I'm such a failure!

[rendermandan]

This says it all.
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h205/rendermandan/Failureofyou.jpg

[Luke122]

It says "MAY be caused by a failure of you", not "WAS caused by a failure of you". Cut yourself some slack dude!


:D

[Diamon]

That's kinda harsh of Billy, I mean we're customers after all... or well, most people are. Maybe you've pirated it and that's why he's mean to you?

[rendermandan]

That's kinda harsh of Billy, I mean we're customers after all... or well, most people are. Maybe you've pirated it and that's why he's mean to you?

Huh?

[Luke122]

Huh?
Ditto

[x88x]

Daimon's referencing Bill Gates. ;)

And yes renderman, you are definitely a failure, as this error shows. It just goes to show that Windows knows you better than you know yourself. :P

[rendermandan]

Ah, that makes a little more sense now. Thanks.

[Luthien]

Bill Gates has actually not been working on Windows since around the time XP was released. Blame Steve Ballmer, who took over and seems the type who would try to blame all errors on the user.

[blueonblack]

Yes, you are a *complete* failure. Your work just screams 'fail'.

Someday I hope to fail as well as you.

:rolleyes:

[x88x]

Someday I hope to fail as well as you.

Hear, hear.

[dr.walrus]

Try working in tech support for a device that occasionally returns the error code 'USER'

pfft.

[Diamon]

*sigh*
How could you not see who I was referring to? And who do you associate with windows the most, Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates? -_-

[Diamon]

Try working in tech support for a device that occasionally returns the error code 'USER'

pfft.

Are you working in tech support? I've always imagined going crazy if I were to help the masses with probleams easily solved by google in 5 mins 8h/day. And an experience I have from helping some people, despite not working in tech support, is that you're telling them what to do, they say they're doing it and you know they're not doing what you're telling them. And they can never admit that they were doing the wrong thing so from there it's pretty much a dead end in many cases? Is it the same in "real" tech suppot?

[artoodeeto]

Are you working in tech support? I've always imagined going crazy if I were to help the masses with probleams easily solved by google in 5 mins 8h/day. And an experience I have from helping some people, despite not working in tech support, is that you're telling them what to do, they say they're doing it and you know they're not doing what you're telling them. And they can never admit that they were doing the wrong thing so from there it's pretty much a dead end in many cases? Is it the same in "real" tech suppot?

You have tech support spot on. It is utterly amazing how many people *think* they're doing exactly what you tell them but in fact aren't even necessarily doing it on the right computer, much less the right programs. And often they don't like to admit they were wrong so they try and blame you, the computer, the program, God, liberals, or whoever else comes to mind.

Rendarman - that error message reminds me of one I got in XP once. It said something to the effect of: "Windows has shut down explorer.exe to prevent damage to your computer." Yes. Genuine didn't-make-it-up error message. I laughed my rear off when I saw it...

[dr.walrus]

Are you working in tech support? I've always imagined going crazy if I were to help the masses with probleams easily solved by google in 5 mins 8h/day. And an experience I have from helping some people, despite not working in tech support, is that you're telling them what to do, they say they're doing it and you know they're not doing what you're telling them. And they can never admit that they were doing the wrong thing so from there it's pretty much a dead end in many cases? Is it the same in "real" tech suppot?

Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes.

And no, I'm not doing it any more and I hope I don't have to do it again.

Lots of conversations in tech support go like this. But much longer:

Me: "It's a simple problem, you just need to install the drivers. Can you..."
Customer: "No I don't think that's the problem. I'm just going to do this *click click*"
Me: "...I'm quite sure it's the drivers. I deal with this problem all the time"
Customer: "I'm getting really frustrated now! Why isn't it working!"
Me: "Okay, go to device manager, right click on the device, and click properties. What does it say?"
Customer: "I already did that"
Me: "What did it say"
Customer: "It just didn't work"
Me: "Can we please try it again. Look, I know this is frustrating, but the program has returned an error message saying the drivers aren't installed. It's definitely a driver problem, which we can have fixed in five minutes"
Customer: "You don't know what you're talking about"
Me: "Please humour me"
Customer: "Ok ok. Ok I clicked properties, now I'm clicking on...*click click* why did that happen?"
Me: "...I don't know what you just clicked on. What did you click?"
Customer: "I don't know"
Me: "Okay, let's just stop for a minute, and please just hear me out. We're not getting anywhere here, so what I need to happen is for you to trust me. I'll ask you to click on something, and what I want you to do is just read out what the next screen says and not click on anything unless I say so, okay?"
--- 2 mins later, the driver is successfully installed and the error message is gone ---
Customer: "I'm still angry, I've been on the phone for 20 minutes!"

AAAAAAAAAAAAARGGGHHH

[Diamon]

Another reason for me to not work in tech support I suppose ^^

[artoodeeto]

Yep. People are idiots. No doubt about it. I think a lot of the problem is we've been sort of conditioned to think tech support doesn't know what they're talking about for a few reasons:
- outsourcing to other countries where there's an accent issue and thus problems communicating

- tiered phone system so you initially talk to someone who tells you to restart your computer, all that kind of super-basic stuff that (for me, since I know what I'm doing most of the time) doesn't often make the problem go away

- people thinking they know more than they actually do

- different people thinking of things in different ways/terminology, and just assuming that everyone else sees it the same way.

