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    DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

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    by jodygilbert ·

    http://techrepublic.com.com/5138-10589-5679809.html

    After you take a look at this download, please post your feedback, ideas for improvements, or further thoughts on this topic.

    Thanks,
    –The TechRepublic Downloads Team

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    • #3246306

      Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      by tonythetiger ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      After finding a problem, the user saying “No, that’s not it.”

      or

      After fixing something the user caused, and telling the user how to prevent it from happenning again, it happens again.

      • #3245484

        Mixed feelings

        by moonguppie ·

        In reply to Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

        I have a part time residential and small business tech support business to help me gain experience (and money) while gaining certifications. I have had more than one client bring in their infested computer a second time. No matter how much I warn them verbally or in writting to either update their antivirus or OS they still looked stunned when I tell them the state of their system. It’s frustrating but at the same time profitible.

        • #3239645

          why don’t you do it for them

          by artcc ·

          In reply to Mixed feelings

          I do the job full time , even though I’m retired. Why don’t you try loading the free AV like AVG, and some of the anti-spy s/w for them and show them how to update and use them. It wins repeat customers and it is still profitable.and it doesn’t take much extra time. After that… well… no pity

        • #3238839

          well yes, but …

          by dustypenguin ·

          In reply to why don’t you do it for them

          fully 50% of the people I do this for STILL don’t do it!!

        • #3056116

          Free Client CD

          by dannobyte ·

          In reply to why don’t you do it for them

          Every new client receives a free cd with some useful freeware onboard. Items such as Avast anti-virus, Adaware, Spybot S&D, Winzip, Adobe Reader, Firefox (browser), Thunderbird (email client), Spamfighter etc. I also include some text files with step by step instructions on how to perform various tasks. To fill up some space i’ll add a few freeware games. For a small investment of my time in collecting this software and burning a cd I have clients who are impressed and who keep coming back.

      • #3246065

        Happens again

        by cheesel ·

        In reply to Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

        Yeah, but they call you days later when you have forgotten about their problem and simply say: “It is happening again!” Excuse me, but WHAT is happening again??

        renee

        • #3262507

          Or worse yet.

          by jessie ·

          In reply to Happens again

          They call you a week later saying it’s happening again and they blame YOU for not fixing it right the first time!

        • #3261554

          busy minds, rushin’ fingers

          by deejay54 ·

          In reply to Happens again

          My biggest annoyance is the call from the dept manager with a problem and I discover important icons gone, toolbars gone and all sorts of settings changed. I ask her how it happend and she has no idea. She keeps her door open most of the time, so I noticed that she plays with the mouse while talking on the phone.

        • #3170389

          That’s why

          by it 4 me 2 ·

          In reply to busy minds, rushin’ fingers

          I lock their desktops down. I protect them from themselves to eliminate support costs.

          I instruct all my techs to install software as only the administrator (so that it propogates to all users, but does not allow them to modify it). I make menus unchangeable, don’t allow drag and drop from menus. i don’t make users administrators, power users or anything unless I absolutely have to. Even with Autocad I found a way to prevent me from having to make them power or admins.

          I lockdown IE security. Dont’ install flash, quicktime or many other plugins. In fact, I don’t even given them the IE menus.

          Printer installation? They have to use the connect feature through internet explorer to connect to a networked printer. No adding printer drivers which cause tech support to take 4 hours trying to troubleshoot an intermittant issue

          I lockdown desktops so that they can’t change the backgrounds, hide icons in the control panel so that they can’t get to ANYTHING they won’t be able to fix themselves. And, at times, I have even locked down the desktop backdrop and any changes to that. Keep it CORPORATE!

        • #3088032

          You are spoiled

          by rickky ·

          In reply to That’s why

          I have tried to lock things down, but always end being forced to allow users to get their privilages back.

          I recently had to restore IE settings on a computer becuase the user could not pay her bills online like she used to. Another was having ebay problems.

          I would love to have the backing of management to do the things you speak of, but with management playing around also it just won’t happen. You must love your bosses for letting you do things like that. I am sooooo jealous!

        • #2949702

          Too corporate for me

          by gtrtech ·

          In reply to That’s why

          One thing I always remember is that I’m dealing with individuals and not robots chained to their desk. Yes I sometimes have to deal with issues that arise from some thinking they know what there doing or others who like to try new things but I have found the moral is better if they can customize a little. As long as it doesn’t get out of hand I’m ok. If it does I deal with it individually. Granted I have their comps set up to where they cant mess with the system settings but other than that I let them have a little freedom with their workspace.

      • #3243929

        you mean…

        by pivert ·

        In reply to Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

        you mean that it’s like a big software company releasing version X and they still manage to miss the ball? 🙂 Be thankful they don’t build airplanes: “we have a little bug here and we’re downloading the latest hotfix. let’s hope we can boot before we hit the…”

      • #3262582

        Users are their own worst Enemy

        by mcdevittj ·

        In reply to Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

        You are walking a user through a step by step process over the the phone, suddenly there is verbal silence at the other end of the line and you hear the pounding of keystrokes. You ask the user “What are you doing right now” but there is no response. Then you hear the inevitable chord.wav and the words “UH OH, what to I do now?” which usually results in initiating a ticket and dispatching a tech to the user’s location. A simplified example of this is your instruction “Type in your username BUT DON’T PRESS ENTER when you’re done” (in order to instruct pressing the TAB key to advance to the PW field). You hear rapid keyboard strokes and then “UH OH”, or perhaps even one of Tricky Dick Nixon’s “expletive deleted” words.

        • #3260536

          OR….

          by firefly1522 ·

          In reply to Users are their own worst Enemy

          as you’re walking them through and at the same time they’re talking to their fellow co-worker about the latest Hamburger Helper recipe! That has happened to me with a woman who consistently calls because “something” is wrong with her computer.

      • #3240293

        We can get back at ’em

        by a. admin ·

        In reply to Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

        Read the Bastard Operator from Hell (http://www.bytebrothers.org/bofh.htm) for instructions.

        • #3240195
          Avatar photo

          Actually I find that Pulling

          by hal 9000 ·

          In reply to We can get back at ’em

          The E-Mail server has the same effect. 😉

          Within 30 mili seconds I’m flooded with “What’s happened to my E-Mail?” comments. 🙂

          It works every time. 😀

          Col ]:)

        • #3241504

          or move an important file

          by tonythetiger ·

          In reply to Actually I find that Pulling

          then when they call, move it back 🙂

        • #3241499

          Make a shortcut on the network.

          by tonythetiger ·

          In reply to Actually I find that Pulling

          naming it “Do not run this program”

          pointing to a batch file that fakes erasing all their files AND backups with the last line being “net send /domain I’m stupid!” 🙂

      • #3238894

        People who come in your office to “Chit Chat”

        by phlogiston2312 ·

        In reply to Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

        While it is understandable that individuals with technical experience are more inclined to fix their computer, what bugs me is those experience 5 or 6 years ago in a peer-to-peer network or happened to be the most technically inclined in a department, and they think that they could “help” you.

    • #3246273

      After doing your research…

      by jck ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      on all the costs to solve an issue at the direction of your boss, having your boss say:

      “That’s unacceptable. There has to be a cheaper solution.”

      Then they let it fester and get worse and blame you more.

    • #3246224

      Oy, been there…

      by gralfus ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      #1. Users do this so they can feel somewhat tech savvy, not realizing that they come across as a non-technical boob. I typically hear users refer to the computer as “the hard drive”. The flip side of this is when an engineer won’t let me touch his PC without first giving him the rational behind the solution. I once had a simple fix for an issue, but the guy wouldn’t let me implement it because it didn’t make sense to him. He wanted me to sit there for an hour troubleshooting other things that made sense to him. When his back was turned, I implemented the solution. He said “What are you doing?!” I said, “I changed the driver and it is working now, bye.” Engineers live in theory, techs live in the practical.

      #4. Sometimes the most basic things slip past us techies. Yeah, it is plugged in, but we somehow managed to cram it in upside down…

      #8. I had only a couple of users that ever did this. One guy was full of himself that he was a “beta tester for Apple and didn’t have time to read manuals.” He wanted me to teach him over the phone how to use our product. Bzzzz! Thanks for playing.

      • #3246158

        Yup,Yup and Yup

        by bnbromiley ·

        In reply to Oy, been there…

        Yup been playing with computers for 30 years [miss DOS]. People get in touch with me for help, through my site http://puter-stuf.historyanew.com or because I built their CPU and they tell someone to see if the old F— can fix it. I try to send an e-mail with the instructions or have them write it down, but people don’t read, follow instructions or know the terms. They want you to hold their hand through the whole thing. Above all they don’t want to apear stupid. I have found the phrase “As you well know” to work wonders.
        Keep at it we need you out there

        • #3244380

          Absolutely…

          by v_dub ·

          In reply to Yup,Yup and Yup

          Your comments are so true… Once, I had spent a whole day preparing notes for users to follow. Then after e-mailing them the notes, I get a phone call two minutes later asking “What do I do now?!”… Erm, you could try reading the notes first! This is usually followed by “Can’t you just talk me through it?” or “Can you do it for me?”…

        • #3244331

          Pointless Wealth of Information

          by travelcare_chris ·

          In reply to Absolutely…

          I recently went on my honeymoon and I knew I was going to be out for a month. I am the only tech on hand so I created a simple website full of simple solutions and phone numbers of who to call. I worked on this site for a week and a half, made sure all of the users had it accessible from their desktop and it was never touched. I had several messages and emails but apparently everyone decided to sit on their problems until I came back. For some reason I am having trouble getting motivated to update the website.

          I love to hear that other people miss DOS too! Those were the good ol’ days when only people who knew how to use computers were willing to, but at the same time hardware costs have only come down because of mass consumption so as usual, it is a mixed bag.

        • #3245668
          Avatar photo

          Well when I started

          by hal 9000 ·

          In reply to Pointless Wealth of Information

          We where using Unix on Mainframes and we only had people who actually knew what they where doing using computers. It was so much easier back in those days if some what more expensive for the hardware and the buildings to house it in. 😉

          But now days with the advent of PC’s and cheap hardware every boy and their dog has a PC and thinks that they are an “Expert” these people drive me up the proverbial wall as they mess things up and then expect you to fix up in 5 seconds what they have spent weeks messing up. 😀

          But by the time DOS came along I actually considered everything as cheap then and it has only got cheaper since. 🙂

          Col ]:)

        • #3245511

          Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

          by tonythetiger ·

          In reply to Pointless Wealth of Information

          The great thing is some of those old DOS apps really fly on the new hardware (as long as it runs).

        • #3245488

          DOS uninstall

          by patpawlowski2000 ·

          In reply to Pointless Wealth of Information

          My favorite thing about the dos days was that to uninstall an application, you just deleted the directory where it was located and it was gone. No residual files, no crap in the registry.

        • #3245969

          Honored to have learn DOS

          by rayjeff ·

          In reply to DOS uninstall

          I am glad to have been able to learn and use DOS before it was completely phased out. It was so neat to be able to use it. I also keep my handy Windows Startup Disk, made from Win 98. When I partition a hard drive, initially, I use it. It’s just something about that control you have in DOS that keeps me using it rather than using a partitioning app.

        • #3135992

          I Still use DOS

          by a. g. ·

          In reply to Honored to have learn DOS

          I was needing to install a program yesterday on a remote computer and the time was different on the two PCs preventing the upgrade.

          I did a remote DOS session and used the time command. Bingo everything worked.

          AG

        • #3262105

          The beauty of…

          by weirdfish ·

          In reply to DOS uninstall

          …DELTREE!

          I still find that I use DOS on occasion at the office. It’s MUUUUUCH faster than “click here, click here, click OK, click there, expand this, CTRL+A, SHIFT+DEL……”

        • #3245468

          Golden Days of DOS?

          by underground_in_tn ·

          In reply to Pointless Wealth of Information

          Or selective memories?

          For some reason, my memories of DOS are not that fond or rosey. I remember:

          – Having a much harder time finding and installing the right hardware drivers, and getting them to work with everything else.

          – Working for hours trying to find the right combination of drivers to load into upper memory without locking up the PC, all just to free up enough of that lower 640K so that “big” programs would work.

          – Getting EMS memory to work.

          – Having to quit one program so that I could run another, or forking over big bucks (and introducing new headaches) to get and run DESQview.

          – PCs were cheap enough so that the same types of troublesome, computer-illiterate users described in this discussion were as abundant as they are today.

          – Etc., etc., etc.

          I suppose some things were better then, as mentioned above: uninstall via the del command, no registry hassles. But DOS gave us .ini file hassles, most of which were left cluttering the Windows directory after those uninstalls.

        • #3245452

          Typical

          by tomsal ·

          In reply to Pointless Wealth of Information

          I feel your pain. We get users who constantly repeat the same questions over and over and over. Each time a solution is shown to them, they remember for a week then ask again. Keep in mind most of these questions are just generic MS Office type issues. So my department put together a large set of documents that cover many areas of MS Office. We also made documents addressing the most common things we get called on. The documents are very well written and we actually tested them on some select employees and asked for their feedback before we “published them” for company use.

          Well the documents are almost NEVER used. My team constantly has to repeat “You know that this problem is documented in the self help folder we published.”.

          I think a lot of folks just get kind of lazy and figure “Hey the IS folks are paid to help us so why should I take the effort to help myself?”.

          As an aside….Are you saying you took off an entire month for your honeymoon?! That’s awesome! I envy you!

          Taking off for just 2 weeks back to back here is like asking to amend the constitution.

          Best wishes on your new marriage.

          later.

        • #3246115

          No No No

          by josh.dale ·

          In reply to Typical

          If I have learned anything, it is that people hate reading instructions. So what I did is created a site on our intranet containing videos of the help documentation in Office using Macromedia Captivate. I then created a search engine for those video files and that significantly reduced my helpdesk time.
          Now I have time for more important issuese, such as getting my rank up on CS:S ;o)

        • #3244056

          how we make the users read the documentation

          by sbmknight ·

          In reply to Typical

          When I get calls from users asking how to do basic things that are documented in our user guide, I tell them I will email them a link to the instructions. When they protest and ask if I can just walk them through it or do it for them (my “favorite”), I tell them no, that the documentation will be more helpful to them because they can keep the link for future reference. This works particularly well with simple things that the user can’t blow off because you won’t do it for them — such as network printer installations.

      • #3245530

        I think I worked with…

        by featherman ·

        In reply to Oy, been there…

        … the guy in your #8! When trying to decide exactly what route to take in upgrading and updating our SAN, he insisted that we could improve response and save a bundle if we utilized all of the available HDD space on a few hundred production machines, you know – peer to peer storage.

        And what happens when your VP’s critical spreadsheet is on a hard drive that crashed and is now sitting in a box waiting for the data recovery tem to get around to looking at it?…..

        BTW – he was an ex-Apple employee…

      • #3245466

        When users miss-label things while describing

        by sbillings ·

        In reply to Oy, been there…

        I’ve been working in tech support since 1999. I also build PCs and do some web design and database programming as well as manage 3 Windows 2000 servers, 2 Windows 2003 servers and a Unix server. My real peeves are when users describe the PC as the “hard drive”. I then say, no, the hard drive is a component inside the computer. Or the user will describe the PC as the ?CPU?. I say, no, the CPU is a component inside the computer. Or when I put a new PC with a flat panel monitor in place for one of the users where I work?they will look at the display and say ?What a nice computer?. I say, no, that?s the monitor it?s not the computer. All the monitor does is show a picture it does no computing what-so-ever. And last, when I arrive at a user?s workstation and they say they ?rebooted their computer but it?s still locked?. Clearly they haven?t so I ask them to show me what they did to reboot and they simply turn the monitor off and back on again—ARGHARGH!!!

        • #3246108

          Why not an open season?

          by ex-military nut ·

          In reply to When users miss-label things while describing

          Hunters have guns and ranchers have cattle prods.

          Hmmm. If only we could shoot those who irritate us. Wouldn’t it be classified as a mercy killing? How about justifiable homicide?

          I was called in on the second day of convalescence leave because a particular user could not remember her password. This person is supposed to be a highly educated administrator but could not understand that because she would not log off when she left her computer in the evening, the expiration counter for her password would not remind her that she was required to change her password. Unfortunately for her, a power outage caused her computer to shut down when the UPS battery died. Everyone at our site was told repeatedly that they were required to log off when they left their computer. But yet its my fault when GOD pulls the plug (lightening strike)!

          Or, or, or..

          You have a complaint that several people cannot send email but they keep getting the “Mailbox over limit” message. I told them they had to clean out their mailbox. I was assured that all email had been moved to “personal” folders. I found that email had been moved from the inbox to “personalize” folders (Mr. John and Ms. Jane)still on the servers! I wonder how I knew. I still don’t think a few of these people ever got the idea that they had to add the personal folders to the email account and set delivery to them on THEIR computer to remove the email from the server.

          I feel for all my IT peers. There’s nothing more frustrating than a deer-in-the-headlights look when you are trying to teach or otherwise educate a user in the proper way of using an application or the computer in general.

          Are you sure we can’t just shoot them?

        • #3244039

          tears

          by sbmknight ·

          In reply to Why not an open season?

          LOL The part about users with mailboxes over the limit hit home with me. We routinely get calls from users insisting we increase the size of their mailbox storage, which we refuse to do for ANYONE, even those elected to office.

          But the best was when a particularly “sensitive” user called, upset because she couldn’t email an overdue attachment because she had filled up her mailbox. I tried very patiently to show her how to make room in her mailbox, when suddenly, I heard sobs on the other end and “I’ll have to call you back.” She never did…

        • #3242168

          They really cried??

          by rayjeff ·

          In reply to tears

          Wow!!! Never had that happened to me yet. But I think Where I work now, it’s a possible sight to see or hear.

        • #3242184

          Techies aren’t immune

          by a. admin ·

          In reply to When users miss-label things while describing

          In fairness, how many techies have you heard refer to a “NIC card” (if I have to explain that to anyone, you can immediately go sit in the corner). Add that to ATM machine, PIN number, etc.

        • #3218057

          Guilty!

          by dumbterminal ·

          In reply to Techies aren’t immune

          nt

        • #3242175

          Miss-label things…

          by rayjeff ·

          In reply to When users miss-label things while describing

          I find that I have to bear it and not go off into a frenzy about it. And when you do explain the difference or why what they are saying is incorrect, then they look at you like they are a dummy. To me it’s not that, you’re just using the wrong term for the wrong hardware component. But it does bother me greatly…but, I bear it.

        • #3218058

          The misnomers kill me too!

          by dumbterminal ·

          In reply to When users miss-label things while describing

          Agreed 🙂

    • #3246193

      How Do I…

      by ffuss ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I really enjoyed the article “The top ten peeves of a support tech”, but what I REALLY want is to discuss the problems I am having with XML::Simple XMLin(ForceArray=>1). I have tried to create a new userID to get to the discussion threads and got stuck with a requirement to enter a builder.com userID and password. When I went to http://www.builder.com, there was not a link to a page to sign up. That’s the beginning of the story of how I got here. I’m sure you are not interested in the rest of the story. Can somebody send me some CORRECT directions, please?

      • #3244369

        Well said…but

        by tyler.poland ·

        In reply to How Do I…

        Well said but some people might miss your satire in this.

        • #3244363

          Ditto!

          by slurpee ·

          In reply to Well said…but

          but for those who do, quite amusing!

        • #3245793

          #10 of the top 10 peeves…

          by rayjeff ·

          In reply to Well said…but

          At my current job, #10 is most relevant. The MIS department (in a small, private four year college) comes under the Office of the President. Because there are no individual IS departments within each academic division, all departments have to go to the main MIS department. This has been very hard for me being that I’m the only tech support on the campus who has actually worked in a tech support role in an IS department before. But, I’m typically looked over by the MIS department head, not realizing my experience.

          But then again it could be out of fear because the MIS head doesn’t have any technical experience; all of his experience is in management. There is no collaboration with the MIS department. After doing personal research of the hardware and software being used, there have been bad decisions made with purchasing. For example, the computer lab I manage got to Xerox Phaser 3450 printers during the summer of last year. In January of this year, one of them died because of a defective fuser. The fuser, which seems to not be able to be fixed on-site, has to be sent to Xerox. Now, this month, the second Phaser printer with the same issues as the other one for all intention purposes has died. I haven’t even filled out a repair form because the first printer hasn’t been repaired yet.

          Just things like that make it hard for me to be able to do my job (went way off on a tangent).

        • #3245760

          Oh, that #7!!

          by Anonymous ·

          In reply to #10 of the top 10 peeves…

          “Users who think part of my job is to spend my lunch break telling them to fix their home computers.”

          This is by far the one that hit closest to home for me. We have a cafeteria where I microwave my lunch – I eat elsewhere for some serenity – and I dread going there during a busy period as it’s almost inevitable I’ll hear a tale of woe about someone’s home PC. I turned this to my advantage with some users, for I told them I would fix their computers after work for a fee, and they willingly agreed. I’ve no complaints about my clients. It’s the ones who think there’s nothing wrong with approaching me and trying to cadge free advice that irritate me. A couple of them have actually had the nerve to just impatiently brush aside my spiel: “Bring in your PC tomorrow and I’ll take it home to look at. My hourly rate is…” and continued telling their merry tales, expecting me to give a diagnosis and recommendation free of charge. When told “I can’t do a thing until I look at it. Like I said, bring it in and I will fix it at home. My hourly rate is..” they actually get annoyed and give me a look like I’m being opportunistic; a greedy mercenary. To which I’d like to ask them: “You approach me uninvited while I’m on my own personal time, expect me to give you a free lengthy diagnosis of your computer in lieu of preparing or eating my lunch, and then you insinuate I’M being unfairly opportunistic?” These are the same kind of people who approach me in the bathroom, I kid you not, to ask for home PC advice. If you think it’s annoying being interrupted when you are trying to make your lunch, well, you get the picture.

