Scott Kurtz Blasts Comic Strips on Tech Support 696
J. FoxGlov writes "Scott Kurtz, creator of the game-centric comic strip PvP, released his first rant with the new domain. It's his view on comic strips about tech support, and specifically names User Friendly and Absurd Notions as examples of strips that just aren't funny. 'Folks, a tech making fun of someone learning how to operate a computer is like a school teacher making fun of a child learning how to read. It's just plain wrong.' Read the rest of the rant here." I fit many people's definition of a clueless (Linux) user, but I still find User Friendly funny. Do you? Or do you think Kurtz is right that it's not nice to knock people who call tech support, even in fun?
User Friendly is not funny. Period. (Score:2)
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Well.... (Score:2)
Anybody who has any type of tech support/helpdesk job will LOVE his (Illiad) work. My friend thought UF sucked until he accually got a job at an ISP. He is addicted to it now
I Also question the Penny Arcade guy for going after User Friendly for this. I could understand a cartoonist mad at another cartoonist if he does something REALLY wrong and REALLY offensive, but this? It just seems petty to me.
He's simply wrong. (Score:2)
Second, User Friendly is often funny, not because of they making fun of the clueless people calling technical support, but because of the superiority of the people answering the calls.
I've done technical support.
Anybody who believes you can train just anybody to do proper/good top level technical support in 2 weeks is an idiot. I can show a 4 year old how to put a PC together from scratch. I can't show a 4 year old how to properly troubleshoot it. And having some guy on the phone follow a flow chart isn't the same thing.
Yes. Newbie user jokes are cruel. But then, some users are stupid too. I'm sorry, but the 'cup-holder' jokes, and the 'power outage' jokes are all too real.
And if you think teachers don't crack jokes about kids when the kids aren't around then I doubt you think they are human.
Clueless??? (Score:2)
There are two things that you laugh about--things that are funny, and things that are true. I think that newbie-bashing by tech-support is hilarious because it trashes the tech-support more than it does the newbies. Have you ever called tech-support and were told that the widget you just payed $1500 for works, you just have to not be an idiot to make it work?
If you do not like a certain type of humor, you are not forced to participate in it. That's what the back button is for on your web browser.
I, for one, cannot stand Jay Leno, because I think he is a mean bastard. I just don't watch him. It's that simple. If you don't like User-Friendly, don't buy the book.
Just my opinion.
He's whining. (Score:2)
Pure and simple, the guy is a whiner. If he truely didn't know anything about computers when he started tech support, then just was he doing on the hell desk? Simple, being an id10t. He didn't belong there.
Computers are substantially more complex than driving a car. Admittadly, they're also substantally less dangerous if you misuse them, but we don't require a license to operate a computer. Instead, anyone with a few hundred dollars can get a computer and then begin ranting that those of us who spent years learning how to operate them are idiots and can't make them functional.
Bullshit. They're perfectly functional if you know how to use them. I'm not talking about elitism or "read the 400 page manual," but simple "what the password is" or "the CDROM is *NOT* a coffee cup holder."
I've heard several (sometimes good) jokes about tech support being dumb or obstructionist, but the fact is most tech support folks *HAVE* to know what they're doing and even more often than not, they have to follow obstructionist policies passed down from above. It's a matter of truth and ability.
Users have the ability to learn. I'll go out on a limb and say they don't *WANT* to learn. They want computers to be as easy to use as a pen and paper. It *WON'T* happen. These people expect to just sit in front a computer and use it with no other studying/learning, yet they wouldn't assemble something without following instructions.
Give me a break.
ignorant support people... (Score:2)
So, I'd say I agree with Kurtz. The horror, the horror...
Technological Illiteracy vs. Just Plain Dumb (Score:4)
I work in a computer cluster here at Georgia Tech, and I'll give you an example I've seen. A fellow in his mid 40's or so was working with M$ Word in the cluster, and trying his damndest to get a printout of something he had brought in on disk. I watched him poke around for a good 20 minutes, and then come ask me for help. He explained that he wanted to get a copy of what he had on the screen, and had been selecting 'copy'. Later on, he asked my help again to enlarge the fonts, he had been zooming into the document and couldn't figure out why it was the same size.
Now, many people would be tempted to laugh at this guy, but honestly, I think he was making some pretty intuitive guesses for someone who probably had zero previous experience. I was pleasantly surprised, and glad to help him out.
The other noteworthy group, and those who warrant ridicule, are those who abandon all semblance of common sense when it comes to computers, or worse, they actively seek to avoid learning or trying to learn, because, in all honesty, it's considered fashionable by many to be clueless about computers. A customer of mine a few years ago brought his computer in for repair no less than 4 times, because he had tried to cram a CD-rom into his 1.2mb floppy drive. I asked him why he had gone to so much trouble to force it when it clearly didn't want to go in that slot, and he said he thought it was supposed to be hard for some reason. *sigh*
At any rate, there's a big difference between people who are clueless about computers, and people who are just stupid as bricks. Stupid people, since stupidity is usually a voluntary state, are always fair game for a little ribbing.
PC strikes again (Score:2)
If we only pretend everyone is a genius then soon everyone will be -- right? If you really think that I have a nice bridge... This notion that it's unfunny to point out that people make stupid mistakes is just more of the idea that laughing at people or giving them bad grades makes them stupid or keeps them ignorant. [Note: Causality reversal warning - remove head from ass before proceeding. Failure to comply may lead to a humorless existence in a dark smelly place.]
It may not be *nice*, but *please* don't tell me it's not funny!
Wrong on Several Counts (Score:5)
Yes, I used to work tech support and, yes, I'll admit that it is not a difficult job and most anyone could do it. I'll also say that I took enough ridiculous calls to write my own comic strip, if so moved. They were funny.
You're right that your plumber doesn't make fun of you... at least, not to your face. But I assure you there are Plumber calendars all over the place that make fun of all of us. You would be surprised at the industrial humor market. For just about every career in existence, there are cartoons and jokes that poke fun at their customers, coworkers, managers (Dilbert, for example). And they're funny.
In fact, I distinctly remember a teacher that I had in high school who was very proud his copy of the "Far Side" episode which featured a kid pushing as hard as he could on the door that was boldly labeled "PULL". It was funny.
Perhaps you're getting my theme now. It's funny. Perhaps you get it, perhaps you don't. You know what? I don't even like "User Friendly" that much. There are some good ones, but it doesn't do it for me the way Dilbert does (perhaps because most of my silly memories have to do with silly managers).
Anyway, we certainly have enough to do in this world without telling each other what we should or should not find amusing.
That's my take.
RP
Re:I think hes probably correct (Score:2)
Honestly, I don't think UF pokes fun at all at the users; I think it pokes fun at the staff, and makes light of their reactions. I actually have been called with some of the questions in UF, and I can say that I had much more.. err.. animated.. reactions once the customer was off the phone. There are people out there that will make you scream, wince, and have you swearing at the end of each day you will quit tomorrow, and then come in the next day to do it all over again.
And who said at the beginning of all this that having a bit of fun about it prevented us from helping people? Back at my last job I spent hours working through relatively simple TCP/IP problems on the phone, and then I laughed my head off. It's a sort of release from having to slow down our own thoughts and ways of doing things, to do things another way and another pace - without it I think all ISP workers would have started getting even with customers. (Another thing the UF characters have yet to do.)
I think people just need to calm down. It's a comic! Laugh, or don't laugh. It's not really offensive from my standpoint, and doesn't warrant an attack on any artist's principles.
Here's something to think about. (Score:3)
What's the 3rd most stressful job (in terms of clinically depression, suicide, alchoholism or other chemical dependency, divorce rate, etc)?
The most stressful is air traffic controller.
The second most stressful is a doctor (specifically surgeon).
The third most stressful is running help desk.
I shit you not.
Complete Agreement (Score:2)
The thing that most tech support employees don't recognize is that without people less knowledgeable than you, you'd be out of a job. When you insult the person who thinks their password is 'asterisk asterisk asterisk', you're insulting the people putting money in your pockets. At the company I work for, customers aren't referred to as 'users' because many don't understand that as anything but a negative term. We don't make fun of the customer who doesn't understand why he needs a new init string in his modem. We don't call them names behind their back because you never know when that information may be subpoenad and you get caught red-faced.
Tech support is about helping people. It's not about solving their problems, but getting them to solve their problems. Tech support employees are educators, because the more education they do, the better they serve their company.
So if you think User Friendly is funny, why don't you sit back and think how much you knew about computers when you first sat down at one, and then try to think of how that feels when you can see everyone else around you doing what you should be able to do. Guess what. Your poop stinks, too.
Hate (Score:2)
0.001% x really large number of people = not insignificant number of Haters
It's the cost of fame, realizing some people will hate you no matter what. Everything offends someone - including *the* Everything [blockstackers.com]. Even being completely Politically Correct offends people.
Don't feel sorry for Illiad, I'm sure he likes what he does and realizes the Haters are in the minority. Feel sorry for the people that need to hate.
UF is hillarious to me. Do I care what Scott Kurtz of PvP thinks of UF? Hell no.
Re:Complete Agreement (Score:2)
Tasteful humour is about making fun in gentle ways - ways that reveal weaknesses but don't permanently scar.
I don't think UF, Dilbert or most strips do any real damage. A little humiliation keeps you humble.
Someone who can't take a little being made fun off is likely also someone who blames all of their mistakes on someone else.
Re:User Friendly is not funny. Period. (Score:2)
Oh just what I want, someone telling me my opinions.
I find UF quite funny. You do not.
I like Dodge's Neon, you may not.
I like coffee, you may not.
Need I go on? If we all had the same opinion, it would not be an opinion then now would it.
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The art of flying is throwing yourself at the ground...
Everyone is dumb at some point (Score:4)
Sounds a little defensive to me . . . (Score:2)
Anyone not smart enough to stop reading the things that annoy them, well, lets just say that when i realized bad news was making me feel depressed, I stopped reading news of war and destruction. This guy is still reading tech support humor? WHY???
That aside, if I were him, I wouldn't have admitted to being barely able to turn a computer on at the start of a 4 year tech support career.
Heck, i wouldn't have admitted to having worked for that long in tech support.
But the fact that many of the people in the tech support industry are hired at that level of technical ability is disgraceful, and i wouldn't have admitted to being a part of the problem.
Indeed, the analogy between tech support and teachers is very close. Some are very good, some are acceptable, and many are woefully unqualified.
I didn't last two whole years in tech support, nearly went nuts. I clawed my way through freelance contracting to full time systems administration just to get away from the pinheads. And when i say pinheads, I don't just mean the callers, some of the cow-orkers were just as bad.
Some of them barely knew how to turn a computer on. They were essentially useless, and generally damaging to our customers, so we taught them how to build computers instead . . . .
