Goddam AOL users...

Rohit Sinha

I don't know why tech support guys have such a holier that thou attitude. Imagine what it would be like if doctors or car mechanics for example started behaving the same way. Doctor: Give me a double one, bartender. I'm pissed off. Bartender: Why, what happened? Doctor: Just saw a patient today. Damn guys don't know anything. I don't know who gives them the right to live if they don't their body well enough. Bartender: <> Doctor: <> Well, this guy came to me one week back and said his head was paining. After one week of conducting tests, taking samples and hours and days of questioning (in the reverse order),... Bartender: <> Doctor: ... we finally managed to find out he's got lymphocercomatitis of the upper cerebra minor. Give me another double. Bartender: Here. Doctor: He could just have taken three doses of Lypticertirene Megaphyte daily for one month and two capsules of Ceepeenilin for two months and that would have been it! But no, he'll come to us, waste our precious time, because we are supposed to be doing something else, after all something else is what we are paid for, and well blah blah blah... Barman: <> Doctor: Give me another. I'm sure he also uses AOL. Bah!
Regards,

Rohit Sinha

Character is like a tree, and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
- Abraham Lincoln

The whole world steps aside for the man who knows where he is going.
- Anonymous

Member 96

All I can say to people that denigrate support is if they spent even 1 day in their shoes they would have a completely different view of the whole thing. Your example so far from the reality of the situation that it's laughable and is based on outdated sterotypes of computer "nerds" with bad attitudes and holier than thou demeanors. Lets face it, how many true nerds of that kind are there any more. Most people in the IT industry are just everyday ordinary people like you would see in any industry. It's such a common job these days I doubt that anyone really considers any of us Wizards in the old sense any more. I hear people bitch all the time about tech support but anyone who has ever done it before in a big way knows what they face every day. And your example is a terrible one, have you never heard doctors or car mechanics talking privately about the people they deal with every day? If you think tech support people have a holier than thou attitude you aint heard nothing. Anyone, anywhere in the world in a job that involves dealing with the general public on a regular basis will, over time, develop an attitude of one kind or another but for the most part cynical towards the human species. While it may be true that some support people have a holier than though attitude, I bet you 95% of the time they don't but the person who is feeling they do is using that as an excuse to justify their own ignorance and unwillingness to come to terms with said ingorance and become more knowledgeable in the process. Many, many times doing support, we come across situations where people will deny that our recommendation will solve the problem and will not try them, even when they are very simple and involve no risk on their part at all: "It can't be that, I'm a computer expert and I don't agree with you, what else could it be.." etc etc. We've been doing this a long time and it still floors us when people come back with that sort of thing. What sort of computer "expert" would disagree with the people who actually wrote the software on how to resolve an issue with it. Obviously no real expert. The normal process is dozens of emails just trying to convince them to try our suggestion after which they finally do, it starts working and they email back something like "you people rock!" completely forgetting that they ever denied it in the first place. Don't get me started! I could provide thousands of examples that would prove the point beyond any doubt. Lao Tzu had some things to say about

Rohit Sinha

J Cardinal wrote: All I can say to people that denigrate support is if they spent even 1 day in their shoes they would have a completely different view of the whole thing. Well, I used to give support a couple of years back when I worked for an ISP and we used to get people like "Wow! You people are great. You have tie ups with Yahoo, hotmail, and all the other sites in the world," to how to install the package, how to install the modem, no I tried to double click, it doesn't work, I'm telling you why don't you listen, etc etc. So yes, I have done support and I've spent more than 1 day in your shoes. Sorry, I still feel the same. Maybe my experience has been different from yours. Maybe in India the general people are expected to be less computer savvy than in Canada, so here the support guys are more tolerant. I don't know. J Cardinal wrote: While it may be true that some support people have a holier than though attitude, I bet you 95% of the time they don't but the person who is feeling they do is using that as an excuse to justify their own ignorance and unwillingness to come to terms with said ingorance and become more knowledgeable in the process. If it's ignorance, I don't think it's that bad. But yes, if they show attitude too on top of it (I'm an expert, shaddup), yes, that's bad. But contempt for people who are ignorant in the field you are supposed to be an expert in is not becoming. I don't suppose you know everything there is to know yourself. (Now don't give me a "When did I say I do?" because I know you didn't but let me continue) Have you ever been in situations like "I took this paracetamol because this is what I do when I have a fever," or "The travel agent told me I didn't need any ticket for my kid"? Have you ever made mistakes in filling up a form? Ever knocked at the wrong door? Ever asked what the price was when it was clearly printed on the packet? Silly examples, I know, but do you see my point? It happens to everyone, some time or the other. You dismissed my example as terrible, laughable and far from reality. All I have to say to that is that it wasn't an example as such, I was just trying to take off from that earlier comment at the beginning of my post and trying to make a feeble attempt at humour. From your reaction it is obvious that I failed. And even if we brush aside the attempt at humour as rudely as it deserves, you will find on careful inspection, that while a bit stretched to suit my argument, it is not

