Why, oh why, do people do things like this?

[Moirae]

Just a couple of notes from today at work.

Mr Annoying calls in and doesn't even wait for me to ask for his phone number and greet him, instead he talks right over me and says "My internet isn't working."

Me : "What do you mean by not working? Does that mean you can't surf or are all the lights out on your modem."

Mr. Annoying : "I don't know, I just can't get online."

Me : "Well, unfortunately I need to know a little bit more than that. Can you take a look at your modem and tell me if you can see any lights on it?"

Mr. Annoying : "Well, no I can't. I'm not at home."

So I sit there dumbfounded for a second at how he could possibly know whether he's online or offline when he's not even at home and, just as I open my mouth to ask the next obvious question Mr. Annoying says "My son called and said he can't get online."

Me: "Well, from what I can see here, your modem is online. You should be able to surf. While it is probably very frustrating for your son to not have an internet connection, we do need for someone to be at your computer so we can do some troubleshooting."

And then Mr. Annoying asks "You don't need for someone over 18 to call in?"

Well, no dumbass, not to just do basic troubleshooting. Only if your internet is down and we need to schedule a tech. But no, I'd lose my job to say that, so I just tell him politely to "Please give your son a call and let him know to call us. We'll troubleshoot with him no problem."

And then there's Moron. The lady who simply CAN'T follow directions no matter how many times I tell her. It ended up a 45 minute phone call because she couldn't do EXACTLY what I told her because the very obvious icons on the screen that say "Network and Internet Connection" and "Performance and Maintenance" or "Network Connections" and "System" just apparently do not even exist on her confirmed Windows XP computer.

I still don't know what Moron was looking at. Never mind that I must have told her 20 times how to find it.

I finally OEM'd her just because I couldn't work with Moron.

[Phone Jockey]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOW. You're in tier 3, huh? I love you guys. Our tier 3 guys are awesome. However, I don't know how they deal w/ some of the nincompoops I escalate to them. Poor fellas.

[Moirae]

Nah, I'm tier one. First track troubleshooting. Heh, I get to escalate to teir 2 when things go bad but those lucky suckers don't really have to deal with the customers much, I think. Those poor guys are the ones that deal with the "Customer called in when they were moving and idiot tech didn't transfer the logins so now we have to erase the new logins, set the transfer, and make sure nothing get screwed over in the meantime" kind of stuff.

There's currently an offer for Billing section in my center, but if I get yelled at doing small stuff, can you imagine how those poor guys get yelled at when they get to refuse someone a credit?

[Depot Denizen]

I've had one repeat offender from Mil Studies...nice lady, just completely computer inept. She even managed to lose the address bar on IE. Unfortunately she tried to pull rank on you. Most of us shrugged it off. The standing rule was that we could transfer her at any time to our awesome supervisor, and she'd handle it. Our supervisor (and the director of the department) were very pro-techie, they did what they could to help the consultants. Made life down in the fishbowl much more enjoyable when you knew management had your back.

In Walk-in and Helpline there was this one dude I called "Mr. Multiplan". He had decided to retire his ancient 386 and buy a new eMachines desktop, but still wanted to use the old MS-DOS spreadsheet program called Multiplan. I did get it running after some time, and the codger monkies with it and breaks it for good this time! Ever time he came in, he had a legal pad-sized page full of questions to ask about his computer. He'd even call the helpline afterwards for more help. Eventually we weaned him of Multiplan, and he got his questions answered.

[Moirae]

I swear, if people don't understand a computer, they need to take a class to learn how to use it properly instead of expecting us petty tech's to teach them over the damned phone.

[Depot Denizen]

I agree wholeheartedly. I would like to see mandatory computer training sessions for staff and faculty, so even the departmental IT staff gets a break. They spend too much time dealing with trivial issues to actually deal with the larger issues at hand.

Lately for me, PhD means "Piled higher and Deeper", as the profs are often the worst offenders.

[Moirae]

I've been getting alot of middle aged women that should honestly know better than the dumb questions I'm hearing. You know the ones who grew up with computers.

If you're between the ages of 30 and 40, you have no excuse for not knowing what "double click the mouse" means.

[Depot Denizen]

I dunno. A lot of people in that age range just haven't had the need for a computer. If someone has little computer experience, I try and steer 'em towards a Mac. Less hassle in the long run, and they don't get viruses!

I did pretty much teach my mom (mid 50's) how to use a computer, and she's gotten good enough to install programs and run everything by herself. My dad just checks his email and looks up info and the weather on his machine.

