I know you IT guys think us end users are idiots. . .

The BBQ Pit
21

I guess I’m really lucky that my IT guys know I’m PC literate. They always assume I’ve tried restarting / pressing the right buttons etc. They say things like “Download and reinstall the drivers and call us if that doesn’t fix it.”

However one of them (There’s three) doesn’t trust what I tell him. He also assumes everyone lies. I had a problem with my printer, we tried all the usual, and he spent the next Four Hours looking for spyware, checking my browser history, browsing the harddisk, etc trying to find proof it was my fault rather than actually fixing the problem.

22

A friend of mine had to service a computer that “wouldn’t work after my desk chair bumped it.” The woman had a tower CPU that sat on the floor by her desk, and claimed that she rolled her chair back to grab some paper and bumped into it. When my friend picked up the unit, it sounded like a box of Lego.

“Bumped it with a chair?”… Yeah right, try: “Got mad and rolled it down the basement stairs.”

23

The good ones soon get promoted or get better jobs, the bad ones stay on thanks to the management fantasy that working from a conversation script is any substitute for technical knowledge. As a result I personally have never interacted with a tier 1 tech who rated anything higher than “dumbwad”. And what gets me the most is the ignorant arrogance… they’ll sit around and chortle… “huh huh… that dumbass edited the registry… why would he do that when we’d be glad to reformat it for him? Everybody knows that editing the registry will make your computer will melt.”

True story… actually my foothold into the IT business many years ago was through a helpdesk. One day I called the Microsoft number for help hooking up a modem, and when they called me back after getting disconnected, I saw that it was a local call-center. I though “I know WinNT better than this dumbwad”, went there the next day to fill out an application, and the next week I was working there. Very soon my performance distinguished me and I was promoted to king of the dumbwads. But 3 months later the center lost the contract because they were all a bunch of dumbwads, and while they scattered on to other call centers, I moved on to greater things.

It’s just the nature of the beast. It’s possible to have good call center techs, I am living proof, but mainaining a high front-line skill level seems to be at the bottom of the priority list.

Oh yes, of course. If they can find the slightest shred of a doubt that it’s something you did, then they can go with the braindead solution of wiping your machine and re-installing it. In fact I’m surprised to hear even went to the trouble of looking for evidence. God forbid they actually cruised across google for similar problems or exercised their own moldy problem-solving apparati.

24

I’m an IT guy. I worked one place that was 9 separate sites scattered over a several mile radius, with 350 employees. Fully 2 of us were IT people. Why yes, it was a non-profit. Why? Anyway, we had no remote-control software to the remote sites. One user called me one day in a huff because her printer had broken for about the 50th time, and I needed “to come over here to fix it”. Uh, OK, you’re 20 minutes away. Maybe we can fix this over the phone. I start asking questions. The response: “My printer doesn’t work! You asking me questions isn’t gonna fix it!” But, maybe we could just try- “Ahhh! It doesn’t work, you need to come here and fix it!” Just try this- “It’s not doing ANYTHING!!” But, I can hear the printer in the background, printing something. She hung up on me. To this day, I have no idea if she can print.

Once I got another irate call from some users because “We can’t print!! We have two printers, and neither works!!” Since this was in the same building, I went to their offices, where I was greeted with dagger looks and pissy comments. After a brief investigation, I announced, “OK, that printer was out of paper, and that one was turned off.” You think I got an “oh, sorry”? Nope.

I really do make an effort to be polite to everyone. And it does sound like the OP has to deal with some awful tech support. But some users just need a good smacking.

On the other side, I had to call tech support for my DSL one day. I was pretty certain the problem was on their end, but I wanted to be sure. The guy I called was obviously reading a script. OK, fine. After the perfunctory check found no problem, he announced, “You have to reinstall the operating system.” I blew a fuse and started saying “Escalate the call!” to everything he said. He said, “Escalate to who?” My reply, “To whoever you escalate to when you can’t fix the problem!” Finally his “supervisor” came on and admitted they were having problems on their end. So, the instruction to reinstall the OS was what, then? An April Fools’ prank? This was Verizon, not some rinky-dink outfit. Idiots!

