The 5 Users You'd Meet in Hell

cweditor writes "The Know-It-All. The Finger-Pointer. The Whiz Kid. "Just as a zookeeper cares for his monkeys one way and his rhinos another (we kid — sort of), so too should IT tailor its responses to fit the individual styles of its end users," according to this Computerworld "rogue's gallery of users (and one angel)". Includes advice on how to best deal with the most common types of users, without having to run screaming into the night. Expect sometime soon to also see reader feedback offering other ideas (and, oh, perhaps some disagreement with the article's)."

The know-nothing.

[RandoX (828285)]

I once had to help a user because she had accidentally rearranged the icons on her desktop and didn't know how to do her job. She had meticulously documented her job as follows:

Step 1: Click the third icon from the top in the second column [...]

Etc....

Re:The know-nothing.

[dintech (998802)]

I've seen someone very confused when the mouse reached the right edge of the desk but not the right edge of the screen...

Re:The know-nothing.

[Tackhead (54550)]

> I once had to help a user because she had accidentally rearranged the icons on her desktop and didn't know how to do her job. She had meticulously documented her job as follows:
>
> Step 1: Click the third icon from the top in the second column [...]

That wasn't just any know-nothing. That was the team lead for your company's ISO 9000 programme!

Surprisingly common

[InvisblePinkUnicorn (1126837)]

It's surprising how many people are like this. I encounter people this clueless on a weekly basis.

Me: "Right-click on your program shortcut and go to Properties..."

User: "What?"

Me: "The shortcut to the program."

User: "What?"

Me: "However you normally open the program."

User: "Ok, the program's open."

Me: "No, just right-click on that icon."

User: "So close the program?"

Me: "Yes"

User: "It says, 'are you sure you want to exit.' Click ok?"

Me: "Yes."

User: "It says, 'An error was encountered.' Click Send?"

Me: "No, click Do Not Send."

User: "OK, so go into the program?"

Me: "No, right-click on the shortcut."

User: "What?"

Re:Surprisingly common

[phantomflanflinger (832614)]

You're lucky. This is what I get:

Me: Right-click on your mouse

Client: Hang on, I'm getting a pen. (PAUSE) OK.

Me: Can you see the context menu? Click Properties on it.

Client: Menu? What menu?

Me: Did you right-click on your mouse?

Client: Yes.

Me: OK do it again then.

(SILENCE)

Me: Can you see the context menu?

Client: No - nothing happens. I've written click on my mouse twice, nothing's happened and now I've got ink on fingers!

Re:Surprisingly common

[InvisblePinkUnicorn (1126837)]

Some other favorites of mine:

A tech support rep for another company emailed saying our upgrader didn't work for him. I asked him what the filename of the upgrader was. He replied with the file version and all the other information about the file, but said he couldn't find the filename...

----

Me: Here is your registration code: Alpha One Five...

User: Alpha? Where's the alpha key? I don't see that...

----

A user wanted to use a camera with our software, but said it wasn't showing up as an option. I asked her if the camera was plugged in; she said no, but said "that shouldn't matter"...

----

Me: Open up Windows Explorer by right clicking Start and going to Explore. Do you see our program folder under C:\Program Files\?

User: I don't understand what you're talking about! ALL I SEE IS GOOGLE!

Me: Not Internet Explorer. Windows Explorer. Right click on Start and go to Explore.

----

A tech support rep from another company was convinced that our "Watch Guard HTTP Proxy" was blocking him from downloading files from our site. I tried to explain to him that it was HIS proxy, not ours, but he didn't believe me and said he wanted to talk to another tech support here.

Hmm..

[somersault (912633)]

Have you tried switching it off and on again?

Irony

[haystor (102186)]

There is strong irony in the IT worker complaining about the know-it-all.

Re:Irony

[ByOhTek (1181381)]

Agreed, I've seen help desk personelle fall into those categories listed in that document.

I'll admit, I fall into the wiz kid category, with a few smatterings of know-it-all (except I'm willing to admit I'm wrong if I screw up, and even temporarily take the blame while we wait to figure out what is really wrong, and I don't install things against company policy). A while ago I had an odd problem on my computer when dealing with a server (the IT area changed settings on the server a while ago related to the server-client connection, and something was cached on the clients computers and not updated). Anyway, the IT guy was the finger pointer. He kept trying to blame me for the problem - jumping from one thing to another, and I just stood there thinking "I don't care if I caused it or not, I want to know what was wrong, and how to fix it. If it was me, I'm more than willing to accept the blame, but without knowing what's wrong, we can't assign blame."

