Computer Stupidities

Stephen R. van den Berg writes "Yet another BOFH ^[?] -relief site: stories about Computer Stupidities compiled by RinkWorks. "What do you mean, other tape? When it said second volume, I just hit enter again.". "

Comments

Management stupidities

[Velox_SwiftFox]

I spent a frustrating two years or so trying to help a company I won't name into being an Internet Service Provider, with explicit permission and encouragement to do so. Unfortunately, the president of the company decided that he was going to be the sole and only salesman for the services; he knew little or nothing about the Internet and displayed no willingness or ability to learn about it, preferring to operate on the assumption that whatever he wished to be true about the business would magically become the case, and blaming any failure of reality to mold itself that way on his subordinates.

The result was the predictable disaster. He was told that because not all customers would be using the proposed 250 dialin connections at once, statistically the 250 connections could support perhaps as many as 2000 users. This caused him to jump to the conclusion that all 2000 could dial in at the same time, 8 customers using each a modem and ordinary phone line simultaenously, and therefore only 32 modems would be needed to support 2000 customers by the statistical rule. Then I was presented with 4 analog dialin lines and modems, and a statement that they should be able to support 250 users, which we would start the business off with.

Upon reality being presented, along with the original provisioning documents, the idea of selling dialin lines was suddenly dropped, and reselling T1 service from our connection was declared to be our new Internet business; also it was proposed that we would be selling web sites, though already web farms with much higher bandwidth were coming into use.

Then everything seemed to - oscillate. One week, it would be declared that we were going to put websites up, a couple of weeks later we were going to go full bore selling bandwidth. No details were ever available of the "plans".

Eventually this climaxed in an angry, out-of-the-blue mobile phone call demanding "Yes or no - do we have a clear T1 channel to the Internet?" and escalating fury as I tried to explain that that was a trick question; we had a T1 to a backbone ISP, but no guarantee there was 1.544mbps to each and every server on the net, et cetra. Upon being told I would be fired if I did not simply answer the question with a "Yes" or "No", I said "Yes", true in the sense we had a "clear channel" DS1 line and not a Frame Relay connection. Nothing more happened for a while, then I was called into the president's office and was told he had sold some T1 connections - and that he decided, and had told the companies involved, that they did not have to actually purchase a point-to-point connection to us, or any CSU/DSU or router; because we already had the T1 & et cetra, we would just sell them "part of ours". Magically wishing the bits from our networks into the customers'. The response he was given, which as it had to be was that the president/salesman had been given specific lists of the required equipment down to part numbers and itimized costs, was not well accepted - I was told, in effect, that he was too important a person to be required to read such trivia as what subordinates put into his "In" box.

Probably I should have known things were not going to work out well when the principal involved proposed early on that we could save much money by buying an AOL account or two to resell to our high-bandwidth customers. Sigh. At least they finally learned to use email, but it was rather a relief to leave that place.

Blame the idiots.

[fireproof]

Ordinary folks who don't understand computers don't deserve to be mocked. Ordinary people who want to use their computers but refuse to learn anything about them do.

However, after spending a good afternoon reading these stories, I note that many of them involve a user who assumes that he knows more than the tech support person or a tech support person who won't consider the obvious.

When a user calls up, claims to be an "Apple Tech," and then proceeds to ask how to do something simple the techie tells him to do, he rightfully should be mocked. When the user refuses to take the advice of a knowledgeable tech and then threatens some sort of recourse because "the tech doesn't know anything," they rightfully should be mocked.

The problem with many computer users is that they get proficient with using MS Word, figure out how to drag and drop, and install a program or two while surfing the web using AOL and they decide that they're an instant A+ certified MSCE know-it-all. I've got friends like this. One of my (least) favorites thinks he knows all about designing web pages. He's decent at Photoshop and knows a bit about WordPerfect. One day, he applied for a job where I work, and told the folks that he had a "vast knowledge of computers." The next day he called me wanting to know how to put in a CD-ROM drive.

I'm often reminded of the "General Motors Tech Support" joke that was circulating about two years ago, where a user calls up tech support because his car won't start. When the support guy tries to get the user to check things out, he is met with replies like: "What's a steering wheel? What's a dashboard? Fuel Gauge? What's That?" Finally, the exasperated user exclaims "I'm not a technical person! I just want to go places with my car!"

Although it seems ludicrous that we would allow someone with such limited knowledge to pilot an automobile, we do the same thing with computers every day. I'm not saying that people who don't know computers shouldn't be allowed to use them -- I'm saying that most people realize that a certain amount of knowledge is necessary to drive a car on our highways. Computers users need to realize that despite the fact that they might want to do something useful with their new toy, they are going to have to take some time to master some concepts.

Abstractions, the "dumbing down" of the end user.

[SirSlud]

Incidentally, I'll go the other way in terms of blaming why computers are so hard to use - it's the level abstraction set up between the user and whats really going on.

For example, I'll propose that the newbie Windows 95 user hasn't a clue what a "Shortcut" is with respect to the idea that its an actual file on the disk with a special file type. They're just told it's a "Shortcut" and how to work it. These types of abstractions only serve to convuse new users as when it comes to problems, they havn't the faintest idea what they're actually supposed to be fixing, nevermind how to. How are they supposed to know when a problem is because of the shortcut, or the actual file it points to? Similar abstractions (wizards, "dumbed down explainations") may serve to help the uninitiated get off the ground faster, but makes it all the more difficult for the user to make an emergency landing when it comes time.

Cars are complex things. Why do auto makers not lock the engine from the driver? Because if the driver /wants/ to look at it and know whats going on, s/he can. And yet, people who don't know anything about engines just don't touch theirs, and refer to experts when it comes time to fix it. But at least they can see it, and chose to learn about it and fiddle with it if they want to. If a proper interface was set up bewteen the low-level and the high-level in an OS, the user should recognize properly what not to touch, or conversly, what to touch when they want to fiddle and learn. Barring this low level from the user (such as in most Windows 9X componants' interfaces) makes them live on another plane of reality from whats really going on, and leaves them clueless when its time to fix things of describe whats going on to tech support.