Slashdot Mirror
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)."
I once had to help a user because she had accidentally rearranged the icons on her desktop and didn't know how to do her job. She had meticulously documented her job as follows:
Step 1: Click the third icon from the top in the second column [...]
Etc....
Have you tried switching it off and on again?
which is totally what she said
There is strong irony in the IT worker complaining about the know-it-all.
t
1) the mad bcc cya artists, who propagate more messages than the worst spammers on earth
2) 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.
3) people that experiment with key configuration settings. Go ahead, click that DHCP button.
4) the well-intentioned, yet clueless. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
5) fanboi bigots; these weak ego'd miscreants are so insecure that the mere mention of a competing technology will drive them into brutal defensive postures. Their reactions remind me of our current political upheaval
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The brother in law!!! It's the worse one, because he is all 5 worst users in the same person!
- The BOFH is waiting to greet them.
My humor is probably your flamebait
No, not just enlist their help with other users and throttle their access, actually listen to what they have to say and ask why they do things that don't align with policy.
That puts you in the rarefied air of the 'Dream User' category.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
7th graders (13 year olds) are the users who will be welcoming me into hell
success often occurs in private, failure in full view
I nearly got fired by a Ms. Entitlement Finger-Pointer. Personal secretary for the president of an unnamed fortune 500 company has the president's Active Directory password, and ended up locking the account. This is where I got the "do you know who I am, I am the SECRETARY of mr. So and So. I was just a phone support operator. After a little bit of screaming and accusation, I figure out what the problem is and unlock the account. A week later, she locks the account again, conveniently right before the weekend. Next, I get an angry phone call from the president himself, demanding to know why his account is locked, because HE IS THE PRESIDENT, and is trying to get ready for an important meeting. I end up in a conference call with the secretary, who proceeds to tell the president that I've "done this to her before." Now we've established the finger-pointing. She'd successfully established my guilt as the baseline of the "discussion", and it was downhill after that. After that point, the writing was on the wall, and I got out of there after a few months. Basically, I ended up on the "list" and was not going to get off.
These people can ruin your job. I'm just glad that I was a lowly operator, it would really suck if I'd have had a good job there and this happened.
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.
I was the Twentysomething Whiz Kid when I was, er, in my twenties. Then I went to grad school, and got a grasp on just how much there was left to learn. I've learned some humility, but even so, the computers at one of my jobs are so-so, and an absolute catastrophe at the other. The difference is that now I have an MSI, so I can articulate why they're a catastrophe.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
"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.
That would be "the know it all". Those of you who think they know everything annoy the hell out of those us who do ;)
-mcgrew
(going for "funny" so I'm sure they'll mod "insightful".
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
...the dreaded 'family member'
In some cases, like my dad, it's not so bad, he pays attention to the explanation of whats wrong and is usually pretty good about dealing with problems he's seen before so I rarely have to fix the same problem twice, plus he's as good at fixing cars as I am with computers and I'm *rubbish* with cars so that results in a pretty fair exchange of skills.
Other members of my family are *much* more irritating and would think nothing of calling me up at 3am because they have a paper due in at 9am that they left to the last minute and couldn't figure out why their printer wouldn't work (for reference: because the dizzy bint had unplugged it to charge up her MP3 player).
The really shocking thing is that several of my techie friends seem to have it even worse than me with their family!
In a corporate environment the worst I face on a day to day basis are those I classify as 'know just enough to be dangerous' - its a combination of a modicum of ability with computers combined with just the right level of arrogance that they know more than I do that leads to all sorts of problems.
Day to day though it's pretty easy - the place I work is only 300 or so people, which is small enough to build reasonably personal relationships with the various staff, so I generally know the best approach to deal with whomever is having a problem - up to and including who can I get away with calling a dumbfuck to their face, and which ones I should save to have a laugh about back at the pen ;)
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!
