People wonder sometimes why I’m “raging” as a tech support person. I understand that it can be frustrating to have to call tech support to begin with – it’s not even the real jackasses that make me the angriest. It’s people who can’t follow directions – they can’t walk the line, so to speak, to get to the desired goal. It’s probably the reason whatever they’re calling about is broken in the first place. They couldn’t follow the directions we dumbed down to make sure they could get where they were supposed to get.
I’m not talking about being computer dumb, I’m talking about being life dumb. Directions – the very simple thing we all are supposed to learn in Kindergarten or at the very least by the end of elementary or primary school. If you can’t follow directions, you’re going to burn your Pop Tarts. You’re going to ruin your ramen, and it’s pretty hard to ruin ramen. You’re going to put your remote control batteries in backwards and they’re going to explode. The world has designed too much patience into the system for you, making those of us who aren’t Simple Jack like you very, very impatient.
An example – I was helping someone today login to our student portal, she swore up and down her password was her date of birth and she never ever changed it from the default. Logged in, it had been reset at least once, the expiration date was set way out in the future. We do this to protect Simple Jacks from letting their password expire when they don’t follow directions and change it like we say to do.
“Now, did it say ‘username and password pair not found’ or did it say your account was disabled? Don’t login again to find out, it’ll disable your account if you fail too many times.”
“Well, it said it was incorrect. It didn’t say if it was my username or my password specifically.”
“Ok, hold on while I reset your password.”
“It said ‘username/password pair not found.'”
“Oh, and how did you determine that?”
“I tried to login again.”
*face palm*
“Ok, don’t login again while I reset your password.”
“It says my account has been disabled.”
Do you see the kind of bovine scatology I have to deal with on a daily basis? How do these people wake up in the morning and get dressed on their own? Without them, though, I’d just be “The Tech” – and how lame would that be?