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You're Wrong, Tech Support, but Fix It Anyway

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  • #16
    I developed the habit of cutting people off and repeating the question until I get the right answer. It works great.
    Interviewer: What is your greatest weakness?
    Me: I expect competence from my coworkers.

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    • #17
      Me too

      [/I]
      Quoth gremcint View Post
      I developed the habit of cutting people off and repeating the question until I get the right answer. It works great.
      I do it too, I find it annoys a lot of people. But I am getting too old to waste hours of my time listening to people ramble on telling me every thing under the sun except the answer to the question I ask.

      Even the answers "I don't know" or "I don't understand the question" are far better replies than the long non-answers many people give to hide their lack of knowledge.

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      • #18
        The last job I had that involved lots of computer use, complete with finicky programs that threw fits if you hit the wrong button at the wrong time, IT loved me because I wrote down error numbers when just reading the message and doing what it said didn't work.

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        • #19
          Some years ago I had a customer who would screw up the after end of year procedure. He did it for about 3 years in a row before I realized he was doing it, because who remembers 12 months ago in detail?

          So when I worked it out, I told him that he had done it before, and he opened his instruction manual and discovered red underlines under the parts he needed to follow and penciled in notes in his handwriting from previous years.

          I understood that he could not remember from year to year, but he did it the next and the one after and the one after that. Somewhere in there I started offering to fix it so he did not have to remember the instructions. I was going to add a check for the mistake he kept making and pop up an error message then abort the program.

          He said (every year) "No! I can remember it"

          And the next year he would forget again.

          And I would offer to fix it.

          And he would refuse.

          It was not a big deal to fix it every year, but it was embarrassing for him.

          The torture finally stopped when he sold his business to a larger conglomerate who used a different computer system.

          What was that definition of insanity?

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          • #20
            Quoth mhkohne View Post
            Refusing to give the error message to tech support is one of those things that ought to warrent flogging at least. I can understand not remembering what the message is, but refusal? To the whipping post with you!
            Hehe. At my office job, I'd get errors sometimes. Weird ones. I'd just screenshot them, format in Paint so they looked ok (leaving on the time) and print, making any additional notes needed. I thought I might have been a bit annoying and overly thorough, but I'm guessing that's why the IT guys all liked me lol.
            "Hi, this is Silver. How may I lose my self respect in order to cater to your over- inflated ego today?" --- Silverrb

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            • #21
              Timing

              Quoth SilverOrb View Post
              Hehe. At my office job, I'd get errors sometimes. Weird ones. I'd just screenshot them, format in Paint so they looked ok (leaving on the time) and print, making any additional notes needed. I thought I might have been a bit annoying and overly thorough, but I'm guessing that's why the IT guys all liked me lol.
              I don't know about using Paint. But the fact you recorded the time of the error is a life saver. The error code is important, but having the time of the error helps in checking the log files for some errors.

              I am not surprised that techs love you.

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              • #22
                Part of the reason I used paint was that I ran 4 monitors at once, any screenshot meant 2 screens were captured. It would be too tiny then to see the info. I'm sure there are much better ways, but it worked and took only a min or two. Plus I could figure it out LOL.
                "Hi, this is Silver. How may I lose my self respect in order to cater to your over- inflated ego today?" --- Silverrb

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                • #23
                  Sense

                  Quoth SilverOrb View Post
                  Part of the reason I used paint was that I ran 4 monitors at once, any screenshot meant 2 screens were captured. It would be too tiny then to see the info. I'm sure there are much better ways, but it worked and took only a min or two. Plus I could figure it out LOL.
                  Nope, what you said makes plenty of sense. All the simpler methods I know assume you have only one monitor. Things can get tricky with multiple monitors, if what you are doing works then stick with it. The other screen capture programs I used were a lot of work with just two monitors and I only was able to use them well because the setup was fixed and I had only three programs running (WebBrowser in one screen, AutoStitch and ImageResizer in the other).

