The Glade 4.0

"Jim" is too goddamn important to have to wait while the helpdesk deals with everybody else. This is why we can't use "Jim" as the measuring stick for what stupid questions should be tolerated from employees.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

/facepalm

Nobody has only one required skill. And your statement here is, again, helpdesk/IT/whatever defining people's jobs, required skill sets, and declaring them incompetent. Not your task.

If your job requires you to be familiar with a computer, and you can't do that, you are incompetent in that area.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Yes, if you're required to use a computer, and you can't, you're incompetent. Nobody's arguing that. "The vast majority of computer illiterate people in a company have only one required employment skill - using a computer" is an inaccurate statement.

Great read

http://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10 ... l-support/

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Having been the helpdesk's helpdesk (Tier 2 support) for several years and now working in a supervisory role, hell yes. I have far more frustrations these days with other IT staff than I do with the users. I have frequently pointed to the "Chronicles of George" as an example of how not to handle tech support.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I get sick of the all too common exec attitude that it makes more sense to save 7 bucks an hour on helpdesk than it does to spend that 7 bucks in order to allow 5 people making 20-40 an hour to get back to work an hour or 4 earlier.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Yes, that was a good article, and I pretty much agree. It all makes sense. The one issue I had was with this:



If helpdesk is "chiding" users/customers, they have already failed.

Yes, but you do need to know how to put the key in the ignition, operate the signals and transmission, read traffic signage, obey laws, etc.

Just like using a computer for your job. You need to know how email works, read dialog boxes, how to type... and so on.

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Holy shitsnacks!

? That doesn't relate to what I said.

Yes, actually it does. If the worker hasn't mastered those things and the helpdesk has to chide them, it's not the helpdesk that failed, it's the worker.

If its somehow offensive that a mere helpdesk worker would chide someone... well, more *** chewings would make the world a better place.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

FTFY.

Also, thank you for sharing.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

If you went to a mechanic and told him "My car's not working" He would ask you "How is it not working?" ANd reasonable people would say "When I do X, it does Y." And the Mechanic would say "Ok, that's Z problem, and I can fix that."

Same thing with computer people. But different. "My computer isn't working." "Ok, well how is it not working?" "I don't know! I'm not a computer person! That's YOUR job!" "Well, yes, that's why you came to me, but what are you trying to do that it isn't doing?" "Look, its just not working, can't you fix it? I don't know anything about computers!" "Actually, no. I can't. Because you won't tell me what's wrong."

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Holy shitsnacks!

Ya know, as someone who worked in tech and help desk support for over 12 years, it strikes me that the issue isn't that certain workers don't know how to use the technology, even though they should, or that IT workers **** on them sometimes for not knowing the most elementary things about how computer OS's work. The issue is that the IT guys perceive that they aren't treated with respect from people who ask questions that they should know the answers to. And even that's not so bad, but it's when they take pride in not knowing, and expect you to help, that it gets under the skin.

But, really, it's the same thing even before computers were an assumed part of your office workday. I call it, "Senior Staff don't bring in their lunch." It's arrogance, and it's beneath them. Same thing about using computers - it's really an issue of arrogance, the feeling that they're too good to have to learn anything beyond typing (and even then ...) But, of course, there's also IT arrogance. In many cases, it's the last thing we have, because most Help Desk folks don't make nearly the coin they should in terms of what they do to keep the company running. So, since they don't make a lot of money, they fall back on the superiority of knowing that they know things that "lusers" can't begin to comprehend. And that often translates into arrogance.

Now, are help desk folks gonna magically be paid and recognized accordingly? Hardly. Are the non-tech savvy going to 'fess up to their ignorance and meekly ask for help? Probably not. What we're talking about is a wholesale change in office culture that's just not going to happen.

The best we can do is effect change on an individual basis. I guarantee you that very few of my users ever felt slighted or stupid after they got done dealing with me, and in many cases may actually have learned how to help themselves before calling me. Part of that was that I usually admitted to them that (a) I didn't know everything, and (b) forces beyond my control (Microsoft!) influence how things work in computer-land.

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This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

I only did help desk support briefly, when I was in the Military...

The only story I have to tell that is worth telling, is when, as the senior member of the team, I was called down the hall to the Senior Master Sergeant (the ranking enlisted guy in the squadron) office. He was complaining about his fancy new CRT monitor having squiggly lines. But only intermittently. I went down there and spent about 20 minutes with him. He occasionally saw the squiggly lines.. i never saw a thing...

Several other people stopped by.. same story.. he was the only one seeing the squiggely lines...

We finally figured out.. he was chomping on corn nuts.. every time he bit down, it caused the monitor to look blurry to him...

Needless to say. he never lived that down.... And since after he retired, he eventually recruited me to work for him at my current job.. he still gets to hear about it now..16 years later :p

Offensive? No. Failure? Sure. If you find yourself chewing on your customers, you're doing it wrong. And not to drag in another thread, but I think your above view vs. mine here is why we don't see eye to eye on cops treatment of citizens.

None of that relates to what I said either.

If you take your car to a mechanic with, in the mechanic's view, a stupid self-created problem, should he chew you out and tell you how stupid you are? Would you return to his shop in the future if he did?

In certain cases the caller is the customer.

In other cases, the caller is just another company employee, who is, in all likelihood, at a lower pay grade and seniority level - "rank" in military terms - than the IT staff are. This still doesn't mean that the helpdesk person should be "chiding" the callers... employees of the same company should be treating each other with respect. But that goes both ways...

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

No, you're not. Company helpdesk callers are not customers. They're fellow employees.



The best way to not drag in anoyher thread is to not drag in another thread.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Would you not tell a colleague who calls facilities services to turn on and off their office light for them? Someone who calls janitorial staffing to ask what to do with trash to spend five minutes on the phone just for the staff to show them where their trashcan is and how to operate it? Who comes to you panicked because an alarm is going off where they sit and you investigate to find it is their phone and the express horror and shock at this and have both never heard that one picks up a phone, how to talk into it, how to dial, and is offended at the very idea of learning any of this?

This is tantamount to some of the calls (a minority) that we receive. These are not executives (who have specialized teams) these are people who are hired to do things like create pivot tables in excel as part of their standard functions.

If they cannot "right click" a mouse, expect the amount of hours they will require every week in order to do the bare minimum requirements of their job function.

These people should be fired because they never should have been hired - however I've not yet seen a competence test that tests basic computer operation by used at any company I've worked with regardless of how computer centric your job.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

@Taly and DE: You just quoted me referring to "customers".

@DE and Elmo: If we're only referring to callers that are coworkers, not customers, and they are calling about an IT question, and you are IT support, if you chide them for "not having even rudimentary computer knowledge in spite of a computer being an integral part of their job" you have failed. In this situation, it is best to view them as a customer. That certainly doesn't mean you shouldn't provide some assistance and suggestions to them on how to more efficiently function, but you certainly shouldn't be scolding them.

@ Elmo: If I were hired to a) help people with the lights, or b) in charge of the phones, then I would help them with their problem. I probably would anyway. If I were a janitor and someone asked me what to do with the trash, I'd tell them where the trashcan is. I certainly wouldn't scold them for bothering me.

Whether or not they should be fired for not being able to do THEIR job is irrelevant. If you spend your time chiding your customers and not doing YOUR job, guess what should happen to you?

I know. That's why i made the distinction. The vast majority of support desks do not deal with external customers at all.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

So how many mirrors do you break a week?

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A promotion to middle management?

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Holy shitsnacks!

On average, somewhere between zero and one. Have something to say?