[Moirae]

At one point, my 50-something year old mother knew almost as much as I did. I don't think there's much excuse for it.

But especially around age 30 or so. I mean, we all learn this stuff in school.

[One-Fang]

Um no, no we don't. I'm just over thirty, and while I did take computing in school, it was totally optional, and only a few people took it. We programmed in BASIC :) Ah, thems were the days - 20 goto 10 :D

[Moirae]

lol, you don't need to learn programming to know how to double click a mouse and what a CD drive does.

Honestly, I started learning computers in grade three. It was not optional. It was a half hour class that everyone took once a week and it was only to learn the basics. Like how to type on it, how to double click a mouse, that sort of thing. Most of the time, we spent playing little games (there's still one that I wish I had managed to finish but we never had enough time).

A 30 year old should know what double click means.

When I got older, I elected to take more in depth courses and now know at least 5 languages but it didn't start that way.

[One-Fang]

Well, y'see, this is why I fully support having Solitaire on every PC, regardless of "no games" rules. It teaches you all about click, double click AND even drag! And they don't know they're learning! ;)

[DGoddessChardonnay]

...We programmed in BASIC :) Ah, thems were the days - 20 goto 10 :D

Heh. I had a whole semester in high school (mid 80's) on BASIC, and a year and a half of COBOL.

And now I can't recall a lick of it. Must be old age.:p

I wonder if they're still teaching BASIC in schools now . . .

[LostMyMind]

But especially around age 30 or so. I mean, we all learn this stuff in school.
:lol: That's real funny, while I was in high school. Every computer class I was in, I ended up being the "Is that right?" dude for the teachers. It even happen in college. If you're in your mid to late 30's or higher, it's completely understandable to have to be trained to use a computer. Took me years to get my mother to the point where she don't even ask me questions anymore unless it's a really screwy problem. In turn, she train poor daddy (who we keep on an win98 slow ass computer so he can't do much damage).

Everyone one else should have paid attention in class. ;)

(I got some college level computer books that will make some of these techs here laugh hard since most of it is wrong, wrong, wrong.)

[Format C]

In the computer lab, I have had students that were completely ignorant of computers. In one case, this woman used to come into the lab and expect us to look over her shoulder and ask us if it is okay to do a certain step in her assignment even after we would tell her to do it. It was getting so bad, that I told one of the supervisors and recommended that we set up an appointment with her. I bounced that idea off of her and she turned it down. A few minutes later, the supervisor came in and suggested it. She made an appointment but didn't show up for it. She did not monopolize our time in the lab after that.

[Moirae]

lol. There's alot of people out there that seriously just don't have a clue and are too worried that they will screw up something. Doing basic things on a computer is not hard and rather beneficial because most of the free world revolves around computers now.

I can understand having to teach someone in their 80's (I had to teach my grandmother how to scroll down the screen when my aunt sent me some pictures in email to give to gramma) but a 30 or 40 year have no real excuse not to know the basics when computers are everywhere.

Even my 57 year old father sat his butt down and bought some books to learn how to use it. He still isn't quite sure how to attach pictures to an email (must remember to show him someday soon) but I can say certain things now and he doesn't give me a blank stare anymore.

I seriously had a woman call up (she must have been around 40 or 45 years old) and ask "I have this thing. When I push a button it comes out of the computer. It's flat, and has a round hole in the middle, and looks kind of like a cup holder. What is it?"

I sat there stunned for a second and said "That's your CD-ROM drive, Ma'am. They're like regular CD's only they work in a computer."

Then she says "Oh. And this other one right next to it. it's about three inches long and looks like I can stick something inside it. What's that?"

Now I'm fighting laughing into the phone and say "That's your floppy disk drive. They're little hard disks you can record on and take to another computer if you need to."

Then she says "Oh, ok. Thank you, you've been alot of help."