Member 96

Heh heh. I guess I'm just in a bad mood today and nothing would seem humorous, sorry for taking it out on your well thought out opinion that I actually can agree with on many points. I'm not bitter or cynical really... <grin> Overall, I would suspect from what I've seen here, on the BBC and in many other places that the general level of computer expertise amongst computer users is probably higher in India than in Canada, but it's hard to say for certain. Actually if I were to make any country specific comments it would only be to say that the record for rudest emails of all time received by our support department goes to one guy in Australia which I can not repeat here despite the anything goes nature of this particular forum. Other than that, we support people in easily over 40 different countries on a regular basis and the great majority of them appear to be very kind, thoughtful and intelligent people. It's just that the really bad experiences tend to stand out, maybe I'm just a "glass half empty" person at heart.

Roger Wright

J Cardinal wrote: emails of all time received by our support department goes to one guy in Australia Is he a member here? Shall we guess which one?:-D It is ok for women not to like sports, so long as they nod in the right places and bring beers at the right times.
Paul Watson, on Sports - 2/10/2003

Rohit Sinha

J Cardinal wrote: I guess I'm just in a bad mood today Happens to all of us. Have a :beer: pal. It's Friday. J Cardinal wrote: Overall, I would suspect from what I've seen here, on the BBC and in many other places that the general level of computer expertise amongst computer users is probably higher in India than in Canada, but it's hard to say for certain. Wow! But even if that is true, (expertise among computer users, as you say), consider this. If only ten people use the computer here in India, and a hundred of them use it in Canada, then the spectrum would probably be wider for the 100 users. And if you take out the computer users who are also programmers, and then do the comparisons again, I'm sure the stats would be very different this time. J Cardinal wrote: It's just that the really bad experiences tend to stand out True.
Regards,

Rohit Sinha

Character is like a tree, and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
- Abraham Lincoln

The whole world steps aside for the man who knows where he is going.
- Anonymous

Lost User

There are AOL users for the same reason we preserve pandas. Evolution is trying to get rid of them but we keep interfering ;P Elaine (fluffy tigress emoticon) The tigress is here :-D

Paul Watson

Just to throw a spanner in the works... The fact that you are getting so many "stupid" support calls is evidence that the software and systems are crap, not the users. If we made better software with more intuitive UIs, more reliable processes, then many of those support calls would not happen. Of course there will always be idiots, and if we made perfect software then just what the hell are we going to ever rant about?

Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South Africa

Macbeth muttered: I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er

Member 96

No it's not. As I said, the majority of the support requests we get revolve around common computer usage tasks, not our software. I think this points out quite the opposite in fact to what you theorize.

Paul Watson

J Cardinal wrote: As I said, the majority of the support requests we get revolve around common computer usage tasks, not our software I was not attacking your software directly Cardinal or saying that all software is crap. But as you pointed out common computer tasks are poorly implemented and provided for. Computing is still in it's infancy in this regard and has literally decades to go before it gets anywhere near the level that will make it what we envisage. Computers are not intuitive at present. Your software is based on the poor systems and so cannot do much to counteract that.

Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South Africa

Macbeth muttered: I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er Want a job?