From the New York Times: We tracked citizen knowledge about the candidates' positions on 12 issues. Last weekend, in the campaign's closing days, there was only one position -- Al Gore's stand on prescription drugs -- on which half or more of the respondents could accurately identify a candidate's stand.
As I type this, some of my coworkers are having a pleasant "isn't this interesting" discussion about the election--not that they're discussing the above factoid, of course: who reads newspapers? Much more entertaining to watch Dan Rather spout corny homespun similes all night on the idiot box. At any rate, I don't dare open my mouth; flames would come out. I probably shouldn't even be posting. I'm beyond the point where I can be calm and civil about this.
The candidates' positions were readily available to anyone who paid attention. I am absolutely livid that the next president of the US is being chosen by an electorate that is largely asleep at the wheel.
I've said this before, but: in a society where we believe that voting is both a duty and a right, why do so many people feel they have no responsibility to actually understand the issues they're voting on? No matter which way this election goes, I'm disgusted.
I don't know whether to shake you or thank you. I'm glad you had the decency not to just vote randomly, but I'm baffled that you bothered to go to the polls when you hadn't been following the election.
I don't understand why people feel it's their civic duty (and right) to vote but they don't feel the responsibility to be informed. I heard guys on the radio this morning urging everyone to go out and vote, but IMHO anyone who is undecided at this point has not been paying attention and should not be participating. It's important to vote, but only if you follow the issues. It makes me absolutely livid to realize that this election--with the future of the Supreme Court in the hands of whoever wins--may be decided by apathetic undecideds who don't have an opinion of the issues, lazy voters who don't care enough to read the newspapers, and airheads who'll vote for whoever has the best haircut and the funniest speechwriters.
I'm not trying to flame you here, just frustrated with the whole situation. Like I said, I give you credit for knowing you shouldn't just flip a coin.
My 'boss' knows nothing about Unix, but promotions in the government tech field are done by seniority, not by skills.
I think that's the crux of the problem in government jobs. All you have to do to survive, and advance, is show up more-or-less on time and kill time for eight hours a day.
I was a contractor at a federal agency for two years, and I saw a lot of lazy, incompetent programmers who kept showing up, warming their chair for 8 hours, and getting paid (albeit at a sub-market rate), and if anyone tried to light a fire under them, they had the union to answer to. I heard horror stories. A colleague of mine found he couldn't get one developer to do what he needed, because the guy said he was "too busy," but every time my colleague went to talk to him, the guy was reading the newspaper. So finally he just figured it out and did the task himself... and promptly got slapped with a grievance: the union claimed that the work my tech-writer coworker had done in his spare time had threatened the livelihood of two full-time union programmers...
I got out of there, partly because my contract rate was at least 20% below market, but largely because I loathed seeing mediocrity accepted and promoted. I saw good hardworking IT people around me who got a 3% raise when dead wood got 2%. I kept doing good work because I care about my work--but had I stuck around much longer, I think I would have deteriorated. When I caught myself pondering a decision on a project and thinking, wearily, "oh... whatever," I knew it was time to get out. "Relaxed atmosphere" is one thing, but this was downright depressing.
So be patient with the beginners. If they still don't get it after a few months, then you call them an idiot!
I agree with most of what you wrote... except that last bit. I'd give them longer than a few months. For people who are trying to start from square 1, there's an awful lot to learn. I've encountered more than one newbie who didn't understand the difference between RAM and hard drive space (both were "memory" in some vague, fuzzy way), and if they don't know that much, everything else is going to be very murky. And most of them are going to progress slowly, because--like anyone--they don't want to spent several hours at a stretch struggling with things they don't understand. Small doses only.
And instead of calling them an idiot (I know, you probably didn't mean that literally), I would instead nudge them toward doing a little more work on their own. I have a newbie acquaintance who persists in asking me very basic questions instead of making an effort to learn on her own. If this continues, I'm going to gently suggest that she buy herself a good "Windows for newbies"-type book.
Agreed, Linux pre-installed would be better for newbies.