I don't think I'm ultra inteligent, I'm not even a very good speller. But during my tech support days, Dilbert, et all, made it possible for me to vent steam and survive.
In retrospect, maybe that was a bad thing. I would have been better off getting out of that industry sooner.
I guess what I'm saying is, this guy sounds a little antagonized. Maybe we should stop picking on guys like him in our comics & stuff.
Re:... (Score:2)
Re:Well.... (Score:2)
People who call tech support usually do **NOT** want to learn. They also want a fix to their problem only. They do not want to be taught about the workings of a computer.
The same people continually call tech support because they fail to independently make an effort to learn. This is similar to teaching at a school, except with tech support, the majority of the students are bad students. They also do not want your opinion or view. They want a fix. They want it now. They will get it or they will take their business elsewhere. They are often stubborn. Did I mention that they are not open to a detailed explanation of how things work? They are also on completely different levels. You do not know what level they are on. You must therefore simplify at the beginning of the call, otherwise they may get lost...
How I should feel? (Score:2)
Nothing is funny or not funny. Things strike some people as funny while others find no humor there at all. The very idea that people should not find something funny is utterly preposterous, and anyone who thinks that they can rationally argue anyone out of laughing is even more so.
I think we're seeing some serious humor impairment here.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Its called FRESHNESS (Score:2)
I don't blame the creators for being clueless, at least they're trying and hopefully learning through their art. Its these self-styled geeks who have given conformists a new standard to look up to who are to blame and keep creators' ego flying. These strips are like little monotnous cultural "ME TOO!" badges that a significant number of technies use to identify one another. Its the electronic equivilant of,
"Hey you like Jewel too?"
Unsure what a good strip is? Goto www.e-sheep.com. Enjoy.
Re:Complete Agreement (Score:2)
I guess being a complete idiot is a job then. I happen to remember several strips where people are obviously suppost to be complete dolts.
Yes I started out as a newbie, everyone did. I dont know everything there is, and I never will. I will always ask for help. And if it is a dumb ass question then I guess they can make fun of me too.
Some stuff is just funny. My roommate convinced several people that if they held a CD up to their ear and spun it fast enough, they would hear the music.
Get a mental image of that and tell me its not even mildly humorous.
We don't make fun of the customer who doesn't understand why he needs a new init string in his modem.
Well, thats because its not funny. Now, for example, what if that user was calling a long distance number with their computer for internet access and they didn't understand why their phone bill was so high when they got it. (assuming they knew the number was long distance) "Well, I thought it was different because it was a computer dialing the phone"
After the initial shock of stupidity, its funny. Yes this did happen to someone I know. She learned from her mistake tho, something that the true morons dont do.
Bah, I'm tired of typing.
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Clueless users are clueless for a reason... (Score:2)
Let's illustrate from an example from consumer electronics: setting the time on your VCR. Any half-competent geek will figure out it's under the menus somewhere (since you've probably been roped into setting the time for friends, family, and people who've flagged you down when driving past on the interstate). For everyone else, that's why they pay some poor people to write a manual in really simplified English and 6 other languages. Most of the manuals written since the 1980s actually make sense. Even my mother (no technical genious) can set the clock and set programs on several different brands of VCR... because she has the good sense to read the books in the first place.
I think Illiad is making fun of the mentality that you can just open the box and it will do everything on its own. Maybe the Internet makes people think they don't have to read the book... I dunno. I don't analyze most of it.
But I do know UF is funny. Besides which, many of the strips have nothing to do with users... they deal with the boneheadedness of the computer industry, or corporate culture in general. And then there are the dust puppy plots...
Bah. (Score:5)
Re:Technological Illiteracy vs. Just Plain Dumb (Score:2)
But these lame strips will keep going on because of the huge conformist self-styled geek culture. The same way Family Circus is for the middle class Xtian crowd UF will be for the geeks. Not funny, hardly creative but they're "one of us." In other words: crap.
Re:"In" Jokes (Score:2)
e.g. chmod president@whitehouse.gov --paranoia=2 --horniness=9
Like, duh! Everyone knows that one, right?
dave
Re:How I should feel? (Score:2)
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But the asterisks were funny. (Score:2)
Actually that strip [userfriendly.org] didn't really have the user stupid, but rather clever.
When I make dumb mistakes, I laugh at myself. It's good to do so. I almost became a Darwin Award, by changing the Power Supply without unplugging the power cord (I was in a hurry). I look back and laugh. Noone got hurt, but it took a notch out of my pliers.
Funny too, is that when I call tech support, I usually find out that the person I'm talking to doesn't know any more than me. And thus tells me to do the things that I have already done, and does not believe me when I tell them "I did that already". I usually have to repeat the steps and give my diagnostics about the problem to get them to pass me on to someone who really knows what they are talking about. At work, I almost refuse to call tech support, because they usually frustrate me. And at the end, I have to figure every thing out myself.
I recently had my cable modem go down, and when I called tech support, I had to go through all the steps with the support guy, checking for conflicts with interrupts and such (which I did in the first place) before he would believe me that the modem was bad. Finally I got someone that knew what they were doing to bring me a new cable modem, and everything worked fine.
So relax, and if you don't think it's funny, then go off and read Family Circus!
Steven Rostedt
Humor (Score:2)
But this does not make humor wrong. It's like a vaccine of mini-hurt to cure the big hurts of life. Humor is healing. When we laugh at our stupid mistakes of previous years, we are healing ourselves of those stupid mistakes.
Of course, there is humor that hurts too much to be tolerated. Racist jokes and cruel pranks are just examples. But if we eliminate all humor that hurts people, we are left only with puns and wordplay. We don't need to be political correctness police. User Friendly is a great strip, and genuinely funny.
If we're not allowed to pick on people, all we will have left are our noses. Ouch! That hurt!
Has he never heard of "irony"? (Score:4)
Scott seems to miss the point entirely on his way to his politically correct rant. We're not laughing at the "dumb" user. We're laughing at the comedy of the situation itself. The sheer outrageousness of the moment.
I'm sure he's offended, on behalf of women and minorities, by "All in the Family" because of the Archie Bunker character's overt racism and sexism.
I'm sure he's offended, on behalf of people with low motor skills, by Chevy Chase's "Saturday Night Live" pratfalls.
I'm sorry, but I'm offended by hyper-sensitive people who over-moralize everything.
We're not laughing a new users. We've all been "new" at one time or another (unless someone has discovered a way to imprint complete educations on a fetus prior to birth). Everyone who's worked tech support has gotten at least ONE really wierd situation (though I doubt anyone's used a permanent marker on a CRT screen in a good long while).
We're not picturing that other person. We're picturing OURSELVES in this situation. Like a guy who's assmebled computers for a living for years having absoloutely no luck getting a computer to boot up, only to find out, after severe, agonizing troubleshooting, that he's forgotten to plug the power supply into the motherboard.
One one level, people are going:
"Yeah, I've been in that techsupport position."
But, on a deeper level, they're usually thinking:
"God! If I were that user, I'd just DIE!
Again, not lauging at the person, or even the stereotype. They're laughing at THEMSELVES. Now if you cannot laugh at yourself, can you laugh at anything else without being a hypocrite?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Re:You need a sense of humor upgrade (Score:2)
I checked your wepage and it looks to me you bought conformist geek culture hook , line, and sinker, friend! Oh course you LOVE UF, you have much in common with 2 dimensional characters who criticize everyone who doesn't buy right into their smoke and mirrors futurist fetish.
UF and such are about as funny as Family Circus is to middle-class Xtians, which is not at all when you're not part of the silly conformist game. Its boring, badly drawn, and repitious but you and others like it dig it cause its a "ME TOO" badge.
I think its pretty ironic that you're telling others to 'upgrade' (major geek word here) their sense of humor when your own has stalled at the media produced fantasy of futurism and geekdom.
User Friendly IS funny. (Score:3)
B) People who claim it's not funny don't get it.
The same could be said for many other jokes, of course.
I suspect that those who don't find User Friendy to be funny either don't have the necessary referrents or suffer from an excess of political correctness.
Regarding the former: Some User Firendly strips aren't stand-alone. You have to have seen quite a bit of the strip's history to get the running gag.
Regarding the latter: Of COURSE "children learning to read" are funny. It behoves a teacher not to ridicule them to their faces. But that doesn't mean the teacher has to ignore the humor. And one of the things about Tech Support is that an endless supply of users making the same ignorant and/or dumb mistakes can be frustrating. So a support person will from time to time WISH they could do what the characters in User Friendly do, when they come up with a snappy comeback, sabotage the luser, or otherwise blow off steam.
If you think the humor of User Friendly is occasionally black, try listening to medical workers or policemen some time.
Some things HAVE to be funny, because otherwise they'd be too painful.
Re:PC strikes again (Score:2)
Fond Memories (Score:2)
a) First using computers (or, in the case of Dilbert, first learning to be a PHB
b) Doing tech support for friends & family (1-900-GrantFix
c) Setting up & running ISP's
d) Setting up & running a tech company
These days, I also use them as a sanity check - eg - "Hell, I almost did that the other day - better check my hair in the mirror for pointy bits!"
:)
Re:Everyone is dumb at some point (Score:2)
But I do agree with your original assertion: there is a difference. Where the difference is, is somewhat of a point of contention (like art and porn, everything's relative to the viewer).
I also agree with your last assertion: if you don't like UF, don't worry about it, and certainly don't publicize it. You're increasing its readership, and that would seem antithetical to your cause.
When I started out... (Score:2)
Now I use Linux as my main OS, have been for a couple years, everyone asks me for help, and it's really annoying.
Why, you ask?
Because I read the manuals, documentation, I learned how it worked, I spent the time to figure it out, and I feel these people are just getting a "free ride" by asking me instead of going and doing it on their own like I did. I didn't know anyone locally with a PC, I had no one to ask until some months later.
Sure, now and then there is no sufficient documentation and I'm forced to ask, but I make concious efforts to learn on my own, these people don't, they don't care, they want it working and they want it working now. Reading documentation is like severing a limb. "Why should I read it when I can just ask you?" is a question often posed to me.
Welcome to the society of instant gratification.
Now if you ask me, this is a Bad Thing(tm), and poking fun at them may be a subtle way to get them to see that its not all that "cool" to just ask people instead of going to even make an effort of SOME kind to find it themselves, especially about something like computers which touches everyones lives now.
Not to mention, I find UF funny usually, and this political correctness rant buddy posts is just crap as the strip isn't usually about tech support calls at all! Only a small minority of them are.