          I think the best bet in these circumstances is to have a cell phone out and pretend to be making a personal call while microwaving one’s food; that way even the most persistent free-advice-seeker can’t get the upper hand. When being direct doesn’t help, eliminate their avenues of manipulation.

        • #3245739

          Re:Oh, that #7!!

          by rayjeff ·

          In reply to Oh, that #7!!

          I think this is were I ALLOW myself to be taken advantage of. I don’t mind analyzing a problem or showing someone something. I love sharing my knowledge because where I work, knowledge about IT perios isn’t openly shared. You have to sneak around to share the knowledge.

          But I do admit that it gets on my nerves at times and there are times where I’m either really ENGROSSED in my own work or I just don’t feel like being bothered. But I don’t have the heart to say, “I’ll come to you when I have a spare moment” or something like that.

        • #3243973

          It’s the lengthy sagas that get to me

          by Anonymous ·

          In reply to Re:Oh, that #7!!

          You’re right, sharing knowledge is a good thing and I don’t mind providing some free brief advice like “Is a flat screen or a regular CRT better for me to buy?” or “should I go with cable modem or DSL.” It’s the long-winded tales of woe involving some AOL upgrade (I joke with my IT friends that I’d love to get a t-shirt that reads “I don’t give a damn about your AOL problem” and wear it under a button down shirt so if I’m approached I can be like Superman and pull open the shirt to reveal the above message), some problem with Photoshop that is producing deteriorated image quality, some scenario involving copying all their old Mickey Mouse club VHS tapes to DVD using such-and-such program which is doing such-and-such thing isntead of the desired result, etc. That’s where I feel the intrusion into my personal time is unwarranted and definitely exploitative.

        • #3254745

          Use an ear bud

          by dr dij ·

          In reply to Oh, that #7!!

          with a wire to your pocket.
          If they bother you when you don’t want, don’t say anything, but wave your hand and don’t look at them, look like you’re concentrating on something else, they’ll get the idea you’re on the phone.

        • #3240772

          Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

          by jwalden1 ·

          In reply to Well said…but

          I thought that was hilarious!

          I think my biggest pet peeve is when a user gives you the “Deer in headlights” look after being told the solution to the problem and then they discover that they don’t like your answer.

    • #3244539

      Quick?

      by skidoggeruk ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      How bout the users ….

      When you are saying ” now click on the Start …”

      They say “OK, I am at printers”

      I like it when they guess where I was going, especially when I wasn’t going there at all.

      I am currently working on forcing Remote assist unto all computers

      • #3245457

        remote control

        by jclambert ·

        In reply to Quick?

        Given the # of calls for software issues I get – I could not be anywhere near as productive without VNC software! I would have to hire an additional person without it.

      • #3262297

        DameWare NT Utilities

        by philwills ·

        In reply to Quick?

        I recently conviced my supervisor to invest in Dameware NT Utilities. We have one site which is almost 4 hours away, which in the past, if there was an urgent problem, someone wasn’t going to be home until 8 or 9 that night.

        I first convinced the rest of the technicians to use the trial version and eventually we convinced them to buy some licenses.

        Now the supervisor uses it almost as much as some of the techs.

        • #3262727

          I love Dameware, but if you are strapped…

          by graytalon ·

          In reply to DameWare NT Utilities

          for cash, you can use Netmeeting. I was helping my sister-in-law last night, in fact, with Netmeeting. Her system is a Win98 and mine is XP.

          But, the great thing about Dameware is you can “force” the client onto any system where you have admin rights. It’s really helpful on those calls where the user has locked their password 10 times in 20 mins. You can tie into find they have the caps lock on and look like the hero while you shake your head in disgust.

      • #3242007

        Remote Assist

        by baldwia ·

        In reply to Quick?

        We work at a large High School (800+cpus) and love to remote into computers to see what the kids are doing. Always a blast to open up the chat box and say “Your privilages will be revoked immediately if you do not cease and desist” or something like that. Gotta have some fun every day, right?

    • #3243536

      Lack of Understanding about ISPs

      by robert_m_knight ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      My biggest pet peeve is when a user does not seem to get it that I do not control the computers that cover the miles between us to connect us. If their ISP has a problem, I can’t fix it. I get just as frustrated as they do.

    • #3245219

      The Ultimate Collection?!?!

      by joneslm ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, trophies and children’s art. We don’t have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.

      Don’t write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages from our video recording.

      When an IT person says s/he’s coming right over, go for coffee. That way you won’t be there when we need your password. It’s nothing for us to remember 300 screen saver passwords.

      When IT Support sends you an e-mail with high importance, delete it at once. We’re just testing.

      When an IT person is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and spill your problems right out. We don’t even like eating food, we exist only to serve.

      Send urgent e-mail all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.

      When we do something as a favour in our own time at our own expense, feel free to criticise us.

      That’s OK, we don’t expect you to lift anything or get under your desk. Manual labour was part of our IT degree.

      When the photocopier or Video player doesn’t work, call Computer Support. There’s electronics in it.

      When you’re getting a NO DIAL TONE message at home, call Computer Support. We can fix your telephone line from here.

      When something’s wrong with your home PC, dump it on an IT person’s chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem. We love a puzzle.

      When an IT person tells you that computer screens don’t have cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument.

      When an IT person tells you that he’ll be there shortly, reply in scathing tone of voice: “And just how many weeks do you mean by shortly?” That motivates us.

      When the printer won’t print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes.

      When the printer still won’t print after 20 tries, send the job to all 68 printers in the company. One of them is bound to work.

      Don’t learn the proper name for anything technical. We know exactly what is meant by “my thingy blew up” and “I’ve got gobbledegook on my screen”

      When you call someone in to fix a problem – don’t tell them about the other 10 problems until they physically arrive. That’s OK – we can clear our schedule for the rest of the day.

      Don’t use on-line help. On-line help is for wimps.

      When your application can’t do what you want… blame us, we write all the software that runs on your PC and can customise it on the fly. Bill Gates lets us do this.

      Remember the IT guy doesn’t need to think – he has seen every problem before.

      If the mouse cable keeps knocking down the framed picture of your dog, lift the computer and stuff the cable under it. Mouse cables were designed to have 20 kg of computer sitting on top of them.

      If the space bar on your keyboard doesn’t work, blame it on the mail/NT/network upgrade. Keyboards are actually very happy with half a pound of bread crumbs, crisps and nail clippings in them.

      When you find an IT person on the phone, sit uninvited on the corner of their desk and stare at them until they hang up.

      Feel perfectly free to say things like “I don’t know nothing about that computer crap.” We don’t mind at all hearing our area of professional expertise referred to as crap.

      When you need to change the toner cartridge in a printer, call IT Support. Changing a toner cartridge is an extremely complex task, and Hewlett-Packard recommends that it be performed only by a professional engineer with a Master’s degree in nuclear physics.

      When you think the network/e-mail/office application is going slow, call us as we have a button to press that makes it go back to it’s normal speed.

      When something’s the matter with your computer, ask your secretary to call the help desk. We enjoy the challenge of having to deal with a third party who doesn’t know about the problem.

      The instant you call us (on our mobile) – we can see what’s happening on your screen and can solve it instantaneously.

      Be aware that IT people don’t need to use the toilet. So you have a right to be upset if we don’t answer the phone.

      When you receive a 30MB movie file, send it to everyone as a mail attachment. We’ve got lots of disk space on that mail server.

      And finally, always remember…. we were sitting there waiting for your call.. The whole day!!!

      • #3244239

        THIS IS GREAT!!!!

        by brentc76 ·

        In reply to The Ultimate Collection?!?!

        I see a lot of this every day. Sounds like there are a lot of inconsiderate users in your environment as well.

      • #3245757

        Absolutely hilarious

        by skooboy ·

        In reply to The Ultimate Collection?!?!

        Remarkable, excellent, succint. I don’t know else to describe it. I too have experienced ALL of this nonsense. ‘Tis true. All of it.

      • #3245542

        and add relatives..yup, it’s even more fun…

        by nerdy_gurl ·

        In reply to The Ultimate Collection?!?!

        What a hoot. Loved it!!!

        I don’t have 68 printers to service, thank god… ;), but I am the IT ‘dept’ for a small company, half of which is relatives who think they know it all… The boss, who acts like I’m personally responsible for every little glitch, his completely tech-stupid wife who refuses to learn anything even basic about her machine, and the brother with a PHD (Piled High and Deep) in computer science, who challenges every thing I say.

        Sometimes I wonder why …………..

      • #3245532

        Are you watching me???

        by kattoon ·

        In reply to The Ultimate Collection?!?!

        Are you sure we don’t work at the same firm?????!!!

        These are great!! Especially the secretary calling, happens all the time here!

      • #3246120

        OMG Great

        by sweeteeme ·

        In reply to The Ultimate Collection?!?!

        That was an awesome list… Our motto here is “We Live to Serve” Some of our patrons think we are being sincere when we say this.

      • #3245881

        so funny my side is cramping

        by avid ·

        In reply to The Ultimate Collection?!?!

        the only thing i would add is “no matter what goes wrong at the office, from pc problems to toilets not flushing, if the IT guy was there in the last month it must be his fault.

        • #3249470

          Job Spec: Anything to do with Technology

          by bigwazza ·

          In reply to so funny my side is cramping

          I started out as an Analyst/Programmer/Operator, and my job spec seems to have migrated to “Anything to do with Technology”.

          I’ve even been asked to “fix it” so staff cannot use the urinals (there was a leak in the pipe), placing a sign was NOT enough. I’m surprised they didn’t ask me to fix the pipe because I am a secretly licensed plumber, electrician (including telecommunications), builder, etc.

          They had me changing light globes for several years too.

          Oh well, I can always become a handyman in my convalesence, or maybe a bus driver!

          On the lighter side, in a small competition between the actuaries and programmers in the “Crimson Room”, the actuaries got nine or ten items, and the programmers got 11, 12 or all 13. A friend of mine got out with only getting one item too!

      • #3245870

        Amazing…

        by gedda_g ·

        In reply to The Ultimate Collection?!?!

        How did you manage to get a hold of my company’s policy on computer use?

      • #3262251

        The sad part……

        by abzfarmer ·

        In reply to The Ultimate Collection?!?!

        This is all true! Love it!

      • #3266133

        Make sure that you….

        by cheesel ·

        In reply to The Ultimate Collection?!?!

        always use many exclamation points in your e-mail request for help, too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    • #3245209

      Biggest pet peeve with any client

      by dirt burner ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      The worst pet peeve of mine is not necessarily specific to any one case. It is something that is common to so many people. It’s peoples persistant belief that you are psychic, have ESP, or some how have a “remote viewer’s” vision of their desktop. For that reason they constantly refuse to voluntarily tell you what they are doing or what’s on their screen as you try to walk them troubleshooting a problem or trying a fix.

      One day this lady was just going on and on as if I was sitting right there looking at her screen. I finally told her that because of an accident I was in a couple of years ago I can no longer telepathically see her desktop and I have no idea what’s on her screen. So, she’ll have to actually tell me what she’s doing and what’s on the screen.

      • #3245179

        Hi, it’s me

        by skidoggeruk ·

        In reply to Biggest pet peeve with any client

        How bout when you pick up the phone and they say “Hi, it’s me” ?

        • #3245126

          One better…

          by gsharpe ·

          In reply to Hi, it’s me

          How about when your CEO telephones you…in your OFFICE and asks “where are you”?

        • #3260515

          Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

          by firefly1522 ·

          In reply to Hi, it’s me

          What!! You mean you don’t know everyone that works in the company by voice?! Bad IT person!

        • #3261558

          For the 9999999th time

          by poppy_shield ·

          In reply to Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

          A user that no matter how many times you show them how to do something will call you about 5 times a day to come and show them again. Only for them to say afterwards “ooohhhhhh, I forgot, could you please write it down for me so I don’t forget?”

          What’s worse than this user?
          A user who calls you back to sit with them, and help them read and implement the instructions.

        • #3261028

          Thenn tell them

          by dr dij ·

          In reply to Hi, it’s me

          Sorry, I don’t see ‘me’ on the company phone list

        • #3053872

          “It’s not working again”

          by too old for it ·

          In reply to Hi, it’s me

          Had a user who just had to have WinXP Pro on her machine before her one-of application had been certifed to work on XP.

          (Early document storage app, and could have been easily replaced by a file cabinet and the paper files the sale people generated anyway.)

          EVERY single day she was stomp, stomp, stomp down the hallway (HS fight song marching cadence, no less) BANG opens the door to the server room/IT lab and in an annoying New Yawk accent: “It’s not working, AGAIN!!”

          Then back down the hall she would go.

          (Hopefully all New Yorkers aren’t that rude.)

      • #3244262

        GREAT Response!!! How did she reply?

        by brentc76 ·

        In reply to Biggest pet peeve with any client

        How did she reply? Did she really think you were in a real accident that made you not see her desktop? I know if I were to say that to some users in my environment they would believe it.

      • #3244150

        The correllary to this…

        by dmambo ·

        In reply to Biggest pet peeve with any client

        …is the person who, when you remote into their PC, will use their finger to point to something on the screen and say “I’m not sure what this thing is.” I’ve often explained that because I can see what’s on their screen, it doesn’t mean that I can actually see them!

      • #3245766

        Re:Biggest pet peeve with any client

        by rayjeff ·

        In reply to Biggest pet peeve with any client

        One word….WHY?

      • #3245584

        You were just out here ….

        by too old for it ·

        In reply to Biggest pet peeve with any client

        … enough said?

      • #3261340

        This problem I haven’t told you about for 3 Months MUST be fixed NOW

        by 2k unlimited ·

        In reply to Biggest pet peeve with any client

        It just wasn’t important the last few months, but today I got a requirement for the boss that effects the whole company so you must jump for me now.

        Some customers just never understand if they call or email sooner for simple problems they get better simple answers and fewer big career threatening last minute problems.

        Side note, similar item: actually happened 2 days ago: The gal in the office next to mine told a walk-in customer to call the service desk so they can get me on the radio. His answer: “That number’s for help next week, I walked here because I need him NOW!” Since he left no notes at my desk, the service desk had no call, and “Tall with green jacket” just didn’t help me find him; he’s still waiting for that magic moment when he catches me not out fixing something. It’s already the weekend, and I’m sure sometime next week he’ll catch me at my desk and get “now” service. He’ll be so glad he didn’t mess with those silly phone folks. Little does he know someone else will be at my office next week because it’s my turn on the phones.

      • #3260516

        Remote viewers

        by firefly1522 ·

        In reply to Biggest pet peeve with any client

        It’s really fun when users don’t realize that you have that capability. I’ve laughed my butt off many a time trying to talk someone through correcting their mistakes while watching them remotely. 😀

      • #3261033

        Simple fix

        by dr dij ·

        In reply to Biggest pet peeve with any client

        just tell them “you need to tell me what happened anyway, my ESP module is offline today”

    • #3245160

      more peeves…

      by david_heath ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      when Tech Republic can’t be bothered creating a webpage for an article and simply re-publishes the pdf for everyone to download.

      For goodness sakes… it’s not exactly scintillating material that everyone is going to steal!!

      • #3244246

        i agree…

        by sgt_shultz ·

        In reply to more peeves…

        …wste of my time. I did spend several minutes reading everyone’s b—ches and gloating that that is why i can compete. am so glad to spend time resorting cables, moving computer, dusting the spots no cleaning company will touch. don’t get mad, get paid is what i say.
        you guys think it is a bad thing when engineer-type sharply questions what you are doing? that is no threat, that is big sweet opportunity.
        if customer bad to me, i raise rate $5. if they want to keep doing business with me, fine by me. they bad to me again, ‘nother $5 raise for me.
        you can’t get people not to be the way they are. but you can get paid to take it….only other choice is quit or b—ch about it. life too short..

    • #3245111

      Network Printing and Mapped drives

      by jdclyde ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Support a few small offices that use (shudder) Win98. They use mapped drives and share out printers. I get a call that they can’t print or can’t get their data. 98% of the time is was from pressing ENTER instead of clicking on OK, and the ENTER selected the CANCEL instead so they aren’t on the network.

      If I charged a nickle for every time I “fix” a windows box with a reboot…..

      • #3244408

        downloading porn

        by vtassone ·

        In reply to Network Printing and Mapped drives

        How about when the lady of the house calls and blames your company (ISP) for downloading “porn” to their computer. It couldn’t be her husband or her 14 year old son because she runs a good Christian home and does not allow that kind of thing. I can just see her going to bed in her flannel night gown and her husband happily tapping on the keyboard!!!!!!!!!

        • #3245877

          absolutely

          by avid ·

          In reply to downloading porn

          and i just love proving the dates and times a site was visited. and the ever present ” it must have been a pop-up that download the 20 gigs of movie clips” and they are on dial-up

      • #3218039

        If I charged a nickle for every time I “fix” a windows box with a reboot…

        by dumbterminal ·

        In reply to Network Printing and Mapped drives

        I like when after the reboot ‘fix’, they ask me why it worked.
        Thats when the discombobulator comes in handy

    • #3245107

      Computer under 3 foot of junk

      by tech ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I REALLY REALLY get hot when I have to dig a computer out from under a ton of personal belongings, remove tens of taped on photographs, try to get to a network connection behind a 500 lb desk pushed into the wall, or find a note on the computer stating that the user will be gone and to “take care of the problem”

      • #3244400

        Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

        by angry_white_male ·

        In reply to Computer under 3 foot of junk

        We recently upgraded our entire call center. I made it very clear that no PC would be upgraded unless the area was clean – free of dust, last year’s lunch, knick-knacks, post-it notes, pictures, for those PC’s on the floor – a shoe collection, etc. A few people had to wait for their upgrade because the day we did the deployment their workstations were still a pig sty. Some people are simply disgusting and I won’t go near their desk or PC until it’s been cleaned.

        We do the same thing every year when we inventory everything (mainly to get to the bar-coded asset tag) – make them spruce up their desks a bit.

        • #3241332

          Ew! The shoe collection on the PC!

          by server queen ·

          In reply to Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

          You reminded me of one of the things I truly hate finding when I crawl under someone’s desk to trace a cable…their rotten, funky, nasty old pair of spare shoes. For some reason, people keep the RANKEST-SMELLING shoes sitting on top of their machines, and you don’t know until you’re suddenly face-to-worn-out-Odor-Eaters. Ugh!

          I did find a large collection of used tissues under a user’s desk once. Apparently, every time he blew his nose, he winged the tissue under the desk, and never bothered to pick up the ones that didn’t hit the trash bin. I backed out of there in a double-quick hurry, visions of virii dancing in my head!

      • #3244133

        Passwords

        by padresfan82 ·

        In reply to Computer under 3 foot of junk

        I love when people bitch and moan about passwords. Examples, Having to change passwords every 90 days or, having multiple passwords for different apps. Users are not so sympathec when I tell them I have 10 or so passwords that I have to remember and change on a regular basis. Users thing we should bow down to them.

        • #3245472

          Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

          by tonythetiger ·

          In reply to Passwords

          When they forget their password, I set it to “imstupid” and make them change it.

        • #3260508

          Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

          by firefly1522 ·

          In reply to Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

          And I really love the people who tell you, “I keep all my passwords taped to the desk under my keyboard!” And they’re so proud of themselves….

      • #3246078

        Don’t ya know…

        by cheesel ·

        In reply to Computer under 3 foot of junk

        computers are just pricey bulletin boards?

      • #3246047

        You ain’t seen nothin’ til you work at…

        by cheesel ·

        In reply to Computer under 3 foot of junk

        a food service place. I was upgrading Dunkin’ donuts cash registers. Mind you, it could have been much worse, but the pounds of decaying (and sometimes wet) coffee beans under the counters were pretty nasty.

    • #3244377

      On-call 24/7 personal tech support

      by angry_white_male ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Once word gets out you’re an IT guy, all sorts of people (old friends from 3rd grade, long lost cousins, etc…) come out from the woodwork expecting you to freely fix their PC problem, give advice or otherwise perform a service for them – for free. Like I have nothing better to do with my free time – or to drop what I’m doing – and to fix your PC (that you likely broke) without compensation.

      Now if someone brings in their laptop from home with a 12-pack of beer, that’s another story… but like many of you – having your lunch interrupted by someone’s home computer problem. Or someone with the balls to call your company-issued cell phone at 10:00 PM because they’re having a home computer problem.

      Most of the time I tell them I charge $50.00 an hour and the clock’s running. Usually solves the “problem” right then and there.

      Or the people who think you’re a computer god who eats and breathes computers 24/7. Most are shocked to find that that (until a few months ago) my computer at home is an aging 450 MHz model that I bought 6 years ago. I honestly don’t care enough to be an IT guy at home. I just use it to check e-mail, surf the web, play a few games and IM with a few friends.

