Technology/tech support, (sdf.org), 01/09/2019
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SparcIPX recently shared a story of dealing with absurdity
at work[1]. I laughed at the silliness of an engineering who
didn't stop to think about why he/she was requiring a 100C
rating on a hose that was meant to deliver water directly to
a person's eyes. I laughed out loud.
The post made me think of my dealings with electrical
engineers over the past several years. I have a client in
Oregon who sells industrial equipment, and many of his
clients are electrical engineers; I sometimes provide
technical support for those clients. My client calls them
"BB stackers," because of their overwhelming and often
absurdly unproductive attention to the most minute details,
real or imagined. I have a very high opinion of their
skill set, and I'm certainly glad that they're designing
systems that would kill people if not done right, but they
are good for a laugh at times (as we all are.)
Another type of customer that my client sends me every once
in a while is the generic "office worker." I'm certain that
none of them has that as a title, yet that is what they are.
These are the folks that have my client's hardware on their
desk, and are expected to be the local professional
"experts" that know how to use it, but who really don't have
a clue how to use the computer, let alone the hardware
connected to it.
I spoke with one of these types today, which is what
prompted this post.
The person on the other end of the phone couldn't get our
driver to work. I asked what the error was, and learned
that, "it just doesn't work." I had them attempt the install
again while I was on the phone and learned that "the little
circle thing just goes away." Next I figured we'd look at
the file name, to see what they're actually doing, and found
that they didn't know how to see the file name, they were
just clicking on our download page and hitting "Run." I
asked them to save the link instead of running it. They said
they couldn't, the only option was to run it.
No problem, we'll just browse to the downloads folder and
see if it happens to be in there. It was, and it was the
right file. They ran it again, also ran as admin, and as
stated, "the circle thing just goes away."
I won't drive you away (if you're still reading) with the
rest of the story. Instead, I'll share a few notes that I
jotted down while on the call working through the problem:
****
Abject paucity of technical knowledge, even among IT
professionals / office workers with IT responsibilities.
1. inability to save a file hosted on a web page (without
instruction.)
2. inability to save, then unpack a .zip file (without
instruction.)
3. inability to locate a USB device that is missing a
properly associated driver.
4. inability to manually update a device driver
- impatient
- incompitent
- rambunctious
****
Numbers 1-4 ought to be elementary for any office job that
might require using connected hardware. If you never do
support, you would be shocked at the number of office people
who are expected to use and manage technology, but can't
even understand a filesystem.
The three attributes I listed up there were what I was
recognizing while politely going through the tech support
motions. These are frequently present (though not universal)
in people who make it to my level of tech help. Often, they
think they know what they're doing, so they're impatience
with my guidance. They are incompitent (or they wouldn't
need my help with basic questions) and they generally don't
realize it. They are rambunctious in the sense that they
want to jump 4 steps ahead while I'm trying to slowly lead
them and verify that they're paying attention and performing
the required steps.
Venting complete. Now, to extract some personal growth from
today's call, I'm going to go work on the basement while I
ponder the areas where I am weak, and where I present myself
in weakness before others. I'm sure human nature will expose
itself in me in many of the same manifestations.
