Most of Microsoft’s sites are down today (1/21/01). Guess what web site that most people’s Internet Explorer defaults to? I can’t tell you how many IT service requests we got today saying, “My Internet’s not working.” If its one thing I’ve realized, people will not try to solve a problem on their own if they can quickly get someone else to do it. How hard would it be for users to try typing in a different web address and hit “Enter”?
But why bother thinking if you can make a phone call and have a tech at your desk in 2 minutes? We sometimes will get a call saying, “I can’t print” from people who somehow missed the LCD display on the printer that was flashing “Load letter” when they went to retrieve their print job. Or the call from the woman saying, “I can’t log on” because she accidentally hit the Caps Lock key. Its like people lose their sense of logic and problem-solving ability when they have IT staff on site.
It seems that all of our computer literate people are somehow located at our remote sites that have no onsite IT staff. We rarely get dumb service requests from them because they know we won’t get there for a day or two and they take the time to figure out things themselves.
I guess you just have to rollwith it.
