# The sweetest thing for an IT person to hear **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 28, 2001, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355 "2001-09-28T18:09:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Slacker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6bbea6/32.png) [@Slacker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slacker)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355/1 "2001-09-28T18:09:06Z")
> [@](#): > > I don’t know what happened but some time between 10 and 11 this morning I was finally able to get into Outlook thru vpn. You can close my request. I love self-healers. Amen! ---
**Author:** ![Lazarus7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/67e7ee/32.png) [@Lazarus7](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lazarus7)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355/2 "2001-09-28T18:12:25Z")
and of course, you still have to fill out the necessary paper work in the WO system … and bill your time accordingly! ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tof](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/cdc98d/32.png) [@The\_Tof](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tof)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355/3 "2001-09-28T18:17:07Z")
ahhh… my favorite phone calls… A\> It happens everytime i do thi… it not doing it anymore. Never mind. B\> Well, while I was on hold, i got it figured out. Have a good one. 🙂 Self Healers kick ass! ---
**Author:** ![Saltire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saltire/32/553_2.png) [@Saltire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saltire)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355/4 "2001-09-28T18:30:57Z")
Ah, but let’s not forget that some self-healers don’t like to let go. Then, they call anyway and want you to somehow troubleshoot something that no longer exists. That can be much worse than the people who call with an actual issue to solve. ---
**Author:** ![redtail23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/3e96dc/32.png) [@redtail23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/redtail23)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355/5 "2001-09-28T18:35:45Z")
You mean, someone actually took the time to _let you know_ they no longer had a problem?!? As opposed to waiting for you to travel across campus, find their building, find their desk, wait for them to get back from \, and THEN say “oh, that’s been working since this morning”!?! Amazing. Simply amazing. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Delta-9](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3be4f8/32.png) [@Delta-9](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Delta-9)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355/6 "2001-09-28T18:52:11Z")
Reminds me of a commercial I heard on the way to work this morning: “Fred, I just promised everybody remote access today. What is remote access?” “Fred, you know that e-mail virus you told us not to open? I opened it.” “Fred, I turned my computer off and on like you told me to, and now my phone doesn’t work.” “Fred?” ---
**Author:** ![Slacker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6bbea6/32.png) [@Slacker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slacker)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355/7 "2001-09-28T18:56:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by redtail23 \* > \*\*You mean, someone actually took the time to _let you know_ they no longer had a problem?!? As opposed to waiting for you to travel across campus, find their building, find their desk, wait for them to get back from \, and THEN say “oh, that’s been working since this morning”!?! > > Amazing. Simply amazing. 😉 \*\* Actually, this was a rare case. Usually I find out when I contact the luser. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Chas.E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e99b99/32.png) [@Chas.E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chas.E)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355/8 "2001-09-28T19:31:20Z")
well, there is ONE thing you can hear from a luser that is even better than the OP. It goes something like “according to the manual, here on page 127, it says X but when I do it, Y doesn’t happen.” This is the best type of call, the luser is actually reading the manual. I was once advised by a BOFH that I should conduct all tech support calls like this: Luser: I have this problem. BOFH: OK, what page of the manual did you get stuck on? Luser: umm… BOFH: OK, go through the manual, and call me back when you get stuck. The idea was to divert all support calls into lusers reading documentation, if they hadn’t read the docs, no support, and most support questions are simple enough to be solved by reading the manual. This was obviously not a very practical idea, but I can see his point. I actually applied this successfully in training, I used to sit down lusers for training and start with “ok, let’s start with page 1 of the manual…” Some people wont RTFM without someone sitting beside them making them do it. I made a lot of money watching people RTFM. ---
**Author:** ![Tranquilis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tranquilis/32/3639_2.png) [@Tranquilis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tranquilis)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355/9 "2001-09-28T19:59:05Z")
> [@](#): > > I made a lot of money watching people RTFM. I love this. It’s so fun watching their little eyes light up when they find the solution the problem themselves. Then, some even realize how annoying they’ve been, and actually _appologize_! ---
