Tales From the Helpdesk

[Danalan]

*Originally posted by Joe_Cool *
**If I was your IT manager and decided that your wordperfect was going to be replaced with MS word, you’d either deal with it or find a new place to work. Note that in a place of business, the IT department decides what software to use, not the user. **

This type of thinking is precisely why people tend to hate IT departments. Your attitude is just as confrontational as ftg’s, and just as narrow-minded. The only reason not to give users a choice in software is to make the job easier for IT. What kind of customer service is that?

There are plenty of stories about incompetent IT people too, and those stories affect IT worker’s reputations and salaries. Restricting users choice of software ends up restricting learning opportunities for IT people.

I’ve dealt with situations where all possible concessions were made to either retain or hire a particularly brilliant or influential staff member – giving them Wordperfect is easy, and the smart thing to do.

[FairyChatMom]

*Originally posted by Danalan *
** The only reason not to give users a choice in software is to make the job easier for IT. **

Not necessarily. Sometimes it’s a matter of economy and interoperability. We get involved in projects where we have to share documents, spreadsheets, slides, and such with different parts of the organization all over the country. So we all have to be using the same software - thus has been decreed by the big mucky-mucks. Plain and simple, if you want to work here, you use Word.

[Joe_Cool]

*Originally posted by Danalan *
**This type of thinking is precisely why people tend to hate IT departments. Your attitude is just as confrontational as ftg’s, and just as narrow-minded. The only reason not to give users a choice in software is to make the job easier for IT. What kind of customer service is that?

There are plenty of stories about incompetent IT people too, and those stories affect IT worker’s reputations and salaries. Restricting users choice of software ends up restricting learning opportunities for IT people.

I’ve dealt with situations where all possible concessions were made to either retain or hire a particularly brilliant or influential staff member – giving them Wordperfect is easy, and the smart thing to do. **

IT’s purpose is not customer service. It is to make the company run smoothly, and CONSISTENTLY. Consistency in work experience, in licensing, and in support. If everybody has their own configuration and their own software, it is a support nightmare, not to mention the fact that the company can be fined and/or sued for licensing violations. The company owns those systems and the software that runs on them, and they are administered by the IT department. You run what they say you run, period.

[rjk]

Thanks, FCM and J_C! I couldn’t have said it better myself!

I guess I didn’t really make it clear in my explanation above: Only Office Admin has WP, and that’s because it’s part of the course. All my department has to do with it is installation on the network; OA supports it from there. We didn’t even know that instructor had WP, and I think I’m the only helpdesker who’s even seen it.

And almost all of our customers are happy with us, even though we don’t do WordPerfect.

[Crunchy_Frog]

If we’re all done discussing the functions of an IT Dept…

One of the things we send out is a NIC (a network interface card for the not-so-PC savvy) and it’s needed to connect the PC to our modem. To install the NIC, the PC needs to be opened up and the card installed in a PCI slot. Now this didn’t happen to me, but to the tech sitting across from me. Here’s what I heard:

“Ok, sir, you have the computer open already? And do you see the white slot it goes into?”
(pause)
“Do you mean there’s no white slots free to install the card or no white slots at all?”
(pause)
“Can you describe to me what you are seeing?”
(pause, co-worker hits mute, exclaims “Oh my GAWD!” and returns to the customer)
“Ok, sir, what I’ll need you to do is replace the cover on the monitor, and be very careful not to touch that coil.”

**Ethilrist **reminded me of this story with the line:

Also, all those people out there who think the monitor is the computer…

[Skeezix]

If I might share:

Personal Helpdesk (IOW, troubleshooting over the phone with my MIL, several years ago)

Okay, Ma, what you need to do is first insert the floppy into the A drive.

Okay, but… it won’t fit.

Is the slot longer than the disk?
(Thinking she’s trying to get a 3 1/2" disk into a 5 1/4" drive)

No, it’s the same size, but the thing won’t go in past halfway.

Alrighy then, are you inserting the disk with the label side up?

What? No, it just doesn’t fit.

Waitasec…
(Rubbing temples.)