      • #3244115

        Amen to that!

        by pos_techie ·

        In reply to On-call 24/7 personal tech support

        I agree with angry white male, the customers I have learned to handle over the years, it’s the ungrateful friends and family that are killing me. My family has come to respect my opionion so much they pay, sometimes it’s cash, sometimes it’s gift cards, but either way I am more than happy to help them as they are grateful and appreciative. It’s the extended family that won’t even let you go to your niece’s birthday party without cornering you and demanding that you fix their computer “because Gatway told me we have to use the restore CD and I don’t want to” to remove the piles of porn, viruses and malware. Whyever would they install AV or a firewall or download windows patches? That’s too hard. It might take five clicks and a reboot! Or the brother in law that crashes his harddrive for the third time this year. Then shows up on Christmas Eve with his PC that he drove there 800 miles, but never called to say he was bringing it or you would have brought your tech kit! Who travels with tools or CDs on Christmas! It’s a holiday for a reason! At least he learned his lesson, he has promised to give fair warning if he’s bringing it back with him and he finally bought Ghost so he can backup to an external drive and have his system back up quicker. But my husband’s family is officially cut off of support as of a month ago, and my husband is the one that insists on it. He said the next time they call, tell them to take it to a pc repair place in their town and pay that guy to do it. He may not get a thank you, but he gets a check.

      • #3245754

        Not only that, “What brand should I buy?”

        by Anonymous ·

        In reply to On-call 24/7 personal tech support

        For some reason my users think I know all about every device out there; handhelds, cell phones, printers, XBox systems, etc. And so they come to me asking for recommendations on what they should buy. I won’t deny it is flattering to be thought of as someone who knows all about electronic gear, but it’s also frustrating having to announce my ignorance when I am asked which kind of smart card reader I think is the best, when I’ve never even worked with any such item. I find what helps is to reply “Which brand are you considering?” and then when they say “Sony” (or whatever) let them know they’ve made a very good choice and best of luck with their purchase.

        • #3245493

          good answer!

          by doug m. ·

          In reply to Not only that, “What brand should I buy?”

          Great answer! I think I will use that line next time. You are so right about folks asking for advice or they feel compelled to tell you all about their machine or printer at home which is acting up or going too slow, etc.

      • #3260953

        I’m sorry for calling you at home, but you don’t have a life so what…

        by dejoy ·

        In reply to On-call 24/7 personal tech support

        Our business hours are 9AM-5:30PM, Monday-Friday. However, users are insistent on calling me afterhours and on weekends. “I’m sorry for calling you at home…” If you were feeling sorry for something you know you should not do, then why do it? The network is not down. Why am I called to support your home laptop or desktop? Yet, the managers don’t want to increase my salary nor give me overtime, not even a parking pass because I’m not considered essential. Don’t they know I’m the only one providing support to 80+ users (not essential, huh?), users who are not power users, but can tell you how the network should operate.

      • #3238176

        After Hours Night Mare

        by jfirm ·

        In reply to On-call 24/7 personal tech support

        My job requires supporting office and production users 24/7. A fellow Tech (Moe) received a page at 2:30 one morning. The first words out of the users mouth was ?I have a question ???

        Moe?s response was to hang up and he went back to sleep. Moe is a little more diplomatic than me.

        My question to that user is ?Who?s you Supervisor and why aren?t you making steel?

        • #3238161
          Avatar photo

          I suppose that would work

          by hal 9000 ·

          In reply to After Hours Night Mare

          If you didn’t work in a place where down time was measured in Millions of $ per 15 minute cycle.

          I still have a vivid memory a few years ago of a call out to a bank well after 2.00 AM back in the days before cell phones where I had to go to their Main Data Processing Office and I backed the car up across the footpath so I could empty it easily to the door of the bank and bashing on the door to try to attract someones attention to let me in.

          Well I did attract some attention from the Police who wanted to know just the Hell it was that I thought I was doing. Just after they had told me to move on and suggested that I come back during work hours which I said was perfectly fine by me as I could get some sleep someone came to the door demanding to know just where the Hell I’d been. It didn’t matter that I’d been trying to bash the door down for about 20 minutes prior to the cops turning up. But the Look on the faces of the Cops was priceless when they realized that there where still people working there at that time of night. 😀

          Data processing for banks is a 24/7/356 job and the costs involved in any down time are unbelievable. Thank God I don’t do that type of work any longer. Now mostly I only work to around 2.00 AM and than I can get to go home and get a little sleep before turning up at 8.00 AM the same day and quite often to the same place where I was at till 2.00 AM that day. :p

          Col ]:)

    • #3244371

      “I already tried that”

      by dratliff ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I work in a rather large building, but still have no problem making a “desk call” rather than talking a user through a problem over the phone. I prefer the hands on approach. However, in a good number of cases, one just knows that a reboot will be the solution. When I ask a user “Did you shut down and reboot?” and they assure me that they have done that TWICE, I am on my way to their rescue. How often I have to bite my tongue when they act amazed that the problem is solved when I reboot their system. Its MAGIC!!

      • #3246105

        Magic shorts.

        by rtyo ·

        In reply to “I already tried that”

        Yes, what we do often appears as magic. When I run into the “I tried that but it didn’t work for me” situation I smile, and say “Yes, but I’ll wager your not wearing magic computer fixing jockey shorts.”

        • #3262695

          Mine was a magic penny…

          by graytalon ·

          In reply to Magic shorts.

          I had a user that just had a multitude of problems. I could never replicate them. I figured he was just fat fingering the keyboard. I then explained to him that I would work some real magic, but it would only last as long as the item I worked it on stayed in contact with the computer. He said anything would be great. I took a penny, put a blob of black paint under Lincoln’s chin. I explained a ritual was worked on the penny because it conducted electrons like a copper wire.

          He taped it to his chasis and I didn’t get another call from him for months.

      • #3262354

        Well…. they may actually be telling the truth…

        by mdpetrel ·

        In reply to “I already tried that”

        Hi;

        The first thing we learned about computer technology is about the hardware and microcode; so we all know that it is really a miracle that all components work together given the complex timings involved at the millisecond level.

        There truly are mullions of instances in which a given “fix” will not work, and suddenly does work.

        I would NEVER even begin to think that the user had lied about trying a given solution… I know too much about what actually goes on at the device microcode level…

        Cheers… mdp

        • #3241325

          I’ve actually seen it too often to doubt it

          by server queen ·

          In reply to Well…. they may actually be telling the truth…

          I’ve actually sat and watched a user try something, have it fail, then sat down and done the same thing myself, and it works like a charm. My husband swears it’s because the computers are afraid of me. He might be right. They SHOULD be afraid of me, I have no respect for them. Trifle with me, and you’ll be repartitioned or parted out, you hunk of scrap metal!

        • #3241990

          Fairy Dust

          by baldwia ·

          In reply to I’ve actually seen it too often to doubt it

          I just tell them I sprinkled fairy dust while they weren’t looking.

      • #3255236

        Reboot does not reset hardware

        by kevj ·

        In reply to “I already tried that”

        I have had systems that required a complete shutdown, pull the power cord and push the power button to drain capacitors, plug in and restart. A warm reboot does not reset the hardware so if hardware is the problem (or microcode in the hardware) it will not work.

    • #3244359
      Avatar photo

      A few that have happened to me recently

      by hal 9000 ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I get a call and straight away I’m asked what have I done to their computers which where working perfectly yesterday and are not today, The fact that I have not been there for months just doesn’t count one little bit. 🙂

      Or the office manager who rings up and asks how to perform an upgrade of a program or apply a patch and then insists that because the web site is in a different country she is unable to update/patch her computer. 😉

      Another Office manager in a small business who insists that the server be in her office because it can be locked and the server will be safe when she isn’t there. Then rings up and insists that I go out and fix a problem but of course she isn’t there and her office is locked so I can not gain access to the server to fix it up. 🙁

      One of my favorite a end user insisting that they have a XP only environment and all the servers are running XP Pro because they are the domain controllers and the workstations are running XP Home because they are the workstations. 😀

      Another small business where the owners sons have access to the computers after work hours and use the network as a giant games play toy and then disable the AV programs to download infected files because they are unable to download them with the AV running and then hopelessly infect every computer in the building and it is all my fault. 🙂

      Or the best one recently I cleared my workload for a few days told everyone I would be away and that one of my staff would handle any problems if they arose then after driving for 26 hours I get a phone call demanding that I come out immediately to fix a problem that they have created and none of my staff will be capable of fixing it no matter what. This particular person insisted that I drive out to their workplace and fix things now and it didn’t matter that I was over a day away they wanted me there within half an hour. 🙂

      Or a urgent phone call telling me that the computers are not working after a long weekend so I get them to go through the usual items and then decide that I’ll have to go out and see what is wrong, when I arrive I find that there is no Internet access and no matter what I try nothing works. I eventually ring their ISP who insists that it must be at my end as everything their end is working perfectly so after several hours I give up and demand that the ISP sends someone out to trouble shoot the Internet connection and within ten minutes without touching a single thing everything starts working again. I really wouldn’t mind the truth being told to me that the ISP has just upgraded their systems and are experiencing some problems but a bald faced lie that I must not know what I’m doing and then when I push them they fix it up without so much as a sorry mate we’ll look into it. 🙁

      Or one that is a bit older the Office Manager some how enables the Auto Update feature in XP and then proceeds to install SP2 after being told not to apply this update because it will prevent the computer from working but she does it on the late on the day that the tax has to be sent in and expects the problem to be fixed a hour before she mucked it up and refuses to accept responsibility because she refused me access to flash the BIOS so things would work if this did happen her excuse was that she didn’t have the time to waste when I wanted to do some routine maintenance. 😀

      Col ]:)

      • #3244307

        “Mysterious Happenings”

        by travelcare_chris ·

        In reply to A few that have happened to me recently

        That is how many of my users explain the things that they clearly did to their computers. …when they get around to telling me about these problems.

        So one of my users says that she can’t receive email from a specific user in the building. This clearly points to a rule set up in her Outlook. I am nearby so I head to her computer and she tells me that she has never been able to get mail from this user. She has been with the company for three months and her computer has a fresh install of the O/S. She has no idea how it got there but she has a rule that is sending all of her email received from one user into her contacts folder of Outlook. How do you tell a user not to do something they deny doing? I explained how the rules work in outlook but sometimes the users will refuse any and all blame.

        • #3245663
          Avatar photo

          No you have it all wrong

          by hal 9000 ·

          In reply to “Mysterious Happenings”

          The computer does it just to spite the user. 🙂

          Every end user that I’ve ever dealt with has told me this in different ways but always it is the same thing “The Computer Did It not ME!” 😀

          Col ]:)

        • #3246097

          um… no

          by rtyo ·

          In reply to “Mysterious Happenings”

          “but sometimes the users will refuse any and all blame”

          Tthe users will refuse any and all blame- ALWAYS.

    • #3244335

      “know-it-all” bosses

      by slurpee ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I have the unfortunate situation of haveing a head of IT who is not very knowleadgeable and is unwilling to admit that anyone may know something she doesn’t – unless we call for outside support at $150/hour. A recent example was when she called them to clean a PC infested with spyware that was running the antiscumware software that these same outsiders had sold our company….(not something that I would run on my home PC ever, either!)

    • #3244330

      Positioning of the IT Department

      by v_dub ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I once worked in an IT Department of two, where (I think!) we reported to a Director of some sort… then we reported to the Accounts Manager, who reported to the Finance Director, who reported to the Managing Director… then after the IT Manager left the company, I don’t know who I was supposed to be reporting to… could have been the Procurement Manager, the Accounts Manager or the Trading Director.

      During this time, it was made clear that the IT Department would not be increasing in size… but it would be ideal if I could teach the guy in Accounts how I did my job…

    • #3244315

      the internet is down

      by gobucksdave ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      user calls in: um – looks like the internet is down again. I’m thinking (yeah buddy every computer in the world and every major backbone is down – yeah right) Plug the ethernet cable back in and walk away.

      • #3244216

        Check for “foreign objects”!!

        by tonyj_stirling ·

        In reply to the internet is down

        I work for a forestry company, and in our district offices, many of the forest managers bring their dogs in. (It’s usual practice in this kind of work).

        One day, I get a call from a user, “I can’t access the network”. Well, we spend a while trying to see what the user CAN see, eventually discern that the PC is definitely not connected to the network, so I get him to check the network cable. Yep, it’s in right, nothing loose, it IS plugged in at the other end of the cable.
        Right, try another cable – pinch it off a PC you know is working.
        5 minutes later, nope, this machine definitely isn’t going to connect, so I’m thinking, it must be the network card. (Even though it’s built into the motherboard of the IBM machine!)

        So, I tell him to pack the PC up and send it to our hardware support guys. “OK, will do”.

        10 minutes later, I get a call back from the same user – “Found the problem!”
        A dog hair had got stuck in the network port. It was a fair-haired dog, do the guy couldn’t see the hair until he unplugged the whole PC and brought it into the sunlight.
        He connected it back up, and the PC worked fine!!

      • #3245734

        Why can’t everyone use email outside of Outlook Express???

        by rayjeff ·

        In reply to the internet is down

        To the point. The faculty and staff have been “shown” how to access their campus email through using Outlook Express. When I say “shown”, I mean it was set up for them by the MIS department. All the while, there is a web-based email application, WorldClient that they can use. Ok, so…WHY CAN’T THEY USE IT?? Because they don’t know how.

        I surprised a faculty member some months ago when they tried to access their email through Outlook and they couldn’t. Then I told them that they could use the web client and that shocked them. They had no idea that they could. And even moreso, they were surprised that they could change their password. I told them yes they could. I told them that the password that recieved was just a given one to get them started into their account, but they should and can change it.

        Now, I can’t really say if the MIS department did a good job of training everyone on the email system or just shoved it down their throats because it was new and it was there to use.

      • #3262353

        Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

        by hcetrepus ·

        In reply to the internet is down

        My favorote commercial on TV is the one where the bonehead guy is mindlessly shoving hsi pencil into the electric pencil sharpener, wanting it sharpened. Someone comes along, looks at him, and then bends over and plugs it in. I yelled to my wife, “Thans what I do for a LIVING!!”

    • #3244286

      How about forgotten passwords

      by gsharpe ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Forgotten passwords or, “How do I login” makes my top ten list.

      • #3244247

        Yep Passwords

        by senior program analyst ·

        In reply to How about forgotten passwords

        “I havent been in the system for awhile can you give me my password”

        Like….I can tell you everyone’s password I have ever created…and of course you havent changed it since I gave it to you the first time…

        Of course we can always see everyone’s password for all applications and systems anytime we want right? It never “*”s out passwords on the tech’s computer.

        • #3244161

          PW Issues that burn my butt…

          by dmambo ·

          In reply to Yep Passwords

          My 3 “favorite” PW issues are: 1) Users who have had to change their PW every 2 months for 5 years and still can’t remember the process. I have given them written instructions that I made my 9 year-old follow to test them out. 2) Users who change their password on a Friday then can’t remember it come Monday (that’s actually better than them posting it on the monitor, I guess). 3) Users who ask if I can exclude them from the PW requirements. I explain that once everyone is special, then nobody is special!!

        • #3245752

          The evil Caps Lock key

          by Anonymous ·

          In reply to PW Issues that burn my butt…

          9 times out of 10 when a user complains they can’t log in the Caps Lock key is on. This got so problematic at one point I felt we might want to consider removing the key from problem user’s keyboards.

      • #3262367

        Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

        by hcetrepus ·

        In reply to How about forgotten passwords

        Glad to see this one! Every user assumes that we know what there passwords are, and look blanky at us when they somehow forget, and expect us to know it. Some have even gotten angry for us not knowing!

      • #3262339

        Um… we deserve this one…

        by mdpetrel ·

        In reply to How about forgotten passwords

        … because this one actually boils down to policy issues… think about it:

        Everyone of us has at least a few dozen passwords and or PIN’s to memorize. The solution most average people employ is to:

        1) either write them all down, in which case security is compromised if you misplace your list, or worse, if you tape it onto your monitor or simply slide it under your keyboard; or

        2) pick something REALLY easy for someone to crack, and then use it for all cases.

        So, what do we do to ENSURE their security? We generate “gobbledygook” passwords for them. Ok, so *I* can remember the value of PI to 25 digits, but it’s flagrantly arrogant of me to expect everyone else to be able to do so…

        Sorry, *I* treat every lost password request with sympathy for the user, not disdain.

        Cheers… mdp

        • #3261385

          absolutely true

          by anne.powel ·

          In reply to Um… we deserve this one…

          We recently compiled a list (without the actual passwords, of course) of the number of system and server passwords we use and it was close to 100. Since corporate policy is that every user password has to change every 90 days, IT every 60 days, NO ONE can remember that many passwords.
          We have users who only log in every 60 days to do safety training, and there’s no way we can expect them to remember their passwords!
          Sympathy and trying to help them set up a password system they’ll remember will make them like you more, not blame you for the issue!

        • #3241316

          I like Mark Minasi’s solution to that one

          by server queen ·

          In reply to Um… we deserve this one…

          Don’t teach users to use passwords – teach them to use pass PHRASES instead. Most password crackers will only crack a certain number of characters, at least for LAN Manager/Windows. Use more than 16 characters, and they’re easy to remember, but hard to hack. An example of using a passphrase instead of a password is something like “4&20blackbirdsbakedinapie.” That one’s easy to remember, nasty to crack.

    • #3244243

      ScreenSaver Passwords & Windows Lock

      by senior program analyst ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      People who call and need help, but when you get there they have “gone to a meeting” or whatever. Leaving thier computer so the Windows Lock or Screen Saver kicks in and you don’t dare reboot since they may have some critical file open under there that you will corrupt.

      When you want to apply a computer patch, do routine maintenance, Inventory, etc. and you get to a computer that the person hasnt touched in two days but the computer is logged in and the screen lock is on.

      • #3245537

        ARgh! ARgh! ARgh!

        by nerdy_gurl ·

        In reply to ScreenSaver Passwords & Windows Lock

        Yep, my favorite guy who is the CFO, CIO, (you name it, he’s ‘it’) at the small biz where I work who INSISTS he must be able to login at anytime.

        Try making backups, try rebooting the server after patching, whatever I do I have to always check he’s offline since he’s always in the fileserver database over the VPN from home. And of course, when I call him he might not BE at home!!

        I even tried to make him unable to login from 2-5 AM so I could run auto backups on his data and he complained…whatever, maybe when he needs a backup and it isn’t there he’ll wise up… fat chance!!

      • #3260498

        Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

        by firefly1522 ·

        In reply to ScreenSaver Passwords & Windows Lock

        And where I work, we have a policy that if you leave your desk locked when you know we’re coming to do some work, we’re logging you off because you should save your work.

        The first upgrade I did when I started at my job was pure h*ll because we sat around waiting for people who had gone to lunch or break to come and say it was ok to log them off. Not anymore.

    • #3244205

      Gadget-Folks

      by nymgr ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      One of my bigger pet peeves are those users who simply MUST have their new ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL TO BUSINESS AND LIFE ON EARTH (aka xmas present) device connected. Nevermind that it’s not for their OS, Version, Language (yes I once had a user come back from a trip to the orient with a new pda who was going to translate the KANJI instructions AND screens so I could install it, thankfully before it went too far up the ladder he plugged it in and fried it), etc. They need it OR ELSE THE EARTH WILL STOP SPINNING (you haven’t lived until you’ve listened to the 45 minute justification of why this MP3 player has a real serious business value and that that’s why it must be installed).
      These folks are even more annoying than the wannabe “geeks”, those users who (often times do) have a great deal of knowledge about a very specific “tool” (software package, piece of hardware, 1 or 2 functions of a specific package,etc take your pick) and at every possible chance try to use that “tool” for whatever the problem is, no matter how INAPPROPRIATE it may be. I had a user who was that departments LOTUS 1-2-3 “Guru” who decided that he would also use 1-2-3 as his wordprocessor.

      • #3245660
        Avatar photo

        I just would love to see that result!

        by hal 9000 ·

        In reply to Gadget-Folks

        😀

      • #3245586

        PDA’s are the tool of the devil

        by angry_white_male ·

        In reply to Gadget-Folks

        And another support headache. Bad enough we issue Palms and Blackberries to a couple dozen people. As soon as one doesn’t sync up properly – the phone starts ringing. I consider these convenience items and put them to the bottom of the helpdek queue. They’re a pain in the rear to setup, configure and then the big question comes from the user: “how do I use this?”.

        My company issued me a PDA – a nice Ipaq PocketPC. What do I use it for? MP3 player for my car!

    • #3244121

      Importance of new office.

      by padresfan82 ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I once had a department ask me to set up a new office for them in a week. They expected me to have a phone system, 10 phones, a router, point to point T1, server, and 10 work stations with images and configureation of un-hired workers ready to go at a moments notice.

      • #3245655
        Avatar photo

        Well you got it easy!

        by hal 9000 ·

        In reply to Importance of new office.

        The ones that I love are being told to setup an office and they have absolutely no idea what they require in it they just know that they need the office setup and not what will be required there. 🙁

        At one place I arranged to have the phones, broadband connection 3 computers setup and running for unknown staff and then they hit me with the need for LT and what started out as a simple setup ended up being a mini domain with 25 users but hey they where only going to have 3 people there full time. 🙂

        Col ]:)

    • #3244110

      BOFH – A little dated, but applicable

      by rack-ny ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      ————————————————————————
      BASTARD OPERATOR FROM HELL #1
      ————————————————————————

      It’s backup day today so I’m p&&&&d off. Being the BOFH, however, does
      have it’s advantages. I reassign null to be the tape device – it’s so
      much more economical on my time as I don’t have to keep getting up to
      change tapes every 5 minutes. And it speeds up backups too, so it can’t
      be all bad can it? Of course not.