Turns out it wasn't me and everything he tried to blame me for wasn't the problem. Especially since several users have since had the same problem (The client caching things it shouldn't).

*sigh* I've been an IT help desk (like the person assiting me was), and I've been on the client end. As much annoyed as I got with some clients, I don't think the worst clients I've delt with are nearly as bad as the worst help desk individuals. Maybe it's just that I have a better personality for helping than being helped (a lot of clients asked for me by name), but I think part of the problem is that some IT desk people can get quite arrogant and put their users into two categories: Those that don't know nearly as much as they should know (the know nothings), and the people who know what they should while still knowing nothing and not having the possibility of knowing more than 'me' (everyone else).

Sorry about the rant, there are issues with both sides, client and help desk. Many seem to think their own side is perfect, but really neither is.

Re:Irony

[haystor (102186)]

I just don't like being treated as the enemy...and a dumb enemy at that. I fully realize I don't know everything about the desktop or why windows networking can take 30+ seconds to log on (what is it doing?!). But when I drag one of them over to show them how my build which is creating 5000 files takes 100x longer when the virus scanner is operating "on access" I expect an answer better than "corporate policy".

The unix administrators I've run across certainly have their tyrants but they eventually relent in order to let me get some work done. The windows side of IT seems perfectly willing to let work stop in order to conform to policy.

Re:Irony

[ch-chuck (9622)]

The olde saying goes: People who think they know everything are particularly annoying to those of us who do.

I know one more...

[courteaudotbiz (1191083)]

The brother in law!!! It's the worse one, because he is all 5 worst users in the same person!

Or any combination

[alan_dershowitz (586542)]

I nearly got fired by a Ms. Entitlement Finger-Pointer. Personal secretary for the president of an unnamed fortune 500 company has the president's Active Directory password, and ended up locking the account. This is where I got the "do you know who I am, I am the SECRETARY of mr. So and So. I was just a phone support operator. After a little bit of screaming and accusation, I figure out what the problem is and unlock the account. A week later, she locks the account again, conveniently right before the weekend. Next, I get an angry phone call from the president himself, demanding to know why his account is locked, because HE IS THE PRESIDENT, and is trying to get ready for an important meeting. I end up in a conference call with the secretary, who proceeds to tell the president that I've "done this to her before." Now we've established the finger-pointing. She'd successfully established my guilt as the baseline of the "discussion", and it was downhill after that. After that point, the writing was on the wall, and I got out of there after a few months. Basically, I ended up on the "list" and was not going to get off.

These people can ruin your job. I'm just glad that I was a lowly operator, it would really suck if I'd have had a good job there and this happened.

IT problem

[CarpetShark (865376)]

That's an IT problem, not a user problem. It should NOT give passwords to active directory, even to the company president. In a fortune 500, that's for the head of IT's off-site safe. No, not the safe with the mission-critical backups; the SMALL, discrete, more secure safe. The head of IT should also have been shielding you from that kind of BS, via laying down his own law at board level.

Typical Asshat IT POV

[coinreturn (617535)]

The article is, unsurprisingly, written from the typical asshat IT support person point of view. The article doesn't list the user who actually does know a lot more than the clueless freshly-minted IT support guy. As opposed to the "Mr. Know-It-All" who thinks he's an engineer, there are those of us who actually are engineers who are hobbled by Mr. Know-Nothing IT guys who operate blindly. I always laugh at the IT guy who does superstitious things like closing the Explorer window and re-opening a new one so he can navigate somewhere! Or tries the exact same operation four times, thinking it will work the fourth time! Every time some idiotic security application is "pushed" onto all desktops and fucks up my ability to update development software, some IT moron asks "well what did you change?" I remember a dimwit who claimed I needed a new computer because he couldn't figure out how get an encryption certificate working in Outlook. I kid you not, I got a new computer out of it.

The Whiz Kid

[Joe Jay Bee (1151309)]

In his cubicle, he has a stuffed [...] Linux penguin mascot. And he's highly likely to be a gamer

10 points for whoever can spot the huge flaw in this quote! ;)

Not just the users

[Just Some Guy (3352)]

Know-It-Alls often insist on doing things their own way. They change options and settings on their computers just because they can, and they have a tendency to connect devices and download software to their computers that IT does not support.

