Coworker vent

[sam_gordon]

You're talking to a non-IT person, and I have no idea what that means, lol.

What does it mean?

Put all the characters together and try to read it.

 

[GaSleepingBeautyFan]

I'm not an IT person but on my 2nd to last job ended up doing alot of IT by default including getting sent to a class to learn how to run the NT Server. That was not fun.

The funniest and easiest IT call I received I still remember 6 years later -

"My computer won't start" she said
So I asked if the computer was plugged in. "It has to be plugged in?" she asked. Needless to say I walked over, plugged in the computer and all was well.

I figured the cleaning folks must've unplugged it when they were vaccuuming.

Between questions like those and the calls I'd get on the weekend from someone who decided to go into the office and work but couldn't access the server because it was doing it's full weekly backup, sure made me realize I'd never want to work in IT all the time!

 

[arminnie]

Decades ago with the very first PCs you had to input the date each time you booted.

This woman that I worked with would literally FREEZE each time it asked for the date. Like this was asking for the circumference of Mars or some such minutia.

Of course she was the president's wife which explained how she was able to get away with being SO STUPID!!!!

One day I had my dog in the office while I was trying to help her. My dog (who normally was totally housebroken) went into the president's office and pooped. He was livid.

Of course my saving grace - the president may have been the president - the, but owner of the company was my brother.

 

[curious3069]

I was just wondering, if the co-worker did say it intentionally, would that been of some benefit to her? Did she have something to gain if it were intentional?

I think sometimes people think that if they make the problem sound big and bad enough, they'll get faster help...I'm going to guess this co-worker might fall into that category.

 

[Feralpeg]

One of my all time favorite memories of my time in the IT world came from a client who called me totally distraught. She told me that her statements were printing upside down and backwards. I had her tell me how she loaded the forms. When I told her to simple remove the forms, reverse them and put them back in, she was amazed. She thought I was the smartest person she ever met. lol! Oh, if all the problems could have been so easy to solve!

 

[Bluestars]

1) I was never rude, short, or condescending to my coworker.
2) I am happy I have a job.
3) I get that support people have to ask questions to get "the real problem".

I still don't think people should exaggerate their problem. What's wrong with some honesty?

I think some people lack common sense. It's not too much to ask a person to describe their actual problem. Also, I would find it annoying if they didn't know the difference between printing something and opening an attachment. Surely that's not the first attachment this person has ever opened in her life. Surely she knows that when you open an attachment it doesn't automatically print. You have to click print. It sounds like she knew the difference between printing and opening an attachment, but purposefully exaggerated her problem to you.

 

[Bluestars]

Decades ago with the very first PCs you had to input the date each time you booted.

This woman that I worked with would literally FREEZE each time it asked for the date. Like this was asking for the circumference of Mars or some such minutia.

Of course she was the president's wife which explained how she was able to get away with being SO STUPID!!!!

One day I had my dog in the office while I was trying to help her. My dog (who normally was totally housebroken) went into the president's office and pooped. He was livid.

Of course my saving grace - the president may have been the president - the, but owner of the company was my brother.

I guess when you are related to the boss, you've got job security no matter what.

I will never forget about 15 years ago when a person who was training to be our assistant controller went to one of the computers and for some reason only know to him, at the

c:

he typed: delete *.*

His boss was not happy. He ended up getting fired for other things at a later time. But wow, how stupid can you get? He worked on computers every day, so it's not like he was the president's wife.

 

[sam_gordon]

For all you "non-IT" types...

It's also OK if you did something and messed a computer up. Just own up to it. Just yesterday, while I was trying to fix a drive in our RAID system, I goofed and ended up bringing our entire system down.

Now, fortunately, I could fix my own mistake, but still, I owned up to it. As I support person, you'll gain my respect by saying "I hit 'delete all' accidentally" instead of just "everything went away, I don't know what happened".

 

[Becky2005]

I will never forget about 15 years ago when a person who was training to be our assistant controller went to one of the computers and for some reason only know to him, at the

c:

he typed: delete *.*

Things like that happened! Now, why they specifically typed it who knows but I know I did basically the same thing when teaching a new person something and the worst part was the computer even WARNED me but I had a brain lapse and said yes and about a second after I clicked it, I realized that I shouldn't have. I don't even remember what I was showing her but it was to delete something at the C:> prompt and poof. I did get a 3 day suspension for that so started hunting for another job as I was sure they were going to fire me. They then wondered why I was job hunting. It was a small business though.

