Arrogant techs.. (long)

[draggar]

Hello all. I have a confession to make. I have become one of those arrogant asshole techs. I didn't plan it nor did I ever think I would become one. It also did not happen overnight.

I used to be one of those "cool" techs, like many. I helped people when I could, I answered questions, even helped people with simple issues on the fly. No big deal.

Then, the people became stupid. I think it was when I did tech support for Fountain Technologies (computers under the names of Quantex, Pionex, Cybermax, Enova, etc). We sold our PCs though outlets such as QVC and the Home Shopping Network (cable TV networks that just show items for sale all day, most of the stuff is a rip off and/or crap). We also sold them though the Air Force Exchange (stores in Air Force bases, obviously). The questions I got were really simple, but I figured that a lot of our customers *were* the 'lowest common denominator". The most common was 'I just reinstalled Windows and now my screen is huge, I have no sound and my modem won't work". ABout 1/3 of my calls were walking people how to reinstall their drivers.

As time went on, people got more and more stupid. "Hi, I decided to upgrade my computer, so I bought a new hard drive, a new HP CD-RW (they were big at that time), an LS-120 drive (that AND the CD-RW??) a new sound card, yeah, have a nice day. People got dumber and dumber but I still tried to remain respectful.

My current job is what made me the arrogant asshole tech I am today. It wasn't overnight. The new scene got me back in the respect game. I helped people, employees and customers alike. It was great, until the true stupidity came in.

I look at intelligence (or lack thereof) with two main factors. There's uneducation where you don't know something because you've never had the opprotunity to learn it. If I ask a question and you don't know it, or you ask me something because you don't know it, then I write that off as being uneducated. No insult, you were just never educated with that.

STUPID is another story. You either know better, you know the answer just refuse to acknowledge it, or you refuse to learn it. If I've shown you time and time again and you still don't grasp it (assuming it isn't linear algebra or you have a learning disability) then I call it stupid. Like the people who ask me how to use a machine, which has DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS on it how to use it, that's stupid. You're wasting MY time.

The ratio used to be mostly uneducated and little stupid, now it is mostly stupid. I spend time and time again explaining the SAME thing over and over to the SAME people. OK, once again, the customer does NOT have the service plan so they will HAVE to pay for service. Their aircard WORKS so I cannot exchange it. No, I cannot fix their laptop. See where I am going?

So, it has come to the point where I waste hours a day answering STUPID people's STUPID questions. If I've shown you the answer 100 times, it's now a stupid question. If I've explained it to you a hundred times, it's now a stupid question. So, excue me if I seem like a "pissy arrogant asshole", OK? Maybe if you wern't such a stupid moron and actually LISTENED to and RETAINED the information I give you then I wouldn't be such an arrogant asshole. (Not only that then I would have time to help out all the uneducated people out there who DO want to learn and DO want to listen to what I suggest).

Oh, and to the arrogant tech I was talking to on the phone today, as I told you several times, the phone was BROADCASTING THE CORRECT INFORMATION. We verified that though our diagnostic equipment. So, the reason the phone was not making calls is because IT WAS HUNG UP IN THE SYSTEM. There was nothing wrong with the phone.

[earl colby pottinger]

Now you know

Why I am no longer a computer tech. After 35 years working with computers and over 15 years of being a computer tech I go sick and tired of the following.

1) Having a customer explain that they could not setup the hardware because the manual was too hard to understand. Arriving and finding that the hardware itself *IS* hard to setup. Ask for the manual, having the customer try to weasel out of giving me the manual, finally getting the manual and it is *STILL* sealed in it original plastic wrap. THEY HAVE NOT EVEN TRIED!!!!!

2) Having a system admin (who makes three times my salary) having problems installing software/hardware. Demand, manual. Follow one page of instructions as shown in manual (no big words!) and it works fine! WHY CAN'T HE READ IT PROPERLY?

3) After lots of hard work recover important business files for customer. Suggest to customer to do backups. Customer says they will not bother, they trust me to recover their files in the future! I AM NOT THERE NOW, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?

