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]

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....

Hmm..

[somersault]

Have you tried switching it off and on again?

Irony

[haystor]

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

I know one more...

[courteaudotbiz]

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

And when they get to Hell -

[Recovering Hater]

- The BOFH is waiting to greet them.

Re:The know-nothing.

[dintech]

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.

[Greatmoose]

Sounds like they need the $500 Dogbert (R) Mousepad extension upgrade! /Too obscure?

Re:The know-nothing.

[Tackhead]

> 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!

The worst kind of user

[blhack]

The worst user is a combination of the know-it-all, the know-nothing, and the entitled all rolled into one ungodly package. Yesterday morning i'm driving into work, and my blackberry gives the annoying *BLEEDEEP* of direct connect.

A little background: we have a DVR on our network that is accessible with a web-browser via *BARF* this nasty ActiveX control. It only works on IE, and only works if you're running as an admin (or with local admin privs)...wtf is wrong with developers?! WRITE FILES TO ~! THATS WHAT IT IS FOR! DO NOT CACHE THINGS IN C:\WIndows\System32\!
anyway, this guy NEEDS to be able to watch the DVR...(he is a senior manager). Now, we are also running a proxy server for all outbound HTTP connections. NOtice I said *OUTBOUND*. The firewall blocks all other outbound port 80 connections...meaning you HAVE to use the proxy.

so:

him: "Hey you, its $firstname $lastname hows your morning!?" (let me interject here that after i tell him to go each menu and wait for an OKAY from him....he responds not by saying "okay", but by reading me the menu....the ENTIRE menu")internet options->connections->lan_settings. Is the box for proxy checked?"
him: "No"
me: "check it"
him: "Okay...theres MSN, now let me try the VIDEO...yeah, there it is....see yeah i needed the internet"...

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

this same guy will come into my office and demand that i come over and help him import cds into itunes, or install an updated version of flash so that he can watch videos on elfme.com....when i tell him that i'm busy with something, or that I haven't had time to do it today but its "on the list"...he laughs and sarcastically says "wow, you are just so buys all the time? work sure is stackin' up huh!?"

Guys like that are the reason most admins are alcoholics.

how do i deal with a user like THAT?

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

[sm62704]

That would be "the know it all". Those of you who think they know everything annoy the hell out of those us who do ;)

-mcgrew

(going for "funny" so I'm sure they'll mod "insightful". [slashdot.org]

-mcgrew [slashdot.org]

The user that gives me more trouble than any other

[drb_chimaera]

...the dreaded 'family member'

In some cases, like my dad, it's not so bad, he pays attention to the explanation of whats wrong and is usually pretty good about dealing with problems he's seen before so I rarely have to fix the same problem twice, plus he's as good at fixing cars as I am with computers and I'm *rubbish* with cars so that results in a pretty fair exchange of skills.

Other members of my family are *much* more irritating and would think nothing of calling me up at 3am because they have a paper due in at 9am that they left to the last minute and couldn't figure out why their printer wouldn't work (for reference: because the dizzy bint had unplugged it to charge up her MP3 player).

The really shocking thing is that several of my techie friends seem to have it even worse than me with their family!

In a corporate environment the worst I face on a day to day basis are those I classify as 'know just enough to be dangerous' - its a combination of a modicum of ability with computers combined with just the right level of arrogance that they know more than I do that leads to all sorts of problems.

Day to day though it's pretty easy - the place I work is only 300 or so people, which is small enough to build reasonably personal relationships with the various staff, so I generally know the best approach to deal with whomever is having a problem - up to and including who can I get away with calling a dumbfuck to their face, and which ones I should save to have a laugh about back at the pen ;)

The Whiz Kid

[Joe Jay Bee]

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! ;)

How about the sys admin categories?

[shaka999]

Guess I'd fall close the the know-it-all category. Personally I'd like to see a list of the IT classes. Towards the top of the list would be the

Cookie Cutter

All users everywhere should have the same setup and run the same programs. The engineer working on software/hardware design has no need to use anything more/less that the receptionist at the front desk. Any "rogue" programs will quickly be blamed on why the computer is crashing. Even if they haven't been run in months.

The Tester

Any problem must be fully tested and proven before any action is taken. Of course its the users responsibility to do the testing. Having a crash/blue screen. Run tests for 5 days and take detailed notes on when it happens. The users project/schedules don't matter. If tests aren't sufficient or notes don't detail every last action help is denied.

The Swiper

Have a problem? The swiper is more very willing to help. They will take your laptop promising to return it within hours. Days later you still haven't gotten it back and you can't find the swiper anywhere. (note, yelling swiper no swiping doesn't seem to help).

Re:The worst kind of user

[Notquitecajun]

Put gay porn on his desktop. Tell him it goes away when he does, and he can't trace it to you.

Surprisingly common

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

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?"

but what about...

[Sfing_ter]

What about the user, that requires you stand their after you have fixed their machine, while they open all their programs and files to MAKE SURE that EVERYTHING works... sigh...

Re:The know-nothing.

[noidentity]

It's not funny! I'm a Mac user and the first time I encountered a multi-button mouse, I couldn't figure out how to click.

Re:Surprisingly common

[Sczi]

My favorite (aka, most hated) is along those lines, but not quite:

Me: click the thing
User: Ok
Me: click the next thing
User: Ok
Me: click the next thing
User: Ok
Me: right-click the next thing
User: what?
Me: click the right button on it
User: Ok
Me: click the next thing
User: Is that left click or right click?
Me: left click
User: Ok
Me: click the next thing
User: Is that left click or right click?
Me: AAAUAHGGHGHAHG!!1

And my favorite question:
User: Is the Internet down?
Me: Is there panic in the streets today?

