Since mean-spriritedness is in the air (not here obv, but in other places and of course on the emo kid / indie kid / Tanya Pink Floyd articles) I thought I would respond to Alan’s continuation to the Digg 9 Things The non-tech savvy do to…. (Ha Ha, linking like that so it causes a posting trackback is one of those things which I am sure annoys the IT guys gals).
The thing is I am not an IT expert, but I am a bit tech savvy. I fall between these two stools. But unfortunately the IT guys/gals here lump everyone who does not work in their area in the same boat. So here are my highly subjective nine.
1: Have you tried turning it off and on again? YES! YES! OF COURSE I BLOODY HAVE!
2: When the come and fix something, they never check that it is fixed with my login. Of course it works when you have admin privileges. Computers somehow know…
3: “This didn’t happen with Windows 98, NT, DOS, with a MAC…. Well its nice to have a history of the world of computing problems, but it is happening now.
4: “You’ll need to download the update.” But I don’t have admin privileges. “Oh we’ll come down next week some time.”
5: Have you tried using Mozilla? IF YOU WANT ME TO USE FIREFOX, DOWNLOAD IT FOR ME WHEN YOU INSTALL THE MACHINE. SEE ADMIN PRIVILGES.
6: We don’t support that application. WHY HAVE YOU PUT IT ON MY COMPUTER THEN?
7: Take six months to respond to any query.
8: “Who fixed this?” – “I did.” – “Oh. You really shouldn’t have done it that way”. – “Well I didn’t have six months to waste waiting. My time is important too.”
9: Smell.
In the end, this war of attrition is because two groups of people (the It geeks and the non-tech savvy) really have nothing in common at all, and find each others positions difficult to identify with. Those of us in the middle, and there are a lot of us, often take the flak. The ideal IT support situation actually would be one where every department has a slightly competent tech savvy person who gets a bit of extra money to do the support in their office. We understand old George’s issues with the on button, and we appreciate that 80% of IT queries are routine, and we can fix ’em. This would free up It to do the proper training and the tricky problems.