This is why geeks tend to hate end users
Apr. 21st, 2006 02:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gizaI've heard it mentioned before that the way the human psyche works, we tend to not remember the dozens of people that we interact with who are mature and polite, but remember the single jackass who is rude to us and causes us grief.
Such is the case with today's end user. We'll call her "Jenny". The email conversation went something like this:
That's an exaggeration, and some of my "responses" were things I wanted to say, but held my tongue on. But sadly, exchanges like that with uncooperative and rude users are a regular thing in the tech world. And they are part of the reason why us geeks are sometimes in a foul mood and downright nasty to other end users.
Unfortunately, if you are an end user, you cannot avoid being targetted by a vengeful BOFH. Your only chance of escaping our wrath lies in helping to prevent us from becoming so jaded in the first place. If you see another end-user being rude or uncooperative with a tech smack them upside the head with the a keyboard and tell them, "You fool! That's a human being on the other end of the line. Show some damned decency to them or you'll screw us all!"
</rant>
Such is the case with today's end user. We'll call her "Jenny". The email conversation went something like this:
Jenny: I can't post to the CAUCE website. I keep seeing "access denied".
Me: I don't see any such entries in our logs. Could you try doing a power reload?
Jenny: Yes, I already tried that. I know computers, you know!
Me: You mentioned you use Safari. As a fellow Mac user, I've sometimes seen Safari act strangly, could you please try hitting the site in FireFox?
Jenny: What? You couldn't divine that I already used both MSIE and FireFox? What kind of a moron are you anyway?
Me: Yeah, that'll motivate me to solve your problem. Hmm... maybe your ISP is using a web proxy--
Jenny: You know what? Screw you! Every time I have a problem, I'm expected to do a "work around". If you can't help me, then I won't go to your stupid website anyway. In fact, I'm going to remove the link from my site. Take THAT Mister CAUCE webmaster!
Me: So this has happened before? I sense a pattern here. So long!
That's an exaggeration, and some of my "responses" were things I wanted to say, but held my tongue on. But sadly, exchanges like that with uncooperative and rude users are a regular thing in the tech world. And they are part of the reason why us geeks are sometimes in a foul mood and downright nasty to other end users.
Unfortunately, if you are an end user, you cannot avoid being targetted by a vengeful BOFH. Your only chance of escaping our wrath lies in helping to prevent us from becoming so jaded in the first place. If you see another end-user being rude or uncooperative with a tech smack them upside the head with the a keyboard and tell them, "You fool! That's a human being on the other end of the line. Show some damned decency to them or you'll screw us all!"
</rant>
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-21 06:58 pm (UTC)Amen to that.
Date: 2006-04-21 08:49 pm (UTC)Makes me glad to be a patient person.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-23 01:03 am (UTC)"It's not working. Fix it."
"What's not working?"
"You don't know? I thought you were an expert. Forget it."
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-24 02:07 am (UTC)