Before I get started, I’m letting everyone know this is a rant, so take heed. I’ve experienced some of the most frustrating days dealing with people based on their lack of knowledge and level of experience.
Some users just don’t want to learn the basic skills needed to perform their job like navigating around in Windows or finding the file they just saved to the hard drive. It’s much easier to pick up the phone and call tech support and let them deal with it. Those kinds of people make me want to reach across the desk or through the phone and strangle them. And the situation is worse when their boss (and yours) absolves them of any responsibility of learning those basic skills.
How can you solve someone’s problem when they don’t understand how to look on the Start menu? Or open Windows Explorer? Or don’t understand that the document they just printed is down the hall because they chose the wrong printer? It’s not like Windows is some new operating system that just got released last week. Where does a company draw the line between keeping that new hire or getting rid of them?
I’ve experienced the same thing while working for a document services company that makes paper copies and digital scans of customer documents. Our customers supposed to fill out a work order with info like how many copies do they need, what time/date do they need it back, what person is requesting the copies, company name, etc. Things you would consider important to complete the job. Some of the responses I get just astound me.
“oh, we’ve never filled out those”, or
“I don’t like filling that out”
What? You want someone to perform a service for you so you can do your job and it’s too much trouble to take 60 seconds of your time to fill out a freaking work order? Wtf?!!
It seems like people have become dependent on others like small children on their mothers, only they aren’t small children anymore. People want to be spoon fed information instead of learning some basic skills, or using the help menu before picking up the phone. It makes be even angrier that their (your) boss doesn’t recognize it, or doesn’t care.
OK, so you have new users. How about some in-house training? Make it mandatory. But that would be too inconvenient for them. If we all behaved like dependent children, little work would get done. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the more knowlegeable the users, the more productive they are.
I don’t understand why that is such a difficult concept to grasp.