4) Have customers with systems where hard drive backups just need you to drag&drop on a Mac or type BACKUP on Intel systems (DOS/Windows) yet the customers last backup was over a year ago and they are screaming they need their files back. RECOVERY SERVICES $5000+

5) Customers claiming I don't know what I am doing, the computer never worked since they got it back, mind you they only come into complain a year later. Do checks on the file dates, find games installed months after they got it back. Find files dated to less than a week/month ago. YOU CAN'T FOOL A TECH IF YOU ARE NOT AS SKILLED YOURSELF.

6) Go on printer service calls only to find the problem is they are out of paper (1 minute fix), needs a toner installed (5 minute fix), someone had messed up the tray settings (1-10 minute fix), the mark on the paper is already on the paper loaded into the trays from the very start (10 minute fix the first time, 1 minute every time else), then the customer blows up when they have to pay one hour min for labour and if the trip time is over 30 minutes they have to pay for that too. TRY LOOKING BEFORE CALLING.

Do I need to go on?

[Pedersen]

I know what the both of you mean. I'm having that issue right now in many ways. I'm good at what I do. I can figure out systems that are very thoroughly obfuscated. While I've never written my own OS, or my own programming/scripting language, I think I could with sufficient time.

Unfortunately, I'm not given time, or support, to finish my projects anymore. I've got one project that should have been done over a month ago. However, it requires the electrician to finish his work before I can do mine. And the managers don't seem to be applying any pressure to the electrician.

I get told to make a set of CDs for a consultant. Why isn't this task given over to any of the help desk personnel (especially since the CDs are going to contain the contents of two folders sitting on a network drive!)?

Why does the help desk staff spend three days trying to troubleshoot a problem, and dump it off on me anyway after that (one that takes me 15 minutes to fix, too, and that's most every time)?

Why does the help desk not have the most critical piece of software our company needs installed on their PCs? Without it, they can't see the same problems that users report. They can't reconfigure items that have to be done. Which means it falls back to me to fix these things.

And now I've got an attitude problem? Screams of rage don't begin to do it justice.

I know exactly how the two of you feel, believe me.

[Seshat]

I wrote a book (published, yay!) where the intended readers were computer techs. Programmers, actually. For the sake of anonymity, I won't say what the topic is - there aren't THAT many books on the topic, and when you factor in that I'm female, it narrows it down even further.

An entire chapter is devoted to one particular aspect of the software. A whole chapter. Unfortunately, I keep getting emails about that aspect. I don't mind, particularly. My typical response to those questions is 'Ah, your question is actually about Foo, you're trying to make feature Bar do the work of Foo. There's a discussion on when to use Foo vs when to use Bar on page XXX.'

So WHY, after a response like that, do I get them coming back to me saying 'ooh, I like Foo. It looks useful. But what I want to know is, how do I make Bar do (what I just told them Foo is for)'.

[UncleImpy]

2) Having a system admin (who makes three times my salary) having problems installing software/hardware. Demand, manual. Follow one page of instructions as shown in manual (no big words!) and it works fine! WHY CAN'T HE READ IT PROPERLY?

This. This right here is what gets me at work. People that call in on my line are the senior admins, the people that get paid 6 figures, using an account that, in and of itself, cost their company over half a million dollars a year, and yet, at least once a month, I get someone calling in with an issue like:

"I've got a server running a RAID 5 array and two of the array disks have hardware crashed. I've replaced the disks and the array is not rebuilding itself. I need help."

No, you need to gimme your freakin job, because anyone that passed basic server competency will tell you a RAID 5 array cannot be rebuilt if TWO of the drives are lost at the same time. ARGH! Who is your HR contact??? Give them my resume!!

Sigh.

[earl colby pottinger]

Plus

No, you need to gimme your freakin job, because anyone that passed basic server competency will tell you a RAID 5 array cannot be rebuilt if TWO of the drives are lost at the same time. ARGH! Who is your HR contact??? Give them my resume!!

Plus what are the odds that two drives failed with minutes/hours of each other? Basicily, these guys were never doing their job in the first place, because they should have replaced the first drive as soon as it had failed. The rebuild would have happened next and unless the second drive failed (and the odds are very unlikely) before the end of the rebuild they would be fine to go when the second drive failed.