In his cubicle, he has a stuffed [...] Linux penguin mascot. And he's highly likely to be a gamer
;)
10 points for whoever can spot the huge flaw in this quote!
I write bullshit
Guess I'd fall close the the know-it-all category. Personally I'd like to see a list of the IT classes. Towards the top of the list would be the
Cookie Cutter
All users everywhere should have the same setup and run the same programs. The engineer working on software/hardware design has no need to use anything more/less that the receptionist at the front desk. Any "rogue" programs will quickly be blamed on why the computer is crashing. Even if they haven't been run in months.
The Tester
Any problem must be fully tested and proven before any action is taken. Of course its the users responsibility to do the testing. Having a crash/blue screen. Run tests for 5 days and take detailed notes on when it happens. The users project/schedules don't matter. If tests aren't sufficient or notes don't detail every last action help is denied.
The Swiper
Have a problem? The swiper is more very willing to help. They will take your laptop promising to return it within hours. Days later you still haven't gotten it back and you can't find the swiper anywhere. (note, yelling swiper no swiping doesn't seem to help).
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
Even worse are sysadmins who think that every other tech in the company are Know-It-Alls that must be contained at all costs. At a previous job, I was tasked with installing a rather expensive server application. It was one of those nightmare jobs with a huge spaghetti-coded shell script installer. You know the kind: works great once it's running, but you better have things exactly right before running ./install.sh.
Anyway, one of its requirements was an empty Oracle database and an account with permissions to create the tables it would be using. Now, I'm sure our DBA was a pretty clever guy, and I understand that he had an important job, but he was a complete ass about giving me that empty database. After all, only a Trained DBA is qualified to know how your schema should be designed; never mind that we were buying the app and didn't have a lot of say over how it was set up. Since he and I reported to different bosses, it finally took a request travelling up to the VP level and back down (plus some not so veiled threats of a beating) to finally get the ability to install the application we'd paid about $50K for. Oh, and the installer ran perfectly the first time. You could actually hear his teeth grind as it completed without so much as a warning.
I'm sure in his mind I was a pesky Know-It-All who wanted nothing more than to make his life difficult. He probably complained to his friends about the thorn in his side at the office who wanted - can you believe it! - free reign over a corner of his beloved Oracle.
The moral is that sometimes the people "beneath" you really do know what they're doing if you can bring yourself to give them a chance.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Put gay porn on his desktop. Tell him it goes away when he does, and he can't trace it to you.
Our company would be viewed as evil by some in the IT or the consulting industry. We sell ourselves as "the CEO's consultant." We openly admit that we're working to better the interests of the person in charge of the company, or the ownership, and not necessarily end users. We believe that by making a company more efficient, the employees will profit as the company does. Our 10 year anniversary is this week, and our world has changed greatly in terms of how we're viewed by the "common" employee.
First of all, if we have bad users, we're the first to highlight them in our quarterly and yearly billing breakdowns. The users who are surly, obnoxious, and complain the most are usually the ones who get the biggest chunk of the maintenance budget. Their name is usually at the top, and each user is also compared to the company average. Many CEOs and owners love our breakdowns, and look forward to them each quarter.
Secondly, the hard workers in an organization also appreciate our reports, which we request to be open if the company's policy allows it (about half do). They know who the jerks and deadbeats (Finger-pointer and Mr. Entitlement) are, and they're happy to be "below average" in terms of company burden. It is also those users/employees who like us the most because we give them extra-special attention when they really do have emergencies. The guy who cries wolf all the time is still served well, but most quickly learn that they'll be singled out at their next review -- "Why do you need so much support?"
The finger-pointer loses power under this system. When it is obvious that the finger should point to them (and that's what the report clearly shows) they have little in the way of demanding a change in consultant or operations. Most finger-pointers we've dealt with have been the first to leave or be fired, based on the clarity that we show to the owners to see who is bringing down efficiency. Since we've taken over some telephone system operations, we also generate a report that shows the delay in responding to voice mails (a skewed report in some ways, because we don't use a weight-system for people who get way more voice mails than average), and it's usually the finger pointer and Mr. Entitlement who ignore the voice mails significantly more than average.
