Beauregard

I know they pay my wages but why are they so STUPID ? A call to restore files turns out to be, the user has put a floppy disk in the PC and created shortcuts rather than copies, of the files on the floppy. Now the floppy has been binned why do the shortcuts not work and why can't they be restored ? No real point to this thread but I can't get away with shouting YOU ARE STUPID and closing the call.

Mr Gee

Welcome to IT Support !!

ozzy

1st-line support are almost as stupid

HHxx

DrEvil

Ozzy - you must of met some of the sys admins I work with!

Stueyb

My users are usually thick as custard. Esp the ones who try and rj11s into the ethernet socket and wonder why nowt works. They can re real ungrateful gits too, but some users are

a) nice
b) cute, esp the blonde accounts ones with skimpy dresses and huge knockers
c) tw*ts - they are the most important people ever (usually junior management) and it doesnt matter that the server has died - they need their excel document formatted NOW.

Anyone agree ?

SJ_Skyline

I often find that this helps:

1. Get a stick, a large one.
2. Find a cardboard box, about midi-tower sized - alternatively use a midi-tower case!
3. Divert to voicemail
4. Relocate to company car park.
5. Get a firm grip of one end of your stick.
6. Repeated beat seven shades out of your box / midi-tower screaming "Read The ******* Manual!!!"
7. Rest.



In all seriousness - I blame the users parents. Some people should never have been allowed to paddle in the shallow end of the gene pool!

(edited cos I am a useless waste of space!)

[Edited by SJ_Skyline - 4/23/2003 9:23:25 AM]

BaldyMan

a day at the office

1 - the computer is'nt working - is it turned on - is the monitor turned on

2 - my files are missing - is the disk in the drive

3 - the printer won't work - is it turned on - try putting some paper in it

Ahhhhhhh the list is endless

David_Wallis

I had a call to do... helpdesk didnt sort due to it being something to do with "nt loader"

hmm.. I removed the floppy disk and rebooted..

David

basal_lobe

IT support personnel are useless. For the most part they are underskilled idiots who used to think they were worth top dollar. Now we hire them for peanuts and fire them when they **** up, which is often.

I also used to be IT support when the job meant something back in the 80's/early 90's so I'm afraid I don't fit into your idiot user category as I probably know more than most of our useless IT dept added together.

Don't bite the hand that feeds you IT geeks.

IWatkins

Users. You can't shoot them and you can't shoot them.

DrEvil

basal_lobe - I would agree with your round about comment that a lot of the current IT support staff (usually that have done these 'become an IT expert in a week' courses) are not much better than the users themselves... I know of two fine examples, one has a business degree and one who previously must of been capaigning against a.n.other bypass (read swampy)!

Miles

Our 1st line think that their arms have been cut off when remote control doesn't work

Beauregard

"I also used to be IT support when the job meant something back in the 80's/early 90's so I'm afraid I don't fit into your idiot user category as I probably know more than most of our useless IT dept added together."

You fit into the worst category. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

ozzy

What's so difficult about equipment slightly more powerful than a pocket calculator

You mean you were the only one who knew how to put the punch cards in the Mainframe the right way round

Stefan

Tim-Grove

Ooo!! bitchy bitchy, calm down ladies.

Foot_Tapper

lol Guys if I were you I'd just ignore basal.
basal always picks a thread on which he can wind peeps up.
He/She rarely has anything good to say about anyone or anything.
Just check out the threads the username posts to.

ozzy

yep, basal = wind-up merchant.

It's still jolly good fun though

rik1471

Without doubt the worst users are the "Know just enough to be dangerous" ones. The ones who think just because they know what regedit is, or they know how to get into the bios they can single handidly diagnose and fix faults they have no idea about, leaving it in a worse state than when they started!

Or people who stand behind you offering annoyingly useless nuggets of "advice" or "information". LOOK - I WOULDN'T COME INTO YOUR OFFICE AND TELL YOU HOW TO DO YOUR JOB, SO **** OFF!

Or when you resolve a fault, the people who won't accept that it's fixed - "well it was alright yesterday".

Or work shy Scousers who you know damn well have found out how to break printers/mice/keyboards etc. just so they have an excuse as to why there lazy fat ***** can't work.

Or the unspoken hiarachy which exists in a large company, where middle management believe that their problem is more important than anybody elses.

Get this - we had a manager who had a LJ 1200, and just because the paper came out slowly he kept logging it as a fault. After 4-5 times of going down and saying it's finehe bought a DJ 970, which he believes is faster because he can see the ink carriage zipping left to right. The LJ 1200 was at least 3 times faster - but no!

[img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

Tim-Grove

Each to his own field you can’t blame people for being a bit dumb in something they haven’t been trained to do. If everyone were IT experts you IT bods would be out of a job.