-- iCEBaLM
Well, here's a rant of my own. (Score:2)
Personally, I've laughed at jokes about whites, blacks, blonds, women, men, preachers, sex, death, baldness, and just about everything else under the sun. Almost every bit of humor out there can be offensive to someone, so deal with it.
As for this Scott guy, I'm more offended at him slamming his competition directly like this. Do you hear professional comic strip artists going around talking about how their competitors suck? No, you don't. Sometimes they lampoon each other's strips, but they don't trash talk. Since Scott is 'in the biz' so to speak, I think people are perfectly justified in ignoring his rant as nothing more than an attempt to get cheap publicity for himself and knock the competition. His conflict of interest here makes everything he says about other people's comic strips suspect in the extreme.
Another thing - I've never heard of this guy before, so I checked out his site from the link /. provided. Scott's strip was about as funny to me as Family Circus, which is to say it was boring as hell. Gee, a guy gets his eye hurt with a Nerf dart and so calls in someone else, who is a big furry monster of some kind, to play his game. What a snoozer. That's about as flat a joke as I can imagine. Kind of like Al Gore trying to make a joke. The kind of safe and sanitized humor I expect from someone who is making sure they don't offend anyone. I also checked out Absurd Notions, which I had also not heard of. Absurd Notions at least raised a chuckle or two out of me. Pvp was just painful. Also, the page for the current strip on Pvp was poorly designed. I had to search for the navigation buttons. Once I went to the previous strip, suddenly there were clearly labeled icons for navigation at the top. He also buries links in the midst of text that you have to read to figure it out. I've seen people who literally barely know how to turn on the computer turn out better designed web sites than that.
Humor lets us deal with taboo and dangerous subjects in a socially acceptable way. Comedians take the absurd, frightening, and frustrating and lampoon, satirize, or turn it into parody. Cartoons like UF and Absurd Notions just do that for a more specific target audience than most. As for Scott and his Pvp strip, all I can say I'm surprised that given the Quaalude effect his comic strip had on me, that he is popular enough that anyone even knows he exists, let alone being worthy of a /. article.
Re:Your rhetoric is getting 'monotonous' (Score:2)
Yes I did consider that, if you read my 'hysterics' you'd see why it isn't funny.
Yes, we all have opinions, I like to post mine.
Your post on the other hand has no substance other than admiting you don't know what the main part of my post is about, acknoledging that UF is repitious and telling me I have a right to an opinion. Which all adds up to little more than nothing. You could have spared your fingers.
Re:(You are) Just Plain Dumb (Score:3)
And just WHAT makes you so sure I was typing with my HANDS ?
Tech support and teaching (Score:2)
However, there is a big difference between laughing at a specific individual and general stupidity. For instance most people find jokes about stupid people/blondes funny even though people that stupid really do exist.
Secondly there is no way these people are honestly trying to learn. The people who call in with these problems might be doctors or lawyers so the issue is certainly not one of ability. The difficulty is rather caused by an unwillingess to try and learn...something which SHOULD be ridiculed.
Thirdly even if tech support humor isn't funny, or is even offensive much more harm is done pointing this out then the strips do themselves. What reaction is such a comment supposed to provide? Are people who were previously enjoying UF supposed to stop reading it because they feel guilty. The human condition is such that much of our pleasure takes place at the expense of another. To insist on only bland inoffensive humor is a far worse harm then any ridicule could bring about
VCRs (Score:2)
It turned out that to get the tuning menu, you hold down PLAY and FFWD together.
... eeeew.
--
Are the UF Tech Support Comments Fair? (Score:2)
As a "Help Desk Operative", one deals with users of all levels of competance.
It is always a pain when a user tackles you with a problem that can be solved easily by referring to the documentation, but often this is due to ignorance about the existance or clarity of such documentation.
UserFriendly, I feel, doesn't really attack this (rather innocent) group of User.
However, the group that UserFriendly does attack, and quite rightly in my opinion, is the arrogent AND ignorant group of users. These are the users that don't only not know the solutions to simple problems, they feel its the HDO's responsibility to correct them despite the fact they have often made _NO_ attempt to enlighten themselves first, or they fall completely outside of the juradstriction of the operative.
Now before you all move to flame me off of /. for being "Anti-user", please remember that I too work on a helpdesk, and I have no qualms with Users who make an honest effort to learn something that they have to regularly deal with. [Please note that I provide more unix support for non-regular unix users - so I'm probably biased]. And Userfriendly makes no effort to slander or parody the users in this category.
The thing to remember is, that above all, not only are the users human, but so are the help desk operatives.
I guess thats my 5 cents worth.
Stupidity-mocking humor is universal. (Score:2)
If comics are prevented from mocking ignorance and stupidity, what will be left?
Target audience (Score:3)
A co-worker thinks it's a laugh-riot and reads it every day since I turned him on to it.
I really like Pokey the Penguin, but he thinks it's too stupid and badly drawn (which is kind of the point). Pokey is ironic, and I like irony.
"Peanuts," by means of comparison, is universally understood and appreciated. It speaks to the human condition-- everyone can relate to Charlie Brown feeling like "the goat" or Snoopy daydreaming about being a World War I fighter ace.
IMHO, the Bastard Operator From Hell series is much funnier than User Friendly because you laugh a little about the luser on the phone and then laugh a lot at how mean a bastard the BOFH is. In other words, it is about the life of an abominable human being rather than the gullibility of his victims.
As a cartoon, the drawings in UF add very little to the story since the characters are mostly expressionless.
The Five Premises of UF
- Regular people are lusers (ho hum)
- Phone techs are misunderstood
- Managers are unnecessary idiots (Dilbert)
- Microsoft sucks
- Quake rules
If you don't agree with most of these premises, User Friendly doesn't have much to say to you.Why it's NOT like teachers making fun of pupils (Score:2)
Kurt said: Folks, a tech making fun of someone learning how to operate a computer is like a school teacher making fun of a child learning how to read.
Absolutely not. 99% of tech support laughs are caused by people not reading the damn words in front of them.
How many times have you solved a colleague's tech problem by simply reading the on-screen message out aloud to them? This happens to me on a weekly basis. Some people just won't bother reading what the computer is telling them in plain English. Often all a tech support guy has to do is read the message aloud, verbatim, without changing a single word or explaining a single concept; and somehow, by the magic of human voice, the user understands.
If a genuinely illiterate person were to have trouble using a computer, this would not be funny.
But a perfectly literate intelligent person ringing up tech support because they are simply too lazy to read the on-screen instructions RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR DAMN EYES is hillarious.
Sure, us techies are guilty of not producing good manuals and we sometimes write ambigious on-screen messages. But the number and triviality of most tech support calls outweighs this a hundredfold.
See my User's Complete Guide to Computers [demon.co.uk] - the first manual designed specifically not to be read.
--
I think this is a PR stunt (Score:2)
As someone else pointed out: If you don't find it funny, stop reading it.
more by the same author (Score:2)
Anyway, in case anyone was going form an opinion of the guy based solely on this somewhat objectionable rant, take a look at this [mpog.com] as well.
--
Gee whiz (Score:2)
But thank the Lord, along came good old Scott Kurtz. He made me see that, in fact, User Friendly isn't funny at all! It's so obvious to me now! It's just not funny!
Let's all pause now and give thanks to Scott Kurtz for enlightening us on what is funny and what isn't.
Re:Of course.. (Score:2)
On Scott and what he thinks is funny (Score:2)
I have done two years of phone tech support for a hard drive manufacturer. I have done 3 years of e-mail tech support for a small linux distribution. I've done tech support.
I find User Friendly hillarious.
Now, I read his article, and I can see what he is trying to say. We should be nice to clueless people. And to some extent, we should. But there are people out there... it's amazing that they can even turn the damn things on! And what is worse, they are trying to do something that is way beyond their skill level (like installing a hard drive - not hard by any means, but for those that are scared to look in the recycle bin...) which is usually the direct result of a sales person at BigComputerStore (who is equally clueless, or he still works on commission...) telling them it's easier than baking a pie.
Now, should we laugh at people who really have no clue? Why not? Why is tech support any different from plumbers talking about stupid homeowners who tried to do something like replace a floater ball in their toilet and destroyed the entire mechanisim? You can't tell me that plumbers don't talk about that kind of thing. They just don't happen to have large numbers or comic strips. It still happens when they eat lunch together.
The reason we enjoy jokes reagarding tech support, is that as a whole, we techies & geeks are fairly computer literate, know about much of this stuff, and are good at getting around the web. Which means it's subject matter that we understand, and as many have noticed in various parts of the Internet, many of our `cliques` are at some times zealtous in their knoledge and beliefs. (Pick a flame war, any flame war...)
So what happens when we have a comic strip that we (Don't know anyone [even my wife!] who doesn't enjoy User Friendly) all find funny, timely, and uses it's comedic license very well with current events - someone is bound to hate it. Apparently there is now one person who hates User Friendly. First one I ever heard of. (And I don't pretend to know Scott.) Now, this person is also a techie, and has a web site. Bingo! That's what the net is all about.
Another thing about the Internet that goes with stating your opinion - others will have the same opinion as you. Multitudes more will not. And they are the ones to speak up. Welcome to the Internet Scott. I hope you don't have too much E-mail to read.
One other quick thing I would like to leave you with. Scott says he thinks comic strips more like Help Desk are funny because they don't poke fun at the customers calling. Well, he should read just a few more strips past his own example: http://www.ubersoft.net/helpdesk/015.html [ubersoft.net]
To me, it seems that this strip is poking fun at the customer for being stupid. Didn't Scott say that was bad? Now, there is a word that comes to mind, but I'll just let it lie.
Re:People who call tech support... (Score:2)
I usually feel sorry for myself when I have to call tech support, as generally, tech support consists of clueless morons. I dealt with tech support of my ISP once (when I signed on) and I had questions and answers like:
....
TS: "How will you be accessing your email?"
Me, wondering why they want to know: "Oh, fetchmail I guess, using POP or IMAP, whatever you support."
TS: "We only support Netscape and Internet Explorer".
Me: "Uh, yeah, and how do you think Netscape or Internet Explorer get the email?"
TS: "Uhm, uhm, I don't know."
Me: "One more question, what is your pop or imap server?"
TS: "We don't have those."
Me: "What did you say?"
TS: "We don't have those."
Me: "You are an ISP and you don't have a pop or imap server? Why am I signing up with you?"
TS: "Well..."
Me: [telnet obvious.obvious.com 110] "FYI, it looks like you have a pop server on obvious.obvious.com."