Even worse are sysadmins who think that every other tech in the company are Know-It-Alls that must be contained at all costs. At a previous job, I was tasked with installing a rather expensive server application. It was one of those nightmare jobs with a huge spaghetti-coded shell script installer. You know the kind: works great once it's running, but you better have things exactly right before running ./install.sh.

Anyway, one of its requirements was an empty Oracle database and an account with permissions to create the tables it would be using. Now, I'm sure our DBA was a pretty clever guy, and I understand that he had an important job, but he was a complete ass about giving me that empty database. After all, only a Trained DBA is qualified to know how your schema should be designed; never mind that we were buying the app and didn't have a lot of say over how it was set up. Since he and I reported to different bosses, it finally took a request travelling up to the VP level and back down (plus some not so veiled threats of a beating) to finally get the ability to install the application we'd paid about $50K for. Oh, and the installer ran perfectly the first time. You could actually hear his teeth grind as it completed without so much as a warning.

I'm sure in his mind I was a pesky Know-It-All who wanted nothing more than to make his life difficult. He probably complained to his friends about the thorn in his side at the office who wanted - can you believe it! - free reign over a corner of his beloved Oracle.

The moral is that sometimes the people "beneath" you really do know what they're doing if you can bring yourself to give them a chance.

From a top-down consultant's point of view

[dada21 (163177)]

Our company would be viewed as evil by some in the IT or the consulting industry. We sell ourselves as "the CEO's consultant." We openly admit that we're working to better the interests of the person in charge of the company, or the ownership, and not necessarily end users. We believe that by making a company more efficient, the employees will profit as the company does. Our 10 year anniversary is this week, and our world has changed greatly in terms of how we're viewed by the "common" employee.

First of all, if we have bad users, we're the first to highlight them in our quarterly and yearly billing breakdowns. The users who are surly, obnoxious, and complain the most are usually the ones who get the biggest chunk of the maintenance budget. Their name is usually at the top, and each user is also compared to the company average. Many CEOs and owners love our breakdowns, and look forward to them each quarter.

Secondly, the hard workers in an organization also appreciate our reports, which we request to be open if the company's policy allows it (about half do). They know who the jerks and deadbeats (Finger-pointer and Mr. Entitlement) are, and they're happy to be "below average" in terms of company burden. It is also those users/employees who like us the most because we give them extra-special attention when they really do have emergencies. The guy who cries wolf all the time is still served well, but most quickly learn that they'll be singled out at their next review -- "Why do you need so much support?"

The finger-pointer loses power under this system. When it is obvious that the finger should point to them (and that's what the report clearly shows) they have little in the way of demanding a change in consultant or operations. Most finger-pointers we've dealt with have been the first to leave or be fired, based on the clarity that we show to the owners to see who is bringing down efficiency. Since we've taken over some telephone system operations, we also generate a report that shows the delay in responding to voice mails (a skewed report in some ways, because we don't use a weight-system for people who get way more voice mails than average), and it's usually the finger pointer and Mr. Entitlement who ignore the voice mails significantly more than average.

The Whiz-Kid is usually a good person to have for us, as we are open to changes in our system. If the Whiz-Kid gives us a recommendation, we'll include it in our summary of recommendations, and give them the credit. If that recommendation is accepted, and it works, more power to the Whiz-Kid, maybe he should go off on his own and consult. If the recommendation fails, it's also his responsibility. But here's the good part: the Whiz-Kid doesn't have the time to take over our work, so it's not competition for us. Owners should know if they have a talented worker, but they should also be aware that the talented worker should do what his job description says he should do, or he should be moved to a different department. About 20% of our customers have attempted to hire in-house staff, but their costs go up, not down, and the service seems to get worse. Currently, we work with no business with an in-house IT guy (even one customer who generates over $100m a year in income).

The Know-It-All is not a problem for us, because every invoice we produce references industry recommendations or knowledge base articles as to why we do it. If the Know-It-All calls us out in a meeting (or otherwise), all we have to do is say "Maybe we missed something, can you point us to two industry experts who recommend that action?" So far, maybe 5% of Know-It-All complaints have led us to making changes, but 95% of them fail miserably. And no, slashdot is not a great place to grab links to recommendations, because it also usually has replies from other "experts" who recommend against the same idea.

The Know-Nothing is our worst user, and maybe the only bad one. Because some WANT to know more, but don't have the aptitude, it seems part

Some user stories

[skintigh2 (456496)]

I was also an admin once. I had a psycho user who would scream and yell and sputter and lose it over minor issues. He completely freaked out because his docs were "gone." I did a search, and there they were in "My Documents." I looked around some more, and he had the usual "My Documents" folder in the usual place, and another folder on the desktop also called "My Documents" and also on the desktop he had a shortcut to a "D:\My Documents." How he had done this I wasn't sure, but it was all my fault.

