It felt empowering at first!
I must admit that right from my childhood I was not too much of an extrovert. College was worse and I felt good when somehow I landed into a programming job - at least I didn't have to speak to too many people - life was easy, at least initially. However, "client-sites" and "customers" meant that I had to be nice...or pretend to be nice to all the folks I met / talked with!
Thank thee the powerful lord! I was still talking to the tech-crowd, but then life plays a prank on all and I found myself in mid of "users"! Working in a startup meant that I was trying to fix Java and Python, and whenever required fixing computers for "users" as well. These "users" were my colleagues from non-technical part of the organization I was working in - all the Finance, HR and like folks who have love-hate relationship with computers - they hate to admit that their computer doesn't love them.
Well didn't I say I felt empowering at first! But I must admit that after repeating the same thing to same person around twenty times, I started feeling a little bit "amused" - how could on the earth somebody could be so....helpless - and that too after 17 years of educations followed by some time spent on work as well! Perhaps these are the persons who grew up in mobile age! All of 'em had person mobile devices - personal mobiles, personal laptops and hadn't have to learn the "Computers" "properly", for example, to hide the...eh, the educational-material stashed on a shared computer.
All of 'em have got Laptop - hooked to wireless network of office, so 70% of my team's work involves motivating 'em to do a right- or is it left-...OK, whatever-click to connect to WiFi. 10% are genuine problems, and rest 20% involves thingies like those listed below:
Problem: Laptop is "suddenly" getting powered off...
Solution:...yeah, only at 0% battery level.
P: Laptop - a Windows machine is giving error messages, which is irritating!
S: ...of insufficient battery level!
P: "Desktop" - they call the additional monitor provided, connected to the VGA port of Laptop as "Desktop"...so, "Desktop" is NOT Working
S...first time:"Desktop", sometimes, requires "electricity" to run!
Solution...second time:"Desktop" not connected to Laptop!
P: System crashed - all files lost, computer is frozen and is not responding!
S: This one was a big one..slightly "challenging" - the gentleman complaining had connected his laptop to "Desktop" and and everything - including his mouse pointer moved to second screen - which was not switched on (because one of our message to save power suggest this extreme measure!)
P: Google doesn't work
S:...without Internet! We had a network breakdown, it was announced - he understood that, but still insisted that Google search is not working. We were informed that Google has got its own array of computers, servers at its data-centers and it does _NOT_ need to connect to Internet to run the search.
P: Google's site is down!
S: We're xXx...not Google, so better complaint at Google's helpdesk - me, the smarty-pants almost spoke up, but then didn't. Well, to be fair, on that particular day, for that particular millisecond when that gentleman pressed enter - after diligently typing google.com in Chrome's address bar - Google decided not to show up - something like that broken robot came up, and for next 30 whole minutes he decided to not to refresh page, or to try another search...before reaching us.
P: Slow computer!
S: ...maybe even closing close to 20% of 100 odd files opened might help, but no, they all were "important" - we had to ask him to reboot the system.
P: "User" smiling sheepishly, says "Hacker attacked my computer..." I was trying to help her to install something.
S: In a population of 1+ billion in this country, why it had to be specifically you! Clear browser history...simply don't show me browser-history / or use anonymous mode when browsing those you_know_what sites!
P: Can't work - need Windows...because Windows is the thing which I know and have worked before.
S: Turned out that Windows8.1 was the alien piece of software and all she wanted were good old days of XP! Her heart was broken when he was informed about the Microsoft's decision to discontinue that awesome OS.
P: ...a dummy telling us that she worked on a critical piece of work for whole day - the work was so critical that she forgot to name the file and even to press Ctrl+S for whole 8 hours! Only person who has broken this record was the one who did _this_ for whole four days.
S: Couldn't provide any "solution", so we were threatened about a complain with senior management...waited eagerly on what "solution" they'd would provide.
P: A financial whiz-kid - MBA finance, last company all-fishing-finance - for five freaking years in Finance - had an "issue" that Excel was not "working" at all..what?
S: Well, all formulas in excel require an "=" prefixed to it...and he was like typing 2+3 <enter> and complaining that installed of "5" the cell was showing "2+3".
P: A user - masters from the top technical school - forgetting her password daily.
S: ...only of her computer, and not of Amazon/Flipkart/Jabong and what-not! She had had the record for highest number of deliveries every week from all the e-commerces websites. It kept on happening, so we had to set up her password to that 1-to-8 thingy! Yes, we have disabled the time-out screen-lock from here computer as well.
I must admit that right from my childhood I was not too much of an extrovert. College was worse and I felt good when somehow I landed into a programming job - at least I didn't have to speak to too many people - life was easy, at least initially. However, "client-sites" and "customers" meant that I had to be nice...or pretend to be nice to all the folks I met / talked with!
Thank thee the powerful lord! I was still talking to the tech-crowd, but then life plays a prank on all and I found myself in mid of "users"! Working in a startup meant that I was trying to fix Java and Python, and whenever required fixing computers for "users" as well. These "users" were my colleagues from non-technical part of the organization I was working in - all the Finance, HR and like folks who have love-hate relationship with computers - they hate to admit that their computer doesn't love them.