That's why I try not to provide computer help to people over the phone. Most of the time we end up going around in circles and both get irritated. I'm best if I can just sit down at the computer in question and fiddle with it til it's fixed. :D

[Diamon]

I agree completely about giving help over the phone. So much easier to sit down at their system, preferably without having them looking over your shoulder and fixing it at a comfortable pace.

And btw, this thread made me think of a youtube clip I saw a long time ago. Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-_51OsaaSY
Starring dr. walrus and artoodeeto maybe :)

[Luke122]

--- 2 mins later, the driver is successfully installed and the error message is gone ---
Customer: "I'm still angry, I've been on the phone for 20 minutes!"

AAAAAAAAAAAAARGGGHHH

I worked on the Telus internet helpdesk for two years. Best call ever:

(Customer has been on hold for 45 minutes)
Me: Thank you for calling Telus, Luke speaking..
Customer: What the hell is taking so long?! I've been on hold for 45 minutes already!
Me(frustrated.. almost the end of 8 hours of this..): Well, it seems that everyone wants to bitch about the wait time instead of letting me fix their problems! *pause*(thinking.. oh ****.. did I just say that out loud?)
Customer:....*chuckle*Ok, haha.. fix my problem!

I had him running in 2 minutes.

After the call, my manager paged me to his office. I get there, and he looks up at me from his desk.

Manager: "Dont say bitch to customers."

[x88x]

Lol. Yeah, I was fortunate that every helpdesk position I had was in a position where it was feasible for me to just say 'You know what, give a minute and I'll come down and take a look at it.'. It keeps everyone less frustrated, lets them feel like you actually care, and gets you some much-needed exercise. ;)

I will admit to lying to tech support before though...mainly though when they're walking me through something simple that I know I've already done and I know the results or when they're having me do something pointless, like, when Comcast would want me to restart my computer to refresh my IP lease...no, I don't need to restart my computer, thanks, I just need to renew and release my IP lease.:rolleyes:

[dr.walrus]

After the call, my manager paged me to his office. I get there, and he looks up at me from his desk.

Manager: "Dont say bitch to customers."

My last day after two years on one helpdesk, I had this couple, BOTH on the phone to me at the same time, wanting a warranty extension. It was outside my remit as the case manager, but I know management would approve it. They REFUSED to take the correspondence address, though I assured them it would get their issue resolved. TWENTY MINUTES of them refusing to do the one thing that would fix their issue.

I find out later, meeting with my old boss for a beer, they emailed every corporate contact off te website, across the globe. There was an investigation and my boss had to manipulate the phone call so you couldn't hear me mutter 'for ****'s sake' to myself in the background. Hahahaha.

You know what, give a minute and I'll come down and take a look at it.'
Also, MUCH easier supporting people within your organisation. Because they know if they verbally abuse you, you just report them to their boss and they lose their job!

Can't do that with the general public :dead:

[artoodeeto]

you know, speaking of the general public. It seems there's one thing many of them have in common: they believe it's ok and/or they have the right to be rude @$$hole$ to people in service-type positions. I've worked a lot of retail in the past, computer and other types, and while yes there's lots of nice or at worse neutral folks out there, there's a LOT, tons really, of rude idiots, or people who say things that leave you shocked. And usually, sadly, you can't speak your mind to them or kick them out. Case in point, working at a Borders bookstore in southern CA once:

Me: I'm not sure which book that you want, but my manager knows this store inside and out, let me ask him.
*manager comes up, finds out the book title and scoots off to find it*
Customer (after seeing manager, who is a white guy in his late 30's) : gosh, it's nice to know that the Mexicans haven't taken over all these jobs yet. They've already gotten so many of the fast food jobs and they only speak spanish and you can't understand them.... *continued on in this vein for a minute or two*

The customer happened to be an older white woman, quite overweight, and I remember first thinking, lady you really should NOT be going to fast food joints. But mostly I was just shocked. I wanted to tell her to get out, but of course I couldn't. I wanted to rip her a new one - I have Mexican ancestors, although I don't look like it, and my girlfriend is half Mexican. I'm not often confronted with overt racism like that...unbelievable. She seemed nice enough til she said that stuff.

But back to the computer thing - especially at the customer service counter in the store I used to work at, man...so many people got so rude and mean when they didn't get what they wanted right away. Even had to call the cops on one guy once, after he tried returning a laptop I'd sold him because it "didn't work." My boss figured out pretty quickly that the guy had bought it, pulled the hard drive out, put in a damaged nonworking drive, then tried to return the whole thing. The guy actually threw my boss against the wall in the store...hence the call to the cops. I never want to deal with the general public again. People can be too unpredictable and too many are just not very nice.

[dr.walrus]

I was once asked in a job interview "Do you agree with the statement 'Some people are too stupid to own computers'"

My reply went something along the line of "There's two answers. In reality, and in terms of the people you often have to deal with, quite possibly yes. But you can't take that attitude with customer service situations - you always have to be polite and you can never belittle someone if you want to sell them something and have them come back. In support, though, you can't totally adopt traditional customer service attitudes and approaches, sympathising with the customer if their problem is their own fault is just opening the gate to hell! It boils down to how far you're willing to help a customer before you write them off as more unneccessary hassle than the amount of money they're making you"

I thought I had missed the point of the question, but at the end they offered me a better job than I had applied for!