The 5 Users You'd Meet in Hell 649
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)."
Re:whiz kid-esque (Score:3, Informative)
IT problem (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I wonder what category I belong to... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:There are more.... (Score:5, Informative)
There are different types of technical support available, and your company may employ some or all of those available. They include (but by no means are limited to) the following:
Tier 1: First level telephone support
In general, this level of support will assist you with "I can't find the right mouse button" type questions. The people who work at this level are generally very comfortable with the desktop operating system that your company uses, and can help you find applications, sometimes even help you find departmental data. Some companies even grant Tier 1 support staff the ability to remotely control your PC and help you to launch applications in this manner.
Tier 2: Second level support
In general, this level of support is called upon when the Tier 1 support personnel have exhausted their flow charts of canned information. This would include problems like, the computer won't reboot or we can no longer send e-mail.
Tier 3: Third level support
In general, this level of support will never talk to the end user. This group of people are involved in building the infrastructure, maintaining servers and network gear, and resolving obscure technical problems that are beyond the scope of responsibility for the Tier 2 support personnel.
It is important to note that there are many Tier 1 support staff who work their way towards Tier 3. They attempt to learn as much as they can about an area - by resolving problems for people that are outside their sphere of responsibility. These people "go the extra mile" trying to resolve problems that you, as a user, should be able to look up and answer for yourself.
If you are using CAD applications, Geophysical applications, or an obscure 4GL to compile your custom application, you will not likely get the support that you are looking for from the standard 3 tier support infrastructure. In many cases, you will have a contract with the vendor to obtain support directly from them.
If you are using obscure functions of "off the shelf software", then you will likely end up being more knowledgeable about the product than your Tier 1, 2 AND 3 support staff, as they have no reason to use the software as intimately as you would.
Your help desk can only provide the service that your company is willing to support. I somehow doubt that refusing to learn an uncommon application feature for yourself on the basis of "it's too hard" will not make you look good to your manager.
Re:The user that gives me more trouble than any ot (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The know-nothing. (Score:4, Informative)
If you're serious, I don't buy that explanation. While what your friend did was a little unorthodox, it almost certainly didn't fry the card. I don't care how much static the tape holds. The charge has to go somewhere ESD-sensitive for it to do damage, and that simply isn't realistic in the situation you describe.
First, for tape holding a card in a slot, if the static charge discharges at all, it would discharge straight into the metal PCI card cage (which is grounded) or into the metal plate at the end of the card (which is also grounded). Assuming reasonable card margins, there should be no realistic path from the tape to anything other than output buffers (which should be ESD-protected anyway) from anywhere near that end of the card even if somehow the computer's case and the ground rail on the PCI bus were not grounded. (Yikes!)
Second, if he was in contact with the tape, any charge held by the tape would be distributed into your friend. While air is a poor conductor, it does cause electrical charge to dissipate slowly. When the tiny charge in a piece of tape is distributed across the much larger combined surface area of the tape plus your friend's body, the dissipation rate increases proportional to the increase in surface area, and thus should be near zero reasonably quickly.
Third, how do you stick something to a PCI card's connector area without touching any metal part of the case again? If your friend was taking even basic steps to avoid static buildup (touching any metal in the computer even once should be sufficient), the remaining charge would be almost nonexistent.
The main reason people say to avoid cellophane tape with equipment is that it is awful stuff. It leaves behind a sticky residue that is darn near impossible to remove (without nasty chemicals), leaves little bits of cellophane that end up in the strangest places (like baking on the power supply transformer), and tends to fall off eventually and subsequently end up somewhere obnoxious (like buzzing in the fan housing), not because of the relatively small ESD risk it contributes. Rubbing your clothing on your chair in a dry climate is likely to produce orders of magnitude more than the charge that cellophane tape holds.
I'd say there's pretty much zero chance the tape caused the card failure. When it comes to electronics, infant mortality happens sometimes. That's what warranties are for... and good return policies.
Re:IT problem (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Surprisingly common (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Surprisingly common (Score:5, Informative)
Who modded this comment up?
1.) You can tap the pad. It's just disabled by default. Which is a good thing, because every time I try to drag one of my heavy fingers across the pad, it registers as a click on any PC out there.
2.) Doing a double-click (on Macbooks/Pros that can run Windows) is as easy as putting two fingers on the trackpad and clicking.
You can also do all sorts of nice tricks like using two fingers to scroll (horiz. and vert.) and things like that. And, of course, you can always plug in a Bluetooth or USB mouse -- the blindingly obvious solution that every Mac critic seems to know about.
All that said, the Mighty Mouse is dogshit. You have to hit it -just so- to do a right-click, and while that's ok when you're not e.g. gaming, it's really awful when you're trying to zoom in with the sniper rifle and instead fire off a shot that gives away your position. And the little scroll-ball is in exactly the perfectly WRONG place for it to be.
Re:voodoo users (Score:3, Informative)
It can also be that they're not allowed to deviate from the script. This is especially true in large ISPs. First level support agents are randomly monitored by quality assurance and in places where you're not allowed to deviate from the script, doing so can mean a reprimand or worse.
The other problem for first level support is that it's difficult to tell if a person who says they're technical actually is or if they just think they are. Plenty of people call up and say that they've tried the first few suggestions, but when they do them again with the tech on the phone, it will magically start working.