The Whiz-Kid is usually a good person to have for us, as we are open to changes in our system. If the Whiz-Kid gives us a recommendation, we'll include it in our summary of recommendations, and give them the credit. If that recommendation is accepted, and it works, more power to the Whiz-Kid, maybe he should go off on his own and consult. If the recommendation fails, it's also his responsibility. But here's the good part: the Whiz-Kid doesn't have the time to take over our work, so it's not competition for us. Owners should know if they have a talented worker, but they should also be aware that the talented worker should do what his job description says he should do, or he should be moved to a different department. About 20% of our customers have attempted to hire in-house staff, but their costs go up, not down, and the service seems to get worse. Currently, we work with no business with an in-house IT guy (even one customer who generates over $100m a year in income).
The Know-It-All is not a problem for us, because every invoice we produce references industry recommendations or knowledge base articles as to why we do it. If the Know-It-All calls us out in a meeting (or otherwise), all we have to do is say "Maybe we missed something, can you point us to two industry experts who recommend that action?" So far, maybe 5% of Know-It-All complaints have led us to making changes, but 95% of them fail miserably. And no, slashdot is not a great place to grab links to recommendations, because it also usually has replies from other "experts" who recommend against the same idea.
The Know-Nothing is our worst user, and maybe the only bad one. Because some WANT to know more, but don't have the aptitude, it seems part
It's surprising how many people are like this. I encounter people this clueless on a weekly basis.
Me: "Right-click on your program shortcut and go to Properties..."
User: "What?"
Me: "The shortcut to the program."
User: "What?"
Me: "However you normally open the program."
User: "Ok, the program's open."
Me: "No, just right-click on that icon."
User: "So close the program?"
Me: "Yes"
User: "It says, 'are you sure you want to exit.' Click ok?"
Me: "Yes."
User: "It says, 'An error was encountered.' Click Send?"
Me: "No, click Do Not Send."
User: "OK, so go into the program?"
Me: "No, right-click on the shortcut."
User: "What?"
And then there are the people who actually do know more than the support person tending their needs - and I am surprised the article doesn't address these folks. There is the tacit assumption here that the support guy is always more knowledgeable than the user. This is frequently not the case. I would really appreciate it if support staff could recognize that I actually do know what I am talking about and cut through all the crap.
This article is fairly content-free. For all the categories, the answer seems to be "let the users bend you over backwards". Nothing useful.
The users who think their cluelessness is the fault of a "virus" in the machine.
The worst thing about these people is they all have a know-it-all friend/relation who'll came over at the weekend and install his pirate copy of Windows/Norton on the machine to "fix" it.
Now Windows won't validate and Norton, well, it's Norton...
Now the only way out is to reformat.
No sig today...
Not sure if you're IT; but having done IT for a mere 3.5 years I have never once had what you described happen. Either the reboot instantly fixes the problem (because Windows probably did something stupid managing memory) or the problem persists in which case there is a bigger issue to be addressed. Three and a half years isn't a lot of time but my experience does not coincide with your perspective.
You can tell them no. Explain to them that you do that sort of thing for a living and it's not something you care to do without compensation. The only reason your family treats you like a doormat is because you seem to let them walk all over you.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
What about the user, that requires you stand their after you have fixed their machine, while they open all their programs and files to MAKE SURE that EVERYTHING works... sigh...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
"I is an engineer!" admins
Sysadmins and wire runners who think one becomes an engineer simply by changing his title to "engineer." This makes for great fun when Systems Engineers (systems integration, production, platform, environmental testing, component, etc. engineers, usually mechanical but also electrical) look for Sys Eng jobs and the search engine keeps returning Sysadmin jobs that were mislabeled by morons who wanted a better title without the schooling. And no, getting an MSCE does not make you an engineer.