Well didn't I say I felt empowering at first! But I must admit that after repeating the same thing to same person around twenty times, I started feeling a little bit "amused" - how could on the earth somebody could be so....helpless - and that too after 17 years of educations followed by some time spent on work as well! Perhaps these are the persons who grew up in mobile age! All of 'em had person mobile devices - personal mobiles, personal laptops and hadn't have to learn the "Computers" "properly", for example, to hide the...eh, the educational-material stashed on a shared computer.
All of 'em have got Laptop - hooked to wireless network of office, so 70% of my team's work involves motivating 'em to do a right- or is it left-...OK, whatever-click to connect to WiFi. 10% are genuine problems, and rest 20% involves thingies like those listed below:
Problem: Laptop is "suddenly" getting powered off...
Solution:...yeah, only at 0% battery level.
P: Laptop - a Windows machine is giving error messages, which is irritating!
S: ...of insufficient battery level!
P: "Desktop" - they call the additional monitor provided, connected to the VGA port of Laptop as "Desktop"...so, "Desktop" is NOT Working
S...first time:"Desktop", sometimes, requires "electricity" to run!
Solution...second time:"Desktop" not connected to Laptop!
P: System crashed - all files lost, computer is frozen and is not responding!
S: This one was a big one..slightly "challenging" - the gentleman complaining had connected his laptop to "Desktop" and and everything - including his mouse pointer moved to second screen - which was not switched on (because one of our message to save power suggest this extreme measure!)
P: Google doesn't work
S:...without Internet! We had a network breakdown, it was announced - he understood that, but still insisted that Google search is not working. We were informed that Google has got its own array of computers, servers at its data-centers and it does _NOT_ need to connect to Internet to run the search.
P: Google's site is down!
S: We're xXx...not Google, so better complaint at Google's helpdesk - me, the smarty-pants almost spoke up, but then didn't. Well, to be fair, on that particular day, for that particular millisecond when that gentleman pressed enter - after diligently typing google.com in Chrome's address bar - Google decided not to show up - something like that broken robot came up, and for next 30 whole minutes he decided to not to refresh page, or to try another search...before reaching us.
P: Slow computer!
S: ...maybe even closing close to 20% of 100 odd files opened might help, but no, they all were "important" - we had to ask him to reboot the system.
P: "User" smiling sheepishly, says "Hacker attacked my computer..." I was trying to help her to install something.
S: In a population of 1+ billion in this country, why it had to be specifically you! Clear browser history...simply don't show me browser-history / or use anonymous mode when browsing those you_know_what sites!
P: Can't work - need Windows...because Windows is the thing which I know and have worked before.
S: Turned out that Windows8.1 was the alien piece of software and all she wanted were good old days of XP! Her heart was broken when he was informed about the Microsoft's decision to discontinue that awesome OS.
P: ...a dummy telling us that she worked on a critical piece of work for whole day - the work was so critical that she forgot to name the file and even to press Ctrl+S for whole 8 hours! Only person who has broken this record was the one who did _this_ for whole four days.
S: Couldn't provide any "solution", so we were threatened about a complain with senior management...waited eagerly on what "solution" they'd would provide.
P: A financial whiz-kid - MBA finance, last company all-fishing-finance - for five freaking years in Finance - had an "issue" that Excel was not "working" at all..what?
S: Well, all formulas in excel require an "=" prefixed to it...and he was like typing 2+3 <enter> and complaining that installed of "5" the cell was showing "2+3".
S: ...only of her computer, and not of Amazon/Flipkart/Jabong and what-not! She had had the record for highest number of deliveries every week from all the e-commerces websites. It kept on happening, so we had to set up her password to that 1-to-8 thingy! Yes, we have disabled the time-out screen-lock from here computer as well.
P: Unable to copy-n-paste files between two computers...
S: It turned out that he was using the advanced "mouse-technology" - user your mouse --> right-click on file --> click copy --> disconnect mouse --> reconnect mouse to another computer ---> and click paste! This was the first time I saw my engineer D on the verge of crying, but still he explained it patiently. Apparently the user did understand it extremely well, because next day he used a very different method....he transferred his files to the area of desktop visible on his extra monitor, disconnected that monitor and connected it to other computer. Again, files were still not there!
P: Not connected to Internet...
S: Informed me over a mail that he cannot connect to Internet...somehow he deleted the shortcut to Google-chrome and again, half-a-day was lost. D created four shortcuts on his desktop, pinned it in start-menu, on system-tray of Windows, so supply of Internet instantly increased to 6x!
P: [from his own email...] There is a problem in my system due to which whole Internet not working properly.
S: D just went to the user and fixed the problem immediately so the "whole" Internet was back to the normal.
S: It turned out that he was using the advanced "mouse-technology" - user your mouse --> right-click on file --> click copy --> disconnect mouse --> reconnect mouse to another computer ---> and click paste! This was the first time I saw my engineer D on the verge of crying, but still he explained it patiently. Apparently the user did understand it extremely well, because next day he used a very different method....he transferred his files to the area of desktop visible on his extra monitor, disconnected that monitor and connected it to other computer. Again, files were still not there!
P: Not connected to Internet...
S: Informed me over a mail that he cannot connect to Internet...somehow he deleted the shortcut to Google-chrome and again, half-a-day was lost. D created four shortcuts on his desktop, pinned it in start-menu, on system-tray of Windows, so supply of Internet instantly increased to 6x!
P: [from his own email...] There is a problem in my system due to which whole Internet not working properly.
S: D just went to the user and fixed the problem immediately so the "whole" Internet was back to the normal.
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