25

One of my regular customers brought me her sons laptop. One hinge was pretty much destroyed, apparently by an impact of some sort, dropped, whatever.

Son sat there with a straight face and said “It just fell apart”. Laptops are often mounted with 1" or so pins driven into the body of the laptop with screws driven through them at a 90 degree angle to hold them in place. The screws on that hinge were sheared off. Granted we are not talking about a huge burly screw…but 4 of them???

I looked at it again at the pile of mangled plastic that used to be the corner of a $1200 laptop and said no it didn’t what happened?

“It just fell apart for no reason” :rolleyes:

I handed it back and said, sorry, its dead.

26

You would not BELIEVE how many times a day I am lied to.

I asked a user if she had restarted. She said yes, she restarted multiple times before calling me…so she was NOT gonna do it again. We checked the logs…she hadn’t restarted in a week.

But we will never accuse a user of lying and we will never tell a user that something isn’t happening. Screen shots are worth a thousand words, as someone said earlier and Netmeeting is even better. If we can connect and see it for ourselves…but at the very least we’ll send someone to take a look at it.

27

Any tech operation that puts reinstalling Windows in the script for first level techs needs to be destroyed. I say that having managed first level techs. Their job is to screen out the obvious, and often they’ll use any step they can to get people off the phone if they don’t know what to do and don’t have a good point of escalation.

It drives me nuts for two reasons. Firstly, it’s a complete waste of the customer’s time as it’s not usually necessary and is based on a fundamental lack of understanding of their product. Often, it’s the computer equivalent of totalling a car because the radio won’t turn on. It’s ridiculous to offer the nuclear option unless you have strong, explainable reasons. Such as, “your system has been massively damaged by the malware and spyware on your unprotected system, and all measures to fix the problem without reinstallation have failed”. Not, “well, I can’t fix it and don’t know what’s wrong, so reinstall Windows with no other programs to see if our little app will work now”.

Secondly, people really, really don’t believe you when it is actually absolutely necessary. We hate, hate, hate to even suggest people to reinstall Windows because it is a huge pain in the ass and a lot of users can’t manage it anyway (if they can even find, or ever had, their system disks). It’s always the absolute last step and never something we would offer flippantly under any circumstances. However, Windows Vista has a few pleasant little issues and in certain very controlled circumstances (one particular issue that we’ve encountered enough times, identified the exact symptoms, can verify the symptoms are caused by the same problem, and have tried every possible remote means to fix) we do basically recommend a Windows reinstall because nothing else will work. We always do so with hat in hand and explain carefully what exactly is wrong with the OS, our experiences with the problem, and how it is known to be a major systemic issue and will very likely continue to cause them issues without our software involved. I still hate to do it every time and, most of the time, people respond with disbelief and anger because they’ve been recommended the same thing by some assclown who has no understanding of what he’s doing. Even when the customer responds with thanks and understanding, it still sucks. As far as I’m concerned, tech support failed to fix a problem if forcing a customer to reinstall the OS themselves is the solution.

28

The liars are one thing. I can deal with the liars. They all tell the same lies. What annoyed the shit out of me when working first tier tech support was the “clicker-aheaders”.

I’m not talking here about someone who knows what they’re doing and can navigate all the way into the Device Manager for me if I say “could you open device manager?”. I’m talking about this scenario, where we’ve already established that the end-user doesn’t know their arse from their elbow:

SI: Could you please click the start button.
EU: Do you want me to turn the computer off?
SI: No, I just need you to open the start menu.
EU: So I press the button on the front of the box?
SI: No, just move your mouse cursor to the bottom left corner of the screen and click on the button that says “Start”
EU: Oh, okay (in the background I hear clickyclickyclickyclicky)
EU: Done!
SI: Sorry, what have you got on the screen at the moment?
EU: Oh, I’ve got my email open because it’s my email that’s not working and that’s where we need to go to fix it, right?

That’s just one of the reasons I got out.

29

Maybe she’s just an idiot - did she turn the monitor on and off multiple times instead?

