Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 10

[The Man]

Pen and ink is not analogous to computers. The thing that computer people consistently overlook or simply cannot understand is that the vast majority of people simply aren't computer people, as the tools are currently conceived of, designed, and intended to be used. It's not even a question of whether they grew up with computers. The things are just not as straightforward and intuitive as we the five percent think they are. We the five percent who naturally grok this stuff and take it for granted that everyone else can do the same.

And it's not something that can be entirely solved by just telling people to figure out how to computer better. A lot of people are already at their limit, just doing simple, predefined tasks by rote.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/

Heck, even computer people do it. Almost 2 decades ago I was training customer technicians (at another site) on some of our equipment being installed. As always, the first thing you do when there is an error is to look at the error list to see what it is. Nope, even after just being instructed what I would find is (from the operation logs)...

Buzzer Stop
Error Reset
Run

Buzzer Stop
Error Reset
Run

Buzzer Stop
Error Reset
Run

Buzzer Stop
Error Reset
Run


Never Error List. So not even trying to find out what the error is to correct. Thing was, that was what they were used to, our competitors machines were just such crap they'd just trip errors without anything being consistently wrong. While our self recoverable errors would, well, recover themselves and be noted in the error log or just the event log. Those errors that did require a tech to recover thus needed that tech to do more than just press error reset. I had to really drill that into them. As I'm training some of the new techs these past weeks what I tell them is that while there are some errors that could be self-recovering but aren't because for various reasons you want the tech to get involved and find out what is going on.

ETA: I also usually relate some instances where what had been non-self-recovering errors were made self-recovering and bad stuff happened.

 

[arthwollipot]

Welcome to hell.

It's incredibly busy this morning and many staff have called in sick. Right this moment is the first time this morning that there hasn't been calls waiting 20-25 minutes or more.

 

[catsmate]

Welcome to hell.

It's incredibly busy this morning and many staff have called in sick. Right this moment is the first time this morning that there hasn't been calls waiting 20-25 minutes or more.

I have the day off due to burning accumulated leave. Long weekends until xmas.....

 

[alfaniner]

I have the day off due to burning accumulated leave. Long weekends until xmas.....

Maybe you can use that time assembling a legal case against Facebook/Meta for swiping your avatar! (sort of)

 

[catsmate]

Maybe you can use that time assembling a legal case against Facebook/Meta for swiping your avatar! (sort of)

I'm afraid it's a fairly generic NAT symbol.
Perhaps I should go back to the Triskelion? Or develop a rotating Reuleaux triangle one....

 

[Norman Alexander]

I'm afraid it's a fairly generic NAT symbol.
Perhaps I should go back to the Triskelion? Or develop a rotating Reuleaux triangle one....

First dibs goes to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. This has been their TV logo since the early 1960's.

[IMGw=500]https://www.abc.net.au/news/image/5542936-3x2-940x627.jpg[/IMGw]

It's a Lissajous curve, as is the Meta logo.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Alright I'm done.

If all I have is a contextless e-mail from you with the subject line HELP ASAP and nothing else, you haven't put in a valid troublecall and as far as I'm concerned you don't have a problem that I need to assist you with.

I'm just gonna sit on this one and not act and see what happens.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Alright I'm done.

If all I have is a contextless e-mail from you with the subject line HELP ASAP and nothing else, you haven't put in a valid troublecall and as far as I'm concerned you don't have a problem that I need to assist you with.

I'm just gonna sit on this one and not act and see what happens.

"Thanks for finally responding if only in this indirect way. I need HELP ASAP in how to make a trouble call. Please respond immediately. You know the number."

 

[TragicMonkey]

Alright I'm done.

If all I have is a contextless e-mail from you with the subject line HELP ASAP and nothing else, you haven't put in a valid troublecall and as far as I'm concerned you don't have a problem that I need to assist you with.

I'm just gonna sit on this one and not act and see what happens.

If I got one like that they'd damn well better be trapped in a collapsed stairwell or something. And if they're not, they will be.

 

[Darat]

Alright I'm done.

If all I have is a contextless e-mail from you with the subject line HELP ASAP and nothing else, you haven't put in a valid troublecall and as far as I'm concerned you don't have a problem that I need to assist you with.

I'm just gonna sit on this one and not act and see what happens.

They'll send Skippy if it's a real emergency.

 

[JoeMorgue]

This is what I mean by learned helplessness.

We ask them to call the help desk or submit a troublecall through the online portal. They didn't want to do that because it took so long.

So they started e-mailing the local IT group directly. We asked them to submit troublecalls and they just don't do it.

That evolved over time to them e-mail individual IT people directly and calling/texting us on our phones.

And throughout all of that the information provided got less and less until it reach the current point where no joke, no exaggeration, the most common method of getting "troublecall" (if you can even call it that) is this kind of "I need help NOW, no I can't give you any further info" direct contact.

Hell it's not even that. The e-mail I got this morning DIDN'T EVEN GO TO ME. She sent it to another random IT tech who is on the other side of the city at a completely different site and he had to send it to me.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Dear Users: the words "include" and "exclude" are opposites. If you use the wrong one by mistake when asking for some data, you really cannot blame anyone but yourself, and should not throw a hissyfit that would be unbecoming in a four-year-old.

 

[Norman Alexander]

NOT(Dear Users: the words "include" and "exclude" are opposites. If you use the wrong one by mistake when asking for some data, you really cannot blame anyone but yourself, and should not throw a hissyfit that would be unbecoming in a four-year-old.)

Fixed.

 

[arthwollipot]

I love the way people can create their own tickets in the portal now.

Short Description: When I starting my laptop I am seen two light patches in black screen on the right side of the laptop.Also I am getting burning smell after sometime . But the

Description: My lap top is having some issues

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I love the way people can create their own tickets in the portal now.

Just don't let the blue smoke out!

 

[TragicMonkey]

I love the way people can create their own tickets in the portal now.

Ugh. It's a worse version of how some people use their email subject lines. Like this:


Subject: quick question
Content: long, complex question that's going to take you days of research and experimentation, with much back-and-forth between multiple parties, conference calls, and conflicting email chains that will expand in length and number of participants

Subject: thanks so much!
Content: thankless, horrible task that should not be assigned to you and when you do it they will complain about it, probably directly to your boss or higher

Subject: holiday party!
Content: we've dreamt up a mandatory activity in the most inconvenient location at the most inconvenient time, and you'll have to work extra hours to do all the work you missed, and the food will be mediocre, the activities boringly stupid, and you will emerge despising your coworkers and management even more than you do already

Subject: great work on X
Content: please do Y, Z, and W just like you did X, only different, and faster. And when you're done we'll talk about A - H.

Subject: new hire
Content: to help with the growing workload, we've hired more staff! But before they can help you'll have to train them for a year while doing all the work yourself alone in your free time. They don't have the qualifications or experience you do but it'll balance out because we're paying them the same if not more than we're paying you!

Subject: please don't go!
Content: without writing down exactly how to do everything you do now, so we can find a braindamaged golden retriever to do all your work.

 

[arthwollipot]

One of my greatest joys is closing an incident with code Caller Unresponsive when there's the word URGENT in capitals in the title.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Ugh. It's a worse version of how some people use their email subject lines. Like this:

...snipped examples of subject lines contradicted by content...

Subject: holiday party!
Content: we've dreamt up a mandatory activity in the most inconvenient location at the most inconvenient time, and you'll have to work extra hours to do all the work you missed, and the food will be mediocre, the activities boringly stupid, and you will emerge despising your coworkers and management even more than you do already

That example is unlike the rest because the two words of its subject line convey all information stated by its content.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I do enjoy the fact that although my company employees about 300 people the site I work at is only 4 and Headquarters is several hundred miles away so "mandatory fun" rarely comes up.

 

[malbui]

I do enjoy the fact that although my company employees about 300 people the site I work at is only 4 and Headquarters is several hundred miles away so "mandatory fun" rarely comes up.

I'm not at all unhappy that Covid continues to mean that mandatory fun is still out of the question. Last week we received confirmation that there will be no big staff dinner at the year end because of safety protocols, but the same budget per head will be made available to department heads for smaller events. So it's ice hockey followed by Korean BBQ for my team. Full of win.