I've had many dealing with Sybase tech support as well. A whole army of dummies, although there are a few exceptions. You explain them what the problem is. Tell them that, yes, you have shutdown and restarted the server, you have done your dbcc's, and no tempdb isn't full, nor are we running out of locks or another resource problem, and yes, I've followed all the steps in the manual, up to the point were it says "contact Sybase tech support", and all they can suggest is to try things I told them I had already done. Or the dumb bimbo who after two hours on the phone still couldn't reproduce the problem because she had no clue how to set an environment variable. I had to email her a shell script so she could reproduce the problem. Her reply? "If I run that, I end up in an editor". Yes. *wack* I *wack* have *wack* been *wack* trying *wack* to *wack* tell *wack* you *wack* that *wack* for *wack* the *wack* past *wack* few *wack* hours. *wack* BTW *wack* here's *wack* a *wack* workaround *wack* Can *wack* you *wack* now *wack* please *wack* log *wack* the *wack* bug *wack* in *wack* your *wack* bugtracking *wack* system? *wack* *wack* *wack*.
Tech support "escalating" a case aren't fun either. I once got a request from tech support to contact a customer who had a database problem, which I promptly refused to do. Database problems of a client aren't our problem, they have to contact their database vendor. And no, I don't care if your PHB says that you have to be nice to the customer. It's not our problem. Besides, the reported error has an error number. There's a manual where you can look up the error and it tells you what to do. If you don't want to tell the client to RTFM, RTFM yourself. And to top it of, the error messages even tells you want you need to do to fix the problem....
And then there's my blind friend, who can't always read the manual and hence have to call tech support more often than sighted people have to. Many support people will, even after being told that she's blind, give her instructions to click with the mouse on some icon....
Lusers are a nightmare to deal with, but tech support isn't much better either.
Oh, BTW, I've done tech support myself, and I think UF is funny. Scott's strip however....
-- Abigail
It's all memorization? (Score:2)
The comparisson to the teacher making fun of the student is wrong as well. The tech is paid to listen to the user tell him (he/she) is the idiot. They sit through a call where every other minute a death threat is pouring out. Sometimes the people call in and just defy what you consider common sense. At that point to relieve some stress why not joke about them with your fellow friends. And why not wake up and read a cartoon as funny as userfriendly each morning. Isn't it our right to decide? Techs are not teaching the user like a teacher teaches a child. We are telling someone who doesn't really want to learn how to get out of a problem they created only to have them call back in a week with the same problem not having learned a thing from their mistakes.
*sigh*
This says it all... (Score:2)
So maybe with a few more years' exposure to the horrible people you get out there on the 'Net (ick), he'll have mastered grammar as well as being able to answer the phone.
Otherwise, what an anal-retentive arsehole...
Umm, but we *do* make fun of schoolkids... (Score:2)
I think someone's just a little bit hypersensitive here...
Re:I think hes probably correct (Score:2)
Did you read the article? He said he did tech support for 4 years. He surely must have run into his share of morons.
(Side note: I did end user tech support for 6 years.)
...phil
Re:It all in good fun (Score:2)
Being a cop or nurse may be more dangerous than doing tech support, but not more frustrating. And certainly both have extremely rewarding moments that have no equivalent in tech support.
The frustration level of tech support, as any other job, depends a lot on the personality of the worker. Unfortunately the people best equiped to solve "tech support" type problems are the ones who are going to find spending 30 minutes trying to talk someone thru doing something that would take 15 seconds in person infuriating. There are people who find tech support enjoyable, but they're rare, and generally not the best of the best.
As for whether or not makeing fun of "users" is mean, cruel, or improper, let me just say if you stoped tech support people from venting steam by making jokes I have no doubt you'd find them occasionally driven to do much worse things to the users than making fun.
Re:Has he never heard of "irony"? (Score:2)
Speak for yourself, sometimes I'm just lauging at the dumb user. And as for that, laughing at the user is only cruel if you do it to their face. Often these people totaly fail to recognize themselves as the user if shown a comic like User Friendly. And lets face it, the people calling the help desk probably dont read User Friendly.
Then again if laughing at them to their face inspires them to go out and learn something finally, I'm all for it.
Re:Wrong on Several Counts (Score:3)
Agreed. I would say that the teacher would be 100% in their right to laugh at the child if the child turned around, and with an air of unquestionable sincerity yelled at him that he didn't have to understand nouns and verbs and spelling and punctuation -- he just wanted to read! After all, what do his parents pay the teacher for?
Maybe if clueless newbies (and I use that term with no trace of apology) took the time to attend sessions with actual computer trainers instead of expecting everything to be handed to them on a silver platter for 7 bucks a month, there would be less making fun going on. The indignancy of newbies when computer software doesn't work the way they expect it to can be very humorous. If I were an automobile manufacturer, I'd find it pretty damn funny if a customer came up to me and told me that I should just make the cars fly instead of go on the road, because driving on roads is just plain tedious. Oh, and it should still get the same MPG.
Mr. Kurtz totally misses the point here. He seems to me to be yet another in the long line of people who are greatly offended by this or that and insists on not laughing as loudly as he can. Frankly, I'm sick of his type, and I wish they would crawl back under the rock from whence they came.
Re:Technological Illiteracy vs. Just Plain Dumb (Score:5)
The thing is with such jokes the point of the humour isn't "some people are so stupid". The point is that, "someone who has no knowledge of a subject will say and do things that are absolutely HILARIOUS to those who DO have knowledge of the subject." This is the basis for the fish-out-of-water comedy routine archtype. It's the basis for one form of ironic humor.
Sadly, a lot of people need to feel superior about themselves, and they take this sort of humor as an oppurtunity to prove it to themselves. That's a shortcoming in the person who's reading/listening/seeing the joke, not in the comedian. Instead, you should be laughing at the irony of the situation.
A classic example are teacher jokes. When the joke has some 2nd grader makes some silly statement about some topic he/she is just learning, you don't laugh at the 2nd grader for their ignorance. Generally speaking you think, "aw, kids say the damndest things!!!" and laugh about the irony of the kid's statement.
We laugh so we don't cry. (Score:4)
However the users don't always have that attitude.
Users treat tech support people like an inanimate component of the computer system -- actually worse because most users know better than to damage a valuable piece of hardware; however they think nothing of repeatedly abusing a valuable person who is trying to help them. In the end it is very hard to keep a person who is facing dailiy emotional abuse productive.
When I got my first job as an MIS director, I reoriented our budget from development to training and support. I hired the best people I could find for tech support, with real skills, both technical and personal. And you know what? They burned out.
Finally I hired a woman to run my training and support who, while nice enough personally, was a total bitch-on-wheels when it came to people who weren't learning what they were supposed to. I got complaints, but as far as I was concerned the people who were complaining had used up their credit (the people who got along with the new trainer were the people who got along with the old ones -- the complainers were just getting a taste of their own medicine). When I hired people who were unfailingly nice these users emotionally abused them and didn't take advantage of all that training they said they wanted. After I hired a strong woman they may have fought with her, but they learned the things their supervisors said they needed to know and they got better at their jobs.
Now that I am older and, hopefully, wiser, I realize that I probably should have made it my job to come down extra hard on abusive users. Back the when I was young and idealistic, I thought that people should be trusted to come to a reasonable accomodation on their own. I didn't realize back then that when sweet reason fails, you have to kick the shit out of someone -- and that's the boss's job.
Unfortunately, people doing tech support at a place like an ISP don't have this option, and the users know it.
We laugh, so we don't cry. And, some of the things that the more naive users do are funny! Like the time one of my buddies diagnosed a balky mini by figuring out that it was plugged into a dimmer switch that was turned up half way. Respect is how you handle the customer. Finding what the customer says or does to be funny is not fundamentally disrespectful, so long as you handle their problems professionally.
Re:He's whining. (Score:2)
And then they'd complain because they have to learn how to write.
Re:All strips but mine aren't funny? (Score:2)
"You should never have your best trousers on when you turn
Difference between ignorance & stupidity (Score:4)
Obligatory story: I've worked my share of tech support in the past. In this particular case, I was working tech support for a school administrative system. I got a call from a school technology coordinator. "My middle school can't get their data to me via modem", so I said "okay, have them make a floppy". Shortly thereafter, I got a call from a school counsellor. "My disk drive is spitting out my hard drive," she said. So I spent five minutes verifying that a) she was trying to make a disk at the middle school to give to the high school with her graduating students for next year, because her school's modem was on the fritz and the central office told her to make a disk instead, b) she was talking about a 3 1/2" floppy disk, and c) her computer actually had a 3 1/2" disk drive (don't laugh, many of the school administrative computers dated back to the early 90's and had Xenix on them, and not all of them had 3 1/2" drives). Finally, I verified that d) she was not putting the disk into the tape slot. I said "There's two slots on your computer, one for the disk and one for the tape. The one for the tape is the big one, the one for the disk is the little one. Are you sure you're putting the disk into the right slot?" She said "Of course I am! I'm not stupid, y'know!".
So I sat there holding a 3 1/2" disk in my hands (I'm 100 miles away from the lady in a call center, of course), trying to figure out what she was doing wrong.
"There's a little wheely-looking thing on the disk. Are you putting it in with that facing DOWN?"
"Of course!" she replied.
I stared at the disk a bit more, turned it backwards, and pushed it into my floppy drive. Voila, it popped back out!
"There's a little slidey thing on one end. Do you see that little slidey thing?"
"Yes."
"Are you putting that end in FIRST?"
A slight pause. "Oh! Nobody ever TOLD me that that end goes in first!". A little more pause. "Don't tell anybody about this, okay?".
Of course I told the technology coordinator, when she called me back and asked what the counsellor's problem had been! And of course the technology coordinator repeated the story at the next user group meeting. And thus I got my revenge for putting up with stupidity for forty-five long excrutiating minutes.
That's right. Stupidity.
When I encountered my first 3 1/2" drive, I didn't know which way it went in either. I tried it sideways. Didn't work. I tried it upside down. Didn't work. I tried it backwards. Didn't work. FINALLY I tried it the way that DID work. No problemo, I was ignorant. I wasn't embarrassed or anything. I learned.
But the point is that I was *NOT* stupid. And the lady with the backwards 3 1/2" disk was, for not trying some other way to put the disk in when her first way didn't work.
I always treated people with respect if they made calls that occurred because of ignorance. I was always supportive of intelligent people who called me with questions that made them feel stupid, saying that's okay, you'll get the hang of this, etc. Sometimes they did some pretty stupid-sounding things, but I'd look at the documentation (typical sucky documentation), shake my head, and note that I'd make the same mistake myself if I didn't know about computers and was trying to go by the documentation.
But occasionally I got someone online who was a real candidate for the Darwin Awards (i.e., the world would be better off if they were removed from the gene pool). Isn't it better to make fun of them instead of going postal and seeking them out with an assault rifle and forcing the Darwin Award For Person Who Should Not Breed upon them?