But I can hardly blame people for not RTFM when the M was written by guys who haven't so much as passed a real, novice user in the hallway in ten years and who think that anyone who doesn't know how to [insert complicated, esoteric procedure here] is an idiot. In a lot of cases, "lazy" doesn't enter into it--people just don't want to waste scads of their time wading through poor documentation, and there is a lot of poor documentation out there.
Someday people will be able to operate computers without RTFM, because some compassionate soul out there will figure out how to design interfaces that don't require a 300-page instruction book, and they'll take whatever minimal documentation is still necessary and embed it in the interface. I have no doubt that some people will gripe then because someone let all the riffraff into our clubhouse.
Yup yup yup. I gave Linux a try, but after three evenings of trying in vain to get the modem to work, I uninstalled the damn thing and went back to Windows. And this wasn't a winmodem, this was a hardware ISA modem I bought specifically for this purpose. I was delighted to return it afterwards and go back to my winmodem, which gave me faster connection speeds. (...donning flameproof suit now...)
The thing that really got to me was the documentation--this haphazard collection of web pages and text files (...spraying extra flame retardant chemicals on flameproof suit now...) that really wasn't written for newbies. I know this stuff is all volunteer, and beggars can't be choosers, but the fact remains that the docs didn't help me. I'm a tech writer myself and I have a low tolerance for unhelpful documentation. "Wade through" was a perfect description of that experience.
And lest anyone think I'm one of the wal-mart hicks that people are dissing (hmm, a little snobbery going on on Slashdot?), I built the box I installed Linux on; I knew enough to ditch the winmodem beforehand; in my old job I was the alpha geek everyone turned to for hardware advice and [windows] tech support. But three evenings with Linux had me tearing my hair out. I shudder to think of real newbies tackling that.
I remember a couple of telecommuters we had, they'd show up at monthly meetings, and people would glare at them.
Aaarrgggghh. That's the sort of mentality that has always sustained pointless, morale-draining corporate policies, like dress codes, inflexible "flex" time (pick which schedule you want: 8 to 4:30, or 8:30 to 5; then stick to it forever), "seniority" as the sole criterion for advancement and raises (i.e., how long your butt's been in your chair matters more than how good your work is)...
What kills me is: IMHO, people glare at telecommuters because they hate their own daily commute and think that everyone should suffer the way they do. And they wind up reinforcing their own misery by maintaining a corporate culture where telecommuting is beyond the pale.
If I telecommuted and got that reaction from coworkers, I'd be furious. Bad enough when PHB's judge you by your hours or your clothes instead of your work. Worse still when coworkers, who should have a clue, judge you by trivial things.
...right up until they are fired for taking an hour and a half with each customer, and having frequent repeat callers, when the jerk next to you is taking 5 minutes and his callers never use tech support twice.
Good point. If the tech support people are under heavy pressure to get callers off the phone, they're in a wretched situation. I don't know whether tech support jobs are plentiful enough that people can afford to just quit places like that, but if they are, that's what I'd suggest. (Tech writer jobs aren't terribly plentiful, but fortunately there seem to be enough of them out there that I can be somewhat selective about who I work for.)
I think you're half right about tech writers being allowed to be helpful: while we don't get pressured to be hostile to users, we're sometimes put under deadline pressure that makes it very difficult to do decent work. (I know, welcome to real life...) I turned down one job last year because they claimed to want someone who would overhaul the documentation and make it superb, but they really wanted someone who would conveniently ignore any and all problems and settle for mediocrity when faced with a deadline... and deadlines there were relentless. And there are enough PHBs out there too. At my first tech writing job I worked under a hack senior writer who made me take out a decent manually created index from an online help file, and replace it with a useless auto-generated one: she knew a good index would make her own work look bad and thereby force her to expend extra effort to keep up with her "junior" writer.
But the pressure to be rude to the customers comes directly from the customers themselves.
