mechanism. Yes, those people are at fault, but as the distributor, the buck stops there. It's their responsibility as a systems integrator to produce an integrated, coherent system.
  • Sometimes they try to blame you the user. `Hey, it's free software. If you don't like it, fix it yourself.' This is so egregiously wrong that it leaves the listener speechless.
  No matter how you cut it, the distributors are being negligent. They aren't selling a system. They're selling a random bag of trinkets.

• The RPMs, tarfiles, make install rules, and distribution providers which allow you to install software that's been stripped of its documentation. So, in this case, the docs exist, but you don't get them.

• The makers of documentation tools who haven't upgraded them to understand how to follow SEE ALSO links. For example, how many man programs do you know that do this? Why not?

There. Is everyone here sufficiently ashamed or pissed off? :-) If there's anybody left whom I didn't accuse of being a party to the problem, let me know and I'll write you in, too. :-)

Anyway, it all boils down to the issue that when you tell the user to RTFM, they have no idea what that means. Even when they do know what the M is, said manual or may not exist--especially on Linux. If the manual does exist, it's highly unclear how to access it, especially with newer software, which hides its docs in idiosyncratic formats, locations, or websites. Another issue is that the user might not be a tool user: they might not have the skills to search the docset effectively in any other fashion than prohibitively tedious reading of every line.

This all contributes to why RTFM gets shouted more often today than before, yet is less effective than it used to be. The end result is that there are more unhappy people on both sides of that exchange.

Problem #2: Actual Learning Unwanted

I've only outlined here the problems of a proper manual not existing, or being difficult to access. There's at least one other important issue; possibly more important, in fact, than the manual's existence or accessibility. It's called willingness to learn. Often the problem resides in the fact that we're talking about users who don't want understanding.

They just want a quick fix, an immediate solution. They don't want to read, to learn. They do not see the computer and its software as a fascinating puzzle to work out, nor do they see the value in studying something. They certainly don't have a problem-solving mentality. They just want their answers, and they want them now.

The difference between inquisitive students in a classroom environment and petulant users who come to a help desk (whether real or virtual) is astounding. These helpdesk supplicants don't think of themselves as students, and they do not want to learn. Understanding is irrelevant to them. Only results count.