      A user rings

      “Do you know why the system is slow?” they ask

      “It’s probably something to do with…” I look up today’s excuse “..
      clock speed”

      “Oh” (Not knowing what I’m talking about, they’re satisfied) “Do you
      know when it will be fixed?”

      “Fixed? There’s 275 users on your machine, and one of them is you.
      Don’t be so selfish – logout now and give someone else a chance!”

      “But my research results are due in tomorrow and all I need is one page
      of Laser Print..”

      “SURE YOU DO. Well; You just keep telling yourself that buddy!” I
      hang up.

      Sheesh, you’d really think people would learn not to call!

      The phone rings. It’ll be him again, I know. That annoys me. I put
      on a gruff voice

      “HELLO, SALARIES!”

      “Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve got the wrong number”

      “YEAH? Well what’s your name buddy? Do you know WASTED phone calls cost
      money? DO YOU? I’ve got a good mind to subtract your wasted time, my
      wasted time, and the cost of this call from your weekly wages! IN FACT
      I WILL! By the time I’ve finished with you, YOU’LL OWE US money!
      WHAT’S YOUR NAME – AND DON’T LIE, WE’VE GOT CALLER ID!!”

      I hear the phone drop and the sound of running feet – he’s obviously
      going to try and get an alibi by being at the Dean’s office. I look up
      his username and find his department. I ring the Dean’s secretary.

      “Hello?” she answers

      “Hi,SIMON, B.O.F.H HERE, LISTEN, WHEN THAT GUY COMES RUNNING INTO YOUR
      OFFICE IN ABOUT 10 SECONDS, CAN YOU GIVE HIM A MESSAGE?”

      “I think so…” she says

      “TELL HIM `HE CAN RUN, BUT HE CAN’T HIDE'”

      “Um. Ok”

      “AND DON’T FORGET NOW, I WOULDN’T WANT TO HAVE TO TELL ANYONE ABOUT
      THAT FILE IN YOUR ACCOUNT WITH YOUR ANSWERS TO THE PURITY TEST IN
      IT…”

      I hear her scrabbling at the terminal…

      “DON’T BOTHER – I HAVE A COPY. BE A GOOD GIRL AND PASS THE MESSAGE ON..”

      She sobs her assent and I hang up. And the worst thing is, I was just
      guessing about the purity test thing. I grab a quick copy anyway, it
      might make for some good late-night reading.

      Meantime backups have finished in record time, 2.03 seconds. Modern
      technology is wonderful, isn’t it?

      Another user rings.

      “I need more space” he says

      “Well, why don’t you move to Texas?” I ask

      “No, on my account, stupid.”

      Stupid? Uh-Oh..

      “I’m terribly sorry” I say, in a polite manner equal to that of Jimmy
      Stewart in a Weekend Family Matinee Feature “I didn’t quite catch that.
      What was it that you said?”

      I smell the fear coming down the line at me, but it’s too late, he’s a
      goner and he knows it.

      “Um, I said what I wanted was more space on my account, *please*”

      “Sure, hang on”

      I hear him gasp his relief even though he covered the mouthpiece.

      “There, you’ve got *plenty* of space now!”

      “How much have I got?” he simps

      Now this *REALLY* *P%^&#$S* *ME* *OFF*! Not only do they want me to
      give them extra space, they want to check it, then correct me if I
      don’t give them enough! They should be happy with what I give them
      *and that’s it*!

      Back into Jimmy Stewart mode.

      “Well, let’s see, you have 4 Meg available”

      “Wow! Eight Meg in total, thanks!” he says, pleased with his
      bargaining power

      “No” I interrupt, savoring this like a fine red at room temperature,
      followed by steak, extra rare, to follow; “4 Meg in total..”

      “Huh? I’d used 4 Meg already, How could I have 4 Meg Available?”

      I say nothing. It’ll come to him.

      “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggghhhhhH!”

      I kill me; I really do

      ————————————————————————
      BASTARD OPERATOR FROM HELL #2
      ————————————————————————

      I’m sitting at the desk, playing x-tank, when some thoughtless bastard
      rings me on the phone. I pick it up.

      “Hello?” I say.

      “Who is this?” they say

      “It’s me I think” I say, having successfully attended a telephone
      skills course

      “Me Who?”

      “Is this like a knock knock joke?” I say, trying anything to save
      myself having to end this game.

      Too LATE! I get killed.

      Now I’m p#$%^d!

      “What can I do for you?” I ask pleasantly – (one of the key warning
      signs)

      “Um, I want to know if we have a particular software package..”

      “Which package is that?”

      “Uh, B-A-S-I-C it’s called.”

      >clickety clickety d-e-l b-a-s-i-c.e-x-e< "Um no, we don't have that. We used to though.." "Oh. Oh well, the other thing I wanted to know was, could the contents of my account be copied to tape to I have a permanent copy of them to save at home in case the worst happens.." "The worst?" "Well, like they get deleted or something..." "DELETED! Oh, don't worry about that, we have backups!" (I'm such a *s$%^*) "What was your username?" He gives me his username. (What an idiot) >clickety click< "But you haven't got any files in your account!" I say, mock surprise leaping from my vocal chords. "Yes I have, you must be looking in the wrong place!" So first he spoils my x-tank game, and *now* he's calling me a liar... >clickety click< "Oh no, I made a mistake" I say Did he mutter "typical" under his breath??!? Oh dear, oh dear.. "I MEANT TO SAY: That USERNAME doesn't exist" "Huh? >wimper< It must, I was only using it this morning!" "Ah well, that'll be the problem, there was a virus in our system this morning, the... uh... DE VINCI Virus, wipes out users who are logged in when it goes off." "That can't be right, my girl friend was logged in, and I'm in her account now!" "Which one was that?" He tells me the username. Some people NEVER learn.. "Oh, yeah, her account was just after we discovered the virus." >clickety click< "..she only lost all her files" "But..." "But don't worry, we've got them all on tape" "Oh, thank goodness!!!" "Paper tape. Have you got a magnifying glass and a pencil? SEE YOU IN THE MACHINE ROOM!!!! NYAHAHAHAHAHA!" I'm such a p$%^&!

    • #3245763

      My favorite: “It’s not working!”

      by cheesel ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I have had far too many users over the years who come running to me just yelling “It’s not working!”

      This makes me want to say “WHAT??? WHAT’S NOT WORKING?? THE TOASTER IN THE BREAKROOM?? THE LAMP ON YOUR DESK?? WHAT??”

      • #3245756

        I also can’t stand “My computer is down.”

        by Anonymous ·

        In reply to My favorite: “It’s not working!”

        What a ridiculous term. To say “My computer is down” reveals no information, and chances are the system is actually running but doesn’t have a network connection, won’t accept their password because they left the Caps Lock key on again, etc. Our 1st level of Help Desk is usually pretty good about eliciting further information; symptoms, error messages, etc. but I get hit with the term “down” quite a bit when approached by frantic users.

        • #3245656
          Avatar photo

          Have you tried suggesting

          by hal 9000 ·

          In reply to I also can’t stand “My computer is down.”

          That they give the computer some antidepressants? that generally works for me although I do tend to crack up laughing when they call me back and ask where do they insert the pill? 😀

          It makes me wonder just what these people are caring around with them. 🙂

          Col ]:)

        • #3246072

          Computer Down? How about an Anti-Depressant?

          by cheesel ·

          In reply to I also can’t stand “My computer is down.”

          computer down? Never fear…Info Uppers are here! And to let your computer sleep, try Data Downers!

        • #3218006

          I can’t get into “The System”

          by dumbterminal ·

          In reply to I also can’t stand “My computer is down.”

          Which generally means the software they use the most, be it Excel, their e-mail client, IE, custom app, etc. We’re supposed to guess….

      • #3245753

        I didn’t ask it to do THAT

        by stu.barber ·

        In reply to My favorite: “It’s not working!”

        What really makes me piss myself laughing inside is when you get called to “fix” a “problem” and you say: “Well, if you didn’t do THIS, it wouldn’t do THAT” and the response is “Well I didn’t ask it to do THAT!”. Who the hell else was there when the thing started being independent???? 😉

      • #3246076

        I can’t get into my computer!

        by cheesel ·

        In reply to My favorite: “It’s not working!”

        I got frustrated one day and told a user it was too small for her.

    • #3245588

      Common ones I hate

      by angry_white_male ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      “I got an error message” is a common one.

      “OK – what did the message say?”

      “I dunno… I clicked OK to close it out.”

      Can’t help them if they don’t tell me what the message was. Drives me nuts.

      —-

      “The mail server is slow.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “It takes a second or two longer to open up an e-mail.”

      —-

      “I can’t print.” (printing problems are the biggest call generator to our helpdesk)

      —-

      “I’m getting SPAM.”

      “OK – how much are you getting?” (we have a decent mail filter that catches most of it)

      “Just a few this week.”

      “OK – that’s an acceptable number given the thousands that we delete each day.”

      “Sure, but can you block those e-mail addresses from my inbox anyway?”

      Ugh.

      —-

      Once in a while I’ll have to reboot a server in the middle of the day. You think people could wait a few minutes for it to come back up before calling? No. The second something isn’t “right” – the phones in IT are ringing off the hook. So now I have to do a “net send * The mail server will be down for 5-10 minutes.” to let everyone know – and I still get the calls.

      —-

      Blast mail to company… the mail server will be down Sat night for maintenance. No other systems will be affected.

      Typical reply from a worry-wort workaholic … “will it affect the accounting system?”

      —-

      Can’t win with some people.

    • #3245545

      YOu all seem to have missed the most important peeve …

      by neil leacy ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      … and that is when friends and family know what you do for a living, and so think it’s fine to ring you any time, day or night, at work or at home, usually with the opening line of ‘Hi, how are you? Haven’t spoken for a while.’ I normally reply, ‘I’m fine. How’s things with you?’ To which comes back the inevitable, ‘Great. Except for this problem I’m having with my PC …’

      What’s worse is that these calls can come from someone I haven’t spoken to in months or may have just chatted to for a few minutes at friends bbq!

      Eat, drink, sleep computers – I’d rather not, thank you.

      Cheers, Neil

      • #3245535

        Closely followed by an example my other top peeve …

        by neil leacy ·

        In reply to YOu all seem to have missed the most important peeve …

        … when you get a call for help and from the sound of the problem you decide you need to physically go to the PC to sort it out but ask can the user hang on for 30 minutes or so while you finish what your doing.

        When you finally get to the users PC they seem surprised to see you and say ‘Oh, it’s okay, I’ve sorted it now’. If

        As usual the PC is situated on the far side of you building and by the time you’ve walked there, answering the numerous queries from people stopping you in the corridors, the user says, ‘Oh, it’s okay now. I sorted it.’ Users are always quick to ring for help but never so quick to let you know when they don’t need you!

        Cheers, Neil

      • #3245503

        Yes! Family and friends love you…

        by mrpjb ·

        In reply to YOu all seem to have missed the most important peeve …

        Being from a big family and having many friends, I have had way too many experiences like you have mentioned. I also do not eat, drink, sleep computers, thank you.

      • #3246092

        FIL: My computer won’t Yahoo!

        by jjpspam ·

        In reply to YOu all seem to have missed the most important peeve …

        … sounds like my married father-in-law who uses the computer soley to surf pr0n and chat with his online girl friend.

        He calls several times a year.

        FIL: My computer’s broke.
        ME: What’s wrong with it?
        FIL: It won’t Yahoo!

        Arghh!

    • #3245544

      Is my diskette virus catching?

      by cmorris ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Here is one that happened to me several years ago in the Mathematics and Computer Science Department where I spent many hours trouble-shooting PC’s and helping faculty members with virus control. A Mathematics instructor came to me one day with a 3 1/2 inch diskette. He stated that he believed there was a virus on his diskette. I popped it into my machine and performed a scan/remove on it. Sure enough there was a virus on it and it was successfully removed. As I handed the diskette back to him, he asked, “This diskette has been stored in a desk drawer with some of my other diskettes. Do they have the virus, too?” True story!

    • #3245540

      Don’t I Get a Break

      by d_bones ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      My most annoying peave is when it’s lunch time. I have a mouthfull of sandwhich whilst playing a realy serious game of spider solitaire (Using 3 packs) and some *$*1# says:

      I know you’re at lunch but…….

      Can’t wait ’till it stops raining so I can have my lunch in peace and quite on the bench next to the busy main road.

    • #3245539

      I completely agree with you

      by jkiran21 ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      All the Techsupport admins might have experienced such type of problem. Atleast I do 🙂

    • #3245528

      Pet Peeves

      by dtsonly2004 ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      IT Support people who won’t answer questions unless phrased in exactly the correct way.

    • #3245525

      How true – all of them…

      by featherman ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      but how about the user who calls with an urgent issue – one which “Needs to be addressed yesterday!” (as in why did you allow this to happen in the first place) – and then goes away leaving a locked computer, locked office or password protected screen saver running. Or the ones who call with an issue, and when you arrive to fix what’s broke don’t have time for you to get to the PC. Like for a few weeks. Maybe. If the quarterly report is done and the moon turns green and… well you get the picture.

      I usually change their home page to something like joecartoon or hampsterdance…

      • #3245498

        True, yes, all of them, BUT…

        by demf ·

        In reply to How true – all of them…

        I take exception with the first two issues Becky mentions in her article.

        I’m now removed from a hands-on tech job (I currently manage a website development team), but I used to be a support guy once. I always took suggestions -as long as the suggesting party was polite, proper and respectful- as good input, knowing that I had the last word at accepting them as such or implementing them. After all, it was MY responsibility if the path I followed was the rigth one or not.

        However, nowadays, I do need to know what’s going wrong at the back end. Chances are that when something in my site will be down longer than usual, I will be held accountable also, and will also get the heat for it. I can’t afford lengthy delays just for troubleshooting’s sake. Many a time I’ve worked at a place where the tech support guy in charge of solving a particular problem has close to zero clues on where to start a troubleshoot, even when there are protocols or checklists available to help him/her solve the problem. Most of the time we’re talking rookies -who are sometimes very receptive to suggestions, but then there’s the occasional professional slacker who has no intention of solving the backlog of problems that make him indispensable to the organization.

        I don’t claim to know better than Becky or anyone else, but as much as a pet peeve it might be, I call the first two peeves she suggested cooperative problem solving, not pet peeves. AS LONG AS I HAVE THE RIGHT ATTITUDE with the tech support guy, (s)he shouldn’t feel threatened or annoyed by it. It requires a great deal of skill to deflect suggestions that might be way off base, and a great deal of maturity to take constructive (i.e., not snotty) criticism. It comes with the job, and yet, the decision making party is free to accept them at face value, however annoying or off-base they may be.

        • #3245475

          Bravo

          by countrynet ·

          In reply to True, yes, all of them, BUT…

          As frustrating as it may be at times listening to unrelated or misdirected suggestions or comments from end users, the fact is we’re talking about those of us who are supposed to be working at HELP desks and/or in IT SUPPORT; HELP and SUPPORT being the operative words, not ATTITUDE or HARD TIME. The first step in solving any problem in life is listening and determining what it really is, and then sorting out relative details to resolve the matter quickly and easily. Last time I checked, none of us had “holes in our hands”.

    • #3245487

      Doesn’t want to learn

      by Anonymous ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      How about the user who says something like “I don’t want to learn all about brakes and gears and stuff; I just want to drive the car.”? I have several users who seem to think they don’t need to learn the difference between a row and a column in order to use a spreadsheet. Ah, well, at least it’s job security.

      • #3245473

        being on-call

        by schristo ·

        In reply to Doesn’t want to learn

        Where I work, we have a service that answers the calls and then contacts the person that is on call (usually within 5 min). What I hate most is when the person that called for technical support is not there when I return the call. I leave messages – my limit is 3(I usually wait 10 min between calls). If they don’t care enough to wait on me to return their call, or they have not returned to their desk after I have left 3 messages, then it’s not important enough for me to keep trying to get in touch with them. It can wait until the next business day!

        Another peeve of mine is when users bring their home PC’s in for us to work on. This is
        non-business related. They think they have their own personal home PC support staff!

      • #3245959

        “I don’t want to learn all about brakes and gears and stuff

        by rayjeff ·

        In reply to Doesn’t want to learn

        That’s one of the most craziest things I’ve ever heard. It makes no sense. it’s like reading the end the middle of a textbook without getting the foundations from the beginning chapters. And then when some simple (to us) goes wrong, who does it fall back on the help the num-nuts???

        • #3243862

          May be crazy but..

          by Anonymous ·

          In reply to “I don’t want to learn all about brakes and gears and stuff

          You’d be surprised by the number of people who seem to think they don’t need to learn the basics before they use a spreadsheet or word processor. The computer is supposed to read their minds, I guess.

    • #3245469

      The guy with the friend who knows everything about computers

      by avid ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I hate it when i get a pc that has been raped by the owners friend who convince the owner that he knows more than you do simply because he used a few industry terms. This makes my job much harder because first i have to figure out what they “tried to do to FIX it, undo that, then figure out what the real problem is, second, it puts unfounded ideas into the owners head about what the real problem is and they insist on watching you fix it.

      • #3245984

        How about the look you get when you can’t fix a problem???

        by rayjeff ·

        In reply to The guy with the friend who knows everything about computers

        Prime example. Last night, a student called me to ask me to “do what I did for her last disk”. Monday, the student had a floppy with work on it that she couldn’t open. So I did the normal thing of running Chkdsk. I was able to pull the work up, even though the disk was bad.

        Yesterday, same thing, different disk. Ok, the student lives an hour away. Because I knew the student would’ve been able to follow my directions, I told her to come back on-campus to see what I could do. She asked me if the disk would be fixed like the other one. I told her plainly that there was a 50/50 chance it would work, if the situation wasn’t the same. She came in. I’m sure I worked on it for about 15-25 minutes. Ended up instead of her three files being on the disk, all were lost. There wasn’t anything I could tell her outside of the disk being bad, which it was. So she left, but not before I got that “look”. The look of “I thought you could save my work”. SOmetimes it’s just not possible.

        Users wait until it’s at the point of no return before they come to you with their problem and then they EXPECT you to fix it. THey don’t realize that they should come right when the problem occures so there can be a better chance of success. Just like with printing. You have like six people printing documents and the documents don’t come out. What do they do? The universal response of “keep pressing print”, instead of coming to you when it doesn’t print the first time. And because the printers have no management system or even connected to a print server, I have to go to the individual computers and troubleshoot.

    • #3245454

      standing over my shoulder

      by antuck ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I hate when people will stand over your shoulder thinking they are going to learn something magical. The whole time asking what are you doing. And then hearing well I was in a chat room and someone said this would fix it are you going to try this and why not? This person said it fixed thiers. This usually happens right when you have figured out what is wrong and then have to spend time listening to them try and defend this person.

      I almost get to the point where I don’t want to tell people I work on computers. It never fails they expect you basied on a short sentence to figure out and give them the fix for free. I don’t mind trying to give some education but I’m not here to give free advise all the time.

      I’ve always wondered if they stand over my shoulder do they stand over the any other tech that is working on something of theres and say the same thing I heard in a chat room….

      • #3246119

        Ditto to over the shoulder….

        by blatkn ·

        In reply to standing over my shoulder

        I work as a Geek for BeastBuy(sp intended)and customer’s are constantly trying to get free tech support over the phone and at the tech bench. Sometimes I relent and give ’em a scrap just to make them go away. I like most folks but some are just plain annoying! Don’t they realize that us techs have to work hard to stay up on the latest and really don’t need the distraction of giving free advice. Having said that, I realize that the customer is our business; therefore,we need to treat them with kindness and respect. Knowing where to draw the line between client relations and profitability can be a challenge.

      • #3245928

        worse yet

        by avid ·

        In reply to standing over my shoulder

        when the client is a 80 something year old lady and who gets all in your personal space and insists on touching you while she leans over your shoulder. and you sit there thinking “lady could you please get your breasts off my back !”
        ick !!!

    • #3245450

      I called to say I just sent you an email ……

      by pcollins ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      This really gets to me.

      If it is urgent, phone, if I am at my desk I will answer your call, if I am not at my desk, I’m probably not reading email.

      If you send me an email, please wait at least 15 mins before picking up the phone.

    • #3245448

      PDF instead of HTML

      by alangeek ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      One of my top pet peeves is the way a lot of people take something in plain text and insist on sending it as a .doc file or .pdf instead of just mailing it or posting it on a web page plain. Like this list of peeves, why make it a download instead of just posting on a page?

    • #3246127

      Related examples and suggestions

      by dmarrs ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Very funny (but so true)! Personal solutions:

      1. Especially if the non-tech diagnoser is higher than you…..I wait until the problem is fixed. Then I let them know the problem is solved and take the opportunity to slip in “Oh, it wasn’t really the T1, it was the XXX.”

      4. I have DSL highband service. Whenever it goes down, we try everything – reboot, disconnect at both ends, reset, etc. I will do anything not to have to call them. Then I call and get a static filled IP phone connection (probably to a different country) where they absolutely will not progress until you physically follow their procedures even though you insist you have done exactly all those steps. Once they had me in DOS typing commands. The return message was not what they expected….instead of paying attention to the actual result, they kept having me type it in again (and again) as if it would magically change. I finally gave up and insisted on talking to their boss (who promised to have tier-2 support call back and they never did but my connection issue got resolved). Corporate providers have really let their customer services go down the tubes by outsourcing to call centers where the front line uses a script they cannot deviate from.
      5. A variation on the purchasing issue. We (IT) make our purchases so we don’t get the same subst problem. However, we end up having to “explain” to nontech purchasing officers why we needed to purchase a $1300 scan convertor (an excellent price for Extron), how it is used (how it works!), why is it so expensive, etc.