Switching gears... I'm not sure I agree with you there. When I was looking for a dialup ISP, I had a whole bunch of choices that were all $20/month (+/- $5). Some, from what I hear, had lousy tech support. My own $20 ISP had very good tech support. In a market where all the providers are in the same price range, it becomes the luck of the draw. In a market where there is no choice of providers--say, an area where @Home does cable and there's no DSL available--it's not customers' fault if the monthly fee can't cover decent tech support; they had no choice of providers (and I don't buy the "well, go back to dialup then" argument... after broadband, dialup is excruciating). I wouldn't blame the customer unless:
There are at least two providers in an area.
At least one is cheap with bad tech support, and one is pricy with good tech support... and
Customers are fully aware of what they'll get with each one.
But obviously I have a strong don't-blame-the-customer bias. And ultimately what I'm battling against is the snotty attitude some geeks have toward non-geeks. As you point out, market conditions may have the same end result, and that's unfortunate. But what really frosts me is when some tech types believe that anyone who doesn't have above-average computer skills is a moron who deserves to be abused. If my friend the nongeek gets shat upon because of a company's evil assembly-line tech support policies, that's bad and I blame the company. If my friend gets shat upon because the geek on the phone has contempt for newbies, that's intolerable and I blame the geek on the phone. (Why is one worse? Maybe because the first scenario involves abstract bloodless things like corporate policy while the second scenario involves personal human ill-will and rudeness.)
Interesting discussion. I appreciate your comments.
This is wandering off-topic, but I have to comment on your observation that employees work for employers, not customers.
Call me an idealist, but I work for customers. As a tech writer I firmly believe my first obligation is to the users who receive my documentation. If my employer tries to get me to provide substandard documentation--whether to save time, preserve the status quo, or accommodate office politics--I will resist. I've fought some bosses tooth and nail to do decent work. If I merely did what I was told, produced lousy work, and collected my paycheck, I couldn't look myself in the mirror every morning. I have no respect for tech writers or other support types who work that way.
Being a contractor helps me avoid the "my job is to make money for my employer" mentality. My job is to help users, which in the long run helps my employer(s). If I get an employer who feels it's my job to screw over the users to maximize their convenience/profit/complacency, and they're watching me closely enough that I can't just do good work despite their meddling, I don't stick around.
That said, you have a valid point about $20/month internet service. No way can that pay for a lot of tech support. But if I were working tech support, I'd have to do the best I could to help those users. If some poor schlub is on the line hoping for my help, my first instinct is not to do profit-and-loss calculations and analyze the viability of my employer's business model and then dole out abuse calculated to maximize the profit of some faceless corporation. Anyone that devoid of empathy should be placed in a position where they are safely insulated from contact with human beings.
Besides, a tech support person providing polite and effective help for half an hour receives the same wage as a tech support person providing intimidation and ridicule for half an hour; and if good tech support can solve the customer's problem, they're less likely to call back tomorrow, increasingly agitated, with the same complaint. They're also less likely to flame the company to a crisp to their friends, some of whom may potentially be the sort of happy low-maintenance customers the company wants to get. If my technology-impaired friend complains that service X has lousy tech support, then I'm not likely to subscribe to service X even though I never need to call tech support, because I don't like companies that mistreat my friends...
People learn a lot about their cars. They spend a year (or at least several months) of carefully supervised driving.
And that's how it should be, when you're first put in command of a large, heavy, potentially lethal projectile. We train people to drive because they could cause serious injury to themselves and others if they went out on the road without that training. But computers are not high-velocity 2-ton chunks of metal.
There is no reason users should have to learn bookfuls of techie arcana just to access the internet. When you pick up your phone, you don't have to understand the inner workings of your phone or the phone lines; you pick it up and mash the buttons and then you talk, and if something gets screwy, you contact the phone company and talk to somebody whose job it is to understand what's going on. There's no reason internet access should be any different.
Tech support providers make ignorant people feel stupid for a reason: to discourage them from calling again, so they go get real training from their "friend who knows all about computers".
If your assessment is accurate, tech support providers are deliberately hostile to customers so that customers will leave them alone--i.e., tech support providers are rude in order to get out of having to do their job. If I'm working at McDonald's and I mouth off to customers so they'll go away and stop interfering with my on-the-job leisure time, how do you think that would go over? As somebody else said, customer service is part of the job. Anyone who thinks that most users who call tech support are idiots should not be working in tech support.
