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Whatever your job, there may be a particular thing that is a frequent event or customer or whatever that everyone ends up having to deal with at least once. Whether it's having to listen to the ramblings of self-important assholes, or cleaning up a disgusting spill, or getting screwed on a tip for delivering someone's pizza, every job has those "rites of passage" that every newbie has to deal with before they're considered part of the team.
Share your stories here.
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To kick things off, let me tell you about One Particular Caller (OPC) that we have at The Client. I may have mentioned her once or twice in previous posts. OPC is not a sucky customer. She's never unpleasant, she's never rude. But she has a tendency to ramble on if you don't keep her on-task, and she does not retain anything you teach her. OPC is not our "worst" caller on the IT Service Desk's Top 10 list-- that goes to someone who generates far more tickets than she should-- but she's by far the most memorable. If you mention OPC's name, other IT desk folks know immediately who you mean, and will react with grimaces, sighs, and shakes of the head.
In OPC's defense, she got her start at The Client before the advent of PCs, and she is quite the older person. (I don't have specifics when it comes to her age.) Many of OPC's calls will end up being that she doesn't remember how to copy-paste something from one folder to another. Or she doesn't remember how to create a folder. Or she doesn't remember how to re-name a file. Or she doesn't know how scanned images work (i.e., you can't edit what's in the images without image-editing software, which isn't commonly available on Client machines).
Sometimes, OPC will be trying to organize her files and need help with the folder creation etc., but will then ask something like "How should I organize this?" Which of course, we can't really answer. These are her files, the organization method should make sense to her, and we have no guarantees that whatever method we might suggest would make sense to her, given her frequent confusion.
Couple all this with her aforementioned tendency to ramble on, and it's not unheard of for calls with OPC to last upwards of 40 minutes. It is those call-lengths that have landed her high on our Top 10 list.
I have been fortunate in my more recent dealings with OPC that I manage to keep her from drifting off topic and will gently interrupt her initial ramblings to nudge her back on-task. So I can get whatever issue she had fixed in around 5 minutes. This does not, however, make me want to have to deal with her, because even my Mom-- one of the least tech-savvy people I know-- has been able to pick things up after enough repetition that she now can do her own troubleshooting. So anyone that persistently has issues with basic computer skills like copy-pasting or renaming files is someone that I don't want to spend any time on the phone with.
TL;DR Version of OPC: Confused older user who does not retain information and will ramble on if you let her. Calls typically run long, upwards of 40 minutes.
Now I've mentioned this background with OPC, I can get to the basis of a story.
Yesterday at work, I happened to overhear my coworker "Bort" mention OPC. I missed the context of why her name had come up, but just the mention of her name got a groan from me and a few other folks in the area. But then another coworker, "Plum," asked, "Who's OPC?" Bort and I could not believe she hadn't gotten a call from her, so we explained who she was and why people dread calls from her.
Less than two hours later, guess who called into the desk?
And guess which member of the IT service desk she happened to get?
Bort and I both laughed at the whims of fate. Some half an hour later, a grumbling Plum finally finished up with OPC. I promptly shook Plum's hand and told her, "Welcome to the crew!"
Share your stories here.
=======
To kick things off, let me tell you about One Particular Caller (OPC) that we have at The Client. I may have mentioned her once or twice in previous posts. OPC is not a sucky customer. She's never unpleasant, she's never rude. But she has a tendency to ramble on if you don't keep her on-task, and she does not retain anything you teach her. OPC is not our "worst" caller on the IT Service Desk's Top 10 list-- that goes to someone who generates far more tickets than she should-- but she's by far the most memorable. If you mention OPC's name, other IT desk folks know immediately who you mean, and will react with grimaces, sighs, and shakes of the head.
In OPC's defense, she got her start at The Client before the advent of PCs, and she is quite the older person. (I don't have specifics when it comes to her age.) Many of OPC's calls will end up being that she doesn't remember how to copy-paste something from one folder to another. Or she doesn't remember how to create a folder. Or she doesn't remember how to re-name a file. Or she doesn't know how scanned images work (i.e., you can't edit what's in the images without image-editing software, which isn't commonly available on Client machines).
Sometimes, OPC will be trying to organize her files and need help with the folder creation etc., but will then ask something like "How should I organize this?" Which of course, we can't really answer. These are her files, the organization method should make sense to her, and we have no guarantees that whatever method we might suggest would make sense to her, given her frequent confusion.
Couple all this with her aforementioned tendency to ramble on, and it's not unheard of for calls with OPC to last upwards of 40 minutes. It is those call-lengths that have landed her high on our Top 10 list.
I have been fortunate in my more recent dealings with OPC that I manage to keep her from drifting off topic and will gently interrupt her initial ramblings to nudge her back on-task. So I can get whatever issue she had fixed in around 5 minutes. This does not, however, make me want to have to deal with her, because even my Mom-- one of the least tech-savvy people I know-- has been able to pick things up after enough repetition that she now can do her own troubleshooting. So anyone that persistently has issues with basic computer skills like copy-pasting or renaming files is someone that I don't want to spend any time on the phone with.
TL;DR Version of OPC: Confused older user who does not retain information and will ramble on if you let her. Calls typically run long, upwards of 40 minutes.
Now I've mentioned this background with OPC, I can get to the basis of a story.
Yesterday at work, I happened to overhear my coworker "Bort" mention OPC. I missed the context of why her name had come up, but just the mention of her name got a groan from me and a few other folks in the area. But then another coworker, "Plum," asked, "Who's OPC?" Bort and I could not believe she hadn't gotten a call from her, so we explained who she was and why people dread calls from her.
Less than two hours later, guess who called into the desk?
And guess which member of the IT service desk she happened to get?
Bort and I both laughed at the whims of fate. Some half an hour later, a grumbling Plum finally finished up with OPC. I promptly shook Plum's hand and told her, "Welcome to the crew!"
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