And finally: I nominate for the Darwin Awards *ANYBODY* who says that working tech support is something that can be done with little training and no prior knowledge. Yeah, you can do tech support that way if you think that customer service is what a stallion does to a mare. But such a "tech support" person would a) not had a clue, and b) never been able to diagnose the problem through that big long decision tree that I went through to figure out what she was doing wrong. The idea that "anybody can do tech support" is why the only answer you ever get when you call Microsoft tech support is "reformat your drive and re-install Windows".
-E
Re:Bah. (Score:2)
Re:Technological Illiteracy vs. Just Plain Dumb (Score:3)
I love users like this (no sarcasm intended).
Why do I work with computers? Because I love learn, and there is no other field where you can spend so much of your time learning. I think of users like this as true "gurus" in the original sense of the word. They are your best teachers. They show you just how incredibly arbitrary the things you believe to be obvious are; they teach you the folly of your UI ways.
Nobody in his right mind complains about users like this, because you gain so much more than you give to them. Their problems are easy, but their insights are profound.
my take on the matter (Score:2)
Either Mr. Kurtz chose to ignore these aspects or he's never really read the strip, just focusing on one particular panel (I wonder if he got permission from Illiad and Mr. Pease to use those panels..) to try to make his `point'. Next thing you know, he'll be attacking Ozy and Millie [ozyandmillie.com] for `offending' trendy people, jocks, bullies and various political figures. Kurtz, if you want to constantly badger people like this, become a political cartoonist or get off your high horse and make a good comic strip.
Finally, I'd like to say I'm very glad with the open minds shown by most of the posters on this thread, it's good to see that we're respecting each other's opinions and not criticizing someone just for liking or disliking a particular strip or strips; it makes for much more interesting conversation.
Peace!
Some Notes from the Field... (Score:2)
Everyone who calls TS is not necessarily dumb. Some people have a legitimate problem with the hardware/software/whatever, have read the manual, have taken a stab at the problem on their own, and explain the problem thoroughly when they call up.
Unfortunately, they're a shrinking minority.
As a background, I did tech support for four years at a university, and one at a bank. Now, thankfully, I'm a network admin, so most of the clueless questions pass through the Level 1 and 2 filters first, and are intercepted. I truly don't mind answering the legitimate questions of people who actually might learn something. My motto is this: Clueless is fine, ignorant is fine, lazy is not fine. I've answered the whole spectrum of computer questions over my stint in tech support. When my university first got dial-up PPP access in '94, the lazy people came out of the woodwork. Some sample quotes:
Bottom line: If you own a computer, you should know something about how it works. If not that, you should be able to follow spoken directions, retain information for an extended period, and not be argumentative.
I also understand user frustration at clueless techs, especially those of us who call up with problems that aren't on their list of questions. Trying to explain advanced networking concepts to a level one tech is not easy. Unfortunately for all the users, it's just going to get worse. Level one techs have it really rough...sweatshop call-center environments, low pay, and very little training or opportunity to advance to the next level. The turnover (and burnout!) is so high that companies can't really invest in an employee. Level one graduates to level two and beyond entirely on their own!
Having said all that, I think that strips like User Friendly and its ilk are a necessary release for techs. They make fun of some of the silly things that users do. For example, at the company I work for now, there's a senior executive who I seriously thought was illiterate. Whenever I called him, and asked him to do something with his e-mail client (he kept corrupting the mailbox on our server...) his secretary would take over reading screens for him. When I finally met her, she told me, "Oh, don't mind him...he just doesn't use the e-mail client." "OK, so how does he get mail?" "I print it out and read it to him." I think that's definite User Friendly material!
If you want another excellent perspective on how techs live and work, hop on over to the newsgroups alt.tech-support.recovery and alt.sysadmin.recovery. Just don't post there! :-)
Re:It isn't that I hate UF, it just isn't funny (Score:2)
R.A.H> Said it best (Score:2)
"Is it funny that Elsa Mae lost her panties? Not to Elsa Mae!"
Remember what got VMS to finaly laugh? A monkey got beaten to let go of some peanuts, and it immediately found a smaller monkey to beat up.
You can't insult users who call your help desk, you can't even play a laugh track to accompany their most glaring stupidites. But you can laugh about it later.
I remember one case, where a customer had trouble logging in. I told him his username must be all lowercase, and he firmly told me that he WAS using all lowercase (he could see it on the screen) and he still couldn't log in. After several rounds of back-and-forth I finaly restarted the tacacs demon in debug mode, and I saw him capitalize his username. When I asked him why, he said "I have to. It's the name of our company".
This after several times telling me quite firmly that he WAS NOT using any upper case letters in his username.
I can laugh about it now. I couldn't laugh about it then - the whole thing took an hour and a alf, and it literaly had me banging my head against the wall.
And that's why I find UF funny.
Ignorance vs. Stupidity, or, Kurtz can bite me (Score:2)
For those of you who are ignorant on the subject, ignorance is that you do not know something because you never learned it. Stupidity is that you did learn it but for some reason you decided not to pay any attention to the subject.
There is also a difference between doing something silly and pulling the most boneheaded stunt in human history. Case in point - someone posted here about a pager battery being in backwards and something about a typo in a line of code. Those are silly. You are looking for things that SHOULD be broken because you just know that everything else is right... right? I have done it, you have done it, everyone has. Hell, I wasted two hours one night trying to figure out why a circuit I built was clobbering the input signal instead of passing it through. Turns out I grabbed the wrong type of transistor. I should have known better, but because I was not paying 100% attention to what I was doing I screwed it up. I put the proper one in and everything started working great.
This is no excuse however, for people who are so fscking dense that they have to have flash cards held up prompting them for everytime they need to take a breath. I am not talking about people who have real problems because of brain trauma, illnesses such as Alzheimer's, or anything like that. I am talking about idiot fscking morons.
A perfect example is this lady who I used to work with. She was 63 at the time. One day I am at my desk with my head deep in some code and my phone rings. She is screaming and hollering for me to get downstairs because of this weird animal. I thought a snake or something had crawled into the building - which had happened a few years before. Instead, she wants me to see these animals out on our front porch. She had nooooo idea what these animals were. She said they were reallly spooky....
What were the animals? They were ducks! I am sorry, but I have yet to know anyone who can go throught 63 years of life and not know what a duck is. Worse yet, she had never heard of a duck before. Pardon me? Ugh....
Tech support and training. (Score:2)
I wanted to comment specificially on the following:
>[...] who says that working tech support is something that can be done with little training and no prior knowledge.
*Thank You*. There are some skills that cannot be easily taught. We can teach someone technical skills and customer service skills, but it may not help.
A place I used to work for tried what I presume was a cost-cutting measure (they did lower salaries) of hiring people who were on "welfare." I feel I must note here that I'm not putting down people on such assistance - most are there by hard luck, and the abuser stories tend to be the exception - as they are some intelligent people. However, this company was just trying to get people on the phones (and other positions at the company, like trouble-shooting in the hardware dept - when laptops came in for repair) with a minimal ammount of training.
Making this worse is that due to frequent changes in software, the company relied on the helpdesk to maintain the procedures (how to deal with various types of calls, etc.) Need I say that it didn't work well? Management didn't help much as they had a team leader who was more concerned about keeping the harmony of the team then if the answer was actually a: the right way to do it or b: would even *work* - there were officially accepted solutions to problem where the solution would *not* fix the problem or would cause its own set of problems.
Example of such a solution: with a Lexmark inkjet printer (ColorWriter/WinWriter, IIRC) the reps being supported were not given access to printer control panel so they could signal it to move the cartridge carrier over for a cartridge change. Instead of trying to get this problem corrected, they decided the proper thing to do was to turn the printer off, open the access door, reach inside, grasp the belt which moves the carrier and pull the carrier over. One guess the result? Three things tended to happen: the belt ran off of its pulleys (only one some models, others were designed such that this didn't happen), in time, the belt was stretched enough that it would slip, or the belt was broken.
A hot topic is which is more importiant for a perspective tech-support person to have: technical or customer service skills. My response, which usually doesn't go over well for some reason, is "That isn't an 'or' question." A good basis in both is importiant, how much of each depends on the specifics of the position in question and the organization they'll be working for.
Everyone should work tech support for a few months (Score:2)
I worked at Dell for nine months, specializing in laptop support and beta testing the newest machines before they went out into the new world to be beat upon.
I sat in a chair for 8 hours a day, sometimes, taking calls that never let up, from people who'd spent three thousand dollars on a computer, and by god because excel wasn't working properly it was my fault, Dell's fault, and we were going to send someone to their house this instant to make their computer work the way it should. You calm them down, talk with them, and then tell them to call microsoft.
That's one extreme. Another would be the guy who calls up, asks a pretty simple question, and when you tell him he says 'oh, wow, DUH.. i can't *believe* i had to call to remember that.. thanks a lot' and hangs up.
Then.. there's the guy I sat next to at Dell. Wonderful guy - quiet, maybe a little shy, always spoke softly on a call, or in person. Young twenties, wanted to go to Seminary (learn to be a man of the cloth) - had his first child, an awesome little girl, a few months before I left the company -
Great coworker. Calm, cool, collected and relaxed.
Until he dealt with angry people, confused people, and in some cases what seems like really stupid people. I remember when he got off a long, hard, call and yelled, not really a scream, but a *yell* about "How can these people possibly keep BREATHING" or something to that effect.
Wow. That's what frustration can do to you.
I laugh like hell at User Friendly, when the tech support jokes aren't one's i've heard 'around the campfire' and the question is really a *funny joke* instead of just "Hey, i don't understand windows" - "Well you're an IDIOT! HAHAHAHHA"
no.. i don't think so
They are jokes, most of the time carefully phrased, and we love 'em. Cope.
Here's something that really happened to me, and now that it's out in the tech world I'm sure it will turn into an Urban Legend - but remember it happened, Dell has the call log, and I have the spiral notebook with the entry.
To explain:
Call from an average male. First computer was a laptop (for some reason, some people guess that an all-in-one package is better than a desktop solution for a first time user).. and he had chosen a background image (in Windows) but it didn't reach out to the edges of the screen.
No problem, I thought. While we aren't responsible for supporting things like the windows desktop, I could spend 4 seconds with this guy, he'd be happy as a clam. No reason to tell him 'uh, sir, i can't help you', that's just silly.
So, I ask him what's on his desktop - nothing he says, just icons and an arrow, no windows are open.
Great, I need you to place your arrow someplace blank on the desktop, and right click.
*tick*tick*tick*ding
Hmmm, he says, that didn't do anything.
I wonder why the hell I heard his box *ding* and some tick tack sounds.
Ok, well, try it again. Just make sure you click where there aren't any icons.
Ok..