This is exactly the sort of attitude that gives geeks a bad name.
Most of the people calling tech support aren't "stupid"; they just don't enjoy wasting hours reading some incomprehensible manual... and I say this as a tech writer myself: there are a LOT of bad manuals out there. They don't get their kicks from playing with computers. I do, but that doesn't make me smarter than them, just different. (And better paid, but that's another discussion.)
I have non-geek friends who are perfectly intelligent, even brilliant, individuals. They use AOL, because it's simple and they don't have to mess with it. They don't have the inclination to spend a couple weeks on the phone with tech support trying to troubleshoot a bad DSL connection, as I did. They're English professors, not network engineers. And the last thing they deserve is some snotty geek-snob treating them like morons just because they dared to call tech support. That would be like your mechanic laughing at you because you didn't understand the [insert rambling, incomprehensible car problem here] and then getting hostile toward you because you didn't know how to fix it yourself. After all, all you'd need is a brain and a [insert name of obscure, baffling automotive tool], right?
Yes yes yes yes yes. I'm glad someone said this. American culture has a longstanding anti-intellectual bias. When someone's as intelligent as Gore, people start looking for ways to take him down a peg; they pounce on every tiny mistake. Then you get an affable idiot like Dubya who can make the most egregious errors, and everybody shrugs it off.
The American public identifies more with the affable idiot, which tells you a little about how most people view themselves. It's the same belligerent know-nothingism that sells a million quack cures and crackpot theories ("don't listen to those so-called experts, don't trust the gubmint...") and now threatens to put the country in the hands of a mental lightweight and his many handlers.
The kicker is, the public's stand on the issues--to the extent the public actually has a stand on the issues--is more in line with Gore's. It boggles my mind that this is one giant popularity contest. I don't care what Gore's personality is like, he's smart (a Good Thing) and I agree with him. He's got my vote.
Salon ran a good article lamenting how the media likes to put together focus groups of "undecideds" as if this staggeringly ignorant bunch of herd animals is representative of the nation: "Ignore the undecided."
Disclaimer: Yeah, I'm another registered Democrat and a card-carrying egghead to boot. My biases are obvious.
Slashdot Mirror
We tracked citizen knowledge about the candidates' positions on 12 issues. Last weekend, in the campaign's closing days, there was only one position -- Al Gore's stand on prescription drugs -- on which half or more of the respondents could accurately identify a candidate's stand.
As I type this, some of my coworkers are having a pleasant "isn't this interesting" discussion about the election--not that they're discussing the above factoid, of course: who reads newspapers? Much more entertaining to watch Dan Rather spout corny homespun similes all night on the idiot box. At any rate, I don't dare open my mouth; flames would come out. I probably shouldn't even be posting. I'm beyond the point where I can be calm and civil about this.
The candidates' positions were readily available to anyone who paid attention. I am absolutely livid that the next president of the US is being chosen by an electorate that is largely asleep at the wheel.
I've said this before, but: in a society where we believe that voting is both a duty and a right, why do so many people feel they have no responsibility to actually understand the issues they're voting on? No matter which way this election goes, I'm disgusted.
I don't understand why people feel it's their civic duty (and right) to vote but they don't feel the responsibility to be informed. I heard guys on the radio this morning urging everyone to go out and vote, but IMHO anyone who is undecided at this point has not been paying attention and should not be participating. It's important to vote, but only if you follow the issues. It makes me absolutely livid to realize that this election--with the future of the Supreme Court in the hands of whoever wins--may be decided by apathetic undecideds who don't have an opinion of the issues, lazy voters who don't care enough to read the newspapers, and airheads who'll vote for whoever has the best haircut and the funniest speechwriters.
I'm not trying to flame you here, just frustrated with the whole situation. Like I said, I give you credit for knowing you shouldn't just flip a coin.
My 'boss' knows nothing about Unix, but promotions in the government tech field are done by seniority, not by skills.
I think that's the crux of the problem in government jobs. All you have to do to survive, and advance, is show up more-or-less on time and kill time for eight hours a day.
