Forum menu
Cougar - you speak the truth, but he did apologise quite well.
Can we be friends again please?
One chap was adamant that he didn't have a video card in his PC; after half an hour of me telling him that he had, he went "well where do I put the damn tapes then?"
That's understandable to a degree. After all back in the day, 'video' meant the tapes to most people.
Cougar - you speak the truth, but he did apologise quite well.
To be fair, I assumed that 90% of it was done for comedy value rather than serious anyway.
Frankly, I don't think you did too badly out of the deal, myself.
Well, that's your fault for not backing me up when I suggested elf go ahead and "smash it all up" early on the first page. Now we'll just have this to go through again in a couple of weeks.
That's understandable to a degree.
A lot of it's understandable. These people aren't (always) stupid, so much as they're faced with something new and strange and a little overwhelming. I've no problems with "stupid" questions, I like to help people which is why I do the job I do.
What I have a chip on my shoulder about is the attitude that some people bring with them. Their computer doesn't work, usually due to a problem of their own devising, and this is somehow our fault. Or that yelling and screaming like a three year old is going to get their issue resolved any faster. I've had my career dismissed as "shit" before now by people who have come to me for help. And now I'm being stereotyped in a manner that's frankly offensive (cos y'know, I never venture outside, being a member of a bloody [i]mountain biking [/i]forum 🙄 ).
So yeah, whatever. I wasn't taking Elfin particularly seriously, I just found the whole experience tedious. Friends, group hug. Just, next time you want help, follow Wheaton's Law when you reach for the keyboard, yeah?
Well, that's your fault for not backing me up when I suggested elf go ahead and "smash it all up" early on the first page. Now we'll just have this to go through again in a couple of weeks.
😀
To be honest, why the geoff he doesn't just buy a Mac and be done with it escapes me.
Don't; I've just cut my own hair and it's all gone terribly wrong. 😥
I like to help people which is why I do the job I do
Are you actually support professionally then?
Or that yelling and screaming like a three year old is going to get their issue resolved any faster
Yeah - I think that's cos people get extremely annoyed very quickly and continue to get more and more annoyed - only phoning support when they're in an absolute rage and can't keep control of themselves when trying to discuss it.
As a general observation, people don't tend to realise when they're being unreasonable and will try and justify their own actions by making out that YOU've done something wrong, which is where we get the situation Cougar talks about.
Are you actually support professionally then?
For my sins, aye. Though these days it's more Enterprise class stuff rather than halfwits whose printers have run out of white ink. It's good to keep my hand in though.
Mostly I look after Windows servers for large companies, doing remote support over VPNs and suchlike.
As an owner and professional user of windows, mac, unix, and linux machines, I can tell you that the are all good/bad, depending on if you know how to use them or not. 😉
I think that's cos people get extremely annoyed very quickly and continue to get more and more annoyed - only phoning support when they're in an absolute rage and can't keep control of themselves when trying to discuss it.
I firmly believe that there is a "type" of person who thinks that the best way of getting results is to shout at people. Unfortunately for them, it doesn't work with IT staff. We're sneaky and have long memories.
Years ago, I used to do end-user support for a large PC retailer, in the vein of the UserFriendly cartoon above. The company manufactured crap PCs and very angry customers.
In terms of rage, sheer obstinacy and a total unwillingness to listen, the worst people to deal with by a country mile were professional people; doctors, teachers, directors and managers who are all used to telling people what to do and getting their own way.
Generally, people were exponentially worse on a monday morning. I theorised that they'd spent all weekend with their mates going "I'll ring them on Monday and give them hell!" We called them "screamers."
The people who receive the best customer service, above and beyond the call of duty, were the people who were nice to us. The people who thought that screaming at graduates in their first IT job was good sport, they went as far to the back of the queue as we could get away with. It was quite eye-opening as to how it all works behind the scenes. I always get great results out of tech support departments these days, funny that.
Wunun...
Oh. 🙁
FCOL Elf - CALM DOWN. Did you get my e-mail the other day?
No CG. Email down at mo. Major technical issues at Elfin Towers. 🙁
BTW I was mainly promoting Linux because it is free.
It wont cost you a penny and for a lot of people it does everything they need. Its something you can try and make a decision on without even installing (by using a live CD).
The hardware support has come on leaps and bounds.
Programs or things that don't work as you expect sometimes just require patience. Its incredible to think that people have built all this stuff and it doesn't cost a penny. Theres also plenty of willing people out there and forums to help.
I think because we live in a "now" world Microsoft is always seen as the preferred option. Because back in the old days it seemed masses ahead in usability - you didn't have to understand anything about what you were doing. Other OSes have caught up in this area though.
Sadly still not up to Windows 7 standards of usability, though. I'm on Ubuntu, it works OK, it's great for programming and development stuff, but Open Office is crap, Gimp's even worse, it changes screen resolution every time I start it up, ... Mostly minor niggles, but if I could* I'd switch to Win7 in a flash.
I find Open Office fine for home usage. At work I have to use MS Office 2010 which I find worse than previous Office releases. I'd say though, so far at work I've not had to do anything OO couldn't do.
The GIMP problem is probably X or your video driver. Not GIMP.