Sharing my frustration

[Kingslayer]

For those of you that don't know, I work as Computer/Network Technician for a local Political/Law Enforcement office. I take care of 300+ computers, 20+ servers, and 300 employees in 7 offices in 5 counties. There are a whole whopping 2 of us in the IT dept to rope this stuff down.

We don't have the smartest users. We don't pay squat so we get bottom of the barrel people. We have a PIO, Press and Information Officer. One would think that this person would (and should be) pretty adept with a computer.

Not this ditz.

She has her own laser printer. It is an HP 4100 DTN printer. 3 trays, envelope feeder, duplexer, all the bells and whistles. It is configured like every other printer in our builing.

Tray 1: Prepunched Legal paper (hardly ever gets used)
Tray 2: Plain ordinary paper
Tray 3: Letterhead (plain paper with preprinted letterhead)
Envelpe Feeder: Com10 business envelopes.

All of these settings are preprogrammed and locked down so the users can't change them. They don't need to change them. Changing them is bad...

She comes to me telling me that she can't print, that the printer is jamming. She says she is trying to print special paper from tray1. This is normal because sometimes people print labels and stuff from the adjustable tray 1. No big deal.

I get over there and she has a piece of notepad paper. NOTEPAD PAPER. Kind of like a big post-it pad paper and she is trying to run that through the envelope feeder!!!

This woman is a pain in my backside. She is always doing stupid airheaded things like this. I told her to turn her computer off and go home, I'll let her use it when she pulls her head out of her butt and starts to listen to me. And I'm usually a nice person. She blew that all to hell didn't she.

[Frodo Baggins]

I told her to turn her computer off and go home, I'll let her use it when she pulls her head out of her butt and starts to listen to me.

I think you need some Jello

One question, was she a blond?

[Chris]

Ha Ha cant believe you actually said that to her, thats pretty funny. But on the other side i cant believe theres only 2 of you taking care of that many computers, so im not surprised you got a little ticked of when you could be using your time better than that. :)

[Kingslayer]

Yes she's blonde. And firing her isn't an option as she used to be married to the boss and worked on his campaign.

[ninthebin]

comical, but she probably took up self harm that night :santa2:

[stompah]

you need to submit it to one of those sites that rips on dumb user. Most people know that doesnt work that way.

[Caffinehog]

Does it matter that I recently caught somoene repeatedly pounding the "print screen" key trying to print their word document?

Or the one who kept trying to use the "touch screen" on a windows XP computer?

And I'm not even in IT.



Whatever you do, don't advise her to flush her DNS cache.

[CrystalMethod]

Unfortunately, I feel your pain. But, I work as a computer tech for a local shop. As such, I can't tell people that "Sir, begging your pardon, but YOU'RE A FREAKING IDIOT! You don't deserve to own a computer!" . Not good for consumer relations... I usually want to say this when users screw up their systems and think software is covered under warranty. I could rant forever about what clients do to their systems, but I think I'd use up all the storage space on the server.

[Breadfan]

I was pulling my hair out Friday becuase some moron came in to use a computer behind me, and after asking me how to format something in word, he sits there talking to himself! It's like:

"Ok, now I'm gonna highlight this text...go to copy...and paste it here...Alright!!! it worked...no...wait...did it? Uhhh...yeah...that looks ok. Cool!"

I'm dead serious. This dude talks to himself while he works...it's so annoying!!

I do all the IT stuff for a small 30-40person company, so I feel your pain. I get very annoyed when people constantly ask me questions about word or excel. They always ask strange off the wall stuff, and expect me to know how to do everything right off the bat...like I'm a super Word expert or something.

The thing that really irks me is when users break something or do something wrong in software, and then go "Stupid computer!" or when I go to fix it, "Don't you just hate dealing with these dumb computers?"

One time this annoying guy pulled that, trying to blame the computer that works fine on his idiocy...I wasn't in a happy mood, so I just went "Yeah, well, trust me, the computer didn't do anything wrong so becareful where you put the blame."

Heheh. :)

[pcgirl]

I work as a computer/network tech for the government too (on the state level). With the exception of just a few people, many many government employees are clueless when it comes to computers. Like Kingslayer said, they don't pay anything, so they don't get the brightest workers. :(

I once saw a lady at my work who didn't know how to use a mouse, and actually picked it up off the desk and was moving it around. She then complained because it wasn't working!!

[FIZZ3]

Well, the IT staff isn't always of the best breed either. I have seen one of these so-called professionals come fix a workstation that kept crashing... holding a McAfee Fix-It diskette in his hands and looking very serious. :rolleyes:

The blade cuts both ways I guess. :)

[Breadfan]

Originally posted by FIZZ3
Well, the IT staff isn't always of the best breed either. I have seen one of these so-called professionals come fix a workstation that kept crashing... holding a McAfee Fix-It diskette in his hands and looking very serious. :rolleyes:

The blade cuts both ways I guess. :)

My brother told me the IT person at his old high school was an older lady who ran around with a wicker basket that contained an HP recovery CD and 2 cans of air, becuase canned air fixes all IT woes. :)

[FIZZ3]

Originally posted by Breadfan


My brother told me the IT person at his old high school was an older lady who ran around with a wicker basket that contained an HP recovery CD and 2 cans of air, becuase canned air fixes all IT woes. :)

haha nice one! :D

[CrystalMethod]

I had a service call yesterday, to set up a wireless router, two wireless NIC's, and one PC with a regular NIC, on a cable connection. The client had his friend over who is a network administrator at a hospital couldn't figure it out. after going at it for four hours they gave up and called to have me come in and set it up. It took me 15 mins to have everything set up and working. I geuss I can read a manual better than some people :rolleyes: (see sig...)

[Top Hat Theater]

lol, someone should stick this thread because it's HILARIOUS!

~THT

[bdf24]

You know it's amazing how lazy people are these days. Nobody takes time to read manuals anymore. I tell people all the time when they ask me questions about computers or some piece of hardware they bought to read the manual.

I look at it this way. If I spend my hard earned money on something. I want to know exactly everything it can do. How do you find out what something can and cant do? You read the manual! Or atleast do some sort of research on it. I love it when people spend all this money on something and use only a quarter of what it can do.

[Caffinehog]

I read the manual before I buy it!

[CPFitz14]

I was at my Aunt's house, and got a strange request. She hated having screen savers, but wouldn't settle for just disabling them. She didn't want them to show up under display properties.

I told her to just ignore them, but she said that they bothered her. And if she doesn't like something, she wants to get rid of it.:rolleyes: After searching around for about 5 minutes or so, I managed to find the default screen savers and delete them. She was thrilled, she had tried for a few weeks I guess... :rolleyes:

But I give her a lot of credit. She's upwards of 70, and very adept at the computer.

-CPFitz-