      7. Lunch:Try a very sympathetic facial expression and say “I have NO idea! That sounds really bad! you should call this company that does in-home support….smile and take a big bite!

      IT will always have to interface with non-tech people at some level whether it is purchasing, organizational structure, and user-level support. That is what we do! Chat a mantra…”patience is a virtue…patience is a…”

    • #3246126

      10 Peeves

      by dixieb ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      You are def right on the nail with this one. I do tech support and see these type of things all the time. I actually printed yours out and hung them in my office…. actually think I may send it to all my co-workes…

      Thanks…

    • #3246106

      Why is it…

      by emj65 ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      that those people who constantly call the Helpdesk about not being able to do something they’ve been doing for YEARS, and ask the same questions over and over again, are the ones who can figure out how to upload a picture and set it as their desktop wallpaper? It’s almost as if the work-related stuff is just too hard, but when it’s something personal, they’ll move mountains to figure it out?! This just aggravates me to no end. These are the same people who will ONLY learn just enough to get by, and won’t try anything new, and god forbid we change something (we send e-mails, reminder e-mails, and sit with the deparment before any changes are made), it takes them WEEKS to learn the new format, even if it’s only a small change. Am I bitter? Nahhhh.

    • #3246093

      #1 Peeve of mine

      by jbusch1 ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      “I have been working on this very important proposal/deliverable/whatever for over six hours and my machine locked up. I haven’t saved it since this morning. What are you going to do?!!”

      Is it too hard for folks to save files!

      • #3245944

        Re:#1 Peeve of mine—SAVE!!

        by rayjeff ·

        In reply to #1 Peeve of mine

        No, it isn’t hard. Even if you don’t want to remember to save every now and then, SET IT TO SAVE ITSELF!!!

        I’ve told several students that, and they still don’t take the hint. Oh, and let’s not forget to start a document up and work on it for hours and then you see the ubitious (SP) “Document 1″…

    • #3246080

      Cringe?

      by cheesel ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Sometimes, do you ever get to the point that when you hear foot steps coming toward your cube, you just want to hide under the desk?

    • #3246063

      Service Guidelines – a Creedo

      by kevin ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I can’t take credit for these, nor do I know where they originated…but they always get a grin from every service person I’ve shared them with 🙂

      HOW TO GET BETTER SERVICE ON YOUR MACHINE

      1. Do not call for service until everyone concerned has had time to form an opinion as to what is wrong. Allow each person the chance to correct the problem. Whenever possible, all controls and adjusting screws should be turned.
      2. After several days, when the machine malfunction has become a major emergency, place an urgent call for service. Friday afternoons are best, but anytime after 4:00 p.m. is OK.
      3. Alert all personnel so that each can give their version of what is wrong. Suggestions on how to fix the machine will be welcomed by the service man.
      4. Hide the service history log that is found inside the machine. Make several references to the man who was here for the same problem last week.
      5. Have at least eight graduate engineers present to ask highly technical questions which are in no way related to the immediate problem.
      6. The minute the service man arrives, ask what caused the delay. Make it clear that he was to arrive two days ago. Before he can answer, ask him when the machine will be back in service.
      7. The machine should be as dirty and greasy as possible. A mixture of oil and pencil sharpener shavings work well. If the machine has electrical components, add staples and paper clips.
      8. Assign someone to supervise the repair. A person who has never seen the machine before is preferred. Bad breath is a big plus.
      9. Ask again when the machine will be ready for use.
      10. Be sure that the lights are off in the room where the machine is to be repaired. A good service man can fix them blindfolded.
      11. When the repair is completed, tell him what a swell job he did. Tell him that the job should be swell, it took long enough.
      12. Try to talk the service man down on the bill. Those big companies make too much money anyway.
      13. After the service man has gone, call his supervisor and tell him the machine is now worse than it was before. Follow up with a letter and send a copy to the company’s home office.
      14. Ask if the machine is ready yet. If the service man is looking at a schematic diagram, ask if he knows what he is doing.
      15. Follow the above rules on every service call, no matter how small the problem is.

    • #3246059

      Why was this a download?

      by br-549 ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I had to download a zip –> extract –> open with/load acrobat. For an article that would have loaded instantly as a web page from the site.

      • #3245995

        Calling Junior Samples

        by ex-military nut ·

        In reply to Why was this a download?

        I like your screen name.

        BR549 and ID10t are a couple of temporary passwords I use when users can’t remember theirs. And these are the same people who think they can function without us? Go figure. If they only knew!

    • #3246040

      I was told by other department

      by jaydev ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      i cannot stand when they report something because they heard it from other department. Oh, we need that patch, fix too. I heard from dept XYZ and they said it’s a must patch.
      I ask are you have a problem?
      Why do you need the patch? I don’t want to have that problem…
      Those users who want all the patches to avoid potential issues, should take advil, tylenol, asprin and all other medications so they don’t get sick… Dummies…

    • #3246020

      unqualified users

      by sbmknight ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I have a problem with people who are not competent to do the job they were hired for, and expect the help desk staff to teach them how to do their job… in particular, secretaries who don’t know how to use Microsoft Word or Windows, and need to be told *repeatedly* how to perform the most basic tasks. Or people who call because they don’t know how to do something, then don’t bother to pay attention while you “show them how” (i.e. do it for them…)

    • #3246013

      Need advice….

      by robin.hunt ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I agree with all 10 peeves and have dealt with every one of them. My current and most irritating peeve is developers/users insisting they MUST have Admin rights to their desktop in order to do their job. On numerous occasions, we have granted admin rights, only to turn right back around and have the user calling and complaining about their machine running extremely slow or “tons of pop-ups” appearing on their machine. As usual their desktops are inundated with spyware and erroneous software that has been downloaded and now creating problems. Upper management says they will back me on “no admin rights”, however, when a user/developer “whines” to a VP, I end up having to give them admin rights. As a result of this constant battle, I also have numerous unlicensed applications that they have installed. I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t. Does anyone have any suggestions?

      • #3245987

        Speak Their Language

        by fractalzoom ·

        In reply to Need advice….

        VPs understand dollars, and you can best make your point if you can speak their language. Can you quantify these events and translate it into a specific amount of increased support costs? A veep won’t get it if you go on about spyware and erroneous software, but will perk his/her ears if you can point to an added $3500 or $5000 in support costs.

        Translate it into their language!

    • #3246008

      Professionals

      by fractalzoom ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      As an IT support professional with 20 years in the trenches helping people use computers to conduct business, I feel the collective pain of many techs posting to this thread.

      However, as I read through this list of complaints, I am reminded of a key point: WE ARE PROFESSIONALS. Dealing with these kinds of issues is what we are *paid to do*. While there’s certainly a value in venting or blowing off steam among other techs, there’s also a danger in indulging in too much of this kind of discourse — not far below the surface of many of these postings I detect a level of contempt for the IT customers. It’s potentially corrosive.

      IT exists to aid and propel the business, not the other way around. And after we’re done complaining up here, it’s important to keep our eyes on the real goal.

      My two cents…

    • #3245998

      I can’t even pee without PC questions

      by banzairunner ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I was in the men’s room…minding my own busines…taking care of business…when a user walks up to the urinal next to mine. Here’s the worst part, he’s done! He’s already washed his hands!! He just comes over to the urinal next to mine and says “I know this may not be the best place or time but i have a computer question.” I should’ve turned to face him in mid-stream and said “Sure, what would you like to know.” while watering his shoes. But, I stayed professional and answered his query. Geesh! Can’t even pee in peace!

      • #3243983

        I get that all the time

        by Anonymous ·

        In reply to I can’t even pee without PC questions

        It’s gotten so bad if I walk into the restroom and see a known offender of the sort you described, I will turn and walk out so I can come back five minutes later. Or visit another facility in the building.

      • #3262728

        Had the same thing happen to me!

        by houndog ·

        In reply to I can’t even pee without PC questions

        Had the same thing happen to me! The guy even put his hand on my shoulder to be sure he had my attention. He almost got more than my attantion, more like a good soaking. 🙂

    • #3245985

      Smarter they are harder they fall…

      by chris029 ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I have worked in many different pc shops, and in a hospital where almost all the employee’s were well trained and educated– they would shut down a monitor to reboot and say the problem was still there. Imagine that.

    • #3245957

      Ok, I’ll be the one to try & balance the argument

      by caughtlbw ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Over my years in IT I’ve come across every one of these issues, and more.

      But as I get older, I’m actually becoming more sympathetic to the User’s point of view, and less tolerant of my colleagues attitudes and approaches.

      This is particularly true today. There are few jobs in the modern office that can be done without a working computer. And the provision of that equipment is close to ubiquitous.

      So for most Users the pc is no different to the telephone on their desk, or the coffee pot in the staff kitchen. It’s a fundamental tool without which they cannot work. And as a fundamental tool it should simply work. And if it worked yesterday, it should work the same today. Why not?

      I pick up my phone, and I hear dial tone. I press some buttons, and I’m talking to my friend in Rome. The intervening technology is irrelevant to me.

      I don’t feel inadequate if I cant distinguish an NU tone from an Italian Ring Tone.

      I spend half my life in an automobile. I’m only vaguely aware of the workings of a reciprocating internal combustion engine. The technology under the hood is irrelevant to me.

      I don’t feel inadequate if I cant describe some annoying rattle as coming from the fuel pump rather than the tappets.

      This is the attitude that most people take to ubiquitous technology, and so it’s the attitude that our Users (correctly) take to the pc sitting on their desk.

      They dont care about the underlying technology. They dont believe that they should need to understand, or be able to describe in anything close to correct terminology, the design, implementation, or operation of that technology.

      There’s a certain intellectual snobbishness that underlies a lot of our complaints about Users. “So-and-so didn’t know that you couldn’t do thingamy unless you’d already enabled gargly-twit. What a tosser!” This strokes our ego (and given the low profile of IT in so many companies, our egos are often in dire need of stroking).

      This also shows up in our intolerance of User’s lack of understanding of our terminology. One of my favourites is “domain”. Why should any User have to know diddly-squat about what we mean by the word “domain”?

      The last two years I’ve spent my time visiting our remote offices to provide on-site support to our Users. In a lot of cases, these Users have never touched a pc before starting in their current position. On the other hand, especially in the larger offices, they have used pc’s all their working life.

      Invariably, I’ve found that if you treat Users as the people that they are, with respect, and in language that has meaning to them, they respond with tolerance, patience, and a surprising willingness to help.

      • #3245943

        What He Said!

        by fractalzoom ·

        In reply to Ok, I’ll be the one to try & balance the argument

        I am in full agreement with this statement. There is a prevalent tendency among IT techs to adopt an “us-and-them” approach which ultimately proves toxic to building a viable, working relationship with the business — you know, that activity that we’re ultimately being paid to support?

        I thought all those Bastard Operator From Hell essays were really funny. But that doesn’t mean it’s a viable way to conduct business. If we feel contempt for our users, we won’t be able to engage as partners with them.

        • #3245920

          What about when you are at a place that is technologically-oriented?

          by rayjeff ·

          In reply to What He Said!

          I’ve read the past few posting how the feelings of the majority of us maybe/are not conducive to the users and our employers.

          I can agree with that. But what if you work at a place that is technology-driven or technology is an important part of the place. Colleges and universities are hotbeds of technology and I’m sure it’s generally expected that faculty/staff be able to use the technology that’s implemented/used. I’ve worked for at three colleges for 7 years now (currently at the 3 college). The first two colleges used technology alot, it’s their bread and butter. The faculty/staff had a better than average grasp of how to use it. The current college I work at, technology isn’t as much stressed but to compete, technology is implemented more and more. But the training isn’t what it should be. Much of that comes down to the faculty/staff not willing to learn. So how do you get people who need the technology to understand they need to learn how to use the technology. If they are trained to begin with, when user issues come up, it makes it easier on the IT staff to figure out a solution.

        • #3245898

          The IT Relationship

          by fractalzoom ·

          In reply to What about when you are at a place that is technologically-oriented?

          I see the situation you’re up against in the academic world — the aim of the organization is not as easily measurable as in the commercial world.

          Ultimately, it’s an IT operation’s responsibility to be aligned with the aims of the organization it is supporting. The goals and priorities of the organization need to drive the goals and priorities of IT. And that can ultimately only be achieved by the IT leadership, by their establishing a partnership and level of communication with the organization that facilitates cooperation in selecting and deploying technologies. It becomes the differnce between IT being reactive (having things done to it and having to respond) and proactive (being engaged in the planning, and being a listened-to voice in establishing the training and support requirements.)

          Of course, the unfortunate part is that this can’t be driven by the techs in the trenches, who bear the brunt of the abuse. IT leadership has to be an advocate for IT out in the business while being an advocate for the business within IT. And until IT management gets a clue, life in the trenches stays tough.

        • #3244033

          No IT leadership…

          by rayjeff ·

          In reply to The IT Relationship

          And that is the main or one of the top five problems where I’m at now. The IT leadership is lacking because they, or shall I say he, makes misdirected judgements or not even judgements at all. One would be the college’s website. If you were to see it, even if you had a just the most basic understanding of web developmemt or webpages in general, you would pick up that the website is out-of-date. Not just by the dang copyright date showing it’s out-of-date, but the design methods. The website has not been updated since its inception in 2002; before then, the college did not have a website. Control of the website isn’t centralized on-site, but at the hosting site, which isn’t the college, obviously. Sure, the excuse of not having the manpower could be made to justify not having an updated website. But then I would counter and say, “hey, why not use the resources you have in abundance…the students?”. The college has a service learning program, why not let the CIS students work on the website. Not only is it cost-effective, it gives the students real-world experience. But do you think that the IT leadership sees that…obviously not.

          When it comes to IT, the leadership is very reactive, but that’s a general trait for everything at the college. We troops in the trenches…our voices go on deaf eyes and ears.

        • #3244025

          Re: No IT Leadership

          by fractalzoom ·

          In reply to No IT leadership…

          What a shame.

          Just to ask the question for sake of asking it (I think I know what the answer is going to be), have these issues been specifically raised with IT leadership? Have you talked to them and gotten an answer? Do they have a particular reason, or is it a case of benign (or even malignant) neglect?

        • #3243961

          You know the answer…

          by rayjeff ·

          In reply to Re: No IT Leadership

          There have been meetings. Formal and informal talks with the director. The answers/responses are all the same. The run-around or promises/assurances made making it a long waiting game. Point is, nothing ever gets done.

          It’s definately malignant neglect. No doubt about it.

        • #3245883

          Yes, superuser training

          by caughtlbw ·

          In reply to What about when you are at a place that is technologically-oriented?

          As you say, “if they are trained to begin with…”

          I’ve been in my current job 2 years. I cannot count the number of times I’ve tried to get the IT department to run superuser courses. I think in that time we’ve managed to do ONE course. The excuse is always that we dont have the resources.

          A typical remote office that I deal with might have 6 Users. If just one of those Users has been to a 2 day “superuser” training course, my job becomes so much easier!

          This training covers very basic stuff. How to plug in and setup a printer. How to “ping” the router to see if it’s alive. How to change passwords. How to access email via OWA when you aren’t in a networked office. etc etc And, of course, in the process you introduce a range of terminology and techie-speak.

          Subsequently, when you have to resolve a problem in that office, you either have the benefit of knowing that the local superuser has already covered the basics, or you can liaise directly with the superuser and know that they understand the language.

          However, the greatest benefit of the training is that the IT department is no longer a distant, inhuman, unhelpful entity. The superuser’s been to Head Office, they’ve met the people on the helpdesk, seen the server room, been out to the pub with you for a chat and a laugh.

          The IT department goes from being an anonymous voice on the phone, to being real people.

          The efficiency gains that result are enourmous. Which is why I get frustrated that as a department we dont do more training coz we “lack the resources”.

          Now, of course, your real question was “So how do you get people…(to) learn how to use the technology?”. Which, in this context, is “how do you get them to attend superuser training”?

          I dont have an answer to that, but I have an observation.

          One of our larger Regional Offices moved offices two years ago. Ever since that move, we’ve had a stream of problems with the new site. The Users at that office, rightly or wrongly, blame IT for those problems, and for our apparent inability to resolve those problems. Their opinion is that they’ve received lousy support from us.

          I was on site recently, and again broached the issue of superuser training (explaining that it would help them if someone in the office was trained up). Everybody in the office refused absolutely, and actually quite vehemently.

          Why?

          Because by this point IT was the enemy, and they weren’t going to consort with the enemy.

          And also because no-one wanted to risk being blamed for problems.

          IT has lost the confidence, and hence the cooperation, of the Users at this site. It’ll take time, and hard work, for us to recover from this situation.

          In contrast, I frequently visit offices (the small ones, with only a few Users) that quite literally have NEVER had a visit from anybody in IT. They might have lots of problems. Usually just little, niggly problems, but ones that are still a hassle. But because I turn up on site, actually fix the problems, and then actually TALK to them, discuss things, explain things, and take them seriously, it’s just amazing how quickly they switch from badmouthing IT, to being really cooperative.

          And THEN I raise the issue of superuser training. And usually the response is very positive. They want to have a productive and mutually beneficial relationship with IT. They want to help us to help them.

          So the observation is that before you can get Users to learn how to use the technology, you first have to have a respectiful, cooperative, and professional relationship with them.

        • #3245865

          Oh! I should add….

          by caughtlbw ·

          In reply to Yes, superuser training

          ….that establishing such a relationship is perhaps *most* difficult in an academic environment.

          The most intractable egos I’ve ever had to deal with have been in Universities. 🙁

        • #3243941
          Avatar photo

          Perfectly Correct

          by hal 9000 ·

          In reply to Oh! I should add….

          Just try telling some Uni Professor or Head of a Department that they are doing something the wrong way and see how far you actually get. 😉

          Instead of accepting your instruction they will go complaining to their superiors that you are not helping them to do what they need to. It’s as if they want you to rewrite the program to work their way rather than try to work with the technology. 🙂

          Col ]:)

        • #3244027

          Yes, IT IS SEEN AS THE ENEMY!!!

          by rayjeff ·

          In reply to Yes, superuser training

          “IT has lost the confidence, and hence the cooperation, of the Users at this site. It’ll take time, and hard work, for us to recover from this situation.”

          Yes. At the college, the IT department, or shall I say the director of the department has lost the confidence of the faculty and staff. They actaully hate going to the department for anything because of “run-around” fear. And if not that, turn-around time for resolutions takes weeks at a time.

          “In contrast, I frequently visit offices (the small ones, with only a few Users) that quite literally have NEVER had a visit from anybody in IT. They might have lots of problems. Usually just little, niggly problems, but ones that are still a hassle. But because I turn up on site, actually fix the problems, and then actually TALK to them, discuss things, explain things, and take them seriously, it’s just amazing how quickly they switch from badmouthing IT, to being really cooperative.”

          “And THEN I raise the issue of superuser training. And usually the response is very positive. They want to have a productive and mutually beneficial relationship with IT. They want to help us to help them.

          So the observation is that before you can get Users to learn how to use the technology, you first have to have a respectiful, cooperative, and professional relationship with them.”

          These two paragraphs go together for me because I have a great relationship with the faculty and staff. They love me because I take the time to help them with their issues and just basically take the time to share my knowledge. I have hear the badmouthing of the IT department all the time. And everyone says the same things. If there was communication and leadership from the IT department to everyone else, especailly the tech support in each division, things could be better. Basically, we are not utilized as we should. If we were allowed to be trained or allowed to work with the IT department, turn around time could be quicker. The faculty and staff have the respect of the tech support people and even one person in the IT department (the network admin that does ALL of the IT work on campus). Why run one person all around campus doing everything when you have 5 other persons in strategic areas on the campus that are in every place you would want to fit an IT person?

          The faculty and staff listen to everything we (the tech support) have to say because there’s no one else that will talk to them without being “I’m the GOD of technology here and I don’t have to tell you anything; you wait on me” speech/look.

        • #3261010

          Learn during Lunch

          by tom ·

          In reply to Yes, superuser training

          We have found that the training angle is indeed a good way to bring down barriers between IT and the end user.

          We have tried to start a Learn during Lunch program where we can cover some basic training on a variety of topics from basic network usage to application tips and tricks. These are always popular but take time to coordinate. Larger organizations with built in IT departments might find these easier to pull off – we support a number of small busniesses and charging appropriately for these sessions is always a challenge. They provide real value, but it’s not always as measurable deliverying a computer of fixing something that broke!

      • #3245839

        I agree.

        by old_guy ·

        In reply to Ok, I’ll be the one to try & balance the argument

        Its easy for us to forget that once upon a time we to were newbie?s, and as such we had to ask some of these same questions.

        Yes, I will agree that there are those that seem to ask the same old tired questions over and over and ….well you get the point. My point is, I have found that at times, it was in fact me who was unable to find a common ground to communicate with my users.

        So with a little patience and understanding I found that with most people (not all) I was able to do my job, which is in fact to provide the service the user needs within the organization, to do their job. Being the resident Geek, or that IT guy, is the work I prefer to do and I knew that some days????..

