I learned my lesson working at the help desk of the dorm computer lab. People go for the path of least resistance. I once had a girl sit down at a machine, immediately turn to me and ask "where's the internet?" becuase I was right next to her and she knew I worked there. She didn't even look at the screen! She didn't even take the time to look for the internet explorer icon and click on it, because it was easier to turn her head and ask me to do it for her.
I now hide in the office. There are various signs around the lab which take care of most problems like - Zip drives DO NOT read floppies, please do not put a floppy in the Zip drive. I haven't had to break out the tweezers since I posted a few of those. When I sat out at the desk, people would just yell out questions from across the lab. It's much less convinient to walk to the office, pop your head in, and ask. If they have to go through the effort of walking across the room, they're much more likely to figure things out on their own, or bother the person at the machine next to them. If they do come to office, we know it's something that they probably really do need help with and we try to teach them. We have a policiy of never doing anything for anyone. We make them sit at the computer and we just talk them through what to click on. Even if it is the 100th time I've had to show someone how to click on Attach File to attach a file to their email.
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I learned my lesson working at the help desk of the dorm computer lab. People go for the path of least resistance. I once had a girl sit down at a machine, immediately turn to me and ask "where's the internet?" becuase I was right next to her and she knew I worked there. She didn't even look at the screen! She didn't even take the time to look for the internet explorer icon and click on it, because it was easier to turn her head and ask me to do it for her. I now hide in the office. There are various signs around the lab which take care of most problems like - Zip drives DO NOT read floppies, please do not put a floppy in the Zip drive. I haven't had to break out the tweezers since I posted a few of those. When I sat out at the desk, people would just yell out questions from across the lab. It's much less convinient to walk to the office, pop your head in, and ask. If they have to go through the effort of walking across the room, they're much more likely to figure things out on their own, or bother the person at the machine next to them. If they do come to office, we know it's something that they probably really do need help with and we try to teach them. We have a policiy of never doing anything for anyone. We make them sit at the computer and we just talk them through what to click on. Even if it is the 100th time I've had to show someone how to click on Attach File to attach a file to their email.