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The 5 Users You'd Meet in Hell
cweditor writes "The Know-It-All. The Finger-Pointer. The Whiz Kid. "Just as a zookeeper cares for his monkeys one way and his rhinos another (we kid — sort of), so too should IT tailor its responses to fit the individual styles of its end users," according to this Computerworld "rogue's gallery of users (and one angel)".
Includes advice on how to best deal with the most common types of users, without having to run screaming into the night. Expect sometime soon to also see reader feedback offering other ideas (and, oh, perhaps some disagreement with the article's)."
The article is, unsurprisingly, written from the typical asshat IT support person point of view. The article doesn't list the user who actually does know a lot more than the clueless freshly-minted IT support guy. As opposed to the "Mr. Know-It-All" who thinks he's an engineer, there are those of us who actually are engineers who are hobbled by Mr. Know-Nothing IT guys who operate blindly. I always laugh at the IT guy who does superstitious things like closing the Explorer window and re-opening a new one so he can navigate somewhere! Or tries the exact same operation four times, thinking it will work the fourth time! Every time some idiotic security application is "pushed" onto all desktops and fucks up my ability to update development software, some IT moron asks "well what did you change?" I remember a dimwit who claimed I needed a new computer because he couldn't figure out how get an encryption certificate working in Outlook. I kid you not, I got a new computer out of it.
"The Know-It-All" It is simply mind-boggling how often a simple reboot fix seemingly unrelated problems. Besides, if you're issue is really so important that I need to come down there personally and look into it, you're probably not getting much work done anyways, so what's the harm in starting a reboot while I start walking to your desk? Worst case scenario, it doesn't help, but you haven't missed out on any productivity.
If I ask a user to reboot their computer (which, by the way, means I think it might help) and they say it's unrelated, their just prolonging the time it takes to get the problem solved, because I'm just gonna reboot it myself when I get to their desk. Why not save us both a little time and just do it now? Who knows, it might even work, and that'll save us both a lot of time.
Unpleasantries.
all of the millions of people that don't RTFM or help screens before lifting the phone and calling tech support; yes, the manuals and help screens suck, so did your chemistry book.
But isn't it your job to be on the other end of the phone to answer a question in ten minutes that would take me an hour to figure out by reading the poorly-written book? If not then why am I paying for support?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
In the rare instance when I actually need to call support, I'll perform the steps they ask even if I've already tried them and know that they don't fix the problem. After all, they're patiently trying to help you, so the least you can do is try not to stress them out by being a pain in the ass.
This guy's the limit!
I just don't like being treated as the enemy...and a dumb enemy at that. I fully realize I don't know everything about the desktop or why windows networking can take 30+ seconds to log on (what is it doing?!). But when I drag one of them over to show them how my build which is creating 5000 files takes 100x longer when the virus scanner is operating "on access" I expect an answer better than "corporate policy".
The unix administrators I've run across certainly have their tyrants but they eventually relent in order to let me get some work done. The windows side of IT seems perfectly willing to let work stop in order to conform to policy.
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The olde saying goes: People who think they know everything are particularly annoying to those of us who do.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
You apparently didn't grasp my question. Puzzling through a poorly written manual takes time away from revenue-generating activities. Tech support owes its employment in part to the fact that it is much faster to ask an expert, even to ask question that the expert may find stupid, than it is to consult a poorly written document. If time had no value, there would be no need for tech support. So again I ask, isn't this your job?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I learned the hard way that using military alphabet abbreviations over the phone just confuses most folks who aren't current/ex military or pilots. You end up having to say "A as in Alpha" instead otherwise they can't cope. It's even worse if they are a foreign national whose English language skills aren't so strong.
Of course most folks here can't deal with metric either so I shouldn't be surprised. (yes I'm an American slamming other Americans on this topic) There are a lot of things people could do to make their lives easier that they don't bother to learn. Sad but true.
First time I encountered a mouse, it was attached to a Mac. This would be back in '85-6 (so I would be 3-4 at the time) and when I was told to 'click on the little picture with the mouse,' I picked up the mouse, moved it to the point on the screen where little picture was, and pressed the button. Whenever I hear these tech support stories, I think back to this, and remember that the only reason these jokes aren't about me is that I've been using computers a lot longer than the people in the stories.
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You joke, but pretty much anyone who has ever done usability testing on modern computer systems has run into difficulty with right and left mouse buttons. It is the single, number one, most common usability problem. The worst are users (about 5%) who always click both buttons at the same time, usually resulting in a left click, but occasionally (and apparently randomly to them) their other finger wins the race and they right click. The problem is not even solely that of novice users. When you use software to record the screen as people work, you see the problem for advanced users, most of whom do not even notice. I saw this once for one of the top security architects for one of the biggest tier 1 ISPs in the US, and he was a really bright guy.
Apple has largely solved this problem with two major things. First, all systems ship in single button configuration, so developers almost never require right-clicking for any action. (aside from one pro graphics company and a few bad ports of Windows/Linux apps). This means everything accessed by right-clicking is a secondary way to get to that function and can be used for quick shortcuts. The second thing they did was the invention of the mighty mouse. It isn't perfect and I don't use one myself, but they change a mouse from single button to multi-button in software, so different users of the same hardware can have either a simple mouse or an advanced mouse. This is the best thing ever for public machines, family computers, and other shared systems.
I suppose having actual experience with formal, scientific testing in this area is why all the idiotic comments about 1 button mice and ridicule of people who have problems is so annoying to me.