*tick*tick*ding
and.. he says to me
"Huh.. well, I wrote click and it didn't do anything"
I remain very calm, do not react strangely at all, and say "let's try the right mouse button"
The guy says, oh, okay, and it works (little box comes up with 'display properties' in it)
...
I ended that call, put down the headset and told every last person I could. We laughed, we hung our heads in confusion, we felt the entire weight of the world in our frustration knowing that at any moment, there are dozens of people just like that calling us to help them.
I understand that 'right click' could translate to 'write click'... but I have some issues with this guy's thought process.
Even as a newbie, back in elementary school with the Apple ]['s.. i would NEVER have thought that TYPING the word CLICK would make a computer do ANYTHING.
Why would typing the word click do *anything*?
Ok.. I'm done.
Tech Support jokes are funny, if they are jokes or puns or paradoxes or whatever, not 3rd grade humor like "You're stupid because you don't know what mastication means".
A lot of these jokes happen. And we laughed then too.
It's healthy to have a sense of humor about one's species, culture and job. One word:
Cope.
-jthm
What ever happened to RTFM? (Score:2)
I know that sounds harsh, but in the long run it's a kindness to both the user and your tech staff. The users understand things better, we have time to work at improving the system, and everyone's stress level is reduced.
Here's a paraphrase of an old proverb. If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day, then comes back tomorrow to mooch. If you teach him how to fish, he eats for a lifetime.
When did users decide they didn't need to read the docs, not even the brief field descriptions on the screen? More importantly, when did tech support groups decide to coddle stupid lusers with one time answers, instead of teaching them?
Some more than others (Score:2)
I've had the cupholder call. I've had people in the middle of domestic disputes. I've... had it all. And I need, nay, ABSOLUTELY REQUIRE a sense of humor lest I go insane and become more evil than I already am.
Look, Scott's over there, with his viewpoint, and I'm over here. All I'm saying is that I worked tech support and he didn't. You be the judge.
Re:Complete Agreement (Score:4)
I worked in tech support off and on for a couple years. I learned a lot about user interface design (a million and one things wrong with the Start menu, for example), a lot about patience, and a lot about how other companies conduct THEIR tech support. But I also learned the difference between the "good" caller and the "bad" one.
Good callers may not be easy to solve, but by the time they're off the phone, your headache is caused by their PROBLEM, not THEM. Good callers are calling you because they know it's your job to help them; they understand their place on the scale, they're a little intimidated by the computer but will actually absorb information if you explain things on their level. The best ones are the ones where you say "exactly!" after they finish your sentence for you. We may joke about the technical problem they have, or the description they give of the problem if it's particularly amusing, but it's hard to joke about the person.
Bad callers are the ones you'd probably hate if you met them in ANY situation. You know - the people who tear down "out of order" signs because they block the pop machine's coin slot, then complain that it ate their money. The people you'd expect to find stranded on the roadside, on the cellphone demanding that Chrysler replace their car because it ran out of gas. The people for whom the "do not submerge hair dryer" warnings were written.
Who WOULDN'T satirize the following true events:
- people who call because they're lonely?
- people who call and open up with a stream of profanities so you can't even get a word in edgewise? (We hung up on him after 30 seconds.)
- people who are clicking a dozen steps ahead of you while you're trying to walk them through something?
- people who INSIST that this Mac disk must work in their PC or vice versa, and fifty explanations later simply refuse to believe you?
- LAN administrators who don't know how to create new users? (this guy wasn't supposed to be calling us anyway, we didn't offer support for Windows NT at the time)
- people who spend half an hour ignoring all your subtle and unsubtle hints to get to the point, while they tell you the long and detailed story of WHY they bought the computer in the first place?
- people who are on free accounts (we used to donate accounts to the schools) and abuse the account somehow? like take a school account home, camp out on a modem, or call tech support constantly with obnoxious demands?
- people who refuse to admit a mistake? "that says winsock dot D I L L" "no, that's D L L" "no, it says D I L L, it says it right here!"
- people who just flat out LIE? "is your username entered correctly?" "of course it is! you think i'm stupid or something?"
- and then get mad when you can't solve their problem?
- and when complaining to your boss about your inability to figure out their lie, REVEAL that they lied?
- people with no memory?
- people who honestly believe "it doesn't work" is as much problem report as you deserve?
- people who, despite having teenagers, don't understand that they can't use the modem and the phone at the same time? I don't care if they know the WHY, I'd just be happy if they'd notice the *click* *click* *click* and GUESS the rest.
- people who GET ANGRY if you walk them through a control panel because they think you shouldn't make them do technical stuff? (for some reason we got a lot of Mac calls of the form "dammit, I bought this Mac so I wouldn't HAVE to mess around in thuh System Folder!" I'm a Mac owner too, which makes it that much worse to see someone making the right purchase for the wrong reasons.)
- people with Amigas calling, for any reason, period? (as soon as they say "Amiga" expect to be on the phone two hours minimum)
- people on their second or third Packard Bell?
- people who cannot comprehend that a cheap-brand PC makes a difference?
- people who refuse to believe there might be trouble with the phone lines? (which was a problem for us since Ameritech was the local carrier...)
- people who call you for tech support on things you don't support (general Windows support, other programs, hardware issues unrelated to Internet access) and REFUSE to take no for an answer?
- people who blame you for EVERYTHING that goes wrong after they install your product? ("why doesn't my MIDI sequencer work anymore since I installed Netscape?")
- people who throw rank at you? ("Do you know who you're talking to? I happen to be the executive adviser to the Mayor! Now FIX THIS!" Every case so far has been user error.)
- people who verbally abuse you? ("You stupid catraping sack of shit! Why the fuck can't you get your head outa your dickhole long enough to understand what the hell I'm trying to tell you, you heaping mound of semen?" solution: hang up. No job could pay me enough to take that.)
- people who wreck their system by sheer arrogance?
- people who aren't observant enough to realize an onscreen message is meant for THEM?
And I could go on and on.
Maybe it's a case of Political Correctness? (Score:2)
I mean, in 1999 a show like ALL IN THE FAMILY would never have been approved for airing. Archie Bunker's rants would have gotten the network sued by every political group except the kitchen sink. (shrug)
Rush Hudson Limbaugh III (love him or not) is definitely correct in this sense: we have essentially lost the ability to laugh at ourselves. Remember the self-deprecating humor from Jewish comics from the first half of this century? We have replaced that with nasty invectives that if any person says the "politically incorrect" thing they get condemned--or worse. Think of Atlanta Braves closer John Rocker's joking comments in Sports Illustrated magazine, which may end up costing him his career in professional sports.
In short, people--no thanks to the "politically correct" movement--have lost their sense of humor and replaced it with nasty sniping back and forth that will one of these days lead to armed clash from both sides--the "Balkanization" of the country.
Re:Sounds a little defensive to me . . . (Score:2)
Hah, but secretaries can power trip too! (Score:2)
On another note, speaking for one technologically inept boss, my stepfather, people generally ascribe the wrong motives to people like him. Yes, he has a secretary. On the other hand, he is also extremely busy. When, and if, he learns to use computers effectively he'll still need a secretary. '
He is an intelligent guy; none the less, there is a certain learning curve to learning how to use computers effectively. In other words, he'll need to spend 50 hours (out of the air) to make computers more efficient than having his secretary take dictation. This might not sound like much, but when you're as busy as he is it is a significant effort. You've got to understand that he does not even have the time to devote time to himself (personal life, a.k.a.: fun). Real or imagined, he does not have the time. Though you might make an argument that learning would ultimately pay off, when you're this busy you also lose patience. Little things like windows system crashes simply make it far too aggravating (from his perspective). Add to this, a crash/bug/misunderstanding can take him hours to get around (that he literally can't fit in his schedule), while someone like myself (whom exists at his office, in addition to his secretary) can work around it in a matter of seconds.
In summation, neither lack of intellect nor arrogance would be the proper word to describe my stepfather's situation. There are many like him. Though a rare few in 'power' might adopt a certain anti-intellectual approach to computers (viewing them as for the underlyings), I feel they're still in the minority. To further generalize this intentional ignorance to people such as my step-father is simply a mistake. Overgeneralizations can be dangerous, because it, too, is a form of affected ignorance.
Re:We laugh so we don't cry. (Score:2)
When people do this kind of thing to me, I usually laugh, but I try to bring them in on the joke -- I make it clear that we all do dumb things and its nothing to be ashamed of. Most people can laugh at themselves, even after they act like a total jerk, if they feel like everyone does it. If the customer decided to go paranoid on me, I would politely and cheerfully refer them to my competition, who can handle their kind of problem better than I.
Good customers are hard to find; but there are some customers that just aren't worth having. They cost more to service than their revenue and take resources away from your good clients. And, in the end, no account is worth losing your respect for humanity over.
Keep your good customers. Let your competition get all grouchy pouring resources into whiny users.
Re:He's simply wrong. (Score:2)
I thought the funny part of UF was it showed when people would go to the techs "What do you mean, I'm wrong? I'm right put using magnets to stick my disks to the filling cabinet!"
In a similar vein, I enjoy mocking clueless tech support when I can. Example: I was experiencing slow downs with my service. I traced the problem to a bad router. Since I didn't know the provider who owned the bad router, I thought I'd ring my ISP and tell them to "pass it on." The ISP refered me to a page (which was on an MS site, and used IE specific JS) to "test" my connection speed. Needless to say I flamed them, and gave up on calling them (Shaw@Home sucks).
UF also has many wonderful things about Linux, Windows Refund Day, etc. Heck, even ye olde secretary who doesn't know powerpoint (despite its easy UI) can get the joke about Solitaite
---
Bill Cosby... (Score:2)
---
Geeky isn't synonymous with funny (Score:2)
Re:What ever happened to RTFM? (Score:4)
Problem #1: ENOMAN
Here's what happened, in a nutshell: more often than not, there no longer is a manual!
This is a grave problem. It widens the gap that separates the clueless user from the priesthood of gurus. It returns us to the bad old days when only the sacred priesthood held the keys to the arcane lore locked away in hidden tomes and passed on through oral tradition. The Unix philosophy of putting all reference manuals online in one definitive location (/usr/man), accessible with either a dedicated tool (man) or with generic ones (grep string /usr/man/man?/man.*) has been lost to us.
Instead of coherent, unified, and centrally located reference manuals, we are stuck with lame help buttons; make-shift, per-tool documentation in an infinite variety of different locations and formats; and, more often than not, no manual whatsoever.
You won't find one single scapegoat here: there's plenty of blame to go around. Here's a partial list of the guilty parties, in no particular order:
- The non-Unix systems that never embraced the notion of unified, online documentation.
- The tech support staff who assume that `the manual' has a well-known meaning to the listener, and that this suffices for explanation.