      • #3243938
        Avatar photo

        While I really do agree with you on this one

        by hal 9000 ·

        In reply to Ok, I’ll be the one to try & balance the argument

        It still does make it very hard to fix a problem when the person walks out of the office because their computer isn’t working and leaves the thing locked and the office locked so no one can get in and rummage about in their personal effects.

        Of course I always just have to love the ones who told you a password 2 years ago and expect you to still remember it.

        This is a two way street the end user has to show some gratitude for your work as well and not be the one constantly complaining because they have locked away something and you have been unable to fix it while they have been away.

        A few years ago I had a CEO’s computer constantly falling over and loosing the MBR’s which was more than a bit confusing and required many hours of data recovery followed by a complete reload and data restore. To him it was just an inconvenience and shoddy hardware that was causing the problem but when he eventually stayed put to give me a piece of his mind for such a bad computer I found a mobile phone directly beside a scanner that he had fitted and once that was removed there where no more problems.

        I’m more than willing to walk that extra mile but it gets really hard when you are abused for the end users lack of knowledge and actual physical damage that they cause. Or the fact that you can not gain access to the broken computer to fix it up as the person has left the office and locked everything up. 😀

        Col ]:)

        • #3243867

          Qui dedit beneficium taceat; narret qui accepit

          by caughtlbw ·

          In reply to While I really do agree with you on this one

          Don’t get me wrong. I don’t suffer fools! And of course some people are just not nice people.

          But even in these cases it’s often worth standing back and looking at things in a broader context.

          For instance, sometimes to the User we simply become the embodiment of all that is IT. And they unload all their frustration on hapless us. It’s unfair. But understandable. And we’ve all of us being guilty at some point of the same thing. (Just yesterday I was inexcusably rude to the poor lass on reception coz she didn’t have my new security fob. Like it was her fault!)

          And then there’s differences in mental approach. As IT people we tend to have quite linear, analytical, logical ways of thinking. That’s what makes us good at our job. But it can also make it very difficult for us to appreciate that there are other, quite different, ways of thinking. And that these other ways of thinking are equally valid. And that thinking in those other ways is what makes other people good at *their* jobs.

          And therefore descriptions or explanations or procedures that to us are simple, indeed trivial, are to other people almost incomprehensible.

          I have a friend who’s a Visual Merchandiser (fancy name for window dresser). I can look at a shop display window and think it’s perfectly ok. He then comes along and: moves that from there to there, turns this slightly around, changes the color of that. A few seemingly tiny alterations. And the display is transformed! I can SEE the difference. But I have absolutely no idea of WHY there’s a difference. To him it’s simple. He barely has to think about it. It’s just obvious. To me it’s incomprehensible. And always will be, no matter how he tries to explain it to me, coz my brain just doesn’t work that way.

          I’ve certainly had similar experiences to the ones you described! Sometimes I’ve been able to turn them around, even to my own amusement.

          The issue of locked offices I’ve come across many times. And you know, it’s often quite easy to “unlock” that office. 😉 (or desk, or filing cabinet) In which case I take pleasure in fixing the pc, leaving a large post-it stuck to the monitor with an appropriate message, and re-locking the office on my way out.

          I remember in my very first paid IT job I was in the office by myself on a Saturday, and took a phone call from the company owner. He wanted me to go into his office, log on to his pc, and email him a document that he needed to work on at home. At this point he stopped, realising that his office was locked and I wouldn’t be able to get in. I just said “don’t worry, I’m already in”. The stunned silence on the phone was a joy!

          A lot of situations I try to deflect with humour, and then turn to advantage.

          For instance, the expectation that I remember a 2 year old password. I might respond with exaggerated shock and say: “You mean you haven’t changed your password in 2 years? I’m very sorry, but that’s against company policy. Failure to change your password regularly is a sackable offence!”

          You can then smile and everybody enjoys the small joke. But it then easily leads on to a friendly discussion about why it’s important to change passwords, and why data security is important, and how we use User identities (of which the password is part) to audit activity, and the implications of this, and so on.

          And I always try and be constructive. Users often avoid changing passwords, or they choose absurdly obvious passwords, because they find them difficult to remember. So I give them a tool for generating non-obvious but memorable passwords that I use myself.

          Take a famous phrase, or a line from a poem, or somesuch, and use the first letter of each word as your password.

          “My life hath fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf!”

          password is “mlhfitstyl”.

          So as you sit down each morning to log on, you simply repeat the phrase as a mantra, typing as you go.

          Ok, maybe not a method that will work for everyone. But by offering a potential solution to their problem you’ve shown that you understand, and take them seriously.

          Finally, rather more often than we might admit the User is, actually, right.

          If I understand correctly the example you gave, you were saying that a mobile phone was placed next to a scanner, the RF emmissions from the phone were being picked up by the scanner’s cable and conducted back into the pc, and was then causing the pc to malfunction.

          Well, if so then it WAS a shoddy pc! It was poorly designed.

          Ok, it wasn’t your fault, and you cant be expected to anticipate everything. But, essentially, the User was right.

          In these cases I’ll always say exactly that. I’ll tell the User that they’re right (it’s both true, AND strokes their ego) and explain why they were right (which also will usually show that I’m not at fault). At this point we both understand the problem, and the User can then make a decision about how to resolve it.

          In the example you give, it would be “Yes, I can replace this shoddy pc for you, or you can avoid putting your phone too close to that cable.”

          There are always Users with whom no approach will ever make a difference. Of course! But I truly think they’re few and far between.

        • #3262631
          Avatar photo

          Well I don’t work in a big office

          by hal 9000 ·

          In reply to Qui dedit beneficium taceat; narret qui accepit

          I do work for quite a number of small business which meant a lot of traveling and short of almost criminal activity being impossible to get into locked offices so I just spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for the person with the problem to return. When they have to office open I can always get into the machine to fix it so there really isn’t a problem there. 😉

          But in the case of the scanner one I had built the computer and I was copping the blame for the scanner which had been added which was causing the problem. Of course if they had of told me that they wanted a scanner on the computer I would have supplied one that was shielded and not just a plastic shell that offered no protection, but once I did find the problem it it was a simple solution which worked out great for all parties concerned but if he had not have stayed in the office that one time I would never have found the problem and in all likely hood would still be recovering the data and then reloading the computer overnight so he had it ready the next day. Of course reactivating Windows 3 times in as many months on the same machine had MS wanting to know what was going wrong which unfortunately until I had a solution I couldn’t answer. 🙁

          I actually had the same thing happen with one of my test units where I would test different parts over a period of time like Vid Cards different HDD and so forth but every time I changed more than 3 items even if they where replaced with the originals I had to reactivate Windows again which became a real pain so eventually as the need arose I replaced all the OEM copies of Windows XP Pro with Volume License copies and no more problems. 😀 But it really got nasty one day when I added 12 X 146 GIG SCSI HDD to my main workstation and when I rang MS to get a new activation number I was accused of Pirating a copy or in this case 17 copies of their software as I needed to reactivate 17 different products. 😉

          I just replied that the entire MS Software products on the workstation which most of which I never use except for testing purposes for my customers came to less than the cost of one HDD and that in that case I would hardly be the slightest bit concerned about the minimal costs involved in buying the software compared to the costs involved in the buying the additional hardware. 🙂

          But what made the whole thing even funnier was all the software is supplied to me by MS in the pack that I pay for yearly to be an OEM builder so I can install all of this software on an unlimited number of machines for display purposes and use as many copies as I want for business purposes provided they do not leave this place permanently. As I do not run a shop as such but specialize in small business network systems I tend to do a lot of work on site and just do not need a central display location where the business people can come in and look as we go out and see what will be required and then quote accordingly for either something as simple as a single workstation to a complete network. 🙂

          The last installation that I did nearly drove me crazy as they kept changing their minds which was a real pain when it came to running the network leads but somewhat more profitable when it came to the hardware side of things as they started out only wanting 3 workstations all with their own Broadband connection which I talked them out of as it was just a waste and into a small network things then took off and eventually ended up as a 15 station network along with a server installation but because they kept changing their minds as the job progressed it cost them far more than it really should of which I find just as frustrating because I then think that I’m not offering the best value for money that I could be. 😉

          Col ]:)

        • #3262611

          Requirements Creep

          by caughtlbw ·

          In reply to Well I don’t work in a big office

          Yep, spent 12 years running my own consulting and design business, so I hear what you’re saying!

          The difficulty in managing requirements creep would definitely be a Pet Peeve for me.

        • #3262571
          Avatar photo

          Well I don’t mind requirements creep as a

          by hal 9000 ·

          In reply to Requirements Creep

          Place grows and prospers but to get this in the time taken to organize a quote for the requested hardware and then install it what should have been a simple little job turned into a nightmare with me having the constant feeling that on every occasion that they thought of me they where just thinking up way to move to goal posts to see how far they could push me before I broke. 🙂

          Luckily they ran out of money first. 😀

          Col ]:)

      • #3262315

        Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

        by hcetrepus ·

        In reply to Ok, I’ll be the one to try & balance the argument

        I have an excellent working relationship with everyone I’ve done any level of work for, even the ones I dont care for personally.

        However, I’m the pee-on, and they are the highly educated. It is a wonder that I am not required to turn on their computers in the morning, and shut them down in the afternoon.

        This is a light humor thread, wish I could see more from your point of view, but in my shoes, today at least, I cannot.

        • #3261195

          Re: Working relationship with users..and THE COMPUTERS!!!

          by rayjeff ·

          In reply to Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

          “However, I’m the pee-on, and they are the highly educated. It is a wonder that I am not required to turn on their computers in the morning, and shut them down in the afternoon.”

          How about being all of that, but you are as highly educated as everyone else, but the only tech in the particular building. And the computers strangely (TRUE STORY) sometimes don’t shutdown unless you are there. I kid you not! SOmetimes the faculty will have a problem and sometimes the computers don;t shutdown or work right until I come along. It’s like the “like” me or know I’m around or something

      • #3261851

        Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

        by firefly1522 ·

        In reply to Ok, I’ll be the one to try & balance the argument

        It’s not an issue of the end-users not knowing all of the “technical” stuff because I definitely don’t claim to know it all. It’s the end-users who can’t follow a simple e-mail that says “click on this” because they just deleted it since they didn’t need the particular application at the time. Or those who want you to fix something but don’t bother to either explain what’s wrong or learn a few tips on how not to let it happen again.

      • #3236706

        I couldn’t agree more

        by chuck… ·

        In reply to Ok, I’ll be the one to try & balance the argument

        I have done IT support (won awards for it to boot!). Here is my take on the ‘typical IT professional’ and their complaints…

        10 Pet Peeves of an experienced ‘IT User’

        1. IT Perception – “Users who insist on giving you their diagnosis of a problem rather than a neutral description of the symptoms.”

        ‘Experienced IT User’ perception – 50% of the IT staff I see start punching the keyboard as fast as their fingers can manage BEFORE finding out what the problem is and the symptoms that are related to the problem. In my experience, I am right about the problem cause more times than the ‘IT Professional’ is and I find the fix for the problem before they do.

        2. IT Perception – Users who hover around asking questions while you?re troubleshooting?and worse, making suggestions.

        ‘Experienced IT User’ perception – Can’t walk and chew bubble gum at the same time?

        3. IT Perception – “Users who deny having done anything that may have caused the problem.”

        ‘Experienced IT User’ perception – IT staff use questions and mannerisms that are the result of playing “NIGYYSOB” (Now I’ve got you, you SOB) instead of educating their victims regarding the pitfalls of installing software. I do install (and prefer to do so for many reasons, including getting the whole program and options loaded that would not happen in most cases if the IT Professional is let to her or his own accord) most programs on my computer. I also involve the IT staff, if appropriate, and they seem willing to support me when needed without any rancor.

        4. IT Perception – “Being treated like a user by tech support from another company.”

        ‘Experienced IT User’ perception – Glad to see that you get to eat the same soup we do! Maybe you will take it to heart and fix your own shop first!

        5. IT Perception – “Purchasing departments that change purchase requests.”

        ‘Experienced IT User’ perception – Add a Do NOT Substitute block to your internal requisitions. If you don’t have written requisitions, create some and make their use mandatory!

        6. IT Perception – “Internal junk mail” –

        ‘Experienced IT User’ perception – Buy bigger disks for the network. Educate people about how to clean out their mail boxes. Most companies complain about how employees use the e-mail and then expect them to live the majority of their lives at the office. The two situations are mutually exclusive. Take your pick?

        7. IT Perception – “Users who think part of my job is to spend my lunch break telling them how to fix their home computers.”

        ‘Experienced IT User’ perception – Good point! The same goes for asking for a ride to pick up your car, answers about what kind of loan you can afford from the finance manager, how to fix a broken whatever from the facilities people, etc?

        8. IT Perception – “Users who complain about not being able to use a new application, when they ?didn?t have time? to attend training or read the documentation you painstakingly prepared.”

        ‘Experienced IT User’ perception – The last two training ‘events’ that were offered here were while I was traveling on company business. No make-ups were offered. I read the documentation and worked out how to use the programs. Also many times the training offered is distilled down to the lowest common denominator. Teach a normal course for normal people. Provide an additional course for people who want more help and also an advanced course if appropriate.
        9. IT Perception – “Being summoned to a user?s office to resolve an urgent computer problem, only to be kept waiting.”

        ‘Experienced IT User’ perception – Who knows when you will arrive? Do you make an appointment or promise to be there in X minutes? Wait two minutes after being acknowledged as being present or when clearly seen. Then leave if they don’t get off of the phone to accommodate your needs.

        10. IT Perception – ” The positioning of the IT department in the organization.”

        ‘Experienced IT User’ perception – The ‘IT Professionals’ that I have seen are generally pretty independent wherever they end up in the corporate structure. They seem largely incapable of being a true support organization but rather function as a rather egregious turf building mechanism that is more interested in making their work lives as simple as possible while keeping departments from developing and deploying more efficient ways of doing business. Many IT departments try to grab both physical and electronic control of all hardware and software in a business instead of fostering innovation and integration of data across the enterprise. Learn to be a SUPPORT group.

    • #3245907

      ??? Figured it out ???

      by gitterdun ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Users are crackheads…
      I’m the crack dealer…

      any questions?

    • #3245857

      My TechRepublic Pet Peeve

      by comb5406 ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      My pet peeve is the ridicules process I have to go through in order to read a two-page article. I receive a link to the article via an e-mail from Tech Republic. I click the link to the article. I then must log into Tech Republic. Browser security prevents the article from downloading automatically so I have to click another link. Finally, the article downloads but in a zip format. I then have to unzip to finally retrieve a two-page PDF document. One would think a tech company would have a less cumbersome process. I would imagine most readers do not even bother.

    • #3245844

      Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      by jbaker ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      My favorite is the user that makes changes to settings (VPN in most cases at this site), then calls me when it does not work once they get back home (we have some users who use laptops remotely, VPN for email and files, and travel quite a lot). They expect me to know (without them telling me) what they changed, and how to fix it. And, of course, they can never remember what it was that they changed.

    • #3244031

      Or those emails for help….

      by Anonymous ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      In the time I’ve been online and people asking me for help on things like my site, I’ve come across some emails that go something like this…

      “i tried to open the image and it says it cant do it. HELP ME NOW PLEASE!! I WANT THIS IMAGE!!!”

      Come to find out they tried to open the .zip file in the image program so you point this out and they go “what is a zip file?”

      Or, you get something like this…

      “I don’t get how to do this tutorial. I’m SOOOO stupid! LOL! Can you please help me? I really like this tutorial! HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” (endless stream of exclaimation points….)

      I’m glad I never had to do in-person or voice tech support. Though I’ve had to call for tech support and I felt rather insulted when I get treated like I’m one of those I mentioned above. 🙁

      That’s why I’m not too interested in tech support stuff anymore. I want to enjoy getting some of my work done, not fighting with those who really have no idea what a power button is. (Seriously, I have no idea why but I’ve come across so many of these types).

      That’s my pet peeve about providing support. 🙂 However, to be fair, I have met others who were knowledgable and even helped me learn a thing or two in the process, and didn’t mind giving details of an error or problem. In fact, I’ve come across some that were so detailed it was a breeze to find the problem right away. If only every situation was like that. 🙂

    • #3243980

      Users who try to cut the line for our Help Desk

      by Anonymous ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      My company has a strict policy: if you have a computer problem, you call our help desk. Don’t approach an IT staff member in the cafeteria, men’s room or parking lot. Don’t pay us an uninvited visit at our desks while we are furiously hammering away on an existing problem, as that interrupts our concentration. Don’t leave ua a worried voice mail as we may have actually gone away on vacation and your message will sit unlistened to for days whereas calling the help desk could have resulted in a much more rapid resolution. We are there to help the user community, but in an orderly fashion: first come, first served, and we have to be able to document, log and prioritize our help desk calls so we can be efficient.

      To be fair, most of our user community complies with this. It took a lot of pressure, reminders, and yelling for our CIO to finally get this policy in place, but for the most part its worked. With the exception of the “chosen few” who routinely ignore, disregard or even flagrantly brush aside the stone “call the help desk” rule. No matter how many times they’re told to call the help desk, they still persist in trying to approach us directly. Even when informed “You’re supposed to call the help desk” and politely refused service until they do, the next time you see them in the hall, get ready for “My Excel formulas aren’t working and I need this fixed now!” as you are on your way to assist another user who did the right thing and called the help desk first.

      We had one guy in particular that my boss had to call HR on as he simply refused to abide by the help desk policy and hounded us to make him our #1 priority. Sad to say, there are some people in this world who truly believe the way to get results is to be a big pain in the butt so people will satisfy their requests just to get them off their backs. No matter how many times this user was told to call our help desk, he would just ignore that and show up to demand help for a problem. If you told him you had ten other support calls to deal with first, it didn’t matter. If you informed him the e-mail system was down and that had to be fixed first, he would insist on knowing when you could get over to fix his issue and refuse to take “I have no idea how long it will take to get this server up again” for an answer – “Will it be a half hour? An hour?”
      If you reminded him that the help desk is first come, first served, it didn’t matter. If you tried to appeal to his sense of fairness and explain why you had to look at Sally’s monitor problem, which had gone on since last Tuesday, he didn’t care. He had to be bluntly told nothing would be done until he called the help desk, and sent on his way. And then when forced to do so he would badger us constantly “When is this going to be fixed? When is this going to be fixed?” in the halls, on the telephone, and anywhere else you encountered him.

      HR had to get involved (unsurprisingly, they had to get involved with some other issues he was causing as well that resulted in many of his coworkers being frustrated by his behavior) and tell him to knock it off. I think most coworkers can resolve differences without having to get the company officials involved, but in this case it just couldn’t be achieved. Now the user reports his problems to the help desk, but in a nasty and sarcastic manner that indicates just how bothersome he feels it is to have to wait his turn and abide by company policy. What I find especially ridiculous is his attitude that we are just a bunch of jerks picking on him. That we’re unfair, not letting him just show up, whenever, so we can drop whatever we might be doing to jump right on that Powerpoint problem. That we are bullies who get our kicks out of entangling users in a bureaucratic gulag. I’ve learned after years of dealing with people like that there is no pleasing them. All you can do is ignore their attitude, not worry about what they think, and refuse to let their problem become your problem.

    • #3243977

      Execs who blame you for their mistakes

      by Anonymous ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      By far one of the biggest frustrations in the IT field is the fact that no matter how well-configured your server is, no matter how properly documented the instructions are, no matter how many things you’ve thought of in advance to stave off one system problem or another, there is always the possibility some exec will not understand how to use their system and blame you for something not working.

      We have a manager who checks her e-mail while on the road. She recently contacted another manager from her personal e-mail account to to complain “the system wouldn’t let me in so that’s why I’m emailing you from my personal account.” Turned out she just wasn’t typing in her password right. But the perception was that the system wasn’t working. And if the system isn’t working, in the corporate world it is NEVER a far leap to the next question: “Whose fault is it?” If you get a few of these ID-10-T issues strung together, at the next manager’s meeting you might very well wind up the subject of a grumbling discussion regarding “Why IT has been screwing up lately.” Sounds paranoid, I know, but it has happened.

      I don’t mind meeting with anyone face to face and explaining to them “You didn’t type in your password correctly. Let me show you.” Problem solved. What I can’t stand is the behind-the-back discussions founded on misunderstanding and finger-pointing, where you don’t have a chance to defend yourself or explain the facts because you’re not present. This is why I always tell users “If this doesn’t work let me know so I can straighten it out for you.” It might be irritating to get a phone call next week from the user asking why such-and-such thing isn’t working, but that is ten times better than hearing from another maanger that the first user in question was bellowing in some meeting that the system or process didn’t work.

    • #3243965

      Operator Error

      by rongroff ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Having worked over 40 years in the computer industry repairing all size types and makes of computers my pet peeve boils down to this: 90% of the problems reported are “Operator caused”! Agreeing with ALL of the Peeves in this article I ask you consider this as the Peeve of ALL Peeves.

      • #3243939

        Operator Error

        by pctech39 ·

        In reply to Operator Error

        That is more commonly known as (PEBCAK), Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard.

    • #3243913

      11th peeve that ain’t there.

      by myron_s ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Having to download a PDF file in a ZIP file then taking the extra step in having to unzip the PDF file from the ZIP file!!!

    • #3243837

      Oh, While you’re here……

      by sbillings ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      When I arrive at a user’s workstation and others are always approaching me with thing that seem to “pop into” their heads. They always say “while you’re here, can you take a look at this for me?”