Of course, my DH is in IT and for the longest time he couldn't figure out how older people were calling the mouse a foot pedal. I had to explain to him it had to do with sewing machines. I could easily see how an older person might think it could be used that way. They do look similar and basically they work on the same concept...you push down & it controls something.

 

[EclecticWAHM]

I don't know about you but I prefer dealing with the person who knows nothing about computers rather than the smug know-it-all who has already tried everything and doesn't want to troubleshoot.

I get that, but it's also frustrating as someone who is really good with computer issues, calling to get help when our internet goes down. I NEVER call until I have gone through all the basic troubleshooting stuff, so I tell them right away that I've already done that and still these people from call centers in India reading off their little scripts can't deviate from the script and have an original thought in their head, and make me go through all the junk all over again. It's ridiculous and frustrating.

It's not about being a smug know-it-all. Sorry, but I don't feel like wasting 20 minutes doing troubleshooting I have already done. Believe me when I tell you that I have done it and move up to the next level. Not everyone who calls for support is computer illiterate and it's stupid to waste someone's time when they've already done something.

 

[sam_gordon]

I get that, but it's also frustrating as someone who is really good with computer issues, calling to get help when our internet goes down. I NEVER call until I have gone through all the basic troubleshooting stuff, so I tell them right away that I've already done that and still these people from call centers in India reading off their little scripts can't deviate from the script and have an original thought in their head, and make me go through all the junk all over again. It's ridiculous and frustrating.

It's not about being a smug know-it-all. Sorry, but I don't feel like wasting 20 minutes doing troubleshooting I have already done. Believe me when I tell you that I have done it and move up to the next level. Not everyone who calls for support is computer illiterate and it's stupid to waste someone's time when they've already done something.

I agree with you. BUT, I also see their side. If you go with the odds, the person with the problem will either:
1) Not admit they've done something
2) Not done something (reboot for example) but say they have
3) Leave out some critical piece of information (is the computer turned on?)

Sometimes support (lower level) is between a rock and a hardplace.

 

[lizabu]

I guess you would be surprised how many times I spoke to someone who said they were some big deal computer programer at IBM or other company and they've already done everything and we fixed their issue by rebooting a modem or plugging in a loose ethernet cord (we're talking 100's of times)

 

[kamik86]

My favorite was in high school, in an IT class. (Vocation school where every other week we spend all week in shop, seniors and freshman are mixed together. - Note to be in IT you also had to pick this, you wouldn't be assigned it if you didn't want to, many people would want this shop and not get in.) One of the freshman near the end of the year raises his hand one day and asks "Mr. <teacher's name"> my computer says my Ethernet cable is unplugged what do I do?".

As we all start laughing and this person has no idea why the teacher walks over and plugs the cable back in (Yes it was even unplugged on the computer end, I would understand alittle if it was unplugged on the other end, since tracing those cables in a computer lab can be tough sometimes, but even that he should have been able to handle)


I worked at once place and although I wasn't really IT support (small business didn't really have one, but it did have programmers and we generally doubled for the really easy stuff) but I would get so frustrated with the sales and admin people because they would not even READ error messages. If your complaining that your losing the coloring of your excel file when you save you get very little respect from me if you just click ok without reading the message that says something like "saving in this format will cause the loss of some formatting information) he was saving as a .csv.

 

[kamik86]

I think some people lack common sense. It's not too much to ask a person to describe their actual problem. Also, I would find it annoying if they didn't know the difference between printing something and opening an attachment. Surely that's not the first attachment this person has ever opened in her life. Surely she knows that when you open an attachment it doesn't automatically print. You have to click print. It sounds like she knew the difference between printing and opening an attachment, but purposefully exaggerated her problem to you.

OP how big is your place? I'll be honest I know many co-workers here that exaggerate issues (I have myself). Not the actual problem as much as the impact (we will claim something is stopping ANY work from happening when really we mean in about 3 hours I will have nothing to do if this isn't fixed). Why? Because if we didn't they wouldn't get to the issue for another day and 1/2.

 

[sam_gordon]

OP how big is your place? I'll be honest I know many co-workers here that exaggerate issues (I have myself). Not the actual problem as much as the impact (we will claim something is stopping ANY work from happening when really we mean in about 3 hours I will have nothing to do if this isn't fixed). Why? Because if we didn't they wouldn't get to the issue for another day and 1/2.

We have about 125 employees.