30

I see that IT people really do think that the people they speak to are idiots. So it’s O.K. to belittle end users and call us liars. Because that’s what we are-- idiot liars.
Yeah, my boss will be calling IT from now on.

31

Both sides can be idiots. Depending on what side you’re on colours the issue. You are acting all indignant coz you weren’t treated very well. People on the other side are also treated like fools and without respect and that colours how they view the people that ring them.

Fools and superior, self entitled fuckwits will always exist everywhere and in every job, get used to it. Complain to a manager if you have cause but try not to let the jerks colour everyone badly.

yojimbo:- IT support for many a year. I’ve seen gobshites on both sides be totally in the wrong.

32

Plus I don’t see any examples of IT people gleefully recounting stories of how someone would call in and they’d automatically start denying everything that person said, unlike in Biggirl’s example, or otherwise being rude to the customer. Sounds like you just have an environment/IT supervisor who allows the IT staff to be jerks.

33

My mom does this. We don’t live in the same city, so I have to help her with her PC over the phone sometimes. I love my mom dearly, and I am always, of course, very nice to her. But, jeez, Mom, it’s hard to hit a moving target.

34

So start your own thread about how stupid end users are. Don’t come into my thread about how the IT people at my work place treat people like idiots and then tell stories about all the idiots you’ve dealt with.

Because it sure seems as if all you IT guys are implying that what was done to me in my OP was justified – just look at what stupid liars you end users are!
I am not an idiot or a liar and yet it is SOP to treat me like one. As I said before, I have worked customer service and yes some people don’t know what they are talking about and are abusive and lie and tell me they’ve paid their bill when they know they haven’t and yet, in all my years of customer service, I never treated my customers as if they were retarded children like IT guys treat end users.

Seriously guys, listen to yourselves.

35

Or maybe you shouldn’t add things like this to your OP

People are coming in and answering, yes people do all these things. Did you really believe that wasn’t going to happen? You’ve been here long enough to know that this was a certainty.

Really? You’ll be able to quote someone saying that how you were treated was justified.

You may not be an idiot but you are coming across as a bit of a fucking whining bint I have to say. Not your OP BTW that was fine but your subsequent posts are IMO. Nobody from what I can see is saying how you were treated is justified. They are just giving their experience of the other side.

You were treated like that by your IT guy. If I acted like that on the phone and ignored a users problem by just dismissing their input I’d have a manager on my back very quickly.

Maybe you should try reading them again. I can see people giving reasons why IT people can be jerks and why some burn out quickly or end up not giving a fuck. They are reasons not excuses. Again, if you feel you have been treated badly you should complain. You’d be perfectly justified in doing so as the IT analyst you dealt with seems to have left you with a machine that wasn’t functioning correctly due to their ignorance of your actual problem.

36

The IT guys may not think you’re actually lying, but users do a couple other things that can annoy IT staff and could illicit that sort of response…

1 Misinterpret what’s happening and misreport the symptoms

and closely related

2 Misdiagnose the problem and misreport the symptoms (bias to fit diagnosis).

I’ve been in IT for ten years, and I HATE deskside support, partly because folks do stuff like this. I did it for about a year when I was getting started in this business, but I’m a lot happier and more productive in the back office.

37

I don’t automatically think that everyone I talk to is an idiot… I start from the assumption that the end user is at least familiar with what they use every freaking day. They, themselves, will prove whether or not they are an idiot within the first few minutes of the call. Nor do I assume that people are lying to me without cause; again within a few minutes of the start of the call, I’ll have a pretty good idea if you are being honest or not based on our trouble-shooting. And trust me, it is usually very easy to tell when someone is being less than forthcoming.

Yes, a fair portion are either idiots, liars, or both. Sorry, that’s the way it is. Based on your OP, I wouldn’t put you in either camp… sounds like you just got a bad IT guy who treated you like crap. I’d have a word with his supervisor.