Re:Surprisingly common

[phantomflanflinger]

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!

Some user stories

[skintigh2]

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:Surprisingly common

[MightyYar]

All of the sudden, Jobs seems like a fucking genius keeping Apple's tech support bill so low, eh? :)

Re:Hmm..

[Tony Hoyle]

That's when you get the response

"I can't tell because it's dark because of the power cut..."

Re:Or nano?

[Anonymous Coward]

:p? what does that do? :wq

Re:There are more....

[zymurgyboy]

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:Or any combination

[Penguinisto]

While this is all hind-sight now, handling such people requires a bit of forethought.

Of course, if you were a semi-BOFH, you would've promptly done some looking, then claim with alacrity that his account was breached by a third party (w/o naming the secretary), and that the lock-out was a safety measure. Then get the alarms going and report it as a security incident... this hands off the problem to the IT manager (hey, he's getting paid the big bucks to deal with crap like that). Eventually the problem gets (naturally) tracked to the secretary (who can no longer credibly claim that you did it, what with all the other uppity-ups getting involved and the log analysis/forensics that go with that), and it has the added benefit of being completely true. As a plus, they can't come back at you because when it comes to IT security, everyone knows that paranoia is a Good Thing(tm).

(a true full-on BOFH would've had the secretary meet with an 'unfortunate accident' involving either high voltage or a fall from a high place).

Re:The Whiz Kid

[laejoh]

And that's when you realize you've become a daddy!

Re:Surprisingly common

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

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.

Re:The know-nothing.

[fubar1971]

Once again for everyone's reading pleasure:
Stupid User Story [slashdot.org]
Of course since then I have had many more, like:
My printer is printing things upside down.
What do you mean I can't drag and drop things to a blank CD in my CD-ROM drive, I have no problems doing it at home with my CD burner
Of course the famous...is the Internet broke, because I have not received any email in the last 5 minutes so the Internet must be broken
There are so many, that I probably could write a book :)

Re:The know-nothing.

[afc_wimbledon]

I guess we all have true stories like these....my favourite is as follows. An update to users' PCs was sent round in an email which basically said "click on the icon in this email to start the process, then do the following...you may want to print off this email to refer to the instructions as you go along." One user, at a remote office (naturally!) just couldn't get this to work. Several different people tried to talk her through it over the phone, but eventually someone had to drive over to see what was going on. It's obvious really; she'd printed out the email and was carefully putting the mouse on the print out, on top of the image of the icon, and clicking....

Re:The know-nothing.

[orclevegam]

My friend once called me to come over to his house and help him figure out why his new sound card wasn't working. I was somewhat surprised he had called me as he actually has a fairly good grasp of computers and can usually figure out the problems after doing a bit of research on the web. When I got there I took one look at his computer and new exactly what the problem was. He couldn't find the screws for the PCI slots in his system, so he had scotch taped his sound card into the computer. If he had used electrical tape, or maybe even duct tape he probably would have been fine, but scotch tape carries a pretty strong static electric charge. Fried his sound card trying to hold it into the computer.

Ones I've met

[stuntpope]

I support a couple of web applications I developed, don't get too many calls, but the ones I remember most are:

Caller: I can't get into the site.
Me: Do you have an account to log in with?
Caller: Huh?
Me: Ok, click 'Create Account', you'll see a form to fill out with your information. Fill it out to make an account.
Caller: Ok (typing noises heard over phone)
(long pause... no typing noises... getting really long...)
Me: Are you done?
Caller: Do you want me to press that 'Submit form' button?

and a different caller -

Me: You need to create a password for your account. It should have a lower-case letter, an uppercase letter, and a digit.
Caller: You mean the number kind of digit?
Me: (suppressing urge to say, "No, cut off a finger and mail it to me!")

Re:Irony

[R2.0]

Even better - the article presupposes that helpdesk folks are definitely going to Hell.

Re:The know-nothing.

[cheater512]

A favorite of mine:

User: I'm awfully sorry. I deleted 'The Internet' (Windows 95)

Tech: Thats fine. I think we have a backup of it around here somewhere. :)

Re:Military Alphabet

[dcsmith]

You end up having to say "A as in Alpha" instead otherwise they can't cope. It's even worse if they are a foreign national whose English language skills aren't so strong.

For real fun, make good use of all the possibilities. You can get someone to lose hope if you spell it
H as in Hour
O as in Opossum
P as in Psychic
E as in Excel

See also
A as in Aardvark
G as in Gnu
K as in Knife
M as in Mnemonic
X as in Xylophone...

Re:How I deal with finger pointers

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Never thought I'd run into a bitchy queen on Slashdot.

Re:And when they get to Hell -

[sYkSh0n3]

Well, you've convinced me. I'll be in church on Sunday.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:How I deal with finger pointers

[TheMCP]

(*snap*!)

Re:Military Alphabet

[Gospodin]

Me: "Nine seven Charlie foxtrot hotel romeo two..."

Of course they were confused. That should be "niner".

Re:Surprisingly common

[CSMatt]

Actually they can. Tech support: "OK, first click on 'My Computer'" User: "How am I supposed to click on your computer?"

Re:voodoo users

[Lehk228]

i used the same strategy calibrated for C-