I-never-heard-of-that-problem-so-it's-impossible admins
We had network tools and browsers that would lock up for minutes at a time, all the time. I reported it again and again and was told it was impossible. I guess I was hallucinating for 300 seconds at a time repeatedly throughout a the day. Months later I mentioned it to an underling and within 2 minutes he changed DNS settings and everything worked perfectly. To the same admin, I asked him to either stop forcing my desktop to sync with their server's clock, or to set their clock to be at least 15 minutes withing the actual time, preferably withing one or two minutes. I was told that it was impossible to sync desktop clocks to remote computers and I was confused. I volunteered to demonstrate it by changing my clock and then waiting a few minutes for it to be changed back to the wrong time, but he was not interested, because it was impossible. That was 5 years ago and the clocks are still off, but only by 4 or so minutes now, not the 17 or 23 or whatever annoying number it was. I also asked why 50% of my hard drive was "reserved" and was told it was impossible, or I didn't know what virtual memory was (40GB of swap?). I caught him once and showed him, and he shrugged and wandered off.
Slaves-to-super-secret-policy admins
Briefly I moved in to (and later back out of) another building in the same company with different admins who had to follow corporate policy. That policy forced us, a computer security company, to use IE. An obsolete version of IE. And we were not allowed to install or change anything, no matter how minor. Our homepage was locked to a link that had been broken for over a year and we couldn't even hit "stop" - we had to let it time out before we could use the browser. I once requested a laptop for a 2 week business trip. I told them I needed admin privs so I could install a compiler. They said ok, gave me the laptop, and I was on my way. Once I landed on the other side of the country I tried to install the compiler and found I had no privileges. I called and asked wtf, and they told me they don't give admin privs. They had no explanation as to why they waited until I carried that boat anchor cross country before telling me.
That's an IT problem, not a user problem. It should NOT give passwords to active directory, even to the company president. In a fortune 500, that's for the head of IT's off-site safe. No, not the safe with the mission-critical backups; the SMALL, discrete, more secure safe. The head of IT should also have been shielding you from that kind of BS, via laying down his own law at board level.
With the growing complexity of computer systems and the growing number of issues inherent in the system (regardless of the Operating System in question), I've found that most "system administrators" just don't care to research problems thoroughly any longer. The oft stated "reboot" only serves to postpone the inevitable visit to resolve the problem in the future.
Back when I was a "Windows Guy(tm)", I visited the desk for almost every system crash that was encountered by the user community. I admit that I, too, chose the occasional reboot rebuff when I was swamped with server issues. But I made a concerted effort to visit the user, and I was usually able to isolate the problems - generally related to faulty hardware or driver configuration.
Rebooting the computer will, in fact, resolve many things. For a while. Ultimately, most problems will recur. If it is software related, it will continue until the software problem is addressed. This could be the OS, and application, a utility, a driver, etc. If the problem is hardware related, it will also continue until the problem is addressed. And, it may end up costing you more money to replace any components that the faulty unit may be attached to.
Reboots I don't mind. Power cycling I don't mind. Unplugging it all and plugging it back in I don't mind. I draw the line at using those damn wipe and restore disks. There are a couple OEMs I no longer use because when I called for tech support and the reboot and connection check failed to find the problem they told me to restore to the base image from the computers installation cd. That's not a solution, and the problem will most likely return, but only after it's taken me a few days to re-install whatever piece of software caused the problem in the first place.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
I was also an admin once. I had a psycho user who would scream and yell and sputter and lose it over minor issues. He completely freaked out because his docs were "gone." I did a search, and there they were in "My Documents." I looked around some more, and he had the usual "My Documents" folder in the usual place, and another folder on the desktop also called "My Documents" and also on the desktop he had a shortcut to a "D:\My Documents." How he had done this I wasn't sure, but it was all my fault.