                  Four screens with I don't know how many programs would be a mess to capture the errors. Just keep at it.

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                  • #24
                    I assume you screen cap by using Print Screen? If you use ALT-Print Screen it just grabs the current app that has focus, even if you are on multiple monitors. (If your app is straddling monitors it might grab things that overlap it in the straddle). Of course then you don't have the Taskbar with the time stamp on it, but that can be added in after. (You can click the Task bar in Win7 and press Alt-printscreen to paste it into a graphics program as well)

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                    • #25
                      Thanks

                      Quoth Jetfire View Post
                      I assume you screen cap by using Print Screen? If you use ALT-Print Screen it just grabs the current app that has focus, even if you are on multiple monitors. (If your app is straddling monitors it might grab things that overlap it in the straddle). Of course then you don't have the Taskbar with the time stamp on it, but that can be added in after. (You can click the Task bar in Win7 and press Alt-printscreen to paste it into a graphics program as well)
                      I have try that sometime. I have a 4K monitor now and have not paid around with multiple monitor setup for quite a while. Thanks for the tips.

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                      • #26
                        another one is use the snipping tool if you have Win 7. (you'll find it on the Accessories menu)

                        you can then select the area of the screen you want. mostly you won't get in the time but you can always mark that in the file name or something.
                        I am so SO glad I was not present for this. There would have been an unpleasant duct tape incident. - Joi

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                        • #27
                          Quoth HawaiianShirts View Post
                          Which is exactly why all those malware installers work. They throw something at an inexperienced user that looks like a generic error message; out of habit, the user just clicks OK without reading the message or even thinking about it.
                          The clever malware writers make hitting Cancel or X have the same effect as OK. The mean ones make the "error" window modal (can't click anything else). The really evil ones just say "fuckit" and prevent you from loading into Windows (Ransomware).

                          Quoth Gizmo View Post
                          another one is use the snipping tool if you have Win 7. (you'll find it on the Accessories menu)
                          You can also use the Problem Steps Recorder if you are having trouble with a *sequence* of steps that leads to an issue -- It saves screencaps and accompanies them with captions describing the current input, then turns it all into a ZIPped-up HTML file for you to give to the techies ^_^ Also useful for making rudimentary step-by-step tutorials. Just click Start and type PSR
                          "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
                          "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
                          "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
                          "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
                          "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
                          "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
                          Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
                          "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

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                          • #28
                            This same co-worker pulled another one.

                            A control icon disappeared from a website that she has to use often. I don't know why. I don't have any control over the site; we just post content to it. Co-worker flipped out and complained to me and to my manager that she can't do her work properly without that control icon. I pointed out that she could execute the same command with a drop-down menu selection (total of three clicks). That, apparently, wasn't good enough.

                            So we contact the vendor. Vendor does some research, determines that it's a browser thing. We can't use one browser on this site due to security concerns; the other two we're allowed to use don't support whatever it is that made that control icon work.

                            I report this to Co-worker. She doesn't like it. She argues with my manager, and they go to the vendor again. I was taken out of the loop for a while.

                            I just heard the resolution last week. The vendor suggested a workaround that involved a drop-down menu selection. Y'know, the SAME SUGGESTION I MADE the MOMENT the problem was reported to me. That was acceptable. Co-worker informed me that she and her team will now be using that drop-down menu to do that one step that they occasionally need to do on the site.

                            Grr.

                            Quoth SilverOrb View Post
                            I thought I might have been a bit annoying and overly thorough, but I'm guessing that's why the IT guys all liked me lol.
                            Better to have too much information than not enough!
                            I suspect that... inside every adult (sometimes not very far inside) is a bratty kid who wants everything his own way.
                            - Bill Watterson

                            My co-workers: They're there when they need me.
                            - IPF

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                            • #29
                              Better

                              The better solution is to just fire this person.

                              There are tons of good people out there looking for jobs, she will not be that hard to replace.

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