Omitted: About ten minutes of “Label up, shiny metal circle down. Are you sure you don’t have it upside down?”

Look, just turn the disk over, and try it that way

Hey, it fits, great.

Is the drive installed upside down? You said you had the label up, and it wouldn’t fit, and now…

Well, I didn’t understand all that. I mean, the slot goes up and down, so you can’t get the label side on top, and…

So why didn’t you tell me this twenty minutes ago?

Well, I didn’t know it mattered. I just didn’t know how I was supposed to make the label be on top, so I took it off. Did that help?

Turn out this was a desktop unit, standing on end so it fit under the desk like a tower would. I don’t know which of us was being more ignorant by the time the call was done.

If she’d had a CD drive, I’d have at least been able to figure this out a lot faster. I hope. But, I can hear how it would have gone.

[sub]Well, the CD keeps falling out. Is that important? Should I have mentioned that?[/sub]

[rjk]

I just had one of those “The monitor is the computer” calls today.

Me: OK, Windows has frozen up. Let’s shut it off manually. Hold in the power switch on the box until the lights go out… Good, now press the power switch again…

Her: It looks just the same! The message is still there!

And of course I thought of this thread. I didn’t laugh until I got her rebooted and going again.

[Cardinal]

These aren’t helpdesk stories, but I taught programs like Word and Excel to end users for a while.

1. We had a man who bought a subscription to the company’s classes so he could come to anything with an open seat. I taught him Windows 95 twice, and Word 95 three times personally. He may have taken it other times also. By the third Word class, he could sort of follow the directions for the practice sessions out of the book, and could actually find the files he needed and open them. He was rumored to be a former orthopedic surgeon! There was speculation among the instructors that he had been forced to retire because of declining mental skills.

2. Me: Highlight the line of text.

Good.

Now right-click anywhere in the white space.

Anywhere in the white.

Just right-click anywhere in here (pointing).

Student: (types “click”)

M: What was that?

S: You said to write “click”.
3. Student in back of class: My mouse doesn’t work well. It skips a lot.

Me: Yeah, your mouse is really dirty in here. See, you can scrape off this dirt and it will act a lot better.

Hey, class, if you haven’t done this before, you’ll want to follow me here. Turn over your mouse, twist this circle to the left here… [etc].

Student in front: (Takes ball in hand, looks at monitor) [quietly] What happens now? (Rubs ball on mouse pad)

My computer geek friend thought that was about the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

[Rocketeer]

Completely off-topic, but my blood ran cold when I read Wikkit’s bit about loading the caravan so that the tongue weight was lessened.

What you get in that case is instability. I loaded an engineless '41 Plymouth onto a car trailer once; because the engine was missing, the cg of the car-and-trailer was way too far back and at freeway speeds we got some terrifying gyrations. Stopped at the very next rest area and turned the car around on the trailer so that there was some weight on the tongue.

[Ethilrist]

The PC’s I was supporting at Target stores had the old-style CD players that had a plastic carrier for the CDs, kind of like a jewel box that worked like a 3.5" disk, with a little metal shutter that covered the read area of the CD when it wasn’t in the machine. This probably increased the longevity of the CDs immensely, given how they were mistreated in the stores.

We got a call from a tech from the company that did our in-store service, saying he was having trouble getting the CD-rom drive to work. He said he’d tried a couple of the course disks and a diagnostic disk, but nothing seemed to work. We asked him to try another disk, and he said, “That’s probably not a good idea. I’ve already got two CD’s and a floppy that drive already…”

Apparently he thought it was like a vending machine, and if he kept feeding disks into the machin, eventually it’d be able to read one…

[ivylass]

I’m not a tech, but my dad had me rolling on the floor with this one.

He and stepmom were preparing to go RVing. They purchased a laptop to take with them, so they could e-mail from the road. They set up an e-mail account with Juno.

My dad had packed up the laptop, so later on that day I went to stepmom’s desktop computer and said, “Let’s check your e-mail, okay?”

My dad said, “No, we can’t. I didn’t set it up on that computer.”

Lord bless him, now he’s e-mailing pictures, so he did learn.