The Glade 4.0

If chiding them gets them to start being able to understand the basic functions of a computer, or at the very least, to understand your instructions when you try to help them, the helpdesk people ARE doing their job. They're decreasing the need for helpdesk calls and increasing productivity.

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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."

Perhaps. I think it's more likely to waste time by starting an argument - there's generally better ways to handle such interactions.

Who said anything about an argument?

If an argument is caused, its most likely because the person asking for help is upset at being chided when that's exactly what they need. If the helpdesk person is chewing out every single person that calls, that's a problem, but occasional mild pointing out that someone has called 3 times to ask how to do the same task, or that its an everyday task no one else seems to have trouble with should not call for arguing back. If the other person starts an argument over that, they're overly sensitive.

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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."

I've never heard a helpdesk person lose their cool and "chide" someone before they actually were chided first, by some jackass that demands they fix his problem without being willing to provide even the slightest bit of necessary information to help with that, first.

Not saying it doesn't happen, but I've never seen it.

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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
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If you cannot describe the problem you are experiencing in common terms yet expect clairvoyant help...you are the issue.

When I was working in cellular a person got handed to me who was on their other phone, driving in their car and wanted someone here to fix their physically broken screen.

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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

/sigh

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Holy shitsnacks!

I hate people, so much.

Escalation call:
User: "Your technician said he fixed my problem, but it's not fixed yet!"
Me: "Okay, we'll figure it out. What happens when you try to launch the application?"
User: "I haven't tried yet."
Me: "Ah...huh. So... how do you know it isn't fixed?"
User: "Should I try it?"
Me: "I would say, yes."
User: "Well, nobody told me that. Oh, wow, it's working now."
Me: "Imagine that."

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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
█ ♣ █

PEBMAC of type 1D 10-T

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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

****, at least you're competent. Had a boss of mine who had printer problems. I'm not data anymore but he knew I used to be. He'd called the civilian help desk a few times and they gave him a bunch of bullshit answers, just to get him to go away. Like, they 'cleaned up his profile'...for a printer problem that multiple users on multiple different computers had the same problem with.

So I go backslash backslashing around the DCs...find old event logs...find the print server's name...go into it...find more printer's of the same model...print to them just fine...then compare settings on the problem printer and the known good printer. Find out the problem printer is using SNMP and I'm like "Oh, that's it. Cool." After sitting on hold forever, I had to talk to the help desk guy through the problem explaining exactly what I knew needed to be changed and exactly how to do it. He kept like clicking random bullshit the entire time and I'd be like, "STOP! Just click here, now enter your admin login/pw...now click this...no not that....wait what are you doing? WTF MAN?".

My second deployment I almost got into trouble because I called the guys in charge of the domain to tell them they had a security loophole that let power users promote themselves to domain admins. To prove it, while on the phone with them, I promoted myself to a domain admin, then demoted myself. It showed up in the logs, and the security guys called me like, "OMG NOW WE HAVE TO SHUT DOWN THE DOMAIN TO CHECK WHAT YOU CHANGED AND DIDN'T FOR HACKING OUR DOMAIN". I got totally belligerent like, "Ok, dude, first off...it's **** stupid to call being able to add yourself to the Domain Admin group because you guys suck at network security 'hacking'....second, my first deployment I built this domain myself from the ground up...it's MY baby, go look at the logs, you think I'm gonna take it down? WHatever, dude...I only called you because I love this domain so much BECAUSE I **** BUILT IT AND YOU ARE **** IT UP AS A PROFESSIONAL COURTESY SO YOU DON'T LOOK LIKE JACKASSES WHEN SOME RANDOM ASSHOLES DESTROY THE WHOLE THING"

**** idiots. The world is full of them.

Years ago my job was editing reports filed by field personnel to Department Standards. Basically I reformatted and edited for grammar, spelling and punctuation. I was pretty good at it, and since my personal life was pretty stressful (wife dying of cancer and all) I was happy to have something that simple to do.

I had a reputation for being able to spot mistakes quickly, not just in the reports but caused by users not understanding what they had done. People started coming over to me asking advanced questions about how to do things in Word and Excel. I answered their questions easily, made them happy and sent them away. My boss came over and asked one of them who had sent them to me, since she was tired of her assistant being used by other people without her permission. Then she started coming over and asking who sent them over anytime someone stopped in. They all said the same thing. The IT guys, who installed things and repaired the computers, but didn't know squat about the programs themselves.

My boss, a bit of a control freak and socially weak, told me to stop helping people unless I was completely caught up with my own work, and sent a message to the IT Manager to find someone else to act as their free (to them) employee.

IT ended up hiring an incompetent contractor who made more than twice what I did to help people with the Office Suite programs. It lasted a short time, during which I had to leave the building for lunch so i could eat without someone coming over and asking for help.

I transferred to an analyst job, wasn't clerical anymore and people slowly stopped asking me for that kind of help.

Recently, one of the ladies I used to help a lot asked me to come over and see if I could fix something she had been working on for two days. I was done in five minutes. She is still not as competent on the computer as she should be, but is a very good field person.

We all have different skill sets. Life goes on.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

In most companies, it is not IT's responsibility to have any experts on software usage. They are given a budget to hire people to fix problems, not to train people how to use their software. Now, IT frequently ends up having to demonstrate to people that "No, your software is working fine, you're just using it wrong," but there's a limit to what they can do there. Asking IT to keep experts in the software for staff consulting is not entirely unheard of, but it's a lot like asking your aircraft mechanic to keep an expert stunt pilot on staff to give people flying tips. The skillsets are not directly related.

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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
█ ♣ █

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Talya, yes I know it was 't even in IT's job description to train people to use the software. It also wasn't in mine. I did it because I knew how to work the programs, could listen, and could train them softly and gently without making them feel like idiots. My boss objected because it wasn't my job and IT was using me as their resource without her permission.

It wasn't to get their job done. It was addressing, improperly, an issue that needed to be addressed. It was addressed eventually and poorly, they hired a consultant to train staff how to use the programs. He was pretty useless,

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones