Dear Users... (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people)

[alfaniner]

We had a guy like that. Brilliant but loud and annoying as hell to work with. The day came when someone on the other end of a conference call, in another cube, that he wasn't involved in, heard him swearing. Fired the next day.

Depending on where you live, there may be a case made to HR that this person makes for an intolerable work environment.

 

[Faydra]

Ha! One of my co-workers has a sign up in his cube that says "I don't give a ****".
I have no idea how he gets away with that, except that he actually happens to be super nice and also brilliant. Swearing happens where I work everywhere all the time. They even passed out shirts that said "Execute the **** out of holiday".

 

[Blue Mountain]

I have never understood why people don't understand that when you're an asshole, you get poorer service.

Just got off the phone to a real curmudgeon, who was... let's say... very dissatisfied with the level of service he has received. Does he never wonder why people don't enjoy helping him? Why they want to get out of his presence as soon as they can? Maybe try being a little nicer to the people who are helping you, yeah?

Yes, we're supposed to give equal service to everyone. But it's a completely normal human reaction to not like people who are unpleasant to you.

I feel the same way about people who are rude to waiters in restaurants. Be nice, get better service. It's as simple as that.

By contrast, I spoke to another person earlier, whose account was being deactivated (in error) while they were trying to use it. I went the extra mile for that guy, because he was nice about it. He didn't try to blame me (or us) for the problem, even though it really was our fault. He was understanding and patient and polite and I felt good about getting the problem sorted out for him.

People. People are weird.

For sure I agree with this, especially for the all the support people who are as helpful as you.

Now look at what I'm trying to get resolved. I'm trying to sign up for a large e-commerce site here in Canada. I've been on the support line with them three times for this issue and have not yet been successful.

The problem is I'm not receiving the emails they send out requesting confirmation of my sign-up request. Here's what I told them in the most recent chat session:

Several times now I've tried to sign up for EcommerceSite using the following two email addresses:

ecommerce-site-mail@myprivatedomain.ca
ecommerce-site-yiywiznj-mail@shaw.ca

I have never received the email you claim to have sent verifying my registration.

I've had more than one interaction with EcommerceSite's help line on this. To date the only substantive responses I've had are:

1. "Our investigation shows neither of these accounts are registered." That's hardly profound: they're not registered because I'm not receiving the registration emails!

2. "Try registering using a free email account from Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo."

These are NOT acceptable options.

- Gmail is owned by Google, which first and foremost is an advertising company. I loathe most advertising on the web and hate the cesspool that advertising and advertisers have turned the modern web into.

- Hotmail is owned by Microsoft, which has a long and sordid history of anticompetitive behaviour. Their Windows 10 product is crap and I hate the fact that Microsoft, one of the richest companies in the modern computer business, is using its operating system--which is supposed to be a utility product to provide an interface between the hardware and the user--for advertising. Basically, it's taken what's supposed to be a neutral platform and is using it to harvest user data and selling it for its own profit.

- Yahoo has had serious data breaches, at one point leaking the personal information of over a billion users! I wouldn't trust them to secure a ten ton concrete block chained to the seabed.

Ergo, I completely and absolutely refuse to do business with any of these companies.

Next points:

* I have used my @myprivatedomain.ca email address to sign up for eBay, Amazon, LinkedIn, and dozens of other accounts. Why is it that only EcommerceSite is having trouble with it?

* shaw.ca is a MAJOR Canadian web service provider and ISP. There is no excuse for EcommerceSite not being able to send email to them.

Final point: this is EMAIL. The standards date back 35 YEARS. Note that word, "standards." There are well documented ways for email to work. I am frankly amazed that EcommerceSite as a company is unable to deliver a simple email message using standard protocols.

Further, @myprivatedomain.ca is unfiltered. There is no spam or junk folder--all email sent there flows through to my email client, and it's the one doing the filtereing. There's no need to whitelist @ecommercesite.ca because it isn't on the blacklist. Correspondence I’ve had with with the web hosting provider hosting myprivatedomain.ca, shows no attempts by ecommerce-site.ca to connect to their email servers.

What came out of that last chat session?

Nothing, just like the other two.

Their support is terrible: they don't open tickets, they don't give case numbers, and they don't follow up. Is it any wonder I may get a little short with their personnel the next time I try to raise this issue?

 

[CORed]

For sure I agree with this, especially for the all the support people who are as helpful as you.

Now look at what I'm trying to get resolved. I'm trying to sign up for a large e-commerce site here in Canada. I've been on the support line with them three times for this issue and have not yet been successful.

The problem is I'm not receiving the emails they send out requesting confirmation of my sign-up request. Here's what I told them in the most recent chat session:



What came out of that last chat session?

Nothing, just like the other two.

Their support is terrible: they don't open tickets, they don't give case numbers, and they don't follow up. Is it any wonder I may get a little short with their personnel the next time I try to raise this issue?

It certainly seems that Ecommercesite doesn't want your business. Unless they have something you really want, that you can't get elsewhere, or they have it much cheaper than you can get it elsewhere, I'd suggest you give up on them.

 

[theprestige]

USER: Why isn't it working?

ME: Please provide the error messsage.

USER: [pastes the error message]

ME: Thanks! I see the problem. It's not working because [first half of the error message, verbatim]. You can get it working by doing [second half of the error message, verbatim].

USER: [crickets]

 

[CORed]

USER: Why isn't it working?

ME: Please provide the error messsage.

USER: [pastes the error message]

ME: Thanks! I see the problem. It's not working because [first half of the error message, verbatim]. You can get it working by doing [second half of the error message, verbatim].

USER: [crickets]

That would require actually reading the error message. My dear departed mother was a very intelligent woman who apparently turned off her brain as soon as she sat down in front of a computer. I ended up being her tech support for issues with her home computer. I had the following conversation with her many times.

Mom: I got a weird error message when I [tried to do X].
Me: What did the error message say?
Mom: I don't know, I didn't understand it.
Me: I'm sorry, that doesn't really help me much.

 

[theprestige]

That would require actually reading the error message. My dear departed mother was a very intelligent woman who apparently turned off her brain as soon as she sat down in front of a computer. I ended up being her tech support for issues with her home computer. I had the following conversation with her many times.



Mom: I got a weird error message when I [tried to do X].

Me: What did the error message say?

Mom: I don't know, I didn't understand it.

Me: I'm sorry, that doesn't really help me much.

My mom says the best computer advice I ever gave her was to read the error message, and tell the support person exactly what it says.

But I don't work with my mom. I work with software developers

 

[malbui]

The number of times people have told me something along the lines of “I didn’t read the message; I just clicked on OK”...

 

[CORed]

The number of times people have told me something along the lines of “I didn’t read the message; I just clicked on OK”...

From the user standpoint, I have to say that I have to watch myself not to do this. When I'm in a hurry, or running on "autopilot", it is really easy to get in the habit of clicking "OK" on every dialog box that pops up. Of course this is a bad habit, as I may click "OK" on something I really don't want to do.

 

[theprestige]

From the user standpoint, I have to say that I have to watch myself not to do this. When I'm in a hurry, or running on "autopilot", it is really easy to get in the habit of clicking "OK" on every dialog box that pops up. Of course this is a bad habit, as I may click "OK" on something I really don't want to do.

I mean, I do the same thing. But if I'm having problems, I slow my roll and stop to see what's going on that my habits may have missed.

One trait of end users is that it doesn't occur to them to stop, step back, and re assess.

 

[Giordano]

From the user standpoint, I have to say that I have to watch myself not to do this. When I'm in a hurry, or running on "autopilot", it is really easy to get in the habit of clicking "OK" on every dialog box that pops up. Of course this is a bad habit, as I may click "OK" on something I really don't want to do.

IMO some designers of dialog boxes use the "OK" option too carelessly. I've seen dialog boxes with the only choice being "OK." So I as user have no choice to make, right. OK.... And I've seen the opposite with "No, Yes, OK" as three choices. It seems to me that Yes should mean "Yes, go ahead with the specific process that you are proposing," whereas OK should mean only that "I read and understand what you are telling me. OK man!" Maybe even better than OK would be "I understand." In the latter case perhaps it would be just educational, or related to a process or event that cannot be stopped. "You just initiated a reformatting of your hard drive. You cannot stop it now. This will change your answer if your spouse asks you how your day went tonight. Understand? Like OK dude?"

 

[The Man]

From the user standpoint, I have to say that I have to watch myself not to do this. When I'm in a hurry, or running on "autopilot", it is really easy to get in the habit of clicking "OK" on every dialog box that pops up. Of course this is a bad habit, as I may click "OK" on something I really don't want to do.

I mean, I do the same thing. But if I'm having problems, I slow my roll and stop to see what's going on that my habits may have missed.

One trait of end users is that it doesn't occur to them to stop, step back, and re assess.

Back when automating test equipment in an engineering lab, we had it set up where the tech would just accept the reading and it would get stored in a data file and the computer would generate the full report when the test was completed. Unfortunately things can happen, wires get lose, thermocouples brake ect. If they don't get checked out and the test continues you can't go back and get that data again. As noted above just clicking 'OK' a whole bunch of times just gets to be a habit and we found people were just clicking past the questionable readings, no matter how many flashing lights and buzzers we put on the display. We called it being a 'button monkey' (push button; get banana, push button; get banana, push button; get banana...). So in this now paperless laboratory we had to reintroduce paper and have the techs write down the readings again, even though those written pages were never used for anything else. It worked, it slowed down the process and made the techs recognize the potentially bad readings so they could take action.

 

[Faydra]

A friend of my brother's once let his 10 year old mess around on his laptop saying "He can't hurt anything". When he was unable to get any response at all from the laptop and it would not boot up, he asked his son what he had done.

"I dunno".

What was the last thing you saw?

"Are you sure?".

 

[arthwollipot]

As I may have mentioned early in the thread, one thing that I wish more people understood is that error messages are meaningful.

Them: I can't do x. It won't let me.
Me: Do you get an error message?
Them: Yeah, but I don't understand any of this computer crap.
Me: Thank you for referring to my chosen area of professional expertise as "crap", and I really need to know what the error message says.

Mind you, I used to work with Lotus Notes, and one error that Notes would generate read "0D:0C". Just that an an OK button.

 

[Blue Mountain]

Mind you, I used to work with Lotus Notes, and one error that Notes would generate read "0D:0C". Just that an an OK button.

Or this wonderful error message I got from the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool gave me (paraphrased because I didn't write the message down):

The media creation tool has encountered a problem and is unable to complete the process. Try running the tool again. Error code 0x1001008D-091.

Searching the web for the error code was no use at all, because all the hits I got were people asking what caused the error. There were either no responses or a bunch of blind-leading-the-blind answers such as "I tried this and it worked for me."

As it turns out, the real problem was I had blackholed the Windows Update servers in my on-site DNS configuration (see Pi-hole network-wide ad blocker.) That resulted in the tool getting an NXDOMAIN response from DNS while looking for a server from which it could download the Windows 10 image.

Why couldn't the installer just say something like "Unable to determine IP address for download1.updates.windows.com"? Even if the message was only in English, international users could put the English phrase into a search engine and likely get back useful information in their native language. Instead they gave a garbage message that means something only to the people who wrote the code, and only Microsoft can see the source code.

 

[Wudang]

The number of times people have told me something along the lines of “I didn’t read the message; I just clicked on OK”...

There is an analogous thing that many mainframe programmers do at a major bank. On the (abysmal) course for one system (IBM's CICS) they show how to catch an error and then throw the same error. I have seen many live programs do exactly that bit of cargo cult programming. The only thing it achieves is to wipe out the error summary and replace it with a neat summary that says basically "I successfully threw an error".

Note that not just did the programmer do this but their chief programmer had then signed it off to get it live.




EXEC CICS HANDLE ABEND for those who care.

 

[arthwollipot]

Even if the error message isn't exactly meaningful on the surface, it's usually enough to be able to recognise it and know what to do about it. The "0C:0D" error in Notes was like that. I came to know exactly how to fix that one. Can't remember now because it's been too long since I've used Lotus Notes.

Don't miss it. **** Lotus Notes.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Everytime. Everytime. Everytime a user moves desks it's an automatic 1-4 hours gone.

"My icons aren't in the same place they were can you move them? When I open a Chrome window it doesn't open on the screen I'm used to, can you drag it over to my second screen. Can you sit here for an hour and move everything so it looks exactly like it did at my previous machine so I can function again?"

 

[jimbob]

Even if the error message isn't exactly meaningful on the surface, it's usually enough to be able to recognise it and know what to do about it. The "0C:0D" error in Notes was like that. I came to know exactly how to fix that one. Can't remember now because it's been too long since I've used Lotus Notes.

Don't miss it. **** Lotus Notes.

At my nephew's christening, I was speaking to someone who worked as a sales rep for IBM.

My first question was, "so I guess you have to use Lotus notes for email, then?"

I have no idea what it was like as an administrator, but it was quite idiosyncratic as a user with several different databases attached.

 

[Wudang]

At my nephew's christening, I was speaking to someone who worked as a sales rep for IBM.

My first question was, "so I guess you have to use Lotus notes for email, then?"

I have no idea what it was like as an administrator, but it was quite idiosyncratic as a user with several different databases attached.

This. Using Notes at IBM Hursley was good. It was all setup nicely and extra features and stuff added like integration with the phone/voicemail system (IBM DTMail) and then corporate "standardized" it. A strange use of the word with which I was previously unfamiliar. I ended up redirecing my mail to my AIX server.