I remember about a year ago me and the guy I work with got a callout to a small office (who just happened to be an ISP) just outside Birmingham who were reporting a “no incoming supply fault”. By the time we got there (because of bad traffic) they had been without power for 2 hours. As soon as we walked through the door this IT bod jumped down our throat balling and shouting telling us how unprofessional and unreliable our company was. We proceeded to there electricity cupboard to test the meter and his fuse board to make sure that it was dead, he told us that he had checked his fuse board and it had to be our equipment that was faulty and that he knew what he was taking about. All the time he was still hurling verbal abuse at us and also told us that his UPS was faulty and would probably only last another 2-3 hours (advantage us). This meter was actually live but we also noticed that the main breaker on his fuse board had tripped ohh yeah this ******** knew what he was talking about all write, naturally we decided to omit this small but vital fact because he was being such a ****. We told him that that we had to go back to our depot to pick up some fault finding equipment to find his so called “service fault” and we might be gone about an hour or two because of the traffic, by this time he was really pulling his hair out. So we left and went for an extended lunch at MacyD’s. Two hours later we returned to a car park full of IT bod’s smoking cigarettes an Mr ******** near to a nervous breakdown, to our delight we found that his UPS had given up the ghost and all his lovely computers were out of action and had been for an hour or so. Back at the electricity cupboard we decided to notice this tripped breaker while he and a few of his work mates were standing behind us. And then asked him “Didn’t you check the fuse board??” by which time his work mates we laughing there heads off and his gaffer was looking very pissed off at him. He reset his breaker and we told his gaffer that our billing department would be in touch to discus the bill.

So the moral of the story is that you are only an expert in your own field and the silliest things can slip past you when you are dealing with something that you haven’t been trained to do. Food for thought I think???




[Edited by Tim-Grove - 4/23/2003 4:58:26 PM]

^Qwerty^

Best one I had was a few years ago now.

The company I worked for had just gone through a number of changes, and they were employing really *important* and *clever* people. Anyway, one lady in particular had nothing good to say about our IT systems, and from day one was saying "this is ****", "that is ****" "i've never worked with such crap IT systems etc. etc".
I then got a call saying said person couldn't login to the system and could I go have a look. This call came via an "escalted" route, because she was so important, and all our systems were ****.

So walked downstairs, got some verbal in front of everybody about how **** our systems were etc. etc.

"can you show me what your trying to do please"
"Im trying to logon to the shared drive thing that you have here and it won't let me on because its broken"
"please show me"

so she types her username and password in the boxes and hits return, and gets bounced.

At this point most people in the office are watching whats going on.

So I pressed the Caps lock key (to turn it off) and said "try it now"



It was so funny.

But our systems were still **** for being case sensitive... ffs. Oh and your keyboards are not as good as my last place of work....

She was only there for a few weeks

rik1471

It's a users obligation to be negative to any new system/equipment.

It's the law!

basal_lobe

a little knowledge is a dangerous thing

too true and a "little knowledge" is what most IT support staff have. I don't claim to know the latest systems as I moved on to more rewarding pastures in 93. I still know more than most of the IT monkeys put together.

As for paper tapes in the late eighties/90's- that just goes to demonstrate how little your really know. You should have been talking about CLI's and embryonic GUI's.

[Edited by ChrisB - 24/04/2003 11:09:52]

rik1471

LMAO, so you know absolutely **** all then. Possibly how to tile your Windows for Workgroups Program Manager Windows, or how to record a macro.

Software and hardware is much more complex than when you "moved on to more rewarding pastures in 93", and requires much more knowledge! So your comments about knowing more than "most IT staff" are far too generalised, unsubstanciated bollox.

Beauregard

Tim-Grove, I agree with you totally when you say “Each to his own field you can’t blame people for being a bit dumb in something they haven’t been trained to do” I really enjoy my job, especially when people appreciate the effort I put in to solve their problems. I also have to deal with some people that don’t appreciate what I do but they still require my help when they break their machines. You take the rough with the smooth and just get on with it. Some days I feel like shouting at people so I post things on here rather than upset people.

Foot_Tapper, I shall ignore the ar*e.

Foot_Tapper

lol with rik

The Joker

Where whould we be without the humble PC user.... The all know what they are doing and the high pay make it all worth while...

Sorry did I say high pay.... Worth while...... NOT

ScoobyDoo555

Out of interest - this IS a serious question though!

Which systems tend to give more REAL problems - windows, linux, unix, Mac OS etc? or are they all the same, just dumb-*** users....

just asking out of morbid curiosity really.....

Dan

Foot_Tapper

Well windows IMO, because the vast majority of companies use it.

GaryK

Yep where would we be without users to complain? Just have to sit and surf SN all day!

I do see (too a point) what basal is saying, having started way back in 83 in IT in them days you seemed to have to do an 'unofficial' apprenticeship, getting the teas, formatting disks, data entry that sort of thing, whereas now people seem to think they can wander in to an IT support department and thats it.

I do think alot of doing the job is common sense and I also know that alot of support centres have call stats so its usually a case of the person not being unhelpful but having to wrap up calls very quickly.

I also think the job is harder because you do have to deal with people installing a 1001 applications then running into problems, back in the early eighties people were frightened of the machines and would never dare install one of six or seven apps available and cause problems!

Gary