People who want to watch

[Aressel]

Its not nice to ask to stay and watch the techs work on your computer. it makes them nervous. After all, troubleshooting is just an extended game of guess and test.

I bring this up because we had a gentleman in this morning who wanted to do so, fortunately the bench was full, so we were able to send him on his way.

Any stories?

[JustADude]

Not really, but I'd say that rule doesn't apply when it's an in-home call, such as to deal with a RG (Residential Gateway. Think Router + Cable/DSL Modem in one) that's blown up. I am just plain not leaving this guy alone with my baby in case he's one of the horror-story ones that ends up screwing the hell out of it.

[BravoOrig]

From working in friends homes and a pc shop for awhile I can say if I'm watched, I can be self concious. Most of the time though it's just annoying as they're trying to learn from what I am doing and I just want to get the issue fixed. Since I can click through and go right where I want to pretty fast, to slow down for someone is not something I like to do.

[Bagga]

If you are doing a long job, or are with a frequent repeat customer, and the customer is trying to memorise your work so he can repeat and ruin it later, why not try a carpet-bomb explanation technique. Do your standard tasks as fast as you can, whilst stating exactly what you are doing in a monotonous gabble.

"I am turning the PC on, I am opening Firefox, I am accessing the control panel, I am opening the graphics icon, I am accessing the advanced options, I am selecting the graphics mode, I am accessing the refresh rate, I am choosing 75Hz bla bla bla bla BLA BLA BLA rabbit rabbit rhubarb rhubarb." (I know, this is all BS, but it's only an example)

Information overload will send the customer running from the room, gagging.

[lordlundar]

I just say "I charge extra for lessons on computer anatomy and repair. Are you going to cough up the extra cash so I can teach you properly?" When they say no, I just reply "Okay then, I'm here to repair the machine. Kindly stop hovering over me and allow me to finish. Also, If I come back because you tried to do a repair from what you've seen, the price is doubled."

Heck, If they're within striking distance and being stupid, I might as well be making some extra cash off of them.

[raven_illusion]

The worse is remote access support, which I have to do. All of the Guess and Test is watched by the customer with popcorn and coke. They think it is daytime t.v. and are just waiting to see what happens next. I pray for the customers who want to leave the room and watch some real TV while I fix there issues....

[Fawn]

I had to fix wireless over the phone in one job. Makes things interesting when you can't see what the hell your doing. Then you have to constantly repeat instructions over and over and over and over and over until their tiny little brains do the right thing for once. Just when you think your done with that set of instructions the moron does something stupid or closes a window and you have to repeat everything all over again.

*bashes head in*

I'm guilty of standing over a person when fixing a computer. Although that's only happened maybe, once or twice since I didn't know anything about computers back then. I found it fascinating to watch actually. lol Not entirely sure why, maybe I was trying to learn something from it. I was so scared to go inside the tower for so long, I though I'd touch something and it would die on me. lol. Ya.. odd.. but I love my computer.

Oddly enough I didn't mind that job, but some people will drive you insane.

[MadRocketScientist]

I would charge more for repair training versus straight repair. Sometimes a person would ask if they could watch and I'd say "Sure". No one can ever follow my mouse or typing fast enough to retain any of it, and if they ask me to slow down, I tell them that by slowing down I will have to start charging for repair training. I could care less if the hovered, as long as they were quiet.

When I would tackle laptops in a foreign language, I kept the user nearby in case I ran across an error message that was unfamiliar (that, and sometimes the user was easy on the eyes).

[technical.angel]

I am soooo totally against it.

I wasn't, but then I had a kid come in with the FOULEST breath EVER and wanted to watch what I did with his computer. The real end of it was when I got a duplicate name error on a laptop, and when I went to change her computer name, the owner turned to me and said "What do you THINK you're doing??"

This was during the back to school rush, until she came in, I was working on 12 computers at the same time. I had a mountian (almost literally) of laptops waiting, and she's giving me a hard time. I managed NOT to mouth off, but explained what I was doing, and why, and after that, I never let the students stay. If they wanted to wait, I'd pull a chair out for them away from the work benches, but not by them.

And, ya know, there's also the fact that if someone wants to know everything I do, I can only work on one PC at a time, rather than 3 or 4 or 12 as usual.

I'm just having a bad student day... week... life..

[GolfCart34]

I have the electrician coming over to replace the breaker box and service line on my house next week on a day I'll be home. I'm not going to watch him because I don't want to be a pest while he does the job that I am paying him for. I would rather have a quality job done than a half assed job because I keep pestering. The only thing I'm going to do is bring my cat over to my boyfriend's parent's house for the day while the job is being done since I don't want the cat escaping when the electrician is going in and out of the house all day.

Not only that, but it's November and it's cold so I'll probably stay hold up in my room all day since we won't have power for a few hours and I can wrap up in a blanket if I'm cold.

But seriously, I couldn't imagine watching a tech while he's working on something of mine. I hate being watched when I'm trying to fix something so I extend the not watching courtesy to them too.

[powerboy]

I am guilty of watching. But only when I can

[Tigress]

When the cable techs came to install my new modem, I helped them do it. Neither of them could fit under or get behind my desk while my short ass could.

At my title insurance gig, the IT tech would sometimes just coach me over the speakerphone as I crawled around behind my boss' desk to troubleshoot or install something. It was much easier than him driving all the way to the office and struggling to move the desks to get behind there.

[technical.angel]

Tigress, that's a totally different thing, that's helping. That's not "What are you doing?" "What did you just click?" "Why did you click that?" "What are you doing now?"

[Qaeria]

As a rule, I do not let anyone look. Most of the time they like to stop and ask why I did one of the most insignificant and trivial things. These are also the people that insist that they observe as they are convinced that if left unsupervised I will all of a sudden change into hacker supreme. On one side, I like making triple what I normally would , but the trauma suffered from too many is not worth it.

After having an observer

[trunks2k]

I admittedly have a habit of watching people work on my stuff when I have the opportunity to. I end up learning a lot.