I was a contractor at a federal agency for two years, and I saw a lot of lazy, incompetent programmers who kept showing up, warming their chair for 8 hours, and getting paid (albeit at a sub-market rate), and if anyone tried to light a fire under them, they had the union to answer to. I heard horror stories. A colleague of mine found he couldn't get one developer to do what he needed, because the guy said he was "too busy," but every time my colleague went to talk to him, the guy was reading the newspaper. So finally he just figured it out and did the task himself... and promptly got slapped with a grievance: the union claimed that the work my tech-writer coworker had done in his spare time had threatened the livelihood of two full-time union programmers...
I got out of there, partly because my contract rate was at least 20% below market, but largely because I loathed seeing mediocrity accepted and promoted. I saw good hardworking IT people around me who got a 3% raise when dead wood got 2%. I kept doing good work because I care about my work--but had I stuck around much longer, I think I would have deteriorated. When I caught myself pondering a decision on a project and thinking, wearily, "oh... whatever," I knew it was time to get out. "Relaxed atmosphere" is one thing, but this was downright depressing.
So be patient with the beginners. If they still don't get it after a few months, then you call them an idiot!
I agree with most of what you wrote... except that last bit. I'd give them longer than a few months. For people who are trying to start from square 1, there's an awful lot to learn. I've encountered more than one newbie who didn't understand the difference between RAM and hard drive space (both were "memory" in some vague, fuzzy way), and if they don't know that much, everything else is going to be very murky. And most of them are going to progress slowly, because--like anyone--they don't want to spent several hours at a stretch struggling with things they don't understand. Small doses only.
And instead of calling them an idiot (I know, you probably didn't mean that literally), I would instead nudge them toward doing a little more work on their own. I have a newbie acquaintance who persists in asking me very basic questions instead of making an effort to learn on her own. If this continues, I'm going to gently suggest that she buy herself a good "Windows for newbies"-type book.
Agreed, Linux pre-installed would be better for newbies.
But I can hardly blame people for not RTFM when the M was written by guys who haven't so much as passed a real, novice user in the hallway in ten years and who think that anyone who doesn't know how to [insert complicated, esoteric procedure here] is an idiot. In a lot of cases, "lazy" doesn't enter into it--people just don't want to waste scads of their time wading through poor documentation, and there is a lot of poor documentation out there.
Someday people will be able to operate computers without RTFM, because some compassionate soul out there will figure out how to design interfaces that don't require a 300-page instruction book, and they'll take whatever minimal documentation is still necessary and embed it in the interface. I have no doubt that some people will gripe then because someone let all the riffraff into our clubhouse.
Yup yup yup. I gave Linux a try, but after three evenings of trying in vain to get the modem to work, I uninstalled the damn thing and went back to Windows. And this wasn't a winmodem, this was a hardware ISA modem I bought specifically for this purpose. I was delighted to return it afterwards and go back to my winmodem, which gave me faster connection speeds. (...donning flameproof suit now...)
The thing that really got to me was the documentation--this haphazard collection of web pages and text files (...spraying extra flame retardant chemicals on flameproof suit now...) that really wasn't written for newbies. I know this stuff is all volunteer, and beggars can't be choosers, but the fact remains that the docs didn't help me. I'm a tech writer myself and I have a low tolerance for unhelpful documentation. "Wade through" was a perfect description of that experience.
And lest anyone think I'm one of the wal-mart hicks that people are dissing (hmm, a little snobbery going on on Slashdot?), I built the box I installed Linux on; I knew enough to ditch the winmodem beforehand; in my old job I was the alpha geek everyone turned to for hardware advice and [windows] tech support. But three evenings with Linux had me tearing my hair out. I shudder to think of real newbies tackling that.
I remember a couple of telecommuters we had, they'd show up at monthly meetings, and people would glare at them.
Aaarrgggghh. That's the sort of mentality that has always sustained pointless, morale-draining corporate policies, like dress codes, inflexible "flex" time (pick which schedule you want: 8 to 4:30, or 8:30 to 5; then stick to it forever), "seniority" as the sole criterion for advancement and raises (i.e., how long your butt's been in your chair matters more than how good your work is)...