Then we had the guy who complained of a slow computer. He had about 30 icons on his taskbar, about 8 of them screen saver programs and who knows what else. I suggested deleting all of them and he balked. I suggested deleting one or more and he balked. Then I started to leave and he asked me if I was going to do anything or not.
But my FAVORITE story: my ex's dad called completely irate. He wanted us to drive 200 miles to his house on a work night and fix his computer. His daughter was crying, his wife locked herself in the bedroom, and he was in a rage because they did something and now he couldn't print AND his landline didn't work. (Needless to say, I had fixed this computer numerous times only to find 400 pieces of spyware and 15 screensavers and 86 viruses on my next visit) Well, my ex explained that we didn't want to do 8 hours of driving that night so he should call the phone company to fix his landline and we'd see about his computer on the weekend.
2 days later, a guy from AT&T shows up, unplugs the printer's USB cable from the phone jack and leaves.
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.
I think the problem is with different definitions of "fixed" which Windows and Unix/Linux/Mainframe/etc admins have. In the Windows world "fixed" frequently means clearing up an inherent, recurring, deep-seated internal design problems of either Windows or some business app which are fundamentally unsolvable given the lack of access to the source code and even sufficient diagnostics tools to track the cause down. So rebooting "fixes" the problem in the sense that people get back to work and the thing limps along for some unpredictable amount of time again, until one of the many fundamentally unsolveable issues crops up again. Then reboot. Lather, rinse, repeat.
In the other environments "fixing" means employing a set of different diagnostic procedures, from analysing logs (which are actually useful, unlike the Windows ones), turning debugging info on, running strace etc, all the way to parsing source code, all of which procedures are very quickly focused on a specific running process or kernel module, which in turn can, in a vast majority of cases, be stopped/started/loaded/unloaded at runtime. Following which "fixing" means alteration to either the system configuration or applying appropriate patches. In some cases even writing your own.
This is because of this fundamental difference you have such a chorus of disagreement between those who come from Microsoft-only shops and those who have a much broader experience.
If you've defined your computer support positions as being responsible for being experts at every piece of software your run and to spend their time helping people with all the problems with them then sure. However the problem with that is you are likely to need a very large staff to accomplish anything, and have to pay a fair bit to get them trained in everything.
Usually IT positions seem to be more responsible for the larger picture, making sure the systems and network operate correctly. Past that, a lot starts to go to the users. This is how it is going to be if you want to have a few of people who are responsible for 20 servers and 500 desktops. If they have to spend all their time acting as trainers, they won't be able to do their real jobs. If you want them to just be systems support, you are going to have to make it the responsibility of the users to learn the software they use.
Also, depending on the environment, it may not even be realistic. I work for an engineering department at a university and as such we have a lot of specialized engineering apps. The extent that we support those apps is to make sure they are installed correctly, that they run and that in the cases where such a thing exists, we can run an example project. That's it. We aren't experts in the software and indeed there's nobody in the department who's an expert with all of it. You'd need several master's degrees and probably a few PhDs as well to have the requisite knowledge for that. So we can make sure that the installation is right, we can make sure it is getting a license, we can make sure there's nothing on the system interfering with it, but we can't help you fix your broken project.
Likewise, it is not unreasonable to ask people to read basic messages on the screen. If the computer comes up with an error like "Error, there was an error," yes it is time to call the computer people. However if it says "Printer is out of paper," you should be able to read that one and figure it out yourself. Computers often try to be helpful, and it isn't unreasonable to ask someone to know a bit about the device they are operating. Much like I am not going to chide you for not knowing how to replace a broken alternator in your car, but I do expect that you should understand that when the fuel gauge goes to E you need to put more gas in, without asking a mechanic.