What happened the first drive failed and they were too lazy to change it as the system was running fine anyway. Only when there is a total failure and the entire company is yelling at them do they get off their fat asses. Only of-course it is too late.

I bet when you asked them about backups the reply was "Backups? We don't need backups, we have a Raid 5 array!". And to think these guys make more money than us!

[Seshat]

I bet when you asked them about backups the reply was "Backups? We don't need backups, we have a Raid 5 array!". And to think these guys make more money than us!

Of course they didn't need backups, they're Perfect Techs.

.... until something goes wrong.

[Pedersen]

Plus what are the odds that two drives failed with minutes/hours of each other? Basicily, these guys were never doing their job in the first place, because they should have replaced the first drive as soon as it had failed. The rebuild would have happened next and unless the second drive failed (and the odds are very unlikely) before the end of the rebuild they would be fine to go when the second drive failed.

Actually, the odds can be quite good for such a failure. When building such an array, the normal practice is to buy all drives at the same time. Same manufacturer. Same model number. Which frequently means getting a group from the same manufacturing batch. Which means made as identically as possible. Which means that they are likely to fail around the same time.

So, yeah, that can happen, and be much more likely than any of us would like to admit. Now, on to the second part, where you say that they were never doing their job in the first place:

Many shops run at the bare minimum staffing level. And keep their budgets so tight that the admins in question are unable to have proper monitoring software. And keep their project load so high that those same admins are unable to do normal system checkups more than once every couple of weeks.

The end result of that sort of planning by the shop is planning for failure. They will lose a lot of data.

I'm lucky with my shop, since even though we have bare minimum staffing levels, we have adequate budgeting, which means we've got proper monitoring and proper backups. But a lot of shops run with much much less, like my previous one.

We had a mirrored drive. What are the chances of two drives failing at the same time? Well, if you put them into the wrong drive enclosure (we had them in removable drive bays to make swaps easier), they are obscenely high. Somehow, enough EMI was happening inside the case to affect the drive bay, resulting in the mirrored drive failing. Both drives. At one point, it even happened multiple times in one week.

I looked like crap, since that was my responsibility to keep running smoothly. I had no idea at the time that removable drive bays would be manufactured that would be susceptible to normal levels of EMI (the machine was not anything special, believe me). Once I found out about it, the bays were removed, and the problem stayed fixed.

[CancelMyService]

1) Having a customer explain that they could not setup the hardware because the manual was too hard to understand. Arriving and finding that the hardware itself *IS* hard to setup. Ask for the manual, having the customer try to weasel out of giving me the manual, finally getting the manual and it is *STILL* sealed in it original plastic wrap. THEY HAVE NOT EVEN TRIED!!!!!

omgomgomg if I ever snap and end up going on a violent spree, it's going to be the result of dealing with these kinds of people.

Working for a cable company, I get people calling in to tell me they just spent the equivalent of my month's salary on a TV and don't even know how to open the box.

Also consider that most stores that sell expensive TVs usually have some sort of in home set up service that the customer most certainly was offered and turned down, and now he wants me to hold his hand through every phase of TV setup. Won't even consider doing it themselves, and why should they pay the store to do it when you can call the cable company and make one of their CSRs change your diaper while telling you how to connect component cables to your TV (WHICH ARE COLOR CODED FOR FUCK'S SAKES, UNLESS YOU'RE COLORBLIND THERE'S NO EXCUSE OTHER THAN NEVER LEARNING YOUR COLORS............gah...........brain bursting...............)

What's worse, they'll call in with something on their screen that's obviously coming from the TV's on screen menu and not the cable box's. They're screaming and yelling at me, demanding I make the offending doohickey off their screen and they Just. Will. NOT. Accept. that it's not the cable box's fault. I ask them "Well Sir/Ma'am, have you tried checking the manual to see if it offers a solution to this problem?" and I swear you can physically hear the crickets chirp in the background. Hell I'd wager they got thrown out with the packing material, let alone left still wrapped in the house somewhere.