- The numerous new Unix users who, coming from a non-Unix (or even, non-computer) background, were never told that the complete programmers reference manual was sitting right there online, waiting for them.
- An emphasis by Unix types on programmers' reference material over users' tutorial material, which, of course, aren't the same thing at all.
- The authors of software systems who completely disdain the need to produce reference documentation. Think of how many libraries and programs you install these days whose functions are undocumented.
- The users who are expecting giant monolithic bloatware, and therefore think that all help information should be available from within a program.
- The programmers who seek to appease the previously named users, and thus cut everyone else off. They often invent a different layout design for each major subsystem.
- The authors of software systems who, unhappy with existing mechanisms, decide to `innovate' and so invent a completely idiosyncratic doc standard. That means that you can no longer use generic tools to access all docs. This doesn't scale, because for each new tools, you have to learn how to access its documentation.
- The authors of software systems who do not translate their program-specific documentation into a generic format to be integrated with the rest of the system. This means that you cannot use generic searching or printing tools anymore. All you have is a random patchwork system.
- The distribution providers (read: providers of Linux-based operating systems) who disavow any responsibility for creating a coherent system. They sell systems "as is", and claim that it's free software, so there's nothing they can do. They like to play responsibility-avoidance games, such as:
- The RPMs, tarfiles, make install rules, and distribution providers which allow you to install software that's been stripped of its documentation. So, in this case, the docs exist, but you don't get them.
- The makers of documentation tools who haven't upgraded them to understand how to follow SEE ALSO links. For example, how many man programs do you know that do this? Why not?
There. Is everyone here sufficiently ashamed or pissed off?- Sometimes these distributors try to shunt their responsibility to the authors by saying that they can't force authors of free software to write documentation. That's true, but they have no business installing undocumented software on their distributions.
- Sometimes they blame the authors for inventing their own doc mechanism. Yes, those people are at fault, but as the distributor, the buck stops there. It's their responsibility as a systems integrator to produce an integrated, coherent system.
- Sometimes they try to blame you the user. `Hey, it's free software. If you don't like it, fix it yourself.' This is so egregiously wrong that it leaves the listener speechless.
No matter how you cut it, the distributors are being negligent. They aren't selling a system. They're selling a random bag of trinkets.Anyway, it all boils down to the issue that when you tell the user to RTFM, they have no idea what that means. Even when they do know what the M is, said manual or may not exist--especially on Linux. If the manual does exist, it's highly unclear how to access it, especially with newer software, which hides its docs in idiosyncratic formats, locations, or websites. Another issue is that the user might not be a tool user: they might not have the skills to search the docset effectively in any other fashion than prohibitively tedious reading of every line.
This all contributes to why RTFM gets shouted more often today than before, yet is less effective than it used to be. The end result is that there are more unhappy people on both sides of that exchange.
Problem #2: Actual Learning Unwanted
I've only outlined here the problems of a proper manual not existing, or being difficult to access. There's at least one other important issue; possibly more important, in fact, than the manual's existence or accessibility. It's called willingness to learn. Often the problem resides in the fact that we're talking about users who don't want understanding.
They just want a quick fix, an immediate solution. They don't want to read, to learn. They do not see the computer and its software as a fascinating puzzle to work out, nor do they see the value in studying something. They certainly don't have a problem-solving mentality. They just want their answers, and they want them now.
The difference between inquisitive students in a classroom environment and petulant users who come to a help desk (whether real or virtual) is astounding. These helpdesk supplicants don't think of themselves as students, and they do not want to learn. Understanding is irrelevant to them. Only results count.
Re:Everyone should work tech support for a few mon (Score:2)
One of my experiences (the short version
Well, they were pretty slow, but finally I'd got to the point I wanted to be at and asked, "So, what does it say in the window?" and they answered "I don't know."
I don't know???
"Umm, why's that?" I asked
"Because the computer's at home, and I'm at work."
"Oh," I continued, "were you following those instructions on your work computer?"
"No, I was writing them down to do them when I get home
"Our tech support hours are until 9PM, please, give me a call when you get home." and I hung up.
Yes, these things _are_ funny.
Re:It's not funny (Score:2)
If someone has a phobia about computers, they are by definition neurotic, and should get help or stay away from them. If someone is being abused in person or on the phone I'm all for stopping it, that's personal and uncivil. But to claim that an online comic strip is preventing new users from learning is ludicrous. Please, some statistics if you wish to pursue such ridiculous claims.
I think you haven't read much UF if you think it's some kind of vicious attack on beginning computer users. You also haven't lived much life if you think it unusual for newcomers to be hazed in any activity. Your very best defense is always to try to see the humor and laugh along. It often *is* very funny, even when you laugh at yourself.
All my life I've had to put up with "egghead" jokes and crappy stereotypes in movies that my friends were happy to bring home to me. It's ok to be the butt of a joke if you're smart, but not if you're dumb? Actually I laugh at a lot of it too -- the stuff with wit and creativity that's been told less than a thousand times anyway.
No, no, no, no, no, that's not the joke (Score:2)
The joke is that the user was so pissed off at his computer that he picked up the keyboard and started pounding on the software box with all his might, which broke the keyboard in two. Which is something, I might add, that I've wanted to do many, many times with Microsoft Office.
At any rate, I agree with what Scott's saying about "clueless user" jokes, but I love User Friendly anyway. I'm just glad the "clueless user" jokes are few and far between...
Jealousy and publicity? (Score:2)
I'm seeing somewhat of a disturbing trend amongst some of the online comic strip authors - PvP and Penny Arcade in particular. It seems that rather than concentrate on their own strips, and make them as good as they can based on their own merits, some folks feel the need to try to bring other strips down to make theirs look better. "UserFriendly sucks, so read my strip instead!" It's akin to political mudslinging campaigns - and if politicians would wake up, they'd realize that they alienate many more people than they're expecting.
I'm proud to be involved in a comic strip which brings a smile to so many faces, and does it without trying to stomp on someone else in an attempt to look better.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
How am I suffering from PC? (Score:2)
Plumbers and mocking people (Score:3)
Unfortunately, many of the problems that tech support people encounter are the computer equivalent of the user trying to flush a disposable diaper down the toilet -- i.e., sheer stupidity. And the sad part is that it's the same people over and over again, finding new ways to clog the plumbing.
I once disagreed with the concept that some people were too stupid to be allowed to breed. Then I worked tech support (grin).
-E
Re:Complete Agreement (Score:2)
Well, who would, if that's all there is to it? You make fun of the customer who, after being told he needs a new init string for his modem says to you "I don't want to do that, make it work some other way." You HAVE to make fun of him, or you'd KILL him.
I have absolutely nothing against clueless users. They will learn, given time and inclination. The second bit is the bit that usually isn't there. I run up against the attitude "Idon'tknowcomputersandIdon'twannalearnwahhhh" so often it makes me sick.
If you don't deal with these sorts of situations in a healthy way (ie, laugh a little) then all sorts of nastyness can creep in and you'll find yourself getting a little snippy or somtimes even downright shitty with your customers. Now, what's worse: a little harmless fun-poking behind the customers back or losing a customer because you've been crabby with them?
One last thing: I have bad news for all you touchy-feely "protect the newbie" types, most of the people that make these sorts of mistakes don't MIND when you laugh at them. Unlike the uptight geeks (like myself) that hang out on
Anger at being told RTFM... (Score:3)
Many people did NOT appreciate that, but at the time I was in a position where I didn't have to care. (And I had written that manual myself, so I darned well knew what was answered and what was not answered there!).
The point, the point -- there's too many people out there who think that the concept of reading is something that applies to other people, not to them. This attitude starts early in their school days, when they learn that they don't have to read the assignment because they can demand that the teacher spoon-feed it to them verbally, and it continues through their adult life.
-E
Re:We laugh so we don't cry. (Score:2)
The true problem callers are the distinct minority of all callers. The rule ``80 percent of your time will be taken up by 20 percent of your customers" definitely applies in this case. And the average caller -- the guy who needs the DUN settings for the ISP, someone who calls with a known problem, & gets the packaged answer before she or he even finishes their question -- they are forgotten before the next break.
And if we didn't laugh at the jerks, the lusers, the alternative would not be pretty. I know several people who did their tech-support time for Netscape who would like to meet George Gilder's brother late some night with baseball bats & tire irons. And maybe George Gilder, too, while they're at it.
Geoff
Laughing at comic strip != laughing in real life (Score:2)
The people who find the UF tech support strips funny are often those who have lots of things piled up they wish they could say. And as another poster mentioned, teachers tell jokes about their students too, just not where the kids can hear them. I certainly did when I used to teach. It doesn't detract from your ability to be supportive and helpful in the classroom--it makes it easier by removing some of the tension and frustration. Let people have their escape: comic strips are healthier than a lot of other forms I could name. And don't mistake comic strips for real life.
Jenny
This rant needs research. (Score:2)
" Folks, a tech making fun of someone learning how to operate a computer is like a school teacher making fun of a child learning how to read."
That is a genuinely horrible example. When I read this, I winced.
Reading is a basic life skill. There is no manual you can hear or watch to teach you how to read at a young age that you can absorb. You need personal instruction, repetition, and practice.
Computer use, however, is an advanced skill. By the time you have matured enough to read a manual. If you are signing up for internet service, it is assumed you know how to double-click. If you can't master the basics, you can't expect to learn the advanced.
What User Friendly mocks is not the user, it is the foolishness of people expecting something for nothing. While it is true that smart people can do stupid things, let's not forget that stupid people do a lot more stupid things.
If you want to drive, you have to try to learn. The same goes for anything else you learn as an adult.
"Anyone in the world, can learn how to work in tech support. It's basic memorization, there is no real math or intelligence skills required"
I can give you the 'math' part of the rant, if what you mean is 'theory' or 'education'. Because no such program exists. But it takes a great deal 'intelligence'.
I help train tech support staff for my company, Crosslink Internet Services. It is a small ISP, about 18,000 customers or so, but we run a small staff, so the employee/customer ration is about that of much larger companies. I have trained about 10-15 techs individually, and I can say, with personal experience, that not everyone can do this job. It takes language skills that many people do not have. It takes logic and problem-solving abilities that are uncommon and untrainable. It takes common sense too, which is what a lot of users lack. The very best ones have professionalism and a strong work ethic, which is another thing that many people lack.
"...the truth of the matter is that knowing how to operate a computer is not an accurate measurement of intelligence."
That is highly debatable. Ever notice how people that are generally regarded as highly intelligent tend to have relatively little trouble learning new programs? That they can do things like program VCRs, TVs, computers without even checking the manual? That they can adjust to new operating systems faster then those who -aren't- regarded as highly intelligent? And have you ever noticed how people who are generally learning-disabled or considered 'stupid' (I'll be brutally honest here) have problems doing simple operations, even when told exactly and precisely what to do?