One of my professors in college (Hi Prof Pierroule, if you read this!) called that sort "voodoo users": they have no idea whatsoever what they're doing, no amount of training actually gets them to understand the computer, and they have merely memorized (or written down) a series of exact steps and they know that if they perform the magical steps, the magical process occurs and they get the desired output... but if anything goes even the slightest bit wrong with any of those steps, they fail completely.
My experience with many such people leads me to believe that voodoo users have a mindset that effectively prevents them from learning how computers work: I think in some cases they're so convinced that they can't learn it that they prevent themselves from doing so even if they otherwise could, and in some cases they don't have the sort of brain processes that allow a person to systematize knowledge about how one part of one thing works to understand how other parts or other things work, so memorizing instructions is all they can do.
I usually make them lavish documentation with lots and lots of color screenshots. (Yes, I've had users that failed because the document was b&w and the screen was color and they couldn't match the two in their heads. This also means the document has to be created with the default system colors, and I have to ensure that their workstation is set to the default system colors.) And over-simplistic language. (You can't say "click 'ok'" and expect them to figure out that there's an on-screen button labeled 'ok' that they're supposed to click with the mouse: you have to say "using the mouse, move the pointer so that it is on the on-screen 'button' labeled 'ok'. [picture of it here] Press the left mouse button and release it.")
Ultimately, I think IT support can be about building relationships with people, albeit small relationships.
As a financial planner I have to learn how to be a partner with people, relate to them, and get them to trust me with their money. Helping different types of people is most often about showing them what is in it for them (why should they care), and helping shore up their insecurities. The know it all and whiz kid could be Analytic types who just didn't get enough hugs as a kid (or something) and are insecure. So, trying to out-do them and show them how they are inferior is a BAD idea. However, working as a partner with them, acting like someone who is on their side to offer suggestions, now *that* will get you much farther, in my experience, and you'll also have a person who begins to trust you and who will be loyal over time.
That's just one personality type I've encountered, there are others of course.
I know it's a stretch for the metaphor between IT and running a client-based practice, but I thought this might prove useful. Mod me down if it's just a bunch of pie-in-the-sky guff, though.
-
I support a couple of web applications I developed, don't get too many calls, but the ones I remember most are:
Caller: I can't get into the site.
Me: Do you have an account to log in with?
Caller: Huh?
Me: Ok, click 'Create Account', you'll see a form to fill out with your information. Fill it out to make an account.
Caller: Ok (typing noises heard over phone)
(long pause... no typing noises... getting really long...)
Me: Are you done?
Caller: Do you want me to press that 'Submit form' button?
and a different caller -
Me: You need to create a password for your account. It should have a lower-case letter, an uppercase letter, and a digit.
Caller: You mean the number kind of digit?
Me: (suppressing urge to say, "No, cut off a finger and mail it to me!")
It depends, how much you are willing to pay wether it is tech-supports work to hold you hand or wether it isn't.
Car anology time. If you hail a cab, you pay enough that you shouldn't have to care even about the most basic things of operating a car like speed limits or fuel. If you rent a car, you pay slightly less, but you are supposed to know the road laws and put in your own gas, although you should be able to count on it to have a full tank when you first got it.
Lease a car and you pay even less, but know you got to remind youselve about oil levels as well, buy the car and you are even cheaper but you know need to maintain the car yourselve and if you turn it into to the garage because it makes a funny sound, you can expect the garage to charge you for discovery time.
The same works in IT. Tech support is often also responsible for basic maintenance, that is, just because a guy is from tech support doesn't mean he has nothing else to do then answer questions. Even if he is, how many people is he servicing?
Are you (or your company) willing to actually PAY for the amount of handholding you require?I once had the luxury of having a REAL secretary, just for me. I was considered so expensive that the company was willing to pay someone fulltime (and secretaries don't come cheap) to do all the non-tech tasks for me. You would be amazed at how this is different from having a office worker who you can ask things.
