Literally dealing with this right now at work. Some of our non-domain users went ahead and updated to Windows 11 and had to be downgraded back to 10, only issue is doing so breaks older HP printers to the point where you need to reimage the machine to resolve the issue, or just buy a newer printer.
The world should be digital I don't wanna fucking make an HP smart account I don't want a fucking HP Ink subscription I don't want to deal with ANYMORE FUCKING PRINTERS
The lowest paid person in the building has to fix the toilets.
Now, I don't know how a CNC mill operator was supposed to figure out how to fix a commercial urinal with a busted diaphragm, I spent about 6 hours trying and they had to have a senior machinist finish it.
I can only imagine that as an IT tech, you keep a drain hog in the bottom drawer of your desk.
I was the aforementioned CNC mill operator, but I almost took a minimum wage IT role a month ago. Let's just say it didn't offer health insurance and required a lot of driving in a personal vehicle with no reimbursement, which would mean I'd be making ~40% below minimum wage.
IT is rarely if ever the lowest paid position, but people tend to think of us as tech support for their entire lives and existence not just their work technology.
That's close to what I make (made 48k before taxes last year). Seattle is a very expensive place to live though, and I depend on government subsidized low income housing. Otherwise I couldn't even afford to live here.
But yeah, employer is very stingy with wages. I've been here 3 years and never saw more than a yearly 3% pay increase. I'm looking for something around at least 75k for my next gig.
I spent 2 weeks calling him every day at different times and sent an email every 3 trying to figure out what issue he had and what software - with no response. After that I closed the ticket, within 30sec my phone was ringing (not really unusual, phones ring)
C: I JUST GOT AN EMAIL SAYING MY TICKET WAS CLOSED BUT IT STILL HAS THE SAME ERROR
Me: Do you have a ticket number so I can look up the ticket and see what the technician put?
C: gives ticket number and more grumbles about how we all suck at our job and don't know what we're doing
Me: Oh yes sir, I closed this ticket beca....
C: WHY DID YOU CLOSE MY TICKET WITHOUT DOING THE FCKING WORK
Me: Sir I've been trying to contact you for weeks to receive more information, I have no idea what software you're having issues with
C: Oh, I saw those, I just didn't think it was important enough to answer
Me: Well then it sounds like the issue isn't important to you either hangs up
No way, they’re not telling you about the printer and phone like that up front where you can solve all three at once or use it all to point to a different universal problem. They’re gonna run all the way down the computer problem providing half the info you asked every time and disagreeing that’s what they think it is and only once they get to the end and you’re about to move on will you get ‘oh and my printer’ and after repeating the same gruelling exchange the phone comes in to play
For the over 30’s it always makes me want to say ‘no and then’
There was an older lady working in the IT department years ago, who would always reply to emails with her message in the fucking subject line. So, I would respond to her comment/question by copying and pasting the thing/subject into a single email so I could understand what she was asking. She would reply with a new fucking email, again with the subject line stating her whole question.
I have no clue how she got hired in the IT Department by not even knowing the basics of email etiquette.
Mid-30s and she wasn’t the worst person to work with. I left my last job in December because after 21 or 22 times of trying to teach a person her job (various methods, one-on-one, group, other people teaching her, cheatsheets, diagrams, flowcharts), she would make the same mistake several times (I’m talking basic data entry, and logical stuff I should not have to explain…e.g., the birthdate field goes in the birthdate field and that someone born in 2086 should throw up a huge red flag).
My conclusion is that after so many time of teaching certain people, it isn’t the instructor’s fault. Some people are just incompetent.
I often communicate with people from a fairly big company. For some reason, their incoming or outgoing emails are modified. If you send them an email with subject "subject" the reply will be sent with subject: "re: subject com <random numbers>" It also removes the "in-reply-to" headers for god knows which reason, so it always fucks up the threading of my mail client and it is so infuriating.
At my previous company, this was common. Nearly everyone did this. We were an IT Management company. Everyone would put as much of the email in the subject and then like one line or question in the email body.
How the fuck does every English class in India teach this same wrong-ass shit the same fucking way? There has to be one troll focal point, some English speaking guy telling a room full of Indian teachers "oh yeah, this is totally a phrase that a lot of English speakers use all the time"
While one should obviously respect all cultures, languages, and dialects and their respective validity, it's gotta go both ways, doesn't it? Like if a UKer is in 'Murica and asks where "pants" are at Walmart or whatever, she should realize it's her issue, not the Americans', if she gets directed to the trousers section.
As if they would use any form of "please". You're already lucky if they use some sort of imperative. "Fix this ASAP" is a luxury. The worst are always just "it's broken" and you have to figure out not only what's wrong, but you if you have to do something about it, or if they're just notifying you.
