It doesn't work

[Customer Beating Robot]

I work in the IT industry. Now, as with most technical professions, such as airplane mechanic, TV repairman, satellite dish installer, the devil is in the details.

Too, too often we get the "It doesn't work" explanation of a problem. Now, I am an incredibly smart individual if I do say so myself. And I do . But there is just absolutely no way I can diagnose your exact problem and fix it for you correctly based upon such a detailed description as "It doesn't work."

I understand that not everyone is technical, and I have a lot of patience and empathy. I will help someone to better be able to give me a sense of the problem. However, I routinely I run into someone who will just state over and over "It doesn't work and you need to fix it right now." after I have asked them a question to better diagnoses the situation. I just can't comprehend the individual who provides me with no details and is not willing to help me help them.

[protege]

Ugh. I so hate that line! Another line I hate is "it just doesn't work right."

Well, what do you mean by that? Not too long ago, I got into trouble with my boss over that line. He was having trouble with one of his home computers. So, as a favor to him, I said I'd look at it when I had time. All he would tell me is that the screen was "acting goofy." Other than that, he couldn't tell me anything more.

Er, ok. So, after hours (gotta love overtime, hehe), I fired the thing up. It booted, the Winblows splash screen came up, etc. with no problems. I left it on for about 20 minutes or so with no problems. Since I couldn't recreate the problem, I told him it worked fine.

Wrong answer. I got accused of being "lazy" and "not working on it." Let me get this straight: you don't tell me what the problem is, which means I can't either recreate it, or have an idea of what you're talking about, and *I'm* the asshole? I don't think so, buddy!

Right after that, he insisted I drop whatever it was I was doing...and to work on his machine for the rest of the afternoon. OK, fine. I did. Again, no problems...which caused me to be subjected to more tirades about how I "don't know what the I'm doing" At that point, I was tempted to hurl the monitor at him

Found out later, from our 3rd party tech (he's a rant or two in himself...) that the Degauss (sp?) switch was shorting out, causing the screen to show pretty colors and just be annoying at times. Why couldn't my boss have told me what it was doing?

Draw circle. Bang head here.

[DevilBoy]

I hate it when you ask the person if they did anything to change their system recently and they immediately reply, "No".

25 minutes into the troubleshooting process, when you are coming up blank... they casually mention that they did just install about 37 new games, sharewares, screensavers, etc. about two days ago... coincidentally enough, around the same time their problems started surfacing.

o_O

[MadMike]

I get this myself sometimes. That, and people who can't seem to give me a straight answer when I can't re-create the problem, and ask them what they were doing that caused it.

I had one of these a few months ago. I was assigned to investigate why one of our programs blew up. First thing I always do is try to re-create the problem. If I can't do that, then there's not really a whole lot I can do. This was one such situation.

I sent an email to the user stating that I couldn't re-create the problem, and that I needed to know exactly what they were doing that caused it to happen. Their response was something to the effect of "I was using (the program in question) to (do what it was designed to do.)"



I figured it would by highly unprofessional to respond back with, "No shit, Sherlock!" So I rephrased into something like, "I need a little more information that that. I need to know exactly what you did, step by step, that led up to the problem. I have not been able to recreate the problem myself, and I don't have anything to go on at this point."

I never got anything back from the user after that, so I moved onto other things and forgot all about it. A few weeks later, I happened to remember it, and told my supervisor what was going on with it. Her response was basically, "If they can't give us an answer, then screw 'em." (Not those exact words of course.) Then she closed the ticket.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

Try this one on for size.

I get a computer in and all they tell me of course is "It's not working right." Unable to get anything more out of him (other than "You're the computer guy...you tell me what's wrong"...wanker) I assure him that I'll figure it out.

I stress test the damn thing up one side and down the other. I'm running test after test after flipping test and everything comes up as ok. I run anti-virus and anti-spyware...it's all clean.

Surprising really since almost every machine I was seeing at the time had at least SOMETHING on it.

3d-benchmarking, CPU testing, even had the damn thing trying to calculate pi to as many digits as the weekend would allow.

Not a damn thing was wrong and it only crashed once when I was working on it and it WAS my fault. I was running 3 instances of 3D-Benchmark, Word, Excel, Photoshop, an antivirus, a spyware program AND Norton's DeFragger all at the same time.

Anywho, I'm stumped to all heck and finally I give up and call the guy to find out what the problem is and I'm not getting off the phone until he bloody tells me.

After much sarcasm from him on how much of an inept fool I am for not finding out the problem I finally find out the problem.

It won't print to his brand new printer...the printer that isn't in the list of installed printers...the printer that isn't at the shop for me to try...the printer whose driver CD hasn't even been removed from the shrinkwrap...the PRINTER THAT HE DIDN'T EVEN ATTEMPT TO INSTALL!

And people wonder why there was a forehead shaped dent in my desk.

Mongo

[Cyanocobalamin]

A desk-shaped dent in your forehead would be much more painful eh?

[Gurndigarn]

I understand that not everyone is technical, and I have a lot of patience and empathy. I will help someone to better be able to give me a sense of the problem. However, I routinely I run into someone who will just state over and over "It doesn't work and you need to fix it right now." after I have asked them a question to better diagnoses the situation. I just can't comprehend the individual who provides me with no details and is not willing to help me help them.

It's even funner in my job. I service video games at theaters, resturaunts, and that sort of thing. So I'll get service calls saying "We need you out here immediatly. XXX and YYY are broke."

I'll ask, "What's wrong with them?" Reasonable enough question, right?

The answer? "I don't know. Some customer came up and said they were broke, so you need to get out here right away to fix them."

>Sigh.< Is it worth pointing out that a number of my locations are over an hour from my house? Worse, I don't work for you. Don't tell me what my schedule is going to be. I have professional pride; if I know there is a problem, I'll arrange to get it fixed. But if you don't let me know what hte problem is, I may not be able to fix it. That's why I asked you-- politely-- to find out from the customers what the problems are, when they come up to you. Why don't you have enough common sense to follow up? Because, as often as not, it's a PITC issue*, not a game problem.

* Problem is touching the controllers. The arcade verson of PIBKAC issue.

[CrazedClerk]

I get this with video game systems.

SC: "My Xbox stopped working last night."

Me: "Ok what's the problem with it?"

SC: (as if I'm incompetent) "I just told you, it doesn't work."

Me: (groaning inside) "I know that sir/ma'am but I'm asking what in particular is the problem."

I've been through these conversation way more times than I ever expected to be.

[flybye023]

My favorite technical description of equipment at work is "it's dead". Now, to me "it's dead" means no power, no reaction, no anything. However, when I actually get out to the equipment it is up and running, just not well. The other thing that just drives me nuts is these people will NOT turn off a computer and turn it back on if there's a problem. They just expect us to fix the problem with the computer "as is" even though the whole system is frozen and they can't get a response. Somehow we are magically supposed to get it to work.

[skeptic53]

The flip side...

"It doesn't work" has to be one of the most annoying lines ever.

Second-most annoying: After rebooting, checking cables, defragging, re-installing drivers, updating Windows, refreshing the network, etc & THEN calling tech support, after describing the problem in detail, then comes the classic TS response:

"That shouldn't be happening."

No, duh, that's why you were called...