**Author:** ![tisiphone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tisiphone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tisiphone)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355/10 "2001-09-28T20:52:40Z")
Geez, and here I thought the sweetest thing was “Thank you.” Although…what you mentioned is nice too. My favorite response to situations like that is “Thank you for calling the Psychic Helpdesk. Our clairvoyants noticed the problem and we dispatched the faith healers immediately. Your bill has been telepathically beamed to you.” ---
**Author:** ![Manduck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manduck/32/256_2.png) [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355/11 "2001-09-28T21:26:22Z")
Some lusers reward you with gifts. I have, on separate occasions from differnet people received candy, a nice coffee mug, and a bottle of wine. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Great\_Gazoo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/67e7ee/32.png) [@The\_Great\_Gazoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Great_Gazoo)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355/12 "2001-09-28T21:34:52Z")
Isn’t it amazing?? I swear that in my last job, every time someone said “This doesn’t work”, I sat down and tried it and it worked. They started looking at me with a little fear in their eyes. They knew I didn’t do anything, but they also knew it didn’t work before I sat down. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![redtail23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/3e96dc/32.png) [@redtail23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/redtail23)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355/13 "2001-09-28T22:14:43Z")
Actually I don’t mind the disappearing problem too much. Sometimes I have them, too, after all. 😉 But I wish I got gifts. I like the “what page of the manual…” idea. Too bad we don’t actually have any of those. ☹ I think the one that ticked me off the most was when I spent over an hour trying to resolve a problem on a dumb VT terminal. I didn’t handle those very often, I was covering for someone else. I only asked five or six times, “Have you moved this or touched any of the cables?”, since that was our most common problem. Every time, they insisted that they had not even TOUCHED the thing, it just quit working. Eventually I realized that they had plugged the mainframe cable into the telephone socket. When I pointed this out, they actually said “Oh, well, yeah, we must have done that when we moved it. We had to move it in order to move this desk, you know.”!!! :mad::mad::mad: ---
**Author:** ![Chas.E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e99b99/32.png) [@Chas.E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chas.E)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355/14 "2001-09-28T22:17:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by The Great Gazoo \* > **I swear that in my last job, every time someone said “This doesn’t work”, I sat down and tried it and it worked.** Yeah, there’s a BOFH term for this, “I/O Error” (Idiot Operator). ---
**Author:** ![techchick68](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ea5d25/32.png) [@techchick68](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/techchick68)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355/15 "2001-09-28T23:01:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by The Great Gazoo \* > > I swear that in my last job, every time someone said “This doesn’t work”, I sat down and tried it and it worked. > > They started looking at me with a little fear in their eyes. They knew I didn’t do anything, but they also knew it didn’t work before I sat down. :eek: I explain this (to help the person feel better) that the computer _knows_ I am on the way and it fixes itself, it’s my kharma or something. It may be wrong but gives them a little giggle to know that stuff happens like that. 😉 Just like when you take your car to the mechanic. It suddenly stops it’s horrible tantrum. ---
**Author:** ![Zyada](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zyada/32/3028_2.png) [@Zyada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zyada)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355/16 "2001-09-28T23:18:22Z")
I just call it the Hammack touch. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tof](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/cdc98d/32.png) [@The\_Tof](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tof)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355/17 "2001-09-28T23:43:12Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Chas.E \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by The Great Gazoo \* > > **I swear that in my last job, every time someone said “This doesn’t work”, I sat down and tried it and it worked.** > > Yeah, there’s a BOFH term for this, “I/O Error” (Idiot Operator). \*\* We refer to it as an ID 10 T error ---
**Author:** ![Natural-J-Bankie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/59ef9b/32.png) [@Natural-J-Bankie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Natural-J-Bankie)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2001, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sweetest-thing-for-an-it-person-to-hear/84355/18 "2001-09-29T00:10:41Z")
The famous PEBKAC Problem exists between keyboard and chair. Or the BSD (not BSOD) error - between seat and desk.