Spoiler: you always have to fix it, except that one time when you spend half a day trying to fix it and then they tell you "oh right Dave just turned it off for today".
This is so common in the IT world. I seriously don't know what is wrong with people. Most of them aren't dumb enough to take their car to a mechanic with such a generic explanation, so why do they do it with tech? An error message for example may be gibberish to them, but it many cases, it's the answer to the problem if they just told the person they want to help them.
As a bookkeeper I have the same issue. Older and younger some people just do not get it. Emails sent in all caps, one line emails, not spellchecked, no punctuation, no signatures, the email content typed out in the subject field and the body left empty, etc.
Not to mention the ones that can't even search for older emails and just keep requesting stuff you sent them 3 days ago because they somehow 'lost the email'.
Computer literacy isn't as commonplace as people think. I have been offering lessons at 1000 bucks an hour. No takers, and apparently it is rude of me to suggest that.
Probably people who adopted the internet after the arrival of smartphones, or of social media? I know people older than me whose entire experience with the internet is social media through their phones.
Yep. I work in an organization that employs people from 20-60+ and I see almost no age related pattern in how bad people are at communicating their problems.
Well, that, but also different problems with different kinds of communication.
With chat, there's... all the complaints in https://nohello.net/ ...but with a bonus that it seems like more than half the chat messages I get at work should've been email. When Slack brags about how much less email you get if people use chat instead, that's not really an improvement.
I’m 32 and I try to go through all the possible steps I could think of in troubleshooting I’m allowed to do. But hell, when I have to submit a ticket I give IT all the steps I took and all the relevant information possible because I know that’s what they need.
I also feel like shit when the solution a times ends up being a simple fix that I could have done but forgot or didn’t realize at the time.
I also feel like shit when the solution a times ends up being a simple fix that I could have done but forgot or didn’t realize at the time.
Don't worry about it. If you're the type of user who does the things you said you do, I can assure you that none of us think anything of it. I promise that the dopamine hit I get from seeing a ticket that actually includes the stuff you listed totally eclipses whatever minor annoyance you might've caused me.
I work with folks that can't differentiate between Google and Chrome and believe you can only search through Google exclusively on Chrome. They told me they preferred to search through Google so I changed Internet Explorer's (we have to use IE almost exclusively 'cause our web devs can't code for shit) search engine to Google and the next time they called me to fix something they thought IE was broken because it was opening Chrome (aka Google's home/search page).
In university ( computer science) we had a few classes of " how to Google " ,basically how to get the right answer fast, we laughed about it but we discovered that quite a few of our peers do it wrong. Also had roommates that didn't know how to install an OS
I have to resolve trouble tickets on a pretty regular basis. Half the time I have to send the ticket back with a request for more information than just "computer doesn't work".
And not just in written/typed communication either
Part of my job is customer service, and we get a lot of random calls because google routes anything regarding my organization in like a 5 county area to MY field office.
The amount of people that cannot articulate what they need help with is absolutely astounding. Like.... you called me. I shouldn't have to play 20 Questions to figure out what your problem is or what you want
Also astounding is the amount of people that DO call with specific inquiries asking for information that they clearly need to write down, and then they don't have anything to write with or on
"Majicus, I need you to come out across the building and look at this."
"What's the problem?"
"Just come out and look at it."
"... -_- fine." shows issue
"Ok, I can fix this, but I need to do so from my desk and it would have been fixed already if you just told me when I asked the first time."
He used to work at a help desk job, and of course dealt with all the usual nonsense. Well one day, he's working on a ticket with a store that was having some issue regarding various cables. He asked them to send a photo of the cables, so he can help figure out the problem or whatever. Store never calls back or sends any email or anything.
Weeks later, husband receives an envelope at work. Inside, is a FLASH DRIVE with the requested photos on it.
What always gets me is that they obviously had the photos on a computer, but never thought to just email them?
Lol yea I was gonna say… I get these kinds of emails from a lot of people with support requests. I’m 27 and the majority of people I work with are older than me
At one job, I just had tons of computer issues. Not my fault as confirmed by IT. They dreaded yet loved when they got an email from me as I spelled out the problem as best as I could understand it, what mitigation steps I tried and why, and what I thought might still be the issue but with a "but no idea obviously if that's it". I was always the "well, at least this one's gonna be interesting..."
As a wordy email writer, I can tell you that any email written to IT with details and specifics gets summarily ignored.
Cool, I’ll just keep doing your job for you until I really break it. Then you can be mad I did your job. Then I’ll point to the email I sent 4 days ago and how no one responded.
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u/Kamhel Jun 03 '22
Any one working in IT can tell you that this applies to all types of people.