Why, oh why, do people do things like this?

[Moirae]

Just a couple of notes from today at work.

Mr Annoying calls in and doesn't even wait for me to ask for his phone number and greet him, instead he talks right over me and says "My internet isn't working."

Me : "What do you mean by not working? Does that mean you can't surf or are all the lights out on your modem."

Mr. Annoying : "I don't know, I just can't get online."

Me : "Well, unfortunately I need to know a little bit more than that. Can you take a look at your modem and tell me if you can see any lights on it?"

Mr. Annoying : "Well, no I can't. I'm not at home."

So I sit there dumbfounded for a second at how he could possibly know whether he's online or offline when he's not even at home and, just as I open my mouth to ask the next obvious question Mr. Annoying says "My son called and said he can't get online."

Me: "Well, from what I can see here, your modem is online. You should be able to surf. While it is probably very frustrating for your son to not have an internet connection, we do need for someone to be at your computer so we can do some troubleshooting."

And then Mr. Annoying asks "You don't need for someone over 18 to call in?"

Well, no dumbass, not to just do basic troubleshooting. Only if your internet is down and we need to schedule a tech. But no, I'd lose my job to say that, so I just tell him politely to "Please give your son a call and let him know to call us. We'll troubleshoot with him no problem."

And then there's Moron. The lady who simply CAN'T follow directions no matter how many times I tell her. It ended up a 45 minute phone call because she couldn't do EXACTLY what I told her because the very obvious icons on the screen that say "Network and Internet Connection" and "Performance and Maintenance" or "Network Connections" and "System" just apparently do not even exist on her confirmed Windows XP computer.

I still don't know what Moron was looking at. Never mind that I must have told her 20 times how to find it.

I finally OEM'd her just because I couldn't work with Moron.

[Phone Jockey]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOW. You're in tier 3, huh? I love you guys. Our tier 3 guys are awesome. However, I don't know how they deal w/ some of the nincompoops I escalate to them. Poor fellas.

[Moirae]

Nah, I'm tier one. First track troubleshooting. Heh, I get to escalate to teir 2 when things go bad but those lucky suckers don't really have to deal with the customers much, I think. Those poor guys are the ones that deal with the "Customer called in when they were moving and idiot tech didn't transfer the logins so now we have to erase the new logins, set the transfer, and make sure nothing get screwed over in the meantime" kind of stuff.

There's currently an offer for Billing section in my center, but if I get yelled at doing small stuff, can you imagine how those poor guys get yelled at when they get to refuse someone a credit?

[Depot Denizen]

I've had one repeat offender from Mil Studies...nice lady, just completely computer inept. She even managed to lose the address bar on IE. Unfortunately she tried to pull rank on you. Most of us shrugged it off. The standing rule was that we could transfer her at any time to our awesome supervisor, and she'd handle it. Our supervisor (and the director of the department) were very pro-techie, they did what they could to help the consultants. Made life down in the fishbowl much more enjoyable when you knew management had your back.

In Walk-in and Helpline there was this one dude I called "Mr. Multiplan". He had decided to retire his ancient 386 and buy a new eMachines desktop, but still wanted to use the old MS-DOS spreadsheet program called Multiplan. I did get it running after some time, and the codger monkies with it and breaks it for good this time! Ever time he came in, he had a legal pad-sized page full of questions to ask about his computer. He'd even call the helpline afterwards for more help. Eventually we weaned him of Multiplan, and he got his questions answered.

[Moirae]

I swear, if people don't understand a computer, they need to take a class to learn how to use it properly instead of expecting us petty tech's to teach them over the damned phone.

[Depot Denizen]

I agree wholeheartedly. I would like to see mandatory computer training sessions for staff and faculty, so even the departmental IT staff gets a break. They spend too much time dealing with trivial issues to actually deal with the larger issues at hand.

Lately for me, PhD means "Piled higher and Deeper", as the profs are often the worst offenders.

[Moirae]

I've been getting alot of middle aged women that should honestly know better than the dumb questions I'm hearing. You know the ones who grew up with computers.

If you're between the ages of 30 and 40, you have no excuse for not knowing what "double click the mouse" means.

[Depot Denizen]

I dunno. A lot of people in that age range just haven't had the need for a computer. If someone has little computer experience, I try and steer 'em towards a Mac. Less hassle in the long run, and they don't get viruses!

I did pretty much teach my mom (mid 50's) how to use a computer, and she's gotten good enough to install programs and run everything by herself. My dad just checks his email and looks up info and the weather on his machine.

[Moirae]

At one point, my 50-something year old mother knew almost as much as I did. I don't think there's much excuse for it.

But especially around age 30 or so. I mean, we all learn this stuff in school.

[One-Fang]

Um no, no we don't. I'm just over thirty, and while I did take computing in school, it was totally optional, and only a few people took it. We programmed in BASIC Ah, thems were the days - 20 goto 10

[Moirae]

lol, you don't need to learn programming to know how to double click a mouse and what a CD drive does.

Honestly, I started learning computers in grade three. It was not optional. It was a half hour class that everyone took once a week and it was only to learn the basics. Like how to type on it, how to double click a mouse, that sort of thing. Most of the time, we spent playing little games (there's still one that I wish I had managed to finish but we never had enough time).

A 30 year old should know what double click means.

When I got older, I elected to take more in depth courses and now know at least 5 languages but it didn't start that way.

[One-Fang]

Well, y'see, this is why I fully support having Solitaire on every PC, regardless of "no games" rules. It teaches you all about click, double click AND even drag! And they don't know they're learning!

[DGoddessChardonnay]

...We programmed in BASIC Ah, thems were the days - 20 goto 10

Heh. I had a whole semester in high school (mid 80's) on BASIC, and a year and a half of COBOL.

And now I can't recall a lick of it. Must be old age.

I wonder if they're still teaching BASIC in schools now . . .

[LostMyMind]

But especially around age 30 or so. I mean, we all learn this stuff in school.

That's real funny, while I was in high school. Every computer class I was in, I ended up being the "Is that right?" dude for the teachers. It even happen in college. If you're in your mid to late 30's or higher, it's completely understandable to have to be trained to use a computer. Took me years to get my mother to the point where she don't even ask me questions anymore unless it's a really screwy problem. In turn, she train poor daddy (who we keep on an win98 slow ass computer so he can't do much damage).

Everyone one else should have paid attention in class.

(I got some college level computer books that will make some of these techs here laugh hard since most of it is wrong, wrong, wrong.)

[Format C]

In the computer lab, I have had students that were completely ignorant of computers. In one case, this woman used to come into the lab and expect us to look over her shoulder and ask us if it is okay to do a certain step in her assignment even after we would tell her to do it. It was getting so bad, that I told one of the supervisors and recommended that we set up an appointment with her. I bounced that idea off of her and she turned it down. A few minutes later, the supervisor came in and suggested it. She made an appointment but didn't show up for it. She did not monopolize our time in the lab after that.