I almost exploded with laughter after I got off the phone. :headdesk:

[AFpheonix]

We didn't have computers that had mouses in grade school or junior high. I remember playing a lot of DOS based Oregon Trail and Math Mansion in grade school, along with the standard LOGO. They did offer a computer class in Junior High, but the computers were amazingly old, so all we could really do was learn BASIC programming on them. The elderly computer we had at home was more advanced, even though it was still just a DOS machine. Got really good at altering my player files on XWing so that I wouldn't get dinged if I happened to die mid-mission :angel:

High school had some apples with Mac OS, so it really wasn't until then that I learned about using mice. We got a 386 with Windows 3.1 somewhere in there, too, and eventually "upgraded" to a Pentium 75mghz with Windows 95 on it. I got a laptop for graduation that was a Pentium 200mghz with Win95. That was a big deal, hoo boy :)

[Thrifty]

I wonder if they're still teaching BASIC in schools now . . .[/QUOTE]

This past semester I took a beginning computers course at my university and we learned in BASIC

[Kusanagi]

We didn't have computers that had mouses in grade school or junior high. I remember playing a lot of DOS based Oregon Trail and Math Mansion in grade school, along with the standard LOGO. <snip>

You killed 4,712 lbs of meat.

You were only able to carry 100 lbs back to the wagon.

[Crosshair]

You killed 4,712 lbs of meat.

You were only able to carry 100 lbs back to the wagon.
That really irritated me too. How hard is it to move the dammed wagon closer or even spend a few days getting all that meat preped. There would be times I could shoot ten buffalo and the next I would only be able to get a dumb rabbit. Heck, set up a buffalo burger stand for the winter and sell to people who need food.:p

[chantal]

I remember playing a lot of DOS based Oregon Trail
I loved that game so much that I went out and bought it (I was about 8 years old). I subsequently received Yukon Trail and Amazon Trail as Christmas/birthday presents. I remember beating/finishing both Oregon Trail and Yukon Trail, but I never got the hang of Amazon Trail. I believe I only made it to about the 5th Aztec/Mayan temple before I died of dysentry or got killed by the natives. :D Oh how I loved those games.

[Dragon_Dreamer]

Heh, Fang, they phased out teaching 6th-8th graders BASIC and LOGO (Lego LOGO ruled) soon after my class hit tenth grade. Class of 1999. I remember when the school got its very first four Macintoshes, in 6th grade. Took them a while to slowly get rid of all the Apple IIes.

Heck, I think the public library still has one, with all the old games! I loved playing the original Oregon Trail. I miss those old machines, sometimes.

[Moirae]

Have to say, I learned how to do the basic stuff on computers starting grade three in school, then Basic, Fortran and Pascal in high school. I learned HTML, C++, and... grrr, I can't remember the other one... in university. Guess you can tell how long it's been.

I've been teaching myself .php and java for web pages. I'd actually love to take classes on it at some point.

[LostMyMind]

It it was at a college and you learn Pascal around that time. I would bet the language you "can't" remember would be COBOL. ;)

:soapbox: If you can learn by reading reference books or looking at examples, don't take classes. They will drive you insane.

I've taught myself every programing language I know, I can read/code in anything with a reference book. What they teach in class most of the time is on logic. If you can teach yourself, logic shouldn't be much of an issue. ;)

I still :burnup: when I met folks who call themselves programmers and can't do anything outside of what they were taught in class.

[ebonyknight]

<snip>

A 30 year old should know what double click means.
<snip>

A 30 year old, perhaps. But I didn't have any required computer courses and didn't need them until I got into college. In fact there weren't any available until I got into middle school and the school only had two Atari 800's available in the library. BTW, they didn't use a mouse. ;)

Gen X'er born in '69

[DGoddessChardonnay]

<snip>
Gen X'er born in '69

I see we're the same age, so we know pretty much the same stuff;)

Remember the Commodore PET computers? We had thoe in our media center when I was in Junior High (aka Middle School.) About all you could do w/them then was play Space Invaders.

Typing Tutor is another one I recall vividly from high school. . . we had the Apple II's in our typing class back then (around 86-87) to use when we were done w/our daily assignments. I liked that so much I found a copy for my Commodore 64C (do they even make a PC version of that software now?)

Seems as if we were in the caveman days of PC'ing weren't we?

[Moirae]

COBOL, yep thats the one lol. But I couldn't take it anymore and quit. Though I wouldn't mind learning more for web programming. I'd love to be able to work at home on my own schedule.

[Mixed Bag]

I've heard of Intellivision games for Mac--and Sherwood Forest! :roll:

Let's see kids find it exciting to master a game by figuring out what words to type. :)

[Buglady]

lol, you don't need to learn programming to know how to double click a mouse and what a CD drive does.
<snip>
Honestly, I started learning computers in grade three.

I'm 32 and the computer mouse was not invented until I was in grade seven. My school didn't have computers *with* mice for all the students to use until I was in grade ten.

I started using a PC in 1993. Someone had to show me how to double click.