"Almost every caller I ever helped was an intelligent person who used a computer for work or entertainment."
Most of the the people I talk with are genuinely stupid. They believe that, if they have a problem, they have the unreasonable expectation that it should be solved for free immediately and require no effort on their part. Do people have the same opinion of tech support people they have of auto mechanics?
"...jokes about computer games aren't funny. However, jokes about the people that play computer games are."
So, we can't make fun of inanimate objects, but we can make fun of people. But they can't be computer users who are learning, because they are just learning. At least he doesn't come out and say 'We should mock the people who are being paid to help users'.
"Ultimately, as we continue to move forward, the general public is going to reach the level of computer knowledge that the typical tech currently has."
How many of us have owned a car for over 10 years, and how many of us are qualified auto mechanics? How many of us use a toilet, and how many of us know how to fix busted pipes? How many of us know how to use a stove, refridgerator, microwave, TV, VCR, dishwasher, laundry washer, and how many of us know how to fix any _one_ of those devices should they break?
"When you read Help Desk you start to realize that the Scott Adams model of asking your fan base to send in material for your strips is a really bad idea."
I can see why. Scott Adams is published daily in thousands of newspapers, I can see why his model is a failure.
Re:Target audience (Score:2)
That knowing something about computers makes you,
in some way, elite.
If you are arrogant about your computer knowledge
you are sure to find UF funny.
I might laugh, too, but I found out the hard way
that messing with computers is fun... but not for a living.
-----------------------------------------------
Scott should know "Not Funny" - he's mastered it (Score:2)
More seriously, I think there's a very real distinction he's completely missed between people who don't know something and those who won't know it. Everyone's been in the first group at some point. Membership in the second group, however, requires someone to resist any attempt to learn about the tools they're using. Almost everyone would find it ridiculous if someone refused to learn how to drive a car but insisted on driving anyway ("What do you mean I have to get a license? I paid $BIGNUM for this car and I want to drive it NOW!"); sadly the same behaviour with a computer is not only accepted but almost lauded in certain circles...
Depends (Score:2)
1) those you wish to learn
2) those who have to learn
Those that wish to learn, trully and utterly enjoy learn about differant aspects of a computer, inside and out. The people in group 1 their goals are to
learn computers.
have fun with computers.
create things with computers (programs, networks, etc)
When these people in group 1 can't firgure out a problem, or takes an extended amount of time to firgure out a problem, they rarley get mad, if ever. They think about the problem in a logical manner, if that doesn't work, they try viewing the problem in an abstract way.
The second group of people, think the computer is something they have to use. Either because they are forced to on the job or some other reason where they can't 'wiggle' out of not using the machine. The people in group 2 goals are:
avoid computers.
find a "freind" that knows allot about computers.
use the computer to get XYZ task done.
put 'computer skills' in their resume.
When people in group 2 have a problem with a computer, they ussually react to their envoirment in this matter.
Find someone who knows about computers and ask them to fix it.
Find someone who knows about computer and DEMAND them to fix it.
Get highly irrate with the computer and extremely mad (ussually removing themselves from the envoirment).
Start going into a panic fit, thinking that they did something wrong (even if it is a program bug, or even a normal operation, like a window opening).
This types of users don't sit down and calmly and logically thing about the real problem they are having.
These users secertly HATE computers and wish NOTHING to do with them. They HATE computers and EXPECT the people in group 1 to slove ALL their problems without ANY effort on their part what so ever.
When people in group 1 make fun of these computer users, they are not making fun of the newbie that are willing to learn. NEVER has a newbie been flamed for reading a how-to. NEVER has ANYONE been made fun of for reading books, trying on their own and for putting an effort into their learning. The people be made fun of are the people that want everything done for them, the ones how don't do anything for themsevles, the ones that can't or won't even try. Those are the ones being mocked, and I see nothing wrong with that.
But if you EVER flame a newbie for reading a doc or for honestly tring, I will be on you faster than stink on a monkey! that is just not cool man
Get the boy a pogo stick (Score:2)
Then there are the people who are utterly opposed to the idea of learning anything at all about computers. Their mantra is "But I shouldn't have to know that!" Sorry pal, yes, you do need to know that. Computers, like any other tool, requires some learning and training to operate.
Finally, not everyone can be tech support. It takes a great deal of patience, a lot of training and a good helping of intelligence. The good techs know how to solve a problem not because it is on a script, but because they can work through the problem. In my shop we couldn't script 1/3rd of the problems and each time Microsoft or Netscape came out with a new version we had to start from scratch since the "options" wasn't in the same place. "Options" became "tools" and was moved from "edit" to "preferences" and so on.
The bad techs get fired, the good techs get burnt out and either quit or finally get paid their due in a better position with better pay.
Through all of that, ALL of it, the techs have two options. Either laugh or blow up at the customers. The latter isn't an option so the former is all they can do and keep getting a paycheck.
That is where User Friendly (the *only* strip I read on a daily basis) comes it. I'm out of the tech game now but I completely sympathize with those who are still in it. I know how much abuse they get and it isn't pretty. I knoew there are users out there who are rude, are crass, are complete and utter pricks and don't want to learn anything. I know all that, read UF, and laugh. Not at any one individual, nor at the techs or anyone else, but at the whole absurdity of the situations presented and knowing that yes, I *have* been there!
Finally, I took a look at PvP to see what Scott viewed as "humor". I picked a good 20-30 different comics from his archives. Not one laugh, guffaw, snort, shook head. Nothing. It was not funny in the least. He wishes that we would all move "past" the humor presented in User Friendly and get onto something with "real" content. The first strip of PvP that I read was someone shooting someone else in the eye with a nerf gun. Oh, that is real content. Then I read a strip about someone being forced to wear a Pokemon costume at a Holloween party. Ohh, stop my laughter now.
From what I can see Scott can not nor will he ever approach the wit and humor Illiad has packed into UF. Just remembering the whole "raid" on Microsoft by the gang brings a smile to my face. That is real nerf gun content. The ROT13 y2k joke is just so subtle that geeks would get it right off and write a perl/vi/sed/etc macro to read what the strip said. All the fun poked at the battles between Linux and FreeBSD, the different distributions of Linux, Open Source and Microsoft with a hint of BeOS and even the classic runs of Dust Puppy versus Crud Puppy. Hell, Illiad even got the classic editor wars (vi vs. emacs) thrown into a rather unique and fun situation.
That is comedy.
Scott clearly doesn't get it for if all he sees is UF belitting people who call into tech support and equates all that belitting with the common user instead of the rare luser when it is clearly so much more. Obviously, he isn't a geek.
Scott, leave the geek humor to the geeks and keep your non-geek self out of it, ok?
Re:Technological Illiteracy vs. Just Plain Dumb (Score:2)
"you shouldn't be laughing at these people, how are they supposed to know ahead of time how it works?" sounds good until you consider that they _do_ have a very good way of knowing ahead of time how it works. It's called a manual. And if there is no manual, maybe they could spend the amount of time thinking about it and looking at the screen until you find a button or menu item labelled with what you want to do.
At the least, they might notice one of the menus is named Help.
Anyone who takes the time to look in the menus and notice something named "copy" deserves any help they want. Anyone who just immediately whines to the nearest techie "how do i work this" deserves to have a comic strip making fun of them.
Maybe it's cruel to make fun of newbies. OK. What about warner bros. cartoons, for just one random example? Isn't that cruel, a poor little cat getting run over by a truck, flattened by a piano and ground up into meatballs just because it was trying to catch some food to eat? Explain to me how that's OK and UF isn't.
Actually, some of them *are* idiots. (Score:3)
>> "But Scott, I work tech support and we constantly get calls from complete idiots." They're not idiots, they just don't understand how a computer works internally. <<
No, Scott, they are idiots. Adults who can't tell left from right, who can have a single phrase repeated to them five times and still forget it a minute later, who can't recognize patterns they've seen repeated a hundred times, who wonder (and I'm not making any of this up) why smoke pours out of their machines when they force plugs or connectors into incongruent sockets, are idiots. No one gets out of kindergarten without understanding that the circular peg can't fit in the square hole.
I recognize that the reason it's me answering the phone, and not them, is that I get excited about computers and technology, and I want to learn how it all works, and they don't. I understand that computers aren't for everyone, and that people who don't care as much as me shouldn't be expected to learn as much as I have. I'm more than happy to help out a polite user with a shred of intelligence who simply can't figure out how to work what is, I admit, a very confusing interface (no matter what OS you use). I get plenty of users like that every day, and I'm always glad when I do. I talk them through their problem, sometimes I shoot the breeze with them for a minute or two, I offer general advice in case their problem recurs, and when I'm done I always feel good about having, in some small way, made a contribution to society.
But, as anyone who works in customer support of any kind will tell you, there are a lot of idiots out there, and a lot of rude people with unrealistic expectations. And if I'm less likely to get upset about those people because I can read a few comic strips that sympathize with my situation -- comic strips that the idiots in question will never read anyway, because they don't find them funny -- well, then that's a great thing. Tech support people put up with a hell of a lot, including the idiots -- do you think, Scott, that we laugh at them while they're still on the phone? that we'd be able to keep our jobs if we did? -- and if a couple of relatively harmless comic strips are what we get in exchange for having to deal with callers who (a) won't accord us the basic human respect & decency that everyone deserves, and (b) won't take a few seconds to step back and think of any possible alternate solutions to a problem before they rush to call us, well, I'm sorry, but I don't see what the big deal is. Their inability or unwillingness to exercise their own brains is their problem, not ours. There's help for it, but that's a different phone number. And, to be quite honest, I don't think that we, as a society, should tolerate or enable people who won't think for themselves. That's irresponsible behavior, and it only makes life harder for everyone else.
In any case, the analogy:
>> a tech making fun of someone learning how to operate a computer is like a school teacher making fun of a child learning how to read. <<
. . . is an inaccurate one. We're not there to teach; if we were, we'd have to have the appropriate certification before being hired. We're merely damage control, there to provide quick fixes for relatively small problems. I'm all for teaching people who are willing to learn -- I know full well that none of us were born knowing the slightest thing about how to use a computer, and I also realize that the better I educate a user, the less likely they are to need to call me back -- and I do what I can in that capacity, but unfortunately it's really not something I can spend a lot of time on if there are others waiting to be helped.
I do hate people who mock newbies, partly because, lord knows, I've been a newbie many, many times in my life, and I will be many, many times again before I die. But there's an important distinction to be made between those who haven't learned yet and those who refuse to learn. And believe you me, I'm definitely not getting paid enough to save the latter category from themselves.