People's Understanding of Internet and E-mail

[Jay]

ha ha....

I love the people in my place.

The User: "Why is my laptop locked down? I can't install anything"
Me: "Exactly"
The User: "But this is my laptop"
Me: "No, its a company laptop that you use for work"
The User: "But I want to install the new version of Office"
Me: "Well you can't as we are not Licensed to use that version of office"
The User: "What do you mean?"
Me: "What you are trying to do is install a none Genuine version of Office onto a company laptop"
The User: "It is Genuine, I got it of my friend and it installs fine on his PC, he is here now trying to put it on my laptop. You are wasting his time!"
Me: "Send him to me with the laptop and I will unlock it for you"
The User: "Ok"

When he arrives I very kindly take the laptop off him, tell him to get back in his car, write a memo to the Directors and copy The User in as to why I have now removed the users laptop from their possession until we arrange a meeting to talk about misuse of company property. It saved me a drive to go and get it

I think the users actually do forget that I am a manager and not a dogs body and so can sanction a disciplinary if I need to.

[Craig321]

1. If its works its normal

2. If it doesn't work its bad

3. There is no good.

That's generally how humans are with everything

[Splash]

I'm not in IT myself but my understanding is above average because I'm interested and read... What i find irritating is that some people know nothing but they seem to think its cool that they have no IT know-how like it somehow implies that they have a life where the person who does know is a geek and doesn't. Very sad.

Y'know what's approximately a billion times worse than those kinds of people? People with a little IT knowledge. I'd much rather deal with people with no interest in the thing that I do (which keeps me in a job, incidentally) than those that insist that they read somewhere on the internets that you can do this, than and the other, so they tried it and now their cat has to have it's legs amputated.

[Lee H]

I've stopped giving technical support to local friends and family now as it's not worth the hassle and stress.

I was getting constant bombardments with texts and stuff over trivial things such as "why am I getting pop-ups?" which was spyware related and simple things like "Why is my printer not working?" which was related to the fact their wife had unplugged the printer to hoover the room and forgot to plug it back in.

[father smurf]

Insist on a 20 quid call-out at least.... before you even start looking at a problem.

[Jay]

I've stopped giving technical support to local friends and family now as it's not worth the hassle and stress.

I was getting constant bombardments with texts and stuff over trivial things such as "why am I getting pop-ups?" which was spyware related and simple things like "Why is my printer not working?" which was related to the fact their wife had unplugged the printer to hoover the room and forgot to plug it back in.

Same here, 9:30am Saturday morning.

"I hear you have an IPhone.... How did you get that then?"

Some guy from work called my mobile to ask me that!

Other people here are just lazy and can't be bothered to do anything. I get calls to my office saying "can you just come down to my office I something to talk about" I get there and its "How to get this to line up with that there in publisher?" in the hope I will do it for them.

Some people can do it but just can't be bothered.

[nichomach]

Same here, 9:30am Saturday morning.

"I hear you have an IPhone.... How did you get that then?"

Some guy from work called my mobile to ask me that!

To which the only response can be...

[Splash]

I got around to setting up CLID on the home phone because the missus is a little more relaxed than I would like about letting people know what I do for a living. Any number not stored in the phone as my immediate family goes through to voicemail (which I should really change the message on to "Welcome to Splash's Free Tech Support Line. Your call is very important to us however all of our agents are currently busy. Please leave a message stating your name, number, and what that bloke down the pub told you was the problem and I'll use magic remote access to fix your issue" when I get time)

[Apex]

<snip>

Class

Been in this current Help Desk role since Feb last year and now I know why I left IT for a bit.

The utter bullcrap that some of the users spout makes my blood boil.

While I under stand that most of the users I support did not come from a IT background the fact that they seem to play dumb / don't want to learn makes me wonder how they have got on in life.

[Moby-Dick]

I rarely have to deal with end users , although the supposed techies that I deal with can leave a lot to the imagination...

[Saracen]

......

When he arrives I very kindly take the laptop off him, tell him to get back in his car, write a memo to the Directors and copy The User in as to why I have now removed the users laptop from their possession until we arrange a meeting to talk about misuse of company property. It saved me a drive to go and get it

I love it.

And thanks for giving me my much-needed daily laugh-out-loud (literally) moment. I'll admit I could see it coming, but I loved it anyway.

[b0redom]

My current client has an airgapped network, completely isolated from the rest of their corporate network. It sits in a small room, and comprises lots of UltraSPARC servers and SAN gear.

I walked into the server room yesterday, and it was baking - I asked the 'consultant' working in there if there was a problem with the aircon, and he replied... "No, I just turned it off. It was a bit cold."

Give me strength....

[peterb]

Hope he didn't charge you too much for diagnosing that particular problem for you!

[kmac]

Speaking of users not undertsanding technology, I like the scene in a Star Trek movie where they (Spoc and co) come to earth and have to take a whale back.

Scottie goes to an engineering place to get a "tank" made but has to design a plastic that can take the weight of all the water. He is given a PC and tries to talk to it. When the earthling gives him the mouse and says "try this" he picks it up like a mic and tries to speak into in. Classic. I can often be seen at work speaking into my mouse....

[Jay]

My current client has an airgapped network, completely isolated from the rest of their corporate network. It sits in a small room, and comprises lots of UltraSPARC servers and SAN gear.

I walked into the server room yesterday, and it was baking - I asked the 'consultant' working in there if there was a problem with the aircon, and he replied... "No, I just turned it off. It was a bit cold."

Give me strength....

dear dear.. do they not understand that getting the room the the correct temp can take hours and hours of full on air con??

The cost would be massive in the electricity alone. What an idiot!

Although I have had the cleaners do that to me, as well as unplug the UPS from the wall to vacume the floor!

I have now banned every member of none IT staff from the server room, installed CCTV and am in the process of setting up a proper keycard system, you have to protect against stupidity!

oh, and I vacume the server rooms myself now... lol.

[Betty_Swallocks]

I'm not in IT myself but my understanding is above average because I'm interested and read... What i find irritating is that some people know nothing but they seem to think its cool that they have no IT know-how like it somehow implies that they have a life where the person who does know is a geek and doesn't. Very sad.

Yes, that annoys me too.
"I don't know anything about computers. Ha ha ha" like it's something to be proud of.
I always deflate them by saying something like... "Oh really? That must be awful for you. I mean. You're not that old. You've got, what, 20 years before you retire, and computers aren't going to go away? It must be terrible to know you'll have to work that long without understanding one of the main tools you need to do your job.
It must be like a plumber not understanding how a boiler works. Don't you find it puts you at a disadvantage?"