If you are as petulant on the phone as you sound in this thread (and I realize that you are probably not… you’re just blowing off steam here, I assume!), then yes, please. Your IT guy will appreciate it. :wink:

38

Yeah, I agree he was a surly bastard. Even if he didn’t believe you, customer service demands that you don’t indicate to the customer that you think they’re either lying OR an idiot. Both are unacceptable in my organization, and he’d have gotten written up if you’d complained.

edited to add: My post was only addressing the last paragraph of your post–about do users lie–in case that wasn’t clear.

39

Early morning convo with IT after IT loses remote access while trying to fix the same damn problem (no, I don’t know why he lost remote access.)

IT guy: What do you see on the screen?
Me: A command prompt for the H drive.
IT guy: What does it say?
Me (reading the screen): Microsoft Windows Version 5. [whatever version it said] Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp and a command prompt for the H drive.
IT guy: Hit escape.
Me (after hitting escape): Nothing happens.
IT guy: So what are you seeing on the screen?
Me: Microsoft Windows Version blah blah blah blah a space an ‘H’ a colon a slash and a greater than symbol.
IT guy: Hit ‘x’.
Me: All that does is put an ‘x’ in the command line.
IT guy: Oh, you have a command prompt?
Me: Isn’t that what I said-- twice?
IT guy: Just type exit. If it happens again, call.
Makes me wanna drive to Manhattan and smack him upside the head.

40

I started out working on a help desk in the mid-1990s at a small company where I was the only “help desk guy” – in other words, any shit the network guy or database guy (there wasn’t a lot of work on either side) didn’t want to do, I got stuck with it. Getting paid peanuts and treated accordingly, I moved on to another IT gig – this time I was level 2 (PC Tech). Woohoo, right?

Wrong. This was by far my worst IT job. It was at a hospital with several satellite clinics. I was assigned to the hospital itself. I’ve never worked with such a glut of losers and know-nothings. I think I closed about 1400 help desk tickets while I was there and the next person after closed like 400. I was motivated to fix things and be done with the tickets; my co-workers were motivated to smoke pot all day and bitch about the users while fixing nothing. Even if they tried, they weren’t computer people and likely would have failed. They were there because they were people who knew people. Further, the help desk was supposed to be level 1, but all they did was open tickets and assign them. They offered no help to the users – users that were mostly either dumb or impatient, or both. To make matters much worse, IT management added fuel to that fire in a big way.

They had the brilliant idea of replacing all the dumb terminals with PCs using a PC-to-mainframe connection server (Microsoft SNA Server for those keeping track). They bought low-end Celeron PCs from Micron with Windows 95 that were slow as hell and constantly crashing; something the users never experienced prior. Dumb terminals don’t crash. There was absolutely no added benefit to this. The users didn’t care about e-mail and weren’t about to begin typing documents, as “it wasn’t in their job description.”

I was in the unfortunate position of being fodder for a poor management decision. Did they understand this? No. I initially took some serious verbal abuse because of this change. Doctors and nurses can be vicious when things on which they rely aren’t working as they should. I hated getting calls like from a doctor like, “My new computer won’t turn on!” because I knew it was likely due to the company cheapening out on PCs and another one bit the dust, and it wouldn’t be returned to him or her for a few days. Secretaries were mostly older and refused to try to understand how to get used to the new system, mostly due to being intimidated and overwhelmed by computers. We were constantly called by the same secretaries:

Secretary: “What happens when I click the OK button?”
Me: “What’s the message it’s saying?”
Secretary: “I JUST ASKED A SIMPLE QUESTION!!! YOU HELP DESK PEOPLE ARE THE SAME!!!”

I lasted there 11 months. No fucking way was I going to continue this little venture for $17 an hour. I went on to work at a consulting firm that had significantly FEWER stupid people.

Now I don’t automatic assume ANYONE is stupid, regardless of the venue or circumstance, until I have the opportunity share ideas with them, but sometimes people are just fucking stupid and there’s nothing more to it. In the job above, I saw it on both sides, and because I worked with a bunch of dumbasses, the dumbasses on the other side just assumed (because they were after all, dumbasses) I was just another dumbass. The level of dumbassery made me want to escape.