For instance, he took care (yeah male) by himself of things like keeping my office supplied, you don't know how luxurious it is to have someone who keeps the printer working for you until you got to order your own catridges again. My time was precious, precious enough to warrent the costs of hiring an extra person to make sure I spend my hours on my task and not supporting myself.
The biggest problem I see with tech support is often simply down to budget, you seem to have 100 dollar questions but are only willing to spend 10. Sorry, but you ain't gonna get what you want unless you are willing to spend.
If I was willing to do support (not on your life) I could easily arrange it for you to have the pefect IT setup where you would never have to read a manual or do a patch or wait arround for tech support to come around. Mind you, it would cost you.
IBM is famous for its excellent support, you got a problem, they come, 24/7 year around, but be prepared for some screaming for accounts when you actually use that support.
I have used them a few times when I was confronted with managers who don't understand a problem unless it comes with a huge price tag, and they are excellent, but the price per hour came to about 500 euro's per hour, all to say that the server was fine, the problem was in the software, just as I had been saying all along.
Tech support can only deliver what you are willing to pay for, and while I do not know you, I find it fairly easy to assume that you are unwilling to pay for it.
Don't expect a doorman to hail you a cab at a motel.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I am sometimes an IT manager.
I find that most of the problem users are also finger pointers. It's rare that I encounter one of the other problem users who isn't also a finger pointer. Usually they'll call my boss, whoever that is, and try to get me fired. This is why I won't even consider an IT job unless I've discussed it thoroughly with my potential new boss and they've made it plain that they will back me up. The finger pointer then usually tries calling my boss's boss. I therefore insist on having enough of a relationship with *that* person that they know me enough to call me and have a friendly discussion about what really happened, rather than flying into a rage as the finger pointer wants them to.
I've found that attempting to mollify finger pointers is generally a bad idea: they'll get pissed off anyway, either now or later, and go to management and tell whatever kind of outrageous stories they think are necessary to get rid of me (or my staff), even if it means lying outright. (And I don't mean the kind of "they're too ignorant of computers to tell the difference" lies, I mean things like claiming I said a bunch of sexist stuff that I would never say.)
So, my new method of dealing with finger pointers is "take no prisoners." If something goes wrong and they say "what did you do?" they get a detailed lecture about not jumping to conclusions before analysis. They try to blame something on me and it's their fault, and they get a lecture about exactly what they did wrong and they get told that if they insist on blaming me or my staff for their errors we will withdraw service from them, including their network connection, and they can figure out how to do their job without a computer. (And I mean it - I've done it.) If they claim that they're suffering because me or my staff is slow in responding to them, all work for that user halts while I contact the help desk and get them to retrieve the records to demonstrate our reasonable response times for that user, and then I insist on receiving an apology before I can continue work.
I then go back to my desk and fire off a very polite email to their boss and mine about their poor behavior and its negative effect on my staff's morale. Since my boss always knows from experience that I am a professional and would never make shit up, when my email and the inevitable one from the finger pointer come in, I am the one who is believed.
The other consequence of this is that I insist that my staff have no more contact with finger pointers than absolutely necessary. If a finger pointer calls the help desk, the help desk notes what they have to say, tells them they'll get a call back, and then routes the complaint to me, and I handle it personally, calling in other IT people to assist me (not them) as necessary. This means that sometimes they have to wait for me to become available to work on their problem for them. If they complain to me about it, or my staff, they are told that because they've had difficulties in the past they have been placed in a special service category in which they are always taken care of by the top IT people (the managers) to ensure that they receive the best possible quality of service. If they complain to upper management about it, upper management will ask me, and I'll tell them the real reason - that they're not allowed to deal with lower level IT people because they can't be trusted not to tell lies and try to get my people fired, while I have the clout to stand up to them.
It has happened that management has decided to fire a finger pointer after they told nasty lies about me came to light. (The specific user accused me of making a pass at her and then discriminating against her for being a lesbian. HR called me about this, and I merely informed them that I'm gay. The discussion was over and I was off the hook.) And yes, management did back me when I withdrew all services from a user because of their nasty behavior - the user was fired, on the basis that they had such behavior problems they couldn't get along w
Interesting analysis of end users.