What kills me is: IMHO, people glare at telecommuters because they hate their own daily commute and think that everyone should suffer the way they do. And they wind up reinforcing their own misery by maintaining a corporate culture where telecommuting is beyond the pale.
If I telecommuted and got that reaction from coworkers, I'd be furious. Bad enough when PHB's judge you by your hours or your clothes instead of your work. Worse still when coworkers, who should have a clue, judge you by trivial things.
Good point. If the tech support people are under heavy pressure to get callers off the phone, they're in a wretched situation. I don't know whether tech support jobs are plentiful enough that people can afford to just quit places like that, but if they are, that's what I'd suggest. (Tech writer jobs aren't terribly plentiful, but fortunately there seem to be enough of them out there that I can be somewhat selective about who I work for.)
I think you're half right about tech writers being allowed to be helpful: while we don't get pressured to be hostile to users, we're sometimes put under deadline pressure that makes it very difficult to do decent work. (I know, welcome to real life...) I turned down one job last year because they claimed to want someone who would overhaul the documentation and make it superb, but they really wanted someone who would conveniently ignore any and all problems and settle for mediocrity when faced with a deadline... and deadlines there were relentless. And there are enough PHBs out there too. At my first tech writing job I worked under a hack senior writer who made me take out a decent manually created index from an online help file, and replace it with a useless auto-generated one: she knew a good index would make her own work look bad and thereby force her to expend extra effort to keep up with her "junior" writer.
But the pressure to be rude to the customers comes directly from the customers themselves.
Switching gears... I'm not sure I agree with you there. When I was looking for a dialup ISP, I had a whole bunch of choices that were all $20/month (+/- $5). Some, from what I hear, had lousy tech support. My own $20 ISP had very good tech support. In a market where all the providers are in the same price range, it becomes the luck of the draw. In a market where there is no choice of providers--say, an area where @Home does cable and there's no DSL available--it's not customers' fault if the monthly fee can't cover decent tech support; they had no choice of providers (and I don't buy the "well, go back to dialup then" argument... after broadband, dialup is excruciating). I wouldn't blame the customer unless:
- There are at least two providers in an area.
- At least one is cheap with bad tech support, and one is pricy with good tech support... and
- Customers are fully aware of what they'll get with each one.
But obviously I have a strong don't-blame-the-customer bias. And ultimately what I'm battling against is the snotty attitude some geeks have toward non-geeks. As you point out, market conditions may have the same end result, and that's unfortunate. But what really frosts me is when some tech types believe that anyone who doesn't have above-average computer skills is a moron who deserves to be abused. If my friend the nongeek gets shat upon because of a company's evil assembly-line tech support policies, that's bad and I blame the company. If my friend gets shat upon because the geek on the phone has contempt for newbies, that's intolerable and I blame the geek on the phone. (Why is one worse? Maybe because the first scenario involves abstract bloodless things like corporate policy while the second scenario involves personal human ill-will and rudeness.)Interesting discussion. I appreciate your comments.
This is wandering off-topic, but I have to comment on your observation that employees work for employers, not customers.
Call me an idealist, but I work for customers. As a tech writer I firmly believe my first obligation is to the users who receive my documentation. If my employer tries to get me to provide substandard documentation--whether to save time, preserve the status quo, or accommodate office politics--I will resist. I've fought some bosses tooth and nail to do decent work. If I merely did what I was told, produced lousy work, and collected my paycheck, I couldn't look myself in the mirror every morning. I have no respect for tech writers or other support types who work that way.
Being a contractor helps me avoid the "my job is to make money for my employer" mentality. My job is to help users, which in the long run helps my employer(s). If I get an employer who feels it's my job to screw over the users to maximize their convenience/profit/complacency, and they're watching me closely enough that I can't just do good work despite their meddling, I don't stick around.