It's nice to know that you think you're special and should jump ahead of whatever else is going on to make sure there's not an issue 3 hours from now. So now, the person who will "run out of work" in 30 minutes has to wait while support takes care of your issue.

I honestly think what you said is EXACTLY why folks exaggerate. They think it will get them to the top of the list and they're obviously more important than anything else going on. My coworker's issue... the document she was trying to open was informational and not needed for work. The document she was trying to print was her paystub... while work related, if it couldn't be fixed, she wasn't going to miss a deadline, or otherwise affect her work. But if she can't print ANYTHING, that's a big deal.

 

[Mom21]

She says "I can't print anything."
I get to her desk and she says "Oh, that prints fine."

That's "not getting the concept of troubleshooting"?

Yes, it was a "little white lie" or "stretching the truth" or whatever you want to call it. It was an INTENTIONAL misrepresentation.

In truth, she did have a problem. I'm not discounting that. Why is it wrong for me to want accuracy when someone is reporting a problem? Do I EXPECT it? No. But it would be nice.

Maybe she thinks you're really a nice guy (you are a guy right? I'm assuming I guess. If not maybe she is gay and thinks you are a nice female) and "super hot". It was all really just a ruse to get you to bend over her computer. Maybe she was taught growing up to play the helpless female bit. Who knows what people are thinking.

 

[tvguy]

Why do people insist on exaggerating problems?

I work in IT support. Coworker comes back and say "I can't print anything." (note the 'Anything'). So I go to her desk, open up the printer properties, print a test page, no problem. She says "I can't print a document the boss emailed."

I go into her email program and go to print a random email. "Oh, I can print that. I can't print a document the boss emailed.". So we track that email down and try to open the attachment. It won't OPEN (and you get a popup saying it won't open) because it was saved in a newer version of Microsoft Word.

She says "that's the popup I keep getting". So she:
1) CAN print most things
2) Gets a popup saying a document can't be opened
3) Tells us she can't print ANYTHING.

Do people really not understand the difference between 'printing' and 'opening'?

My son works for an IT consulting firm. He says he prefers 100 of these type trouble tickets to the ones where you have a software issue where you trace it to a piece of software, the vendor denies it is their problem, you search further, everything points to that software, you call again, they deny it. Cycle continues for 2 or 3 days, you have 4 people who have now put in about 90 man hours in it, and finally, the vendor admits it is there problem and tells you how to fix it.
Besides, my sons says, the people in the example you cite are more likely to bring you homemade cookies as a thank you.

 

[kaytieeldr]

A lot of people are just not computer savvy and just don't know what they are doing or the correct terminology for things. I was helping a group of people do something on the computer a couple years ago and I was shocked at the large number of people that didn't even know how to "point and click" with a mouse.

Maybe offering a computer basics class will help?

You know, that makes sense - but the general terminology, the difference between 'something' and 'anything' - are concepts that existed, and we learned, long before computers.

 

[kaytieeldr]

I feel your pain, but sometimes you've got to acknowledge that IT folks can be bristly to anyone who isn't a computer expert.

Sometimes it makes me chuckle when one of the older folks at our office has a computer issue and IT comes to help them. Sometimes it's something really basic, but the older folks just didn't grow up exposed to computers the way us younger folks did.

I hope you mean a lot older as in beyond retirement age, because I'll have you know that while I wouldn't do anything but the simplest troubleshooting, I've been using computers at work for over 25 years. Don't sass me, you young whippersnapper, or I'll have to hobble over there and trip you with my cane!

That being said, sometimes I just can't come up with a clever or intelligent sounding way to describe my computer problem. In fact, my old computer at work went out in a blaze of glory that even the IT folks hadn't observed before. It made a sound like the launching of an airplane off an aircraft carrier, then it proceeded to reboot itself constantly and at such a fast rate that you couldn't even get into the BIOS or make it stop without literally unplugging it from the wall. There was no way to describe that intelligently, so I just had to tell them that my computer had lost its mind and was rebooting itself in an endless loop.

Nope. Sounds like you describe that incident quite well - unless you wanted to add the sound effects?

 

[kaytieeldr]

I know that troubleshooting can be frustrating, but I doubt that she intentionally lied to you. It's about phrasing. Have you never said something like "Well, that was a disaster"? In reality, it may have been bad, but certainly not a disaster. It's like saying "I hate that". Most people don't really hate things when they say that. It's just a form of exaggeration.

Not necessarily. I hate ham, lamb, venison, liver, sardines, anchovies. Won't eat any of them. Ever. Absolutely not exaggerating.