What kind of support techs are there?
(1) The Whiz-Kid - just scraped by in college, but reached Level Google in every game during those 4 1/2 years. Builds PC's in (inevitibly his) spare time. Has never touched a mainframe in his life and doesn't really understand it, and therefore, looks down on it. Knows every upcoming Intel processor code name, but can't write code, else they would be in "real" IT. How to handle? Empathy. Tell them they are amazing, and let them add that secured printer driver to your system and reboot.
(2) I'm New Here. Usually female, males will try to BS through it. Will have to check back with someone else on everything. How to handle? Empathy. Show patience. Be tolerant. Followup with an email to their boss thanking them if they didn't royally screw up. They are your friends for life.
(3) Whatever. The private sector civil servant. Doesn't know, doesn't care, just get the job done and move on. How to handle? Empathy. Tell them they are very busy and you appreciate their time. Won't help move them any faster, but there is a 1% lower chance they'll totally bork your system.
Interesting, how empathy is the correct response in every situation. There's a life lesson in there, young Jedi.
On me: I joined a Fortune 25 company as an executive, and have since risen in the executive ranks. I actually am entitled to nearly anything. But I never, ever take that tack. I personally throw out a few questions to see what category they fall into and deal appropriately. Occasionally the newer ones (who haven't heard the rumors) will decide to do what TFA says, dive deep and bury the user (me) in tech talk. It hasn't worked even once. I may have a title, but I write code at home for fun. It's a kind of malicious fun to see them retreat to Executive Support with their wanna-be tech tails between their legs.
What's the worst that could happen? Mom would kick you out of her basement? Trust me, that's a good thing.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
There is a new assistant at the company who at the time of this incident hadn't even made it through her thirty day probation period. She had managed to piss off all three of the other guys in my department by claiming to be a know it all and basically telling them how to do their jobs. Despite that I went into my first encounter with her with a semi-open mind. I was there to deal with some slowness problems that she was having with her computer (she was trying to insert 20 megabyte uncompressed graphic files into her Word document from a file server on the opposite side of a 3mb MPLS circuit.) While I was there diagnosing that problem, she started into me with her, "I need a flat screen." diatribe. I won't bore you with all the details of the multi-week long ordeal, but the conversation involved the lines. "My brother works in IT and he says I need a flat screen. My dad has been developing computers for years." She claimed that she had been working with flat screen monitors for "ten years" at which point I expressed my suprise and shared with her that I had done some market research on flat panels when they were just about to be introduced widely into the market... in 1997. That really flustered her and she mumbled something about how her dad had always been into really advanced computer stuff and that she had been "using computers for fifteen years." Now I'm 29, and she looked younger than me so I was kind of flabergasted and asked, "Wow, that's a long time. How old ARE you?" She got really defensive at that point and told me, "My age doesn't have anything to do with what you are here to fix." to which I replied, "Neither does your "need" for a flat screen monitor."
During the same conversation I was looking at her computer and I realized that she had both anti-spyware software on there and Symantec corporate edition which also does spyware scanning. I uninstalled the anti-spyware program (it was old and should have been uninstalled long ago. The guy who usually handles the workstations had obviously missed that). She of course needed to know why so I explained to her how when multiple programs try to access a file at the same time to scan it, they can often spike the CPU utilization as they fight to get a lock on the file. She then tried to tell me how she doesn't "scan files" and so obviously that wasn't her problem. I had to explain to her how the programs automatically scan the files any time she opens or saves them and her eyes started to glaze over before she retorted, "You don't have to dumb things down for me. I understand how computers work." I wanted to grab the bitch by the shirt and yell at her, "Then why the fuck are you asking me so many god damn innane questions then?!?!" Some how I resisted the urge.