What My Users Have Taught Me - Part 2
The logical is of course illogical. User's suppositions are truth. Common sense is for the herd and must be shunned. Part 2.
In continuation of the previous list of crazy things users do and believe, here are eleven more 'truths' proving that while we were all born intelligent, sometimes education gets in the way! Scroll down or click 'Read More' to find out what I learned from my users recently.
- Wite-Out dries pretty fast; feeding paper through the copier or fax machine right after applying Wite-Out causes it to dry faster.
- Replying to e-mails sent from a fax server with a "no reply" e-mail magically faxes your response back to the sender.
- It must be a computer bug that causes Outlook to print the text of your e-mail rather than the random attachment that you really wanted to print.
- The inconvenience of pulling your laptop off of a quick-latch expansion base is much higher than unplugging all your cables from the back and carrying the expansion base around with you wherever you go.
- You're supposed to point a line-of-site infrared remote at the projector screen at the front of the room, even if the projector is in the back of the room.
- It's not funny when Tech Support suggests a highly witty, non-technical solution to a support request of, "Computer screen upside down. Thanks. Frank."
- Using the VGA cable gives you really slow Internet.
- Microsoft Outlook's nickname cache is the best place to store important e-mail addresses; using the Contacts feature is only for the uber-lame.
- There's nothing wrong with complaining that IT didn't respond to your e-mail asking how to get your laptop onto the Internet at the hotel you were staying at, even though you 'sent' the e-mail using said laptop.
- What's the point of having a rechargeable battery charger if all it's going to do is melt any regular non-rechargeable alkaline batteries? This is a detail that IT should have considered prior to purchasing the chargers.
- As soon as someone walks into a room with a computer, they lose the ability to differentiate the difference between the left-side and right-side of objects, large highly contrasted words become as hard to find as Waldo, and their understanding of the basics of their native tongue goes the way of the buffalo.
Ned
Always get the end user to log their request in the system, so that the accountants can see that the System Administrators are doing some work. I recently got an end users PC booting, instead of just giving beep beep bad RAM noises, so I closed his request about that problem. While I was there he asked me to upgrade a software package, which I did (while he went off to lunch) , and asked him to log that new request in the system later.
But did he ? No. I just got the "Ah it's grand now" reply. People don't get paid for invisible work. Or worse still people doing invisible work get laid off !
Great website.