That said, you have a valid point about $20/month internet service. No way can that pay for a lot of tech support. But if I were working tech support, I'd have to do the best I could to help those users. If some poor schlub is on the line hoping for my help, my first instinct is not to do profit-and-loss calculations and analyze the viability of my employer's business model and then dole out abuse calculated to maximize the profit of some faceless corporation. Anyone that devoid of empathy should be placed in a position where they are safely insulated from contact with human beings.
Besides, a tech support person providing polite and effective help for half an hour receives the same wage as a tech support person providing intimidation and ridicule for half an hour; and if good tech support can solve the customer's problem, they're less likely to call back tomorrow, increasingly agitated, with the same complaint. They're also less likely to flame the company to a crisp to their friends, some of whom may potentially be the sort of happy low-maintenance customers the company wants to get. If my technology-impaired friend complains that service X has lousy tech support, then I'm not likely to subscribe to service X even though I never need to call tech support, because I don't like companies that mistreat my friends...
People learn a lot about their cars. They spend a year (or at least several months) of carefully supervised driving.
And that's how it should be, when you're first put in command of a large, heavy, potentially lethal projectile. We train people to drive because they could cause serious injury to themselves and others if they went out on the road without that training. But computers are not high-velocity 2-ton chunks of metal.
There is no reason users should have to learn bookfuls of techie arcana just to access the internet. When you pick up your phone, you don't have to understand the inner workings of your phone or the phone lines; you pick it up and mash the buttons and then you talk, and if something gets screwy, you contact the phone company and talk to somebody whose job it is to understand what's going on. There's no reason internet access should be any different.
Tech support providers make ignorant people feel stupid for a reason: to discourage them from calling again, so they go get real training from their "friend who knows all about computers".
If your assessment is accurate, tech support providers are deliberately hostile to customers so that customers will leave them alone--i.e., tech support providers are rude in order to get out of having to do their job. If I'm working at McDonald's and I mouth off to customers so they'll go away and stop interfering with my on-the-job leisure time, how do you think that would go over? As somebody else said, customer service is part of the job. Anyone who thinks that most users who call tech support are idiots should not be working in tech support.
This is exactly the sort of attitude that gives geeks a bad name.
Most of the people calling tech support aren't "stupid"; they just don't enjoy wasting hours reading some incomprehensible manual... and I say this as a tech writer myself: there are a LOT of bad manuals out there. They don't get their kicks from playing with computers. I do, but that doesn't make me smarter than them, just different. (And better paid, but that's another discussion.)
I have non-geek friends who are perfectly intelligent, even brilliant, individuals. They use AOL, because it's simple and they don't have to mess with it. They don't have the inclination to spend a couple weeks on the phone with tech support trying to troubleshoot a bad DSL connection, as I did. They're English professors, not network engineers. And the last thing they deserve is some snotty geek-snob treating them like morons just because they dared to call tech support. That would be like your mechanic laughing at you because you didn't understand the [insert rambling, incomprehensible car problem here] and then getting hostile toward you because you didn't know how to fix it yourself. After all, all you'd need is a brain and a [insert name of obscure, baffling automotive tool], right?
Yes yes yes yes yes. I'm glad someone said this. American culture has a longstanding anti-intellectual bias. When someone's as intelligent as Gore, people start looking for ways to take him down a peg; they pounce on every tiny mistake. Then you get an affable idiot like Dubya who can make the most egregious errors, and everybody shrugs it off.
The American public identifies more with the affable idiot, which tells you a little about how most people view themselves. It's the same belligerent know-nothingism that sells a million quack cures and crackpot theories ("don't listen to those so-called experts, don't trust the gubmint...") and now threatens to put the country in the hands of a mental lightweight and his many handlers.
The kicker is, the public's stand on the issues--to the extent the public actually has a stand on the issues--is more in line with Gore's. It boggles my mind that this is one giant popularity contest. I don't care what Gore's personality is like, he's smart (a Good Thing) and I agree with him. He's got my vote.
Salon ran a good article lamenting how the media likes to put together focus groups of "undecideds" as if this staggeringly ignorant bunch of herd animals is representative of the nation: "Ignore the undecided."
Disclaimer: Yeah, I'm another registered Democrat and a card-carrying egghead to boot. My biases are obvious.