      On a side note, I hate “can you?” and “could you?”— I much prefer “Will you? and “Would you?”
      You may not think it makes a difference when you ask people with can and could instead of will or would but it does!!!

    • #3262388

      Bunch of Whiners

      by fractalzoom ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I’ve been watching this thread for the past day or so, and have reached a conclusion that I know will bring flames down upon me…but have you considered that maybe you’re whining just a little bit? Buck up. This stuff is a fact of life in IT work. And the more you take the attitude that users are protozoal pond scum, the more you perpetuate the cycle.

      Quit whining, and be grateful you’re employed…thre are lots of techs in Bangalore who would love to do your job for you.

      Peace,
      -MF

      • #3262334

        Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

        by hcetrepus ·

        In reply to Bunch of Whiners

        Yeah I remember when i tried switching to decaff……

        Reading these are stress releif for me, knowing somewhere else someone puts up with the same “I cant tie my shoes, help me!” that I do, just makes me feel better.

        Go ahead… have a caffeinated drink and relax bro.

      • #3262678

        Helpdesk Day from Hell

        by caughtlbw ·

        In reply to Bunch of Whiners

        I remember a day about 18 months ago. Three of us in the office to man the phones. Two of them contractors who’d only been with us a month or so.

        I got to the office at 7am. First phone call at 7:30. The Area Ops Manager in Oxford couldn’t log in. Claimed the VPN connection was down. Turned out he couldn’t type his own password.

        And so it began.

        A couple of hours later I had a User on the phone, another on hold, I was using my own pc and two test-rig pc’s on adjacent desks to troubleshoot three previously reported faults (the Users waiting for me to call them back), and I was running two Dameware sessions to remote offices working directly on those User’s desktops. All at the same time.

        The other 2 guys were similarly loaded.

        Every other phone in the office was ringing with people trying to get through to the Helpdesk.

        And, of course, we had a continuous stream of local Users walking into the IT office with problems.

        This didn’t quiet down until 6pm.

        In the middle of the afternoon I had a User phone from the Bristol office. A laptop User. He couldn’t synchronise his email inbox, and demanded I fix it immediately.

        Now, this was a laptop that I’d setup personally. I’d taken *great* care in setting it up, and had thouroughly tested it. I’d specifically tested the functions that he now claimed were not working.

        I knew from his description of the problem that settings on the laptop must have been changed, and that the only person who could have changed them was the User. Of course, he denied this absolutely, and more or less blunty accused me of not setting it up properly to begin with (even though it had been running ok for weeks).

        Now, I *DID* lose it.

        I DID call this User a moron.

        I DID call this User a liar.

        I DID tell this User I would NOT fix his laptop.

        I DID slam the phone down on him.

        And, of course, this User DID just happen to be the Staff Union Representative for the entire company.

        That was NOT a good day on the Helpdesk.

        I HAVE to look back on a day like this, and laugh!

        We remember the few bad days. We forget the many good days.

        If we dont sometimes laugh and blow off steam, we’d slowly go crazy.

      • #3262610

        Knowing your customers and venting

        by ace1angel ·

        In reply to Bunch of Whiners

        Now I’ve been lucky enough to have been with my users for 6 yrs, in that time I have them fairly well trained.

        They bring in their laptops for ‘a tune up.’ when they’re in the office, they read and save the Tips and Tricks I send out.

        That doesn’t mean that I don’t have some of the same issues. People who refuse to learn the basics of windows (any version) and keep getting more and more lost, but refuse training. People who try and break computers, and complain when they succeed. People who think they know better and more and then wonder why their system doesn’t work. That’s IT life.

        It’s all in how you deal with it.

        Personally, I realize I’m paid to be nice and patient, and I do that very well. Then I enjoy little vents like this, where no one gets hurt and most people enjoy sharing the laughs and frustrations.

        Respectfully submitted

    • #3262740

      Users with unrealistic Expectations, or think themselves in QA

      by ace1angel ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I would add the user who is upset because his computer doesn’t work at the speed of thought, who insists he knows more because he came for QA at another company. He thinks he’s the Beta tester, on a finished app and will do his best to break it and when it does finally give up the ghost yells, “SEE I told you it didn’t work!” One who is never satisfied, where you’re tempted to ask them what have they done now to mess up the machine, that seems to work for EVERYONE else in the company.

    • #3262731

      “Is there a tech in the house?”

      by cdanos ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      On my list, the #1 has to be:
      At a party, social gathering, or even at the deli counter if someone finds out I’m a PC tech they immediately start describing in detail their latest problem with their pc. I usually try to be helpful but really; if I asked someone what they did for a living in the course of a conversation and they said ” I’m an accountant.” I wouldn’t ask for tax tips. People just assume that if you are a tech you must yearn for constant challenges and problems to solve. Never mind that you’re just trying to have a life outside of work.

      • #3262713

        Double Whammie

        by dmambo ·

        In reply to “Is there a tech in the house?”

        I get double whammied on this. My wife is an Adult Nurse Practitioner, so we get both the tech questions and the health questions. I love it when someone asks her about their home networking problem or me about which antibiotic is best for their strep throat. They must figure that we undergo knowledge osmosis while we sleep.

      • #3262612

        And what do you do?

        by ace1angel ·

        In reply to “Is there a tech in the house?”

        Personally, I find out what they do, and blatantly ask them for free advice, Dr? Cool I got this pain…. Accountant? Why not ask about a few Tax laws? Though I liked another person’s response, which was to act horrified and recommend they contact a company that does home PC repair.

    • #3262621

      Yada, Yada, Yada

      by thumper1 ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      1) Had a secretary who worked for the managing partner in the firm. She was not above letting everyone know that she worked for the boss. She absolutely would not tolerate being made to wait for anything. She called me one day while I was in the middle of a project. Based on the time between her first and second call, and then the call from her boss, (About 1 minute 30 seconds) she expected me to drop what I was doing and RUN down to her office. Not wanting to give anyone a bad time, I explained to her and her boss that sometimes I am in the middle of things that I simply can not drop and would make every effort to get to her ASAP. Made no difference. I started timing the calls. If I was not in her office within 45 seconds of her first call, the next call I got was from the attorney she worked for.

      2)I had a secretary whose system was giving her problems. She called me and I went right over to her desk, but when I got there, she was involved in personal phone conversation. (She spent a lot of time on the phone) I waited a good ten minutes for her to finish, didn’t say anything. Happened again a few days later, this time I walked away. Found a project in a room that had no phone service. When she finally tracked me down, I said “I thought that since you didn’t make any effort to get off the phone, your problem was solved.” The third time it happened, I started to walk away. She said “I gotta go” to her phone call and hung up.

      3) Secretaries who call you over to diagnose a problem, tell you “I got an error, Your system has Yada, Yada, Yada,” Before the event viewer, I used to tell them “I really need to know what the Yada, Yada, Yada is.”

      4) Had one secretary who was having problems. She was looking over my shoulder while I was attempting to fix it. Duplicating her steps, she apparently I was intentionally trying to screw up her computer. She says “What are you doing!” and HITS me on the shoulder. I stopped what I was doing and said “I can not fix it until I know what it is doing”. I debated going to management, didn’t. Regretted it later when this secretary became an even bigger PIA.

      5) Secretaries who regularly violate company policy by installing software from outside the office. Games, screen savers, wallpaper, etc. Spent too much time fixing hijacked systems.

    • #3262810

      10 Support peeves

      by itgirl.2010 ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I really enjoyed reading your peeves regarding issues of being an IT support person. Many many times over I have felt as you describe in your article. As you mentioned it is encouraging to know others feel as I do. Honestly, I couldn’t have put it better myself. Thanks for the support.

      LK

    • #3262795

      One of My Pet Peeves

      by donna.stefanov ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I hate it when I start questioning the client calling in with a power problem (this is a phone call). You will go through everything you can think of to troubleshoot the problem only to find out that power went out in the whole building.

    • #3262127

      And what are the answers ?

      by tq66 ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      It’s too easy to list gripes. A billion highly sought after TechRepublic participation reports* to the first person to list constructive ways to prevent gripe enducing behaviour.

      * at TechRepublic’s discretion

      • #3262113

        Hmmm…..

        by caughtlbw ·

        In reply to And what are the answers ?

        Whilst at work:

        1. Smile
        2. Listen
        3. Be polite
        4. Be respectful
        5. Be patient

        Whilst not at work:

        1. Have a life

        Finally, make sure your boss will back you up for those inevitable days when you fall off the straight and narrow.

      • #3261469
        Avatar photo

        The easy solution is to work

        by hal 9000 ·

        In reply to And what are the answers ?

        With your end users in a constant attempt to get them to learn what not to do or at the very least learn how to minimize any disruptions that they may inadvertently encounter. 🙂

        Unfortunately not everyone is interested in learning as they do not consider this to be their primary job and they already have you handy to fix up what goes wrong! :p

        Col ]:)

    • #3262110

      10 peeves

      by davefv ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      NEVER eat with end users

    • #3261922

      “They” Pay Your Salary

      by gbig@customerselects.com ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Bottom line? Your clients pay your salary. If you have to stand at their desk for an hour, or troubleshoot without their help, or order the part 10 times over, you do it because that is your JOB!

      After that, in the interest of efficiency, offer suggestions, improve communications, take a break, dream up ways to help people help themselves – even be creative if possible. This is your only recourse. To peeve is to quit. If you cant take the heat, do something else for a living. To serve others is to do what they both need and want, no matter what your opinion is of their intelligence, lack of understanding, or your own feelings of knowledge superiority. Users often get the impression IT techs are arrogant, can you guess why? Your list includes many hints.

      • #3261504

        Yes “They” do!

        by fractalzoom ·

        In reply to “They” Pay Your Salary

        Thank you for making the same point I’ve been trying to make in this thread…the bottom line here is that we’re professionals in this field, and these are the parameters of the IT landscape, the facts of life in this career field.

        I understand the value of venting, but what I’m reading here doesn’t sound like healthy venting. Most of what I see here seems to indicate a real contempt for the people being supported — a dangerous attitude, and one which I do not tolerate in my own IT department.

        If doing this kind of work really bothers you that much, go sell used cars or something. Sheesh!

        • #3261466
          Avatar photo

          If you think that this is bad

          by hal 9000 ·

          In reply to Yes “They” do!

          Then never get near a bunch of Doctors at any conference as they put down their clients who pay them even worse. :p

          Here I have yet to see any IT Pros call their end users stupid, idiots or anything else for that matter we are just having a general gripe which is healthy rather than locking it all up inside and then causing health issues. We all already work hard enough but no matter how much time we spend in the office we are still constantly bombarded with questions at the most inopportune times. Is it any wonder that just working IT is the best contractive known to man? 😀

          Col ]:)

        • #3261427

          Pros less than professional

          by caughtlbw ·

          In reply to If you think that this is bad

          Unfortunately, I have seen posts here referring to Users in these derogatory ways.

          A post that made my jaw drop was one that said when a User forgets their password, he resets it to “IMSTUPID”, which the User of course then has to type in.

          I’ve said in a previous post that on occassion I’ve ‘lost it’ with a User, so I’m not claiming to be an angel. But to disrespect another person like that! It reflects badly on all of us.

        • #3240842

          Best contraceptive known to man???

          by rayjeff ·

          In reply to If you think that this is bad

          “Is it any wonder that just working IT is the best contractive known to man?”

          DO you really think so??? SAy it ain’t so!??!?!?? *laughing*

      • #3261467
        Avatar photo

        OH grow up

        by hal 9000 ·

        In reply to “They” Pay Your Salary

        No matter how much I Dumb It Down most end users still do not understand what I’m saying but they are the ones who ask the hard questions and then want a nontechnical answer that is within their understanding. Most times this just isn’t possible so like most IT people I just live with it. 🙂

        Personally I’m sick and tired of seeing my clients eyes glaze over as I talk to them in a direct response to a question that they have asked, so what it matter if they do not understand the difference between a CPU, GPU, HDD, LAN or whatever so long as they can get their e-mail and do their work no body cares. I do not know many IT people who feel “Superior” to their End Users it is just something that the end users dream up because they do not understand us and in all likelihood we do not understand they specialized parts of their jobs either to each his own but that by no means requires us to like the constant senseless stream of calls from the same person who constantly does the same thing and can not understand why it will not work after all it is so easy in the movies so why isn’t it the same in real life? :p

        Col ]:)

        • #3261197

          The look End Users give you….

          by rayjeff ·

          In reply to OH grow up

          “Personally I’m sick and tired of seeing my clients eyes glaze over as I talk to them in a direct response to a question that they have asked, so what it matter if they do not understand the difference between a CPU, GPU, HDD, LAN or whatever so long as they can get their e-mail and do their work no body cares.”

          That look bothers me all the time. And then when you explain something to them, they want you to skip over what they consider to be information they don’t need. But they fail to understand that you have to understand it in order to know the solution or whatever. SO, in turn that makes me frustrated and mad because here they are asking me somehing but not wanting to hear it all. If the answer was so simple, they would’t need my help.

        • #3136127

          And then when you explain something to them

          by too old for it ·

          In reply to The look End Users give you….

          I’ve been known to get cut short when I start with “can you move the mouse to …” with “never mind all that, just tell me what I need to do to fix his”

          No, “fixing it” is what you pay me for.

          Best place I ever contracted at had a separate Executive Support team. One MCSE, couple of MCP’s, recent college grads who were long on schmooze, and ok on tech skills. But they handled all the plugging in of AC cords, pushing the on button on printers, getting the latest PDA hoo-hah working. They actually had their own paneled office on “mahogany row”.

        • #3260597

          It’s part of the deal

          by fractalzoom ·

          In reply to OH grow up

          Finding ways to translate complex technical concepts into comprehensible language, and dealing with perfectly intelligent people who just don’t happen to have the particular background of expertise that you do, is a part of the IT workplace. I guarantee you that your eyes would glaze over if those same finance department people who we so superciliously look down upon were to start flooding you with their business vocabulary about amortizations and accruals. “It’s all so easy in the movies — why don’t these IT geeks get it?”

          We’ve all got specialized vocabulary for our career fields, and the fact that a non-techie is unfamiliar with our IT language does not make them inherently stupid or less deserving of professional treatment.

          (And while I appreciate that you, HAL9K, have perhaps not directly suggested that these people are stupid, there are certainly many others on this thread who have…)

          Cheers,
          -MF

        • #3261823

          Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

          by firefly1522 ·

          In reply to It’s part of the deal

          My reply to that is that if I ask them about their jobs I at least give them the courtesy of faking like I’m paying attention!!

          A couple of weeks ago, I took a training class that is meant for some of the end-users in the company. Not because I want their job but so that it would help me in parts of my job to understand what it is that they do and how to fix some of the mistakes that they make. And you better believe that I didn’t care if I felt like an idiot or not, I was asking questions about anything that I didn’t have a full grasp of.

          The only thing I really have a gripe about is other people not even making an effort to know the simplest things.

        • #3261661
          Avatar photo

          Actually I fully expect that to happen

          by hal 9000 ·

          In reply to It’s part of the deal

          Many years ago when I still did Government work I had to go to an Air force base to fix a problem with an avionics package and I didn’t understand a single word that they said when describing the problem. The end result was that they fitted me in a flying suit strapped me int one of the aircraft and showed me exactly what was going wrong. What a Hell of a Ride. 😀

          After that I was always the one who was requested back to fix any problems and I got to ride in a lot of different military aircraft I think it was the only reason that I stayed there for so long the fringe benefits almost made it worth while. 🙂

          But what I do find amazing is that with Doctors when they ask you about some of their play toys they never expect you to know what they are showing you and get a fright when you can name the instruments that they use. 😉

          Col ]:)

        • #3241899

          Not stupid but

          by dr dij ·

          In reply to It’s part of the deal

          lacking of knowledge in relation to computers. People think because they have a computer at home or their kid has one their knowledge exceeds what it actually is.

          And frankly there are many who by IT standards ARE stupid (in terms of using computers). Doesn’t mean you can’t be nice to them. They may lacking computer knowledge but they are not paid to do IT work but to use the computers.

          And sharing what they did is kind of funny. And may help give solutions for other techs. Read computerworld.com’s sharktank once a day, and may nothing worse happen to you that day. You don’t need to eat a toad.

          I had one end user who kept asking me to add totals to a new spreadsheet we mailed to a client showing production counts. After 2nd time I said NO, I won’t do it for you, but I’ll show you how.
          Tho I think eventually we sent her out to an Excel course for a day.

          Part of the problem is with companies, assuming people are born with basic word processing and spreadsheet skills, plus email and file manipulation.

        • #3241096

          Try speaking English

          by donald_a_taylor ·

          In reply to OH grow up

          The real problem is that not that your users can’t understand a simple explanation but that most techies couldn’t make one if their lives depended on it. It is actually possible explain how a PC runs and even the internet in terms that the average user can understand but it makes us feel smart to say that it is not that simple. The user does not need to know the difference between the hard drive and the PC. FWIW the hard drive essentially is the PC. It contains the information that it uses to run. They don’t need to understand the internal workings of a computer any more than you need to understand the machinations of the internal combustion engine in order to drive a car.

        • #3241047
          Avatar photo

          Well in my case at least it is the users

          by hal 9000 ·

          In reply to Try speaking English

          Who will not settle for the basics and want a better explination of what is going wrong. That is where the trouble starts.

          A good example is this recently a end user installed SP2 for XP on her computer and when it came time to reboot it didn’t. It required a BIOS update to work properly. Now just how she managed to install SP2 is quite beyond me as the workstation was susposed to be locked down and no new software should have been able to be installed. But as she is the boss wife and her delquint son has free reign of the company computers anything is possible so I’m asuming that he somehow managed to not only turn on the Auto Update fuction but also gave her Admin Rights as well. Now I just said that SP 2 wouldn’t work with the existing computer it needed patching to work but that wasn’t good enpough for her and she wanted to know why it didn’t work. 😉

          I also had to spend a lot of time explaining to her how to update Nero and her main stumbling block was not the update but the fact that the download didn’t come from this country so she refused to install it. She just could not understand why any updates/Patches should come from another country and still work. 🙁

          I never expect the end users to understand what goes on under the hood so to speak and I do not expect them believe that I know all there is to know about an indivual program that I do not use and on at least one occasion go out of my way not to use so I can never be placed in a position of being accused of selling company information to a competitor. But never the less they want an explination on why the CPU doesn’t do as they have told it to, Why I use 2 sticks of RAM on a HTT P4 and things like this. I’ve tried the simple approch and just saying it works better that way or that is how Intel recomend you build the computers but this is never enough for these people and they want detailed information of why it is so and that is where it starts getting hard to explain. 🙂

          Like they understand that a 3 GIG P4 runs at 800 MHZ but are unable to understand that the RAM only runs at 400 MHX so if you only fit one stick you are limiting the performance of their computer. Trying to give a simple explination in cases like this are almost impossible without looking like you are patronising them and that is even worse than talking over their heads. 😉

          Col ]:)

        • #3241954

          Re:Try speaking English–Have to agree with Hal…

          by rayjeff ·

          In reply to Try speaking English

          I know where I work, everyone WANTS to know what makes the engine run. If they don’t have that basic background to begin with or they have somewhat of a background but they still don’t get it, you have to explain it over and over and over again.

          It’s the trade-off.

        • #3217945

          ‘The user does not need to know the difference between the hard drive and..

          by dumbterminal ·

          In reply to Try speaking English

          …the PC’
          But it sure helps
          Would’ve saved me the trouble once of opening a workstation looking for that “second hard drive that crashed” that didn’t actually exist

      • #3261425

        Not a zero sum game

        by caughtlbw ·

        In reply to “They” Pay Your Salary

        An hour spent on one User is an hour unavailable to other Users.

        The “they” that pays our salary is not the User, it’s our employer.

        Our duty is to our employer. To do our job as best we can, utilize resources to greatest benefit, etc etc.

        It may be entirely appropriate to “peeve” about an individual User, if the behaviour of that User is such as to reduce the value of our overall contribution to the business.

        Every one of us has, at some time, had to deal with that User who seems to require 10 times the amount of support as any other User. Depending on what this high-demand User does within the business (and the value of their contribution to it) it could be an appropriate response to actually deny them support!

        • #3261393
          Avatar photo

          Well a long time ago in a Galaxy Far away

          by hal 9000 ·

          In reply to Not a zero sum game

          I had an office manager delete every network protocol on a brand new system on the first day that it was finally installed up and running.

          At the beginning of the next day I got an emergency call out to this business which had me totally confused as it was working perfectly the previous day when I had left and I didn’t even expect to see any problems so quickly.

          When I got there the place was in uproar and I very quickly found the problem apparently the Office manager had gone around to every computer deleting these protocols because they where unnecessary as they where not on her home computer so they had no business being on the company network. 😀

          Luckily there where only 8 computers involved so it was an easy fix but I did read out the riot act to the person responsible as the entire episode really was a waste of my time and worse still they wanted it fixed Under Guarantee even though there was nothing wrong with the installation. 🙁

          Col ]:)

    • #3261505

      Cisco professors needing tech support!

      by itwildcat ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Try being an IT student, working in the feild (at your own college mind you) as a help desk tech.. and your cisco instructors call you because they can’t set basic preferences for their e-mail!! OMG!
      At least common users have an excuse!