Then we had the guy who complained of a slow computer. He had about 30 icons on his taskbar, about 8 of them screen saver programs and who knows what else. I suggested deleting all of them and he balked. I suggested deleting one or more and he balked. Then I started to leave and he asked me if I was going to do anything or not.

But my FAVORITE story: my ex's dad called completely irate. He wanted us to drive 200 miles to his house on a work night and fix his computer. His daughter was crying, his wife locked herself in the bedroom, and he was in a rage because they did something and now he couldn't print AND his landline didn't work. (Needless to say, I had fixed this computer numerous times only to find 400 pieces of spyware and 15 screensavers and 86 viruses on my next visit) Well, my ex explained that we didn't want to do 8 hours of driving that night so he should call the phone company to fix his landline and we'd see about his computer on the weekend.

2 days later, a guy from AT&T shows up, unplugs the printer's USB cable from the phone jack and leaves.

Re:I wonder what category I belong to...

[Odin_Tiger (585113)]

"The Know-It-All" It is simply mind-boggling how often a simple reboot fix seemingly unrelated problems. Besides, if you're issue is really so important that I need to come down there personally and look into it, you're probably not getting much work done anyways, so what's the harm in starting a reboot while I start walking to your desk? Worst case scenario, it doesn't help, but you haven't missed out on any productivity.

If I ask a user to reboot their computer (which, by the way, means I think it might help) and they say it's unrelated, their just prolonging the time it takes to get the problem solved, because I'm just gonna reboot it myself when I get to their desk. Why not save us both a little time and just do it now? Who knows, it might even work, and that'll save us both a lot of time.

Re:I wonder what category I belong to...

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

In the rare instance when I actually need to call support, I'll perform the steps they ask even if I've already tried them and know that they don't fix the problem. After all, they're patiently trying to help you, so the least you can do is try not to stress them out by being a pain in the ass.

Re:I wonder what category I belong to...

[avronius (689343)]

With the growing complexity of computer systems and the growing number of issues inherent in the system (regardless of the Operating System in question), I've found that most "system administrators" just don't care to research problems thoroughly any longer. The oft stated "reboot" only serves to postpone the inevitable visit to resolve the problem in the future.

Back when I was a "Windows Guy(tm)", I visited the desk for almost every system crash that was encountered by the user community. I admit that I, too, chose the occasional reboot rebuff when I was swamped with server issues. But I made a concerted effort to visit the user, and I was usually able to isolate the problems - generally related to faulty hardware or driver configuration.

Rebooting the computer will, in fact, resolve many things. For a while. Ultimately, most problems will recur. If it is software related, it will continue until the software problem is addressed. This could be the OS, and application, a utility, a driver, etc. If the problem is hardware related, it will also continue until the problem is addressed. And, it may end up costing you more money to replace any components that the faulty unit may be attached to.

Re:There are more....

[s20451 (410424)]

all of the millions of people that don't RTFM or help screens before lifting the phone and calling tech support; yes, the manuals and help screens suck, so did your chemistry book.

But isn't it your job to be on the other end of the phone to answer a question in ten minutes that would take me an hour to figure out by reading the poorly-written book? If not then why am I paying for support?

Re:There are more....

[zymurgyboy (532799)]

I reedening form the same bok you are. ifI havening this much truble fixing you CP, some self help is probably not bad idea.

Is it just yor external email or email or external emais from you hole area?

Re:listen to the whiz kids

[qortra (591818)]

Yes, I must agree. IT guys are not at the top of the tech food chain; there are plenty of people in other fields who are just as capable if not more at that kind of work. In situations where you're the IT guy butting heads with the whiz kid, one of two things is happening:

1) The whiz kid is advocating a violation of protocol. Often, this is the whiz kid not understanding how things work for the average technology user. In this case, you probably should consider but ultimately reject the opinion of the whiz. In other cases, the opinion should be weighed carefully, keeping in mind that protocol should be adapted once in a while.

2) The whiz kid is telling you how the technology actually works (not how it looks from the perspective of the Windows Management Console). In this case, if you disagree (and/or accuse them of going to hell, as in this article), you have now become the know-it-all, and he is the expert. Show some humility, and try to learn. If he is eventually found to be wrong, your humility will only act as a slap in his face. If he is right, you have potentially avoided losing face.