    • #3260702

      My Top Peeves

      by black-eyed pea ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I haven’t the time to read all the other posts, but I do have a list of my own to add to the Tech Republic download:

      1. System/network administrators who fail to communicate to coworkers that they have made a recent change to the network.

      2. Sysadmins that are not really sysadmins.

      3. Sysadmins that are policy makers and deployers, but not testers.

      4. Users who assume that just because you are an IT employee, you know everything about all hardware, software, operating systems, and home electronics (X-Box, iPods, Tivo, etc.)

      5. Users who insist that you should be able to do something when they notice that the Internet is slow, as if the fact that I’m a sysadmin means I own the entire Internet.

      6. Users who insist on ?driving? while you are trying to troubleshoot. (?No, just tell me what to do. Really. I want to figure this out.?)

      7. Users who call you multiple times per day for obvious answers, then get offended if you fail to call them back even once.

      8. Users who blame you for their own stupidity. (?The data isn?t appearing right! This system really sucks! How can you?oh, gee, whoops, I clicked the wrong button.?)

      9. Users who somehow manage to break your idiot-proof system, proving that if you built an idiot-proof system, they just build a bigger idiot.

      10. Users who ?simply must? have administrator rights on their computers.

      11. Politics getting in the way of a good technical solution.

      12. Users who exhaust the abilities of one support tech and subsequently approach you with the problem as if nobody has attempted to solve it previously.

      13. Users who fail to backup their data and subsequently fix the blame of data loss upon you.

      14. Users who call with a problem right before they leave for the day/week or a business trip.

      15. Users who fail to check out their laptop prior to going on an extended business trip.

      16. USERS!

    • #3260971

      No, no, I’m more important…

      by dejoy ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      With recent changes, I became the company’s central point of contact for user support. I support 80+ people, and a great majority of the users always want something or need something ASAP. They feel that what I’m working on is not as important as what they have to do right now.

    • #3260960

      I’m too lazy to think…

      by dejoy ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      What happened to the good ‘ol days when people use to think for themselves or go looking for the answer so they would remember? Has the F1 key become extinct? Hardly, nowadays, people want you to do the work for them because they do not want to take a couple of minutes to understand the steps to create a table in Word, change their Outlook signature, or sort their columns in Excel. Then, I begin to wonder why I don’t paycheck isn’t as much as I like it or like these people when it appears that I know more than them…

      • #3241091

        Too Sexy for my Brain

        by cybdiver1 ·

        In reply to I’m too lazy to think…

        Oh the title of my reply has nothing to do with anything I just thought it sounded good.

        But all too true. I work with a large number of People with Scientific Masters degrees in different levels of Engingeering, and it amazes me how they graduated. I guess following what the teacher told they in class and whats in the book is easier than figuring things our. You would think someone that can understand how to build a bridge or a dam could figure out how to move a margin or change fonts. See the little led on the back of your comptuer? Is it blinking?
        NO the whole internet is not down, if it were I would be getting alot more phone calls than just you!!!!! ARGH!

      • #3241043
        Avatar photo

        HR came along and told them all

        by hal 9000 ·

        In reply to I’m too lazy to think…

        To refer any problems to IT as it was not in their job description to fix what they break. 😉

        Col ]:)

      • #3240451

        Hit F1 key

        by dr dij ·

        In reply to I’m too lazy to think…

        and expect you to show up at their desk.

        (well F1 is supposed to be the help key right?)

    • #3241311

      “Computer Not Working”

      by server queen ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I actually get tickets from our Help Desk that say “Computer Not Working” – and no more information than that. (My peeves tend to be with our own Help Desk as much as with the end users – I expect more of our Help Desk staff.) You’d think that since we’ve all been here several years now, they’d know that I’m going to storm up to their desk in a huff and ask them to call the user back and get the same information I tell them to get every single time they give me one of these useless tickets. WHAT doesn’t work? WHAT do you mean by “doesn’t work.” WHAT DOES IT DO WHEN YOU TRY? (I ask that question every single time!) When did it stop working? Has anything changed since the last time it did work? Does it work for other computers in the area? other user logons on that computer? etc., etc., ad nauseum.

      • #3241727

        what a J*CK A**

        by perryl23 ·

        In reply to “Computer Not Working”

        You are quite the piece of work aren’t you? What is the HD Tech, your freakin secretary? Get up off your fat a** and go plug the damn thing back in ID10T.

    • #3241827

      universality

      by storch ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Jody,

      Your list is so true! And after reading many of the posts, I am convinced that we all have the same problems. It doesn’t seem to matter what size the company is nor if it’s a for profit business, a non-profit business, a public agency, or a school. The user behavior also transcends national boundaries. I suppose the common denominator is a quirk of human nature.

      And here I was thinking I was having so much difficulty because I am relatively new to tech support. On one hand it is validating and on the other hand it is disheartening to hear that you veterans go through exactly the same things as I do.

    • #3241823

      like a doctor, sorta

      by storch ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Another thing I thought of. We’re supposed to be on call 24/7 and be perfect, instant diagnosticians. Except that we get paid less and get a lot less respect than a doctor.

    • #3239901

      Ollie’s Trolley ?

      by hu ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Jody you ever eat at Ollie’s Trolley ?

      Downtown near the beer,wine,music street. The one they close off with the big screen televisions

    • #3239841

      Instead of complaining, a solution may be…..

      by just some guy ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I’ve been in this biz for more than my share of time now and have seen/heard all of this and more. With any group there’s the 10% rule. This means on both ends 10% of the people will be great or totally rude. I guess I’m digressing from my point.
      Have any of you thought about being proactive with user issues? How about some training? You could do it over lunch or maybe right after the end of business. Start out with the basics. Show em what a CPU and RAM actuall look like. Then move up the ladder once a week(??) through viruses and spyware.
      This will do a few things for you:
      1) users calling the help desk will be able to communicate better.
      2) You will be looked upon as caring about the “dumb” user.
      3) When people come to you during lunch, ask them if they’ve spent the time to come to these classes voluntarily. If not, suggest they do. This puts the responsibility on them.

      As always, 10% of people just won’t get it. Then the $50/hr answer is perfect.

      • #3240932

        Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

        by firefly1522 ·

        In reply to Instead of complaining, a solution may be…..

        Well, how about when you give specific instructions that you’ve taken the time to type out (and I do use basic English because I’m not good at remembering technical terms myself), you’ve walked them through the process, notified the users of the help manuals that come with just about every program and they still refuse to follow instructions?

        As an example, we have scanners at all of our branches that everyone is supposed to use for certain documents. I personally, followed the vendor’s tech around to make sure that I understood how it worked. I then took notes step by step on everything they were supposed to do. After that, I took out all references to technical terms and just left “Click this”, “type this”, “it will do this”, etc. I then retested my instructions to make doubly sure that everything worked in the order that I said it did. I then had someone else who was not technically inclined at all test them out to make sure I didn’t skip anything. The final draft of instructions included screen shots.

        Now how do you explain, other than carelessness, certain people messing things up then calling me to fix it? And when I asked (because just by the end result I knew what had happened) if she had followed my instructions, her response was “Oh, I didn’t look at them.” And when I asked where they were, she said, “I don’t know.” >:(

        That’s the kind of end-user problem I run into a lot. Not that they’re genuinely ignorant because if they don’t know you can’t expect them to do things correctly. It’s the ones where they have all the information and choose not to use it.

        • #3240799

          THis just means you haven’t engaged them properly

          by fractalzoom ·

          In reply to Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

          It’s simple: If your support customers are ignoring you, if when you speak all they hear is that “wah wah wah” sound like when Charlie Brown’s teacher is talking, it just means that you haven’t done your homework in engaging the user population. No credibility, no ears.

        • #3239591

          “Human Factors”

          by caughtlbw ·

          In reply to Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

          This is the whole “Human Factors” side of the support equation. It’s arguably a greater challenge than the Technical Factors with which we deal each day, and therefore more satisfying to solve.

          You’re frustrated because, from your perspective, the behaviour of this User is irrational.

          On the other hand, the User herself no doubt regards her behaviour as being rational. Though, quite possibly, she cant articulate her rationale.

          I can imagine any number of scenarios in which this User’s behaviour makes perfect sense. For example, let’s imagine that the last dozen times she’s been given detailed technical instructions to follow, those instructions have proven to be faulty and, consequently, she’s wasted many hours of her time.

          Based on her experience, she quite reasonably expects the instructions that you give her to also be faulty. The rational course of action is to disregard your instructions, and to request your assistance from the very beginning.

          Or, have you considered the possibility that this User is dyslexic? Your instructions may be the acme of lucidity, but they’re useless to her!

          Is this User a manager’s PA? Have you considered the possibility that all the PA’s are running a book on who can waste the greatest number of hours of IT support? The chance to gain kudos in the eyes of her colleagues far outweighs any guilt over wasting company resources.

          The point is, all of these possible explanations have nothing to do with the technical quality, or otherwise, of the instructions that you’ve provided.

          Now, you might decide that addressing the “Human” side of this problem is none of your concern. You might decide that you’ve met your responsibilities by providing a technically accurate document, and nothing further should be required of you.

          Or, you might decide that facing up to, understanding, and resolving these “Human” problems is an inherent part of the Support task.

          Personally, I choose the second option. As much as anything because the “people stuff” is a heck of a lot harder than the “techie stuff”, and therefore much more fun.

          In the specific example that you give, you have to step back and try and provide an explanation of this User’s behaviour that is rational from the perspective of the User.

          You have then to test that explanation to see if it’s the correct one.

          Having reached a correct explanation of their behaviour, you can then determine a course of action that will modify that behaviour in the desired way.

          Needless to say, you don’t have a snowflake’s chance in hell of changing behaviour, if you don’t know what’s causing that behaviour in the first place.

        • #3241370

          Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

          by firefly1522 ·

          In reply to “Human Factors”

          Actually, I’ve spoken with this person several times about other unrelated issues and her problem is “It’s not my job so I don’t care” or “I’m not getting in trouble for it so I don’t care”. And that’s the reason why we’re revamping the policies and stuff so that people like that who don’t care cause they haven’t been caught can be weeded it.

          Trust me, with the instructions that I’ve created roughly 95% of the people who have used them experience no problems. And that is accounting for the ones who are a little slower to learn than others. At my job, the ones who have trouble following directions are the ones who don’t care and they will soon be gone.

        • #3256237

          5% failure rate?

          by caughtlbw ·

          In reply to Reply To: DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

          I’m prompted to two observations. Not trying to be picky; rather just looking at things from a distance…..

          First, you note that your documented procedure has a 95% success rate. That is, 5% of the time your procedure fails to work as required. I’m surprised that you consider acceptable a process that fails once in every 20 executions.

          Second, you note that 5% of the company’s employees are underperforming in their jobs and are shortly to be sacked (I’m assuming that the subset of employees who use your procedure are representative of the population of employees).

          I’m surprised that you consider acceptable a company culture that so demotivates and disenfranchises it’s workers that 1 in 20 of them is rendered unviable.

    • #3249456

      true too true

      by reginawiz ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      When some one (anyone) changes a purchase order without verifying why something was ordered he/ she should pay for the extra cost.
      another peeve is when a user says what the problem is in one language which has no relation to what the computer is actually doing.

    • #3339088

      How Long Is It Going to Take?

      by mlrome ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I love this question when you are in the middle of trying to solve a problem with hardware or software and haven’t yet determined what the problem might be and have no clue how much time might be involved. Anybody have a come back for this one?

      • #3339040
        Avatar photo

        Well once when I had someone breathing down my neck

        by hal 9000 ·

        In reply to How Long Is It Going to Take?

        When I had got the whole thing to bits I turned around after the expected question and said “Thank God you’re here watching what I’ve been doing I can’t remember how I pulled it apart can you show me how it goes back together?” I didn’t see the person again until I had finished and was about to leave as I dropped into the office to tell them it was all fixed and was right to work on now. 😉

        But I have seen signs up that quote prices for repair work they go something like this “repairs service are charged at X$ per hour and at X + Y$ per hour if you help us.” it seems to work for them but in all honesty I’ve never found a solution to the business question when the down item is costing them hundreds of thousand $ per hour or even more and they expect you to arrive immediately after a phone call at 2.00 AM after they have messed it up completely and then when you do finally get there you are expected to have it up and running before you even get in the door. Now my standard reply is “As Long As It Takes” and if they really press the point I tell them “That I perform miracles immediately the impossible takes a little longer and for comic relief I walk on water on the Weekend.” 🙂

        While it doesn’t answer their questions they do at least leave me alone so I can at least have a chance of finding out what is going on.

        But my favorite is the answer when you ask the operator what where you doing just before it failed they always reply “Nothing” and then you find some downloaded rubbish which has taken the whole thing out. It would be so much easier if they where just to tell us what they had done as we most likely could fix it faster. 😀

        Col ]:)

      • #3254798

        as long as it takes?

        by dr dij ·

        In reply to How Long Is It Going to Take?

        tell them it will be done when you’re finished?

      • #3181105

        Cawwwfee break

        by k.h. ·

        In reply to How Long Is It Going to Take?

        I’ve used this before in a polite nice way, smile and said “you know, it may take some time, so now is a good time to grab a cup of coffee or something, (wink at them) and tell them you’ll let them know when you’re done.” Then turn back to your work.
        I’ve used this before and it makes them smile every time.

      • #3179748
        Avatar photo

        Well this week I got my own back

        by hal 9000 ·

        In reply to How Long Is It Going to Take?

        One user who is a particular problem asked me to have a look at her workstation and when I could find nothing wrong with it I asked her what her problem was. She said it was involved in an accounting package so I asked her to show me.

        She made constant mistakes and them claimed it was because I was looking over her shoulder which was causing the mistakes her last words where “I’ll guess that I’ll have to leave you alone next time I need something done on my computer wont I.”

        One down several thousand to go. 😀

        Col ]:)

    • #3254972

      Support Peeves

      by khinton ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Users that say yes I have done that when you tell them to do something and you know dam well they haven’t.
      Users that argue with you and don’t listen.
      Users that do the same thing over and over again, get the same results and say oh I thought it might be different this time.
      Users that load screen saver and complain to the boss when you remove them.

    • #3171710

      User from hell

      by tharmagon ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I work for a private, single owner company as the only IT person. I get a lot of simple ‘how to’ calls, which I don’t mind as most of the users are not computer savy but appreciate my help.

      But I’m sure one user is from hell. First of all every computer is locked down so the user can’t make silly mistakes. We have an Internet proxy server to cut down spyware etc. We also scan e-mails for dangerous attachements.

      My subject user is the son-in-law of the owner. So he complained to the owner that he shouldn’t have to obey the computer policy. That, I was stopping his freedom. So the owner told me to give him free access to the web, stop filtering his e-mails and give him admin access to his computer.

      These are some of the results:
      1. He called me and said his computer was acting strange. When I got there it was locked up with no task bar. It wouldn’t even reboot. I Eventually got it running and found over 1,000 malware files. Took me 4 hours to clean it so it ran correctly. While I was cleaning it I loaned him another computer. By the time I gave him his back, the loaner was full of malware as well.

      2. We have no wireless on our network by design. One day when using my laptop it locked on to an unsecured wireless signal. When I checked it out, it was connected to our network. I found the culprit, you guessed, the user from hell bought a wireless AP on the company and installed it totally open with absolutely no security.
      3. We started getting a few sober loaded e-mails. So I told all the users to simply delete any e-mails they didn’t recognize. Everyone did exactly that except the user from hell. He managed to get around 40 of them and forwarded everyone to me with a message telling me to fix the problem. I told him repeatedly that sending them to me increases the danger to the network and to delete them. But no he forwarded every one of them to me. Next I get a call from him saying his computer is popping up a dialog. I check it out and you guessed he is infected. I asked him if he opened any e-mail attachements, and he said “maybe”. I said it’s hard open one accidentally so either you did or didn’t. He said “maybe, I don’t remember”.
      4. The best one is when he called me to say that his laptop would not switch the picture to his desktop monitor. He demanded I give him a new monitor immediately. I went to his office armed with another monitor only to find that he had been out with his his laptop and on his return hadn’t plugged in the monitor cable. I just picked up the free end of the cable and said “I know this is very technical, but you have to plug it in before you get a picture”.

      When ever my phone rings and I see his name on the phone display I now ignore the call. I’ve also set Outlook so it deletes any e-mails from him. Now if he want sme he has to walk to my office and find me.

      • #3171587
        Avatar photo

        I’m glad I’m not the only one!

        by hal 9000 ·

        In reply to User from hell

        I have several people like this all of who think they know far more than they actually do and then pass the blame for their mistakes onto others. The way that I cured one of these people was in a small Office where the Step Son wanted unlimited access so it was given him and then he added a wireless hub so he could use his LT while out in the yard of course it was unsecured and wide open with complete access to the entire network which I had deliberately setup as a nice tight wired place with no holes.

        My solution was to grab the Owners LT and in front of him copy the companies entire Accounting package over the wireless connection in my car outside the fence of the place. I then offered to drive down the road and sell the accounting package to his competition, which he didn’t seem to like at all but he thought that it was only because I had his LT that I could do this so I grabbed my Lt and proceeded to do the same thing. About half way through the copy procedure he hit the roof and we went back inside and removed the wireless hub to bring security back up to what the original installation had been. But where it got really nasty was he demanded to know that the file had not been copied previously which I couldn’t give him as it was wide open and anyone could have got what they wanted but I then added that loosing their accounting package was only a minor problem as anyone could come past and within a 500 meter radius download Kiddy porn or other restricted material and he would be to blame for the download even theough he knew nothing at all about it. Needless to say I gave him enough rope to hang himself and he now has the tightest locked down unit in the place and any requests are ignored by me until they are cleared by the owner and even than he has to tell me to give this person whatever access he thinks he wants but he first asks me what the potential problems might be and then makes up his own mind normally the Step Son is told to live with what you’ve got!

        Col ]:)

    • #3088179

      Help documents

      by blackcurrant ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I have been working with my present employer for 15 years, and have been the IT Officer for 5. Over the years I have obviously got to know what the common problems are and, because we have a reasonably rapid turnover with new people working with us for a few months before moving on, I have documented those tasks which new users find difficult.

      Whenever a member of staff begins work, they spend about an hour with me so I can tell them how the domain is organised, how to use the email, how to name files etc etc. One of the things I always stress is the location of the HELP folder. This contains subfolders named after the applications we use, and each of those contains “how to…” documents. There is even a single word document in the Help folder called “Start here for help”, and which hyperlinks all the documents.

      If I had a penny for every time someone has asked me how to do xyz, and I turn to them and say “Have you looked in the help folder?”, and they then show me a sheepish grin and walk off….

      What do I need to do? Dress up in a wizard’s outfit and threaten to turn them into toads?

    • #3088139

      #1 versus #4 – Oh, the sweet irony!

      by ejhonda ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Becky is a trooper for admitting that she hates it when customers attempt to diagnose the issue rather than answer her questions, and then also admitting that when she’s in the customer seat she ultimately has the same flaw – wanting to skip the basic troubleshooting and report what SHE’S found. In effect, diagnosing the problem herself.

      How ironic, but ultimately, how very true. “If they only realized I’m competent.”

    • #3087804

      Possible # 11

      by carlosaaa1 ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Users who complain about not being informed on how to use
      something when they would have been if they had read the email
      from the IT group three months ago.
      I get this alot, after painstakingly working on an email to ensure
      legibility and brevity, users still don’t read it because it came from
      IT.
      Way we are tackling it, if you didn’t read it we ask that you do when
      you call. If they don’t have it anymore, we forward the message to
      them so they can read it then.

    • #3085371

      My most anoying problem

      by sparkyfire ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      Having to explaine the same thing 6 times before the user finaly “gets it”. This happens enough that I started asking my co-workers if I was complicating anything, or if I just wasn’t being understood. Seems most of them have this problem as well.

    • #3266136

      Bigwigs

      by cheesel ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      I hate it when bigwigs need to have their PC’s looked at but they don’t btoher to talk to you, the puny little techie, they have to talk to you through their Admin.

    • #3263035

      My Peeves

      by daniel.muzrall ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      1. The user comes over and says “I got an error message.” I then ask “What did the message say?” User replies “I don’t know…I closed it.” How can I solve a problem when I don’t know what the problem is?

      2. Sure, there are lots of cords, cables, and wires involved in computers/networking. How is it that if a user has a problem with ANYTHING that has a cord, cable, wire, or antenna that I’m supposed to be able to fix it?

      3. Calling another company’s tech support, explaining everything I’ve done to troubleshoot, only to have the person on the other end ignore what I’ve told them and start running through their support script FROM THE BEGINNING.

      4. Calling another company’s tech support and having their tech not really know much about computers in general. (I’ve had to walk outside techs through some pretty basic troubleshooting steps because they didn’t know how.)

      The list could go on and on, but I’ll leave it there for now. 🙂

      Dan

    • #3218013

      My biggest….

      by jim s. ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      When the email server has a problem, it’s not the one call froma user stating there is a problem, but it’s from the other 20 that share the same floor space that can not ask if anyone else is having a problem and if someone had already called IT.

    • #2583380
      Avatar photo

      The 6 words that make you think “Oh Crap!”

      by jedmundson ·

      In reply to DOWNLOAD: The top ten peeves of a support tech

      The 6 words that make you think “Oh Crap!”
      “Let me ask you a question . . .”

      I rally Hate! when a user calls and says “I just got this error message. I clicked OK and now my computer won’t work.”
      (What was it?)
      “I don’t know it was an Error Message.”

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