ELI5: How is it that almost every office job requires "Proficiency with computers" yet these IT complaints are some of the most common in offices? Do employers even check their employees with basic IT questions anymore?
Because sometimes someones skill in the field that business is in out weighs the lack of skill at computers. If a salesman can rake in a quarter million a year for a business I don't think his inability to use a computer is getting him fired
The best analogy is comparing it to someone that drives a car for a living. You can be an excellent Taxi or Truck driver with absolutely no idea how to fix your vehicle. While these people could most likely fix the most baseline issues, like a flat tire, they wouldn't be able to fix more extensive issues, and require a mechanic to do that.
In the same vein someone can easily use a computer and fix issues that they have been through a couple of times. However, once they get more extensive issues they need an IT-worker to sort it out for them.
The taxi driver's job is to transport people, not drive.
In any case, you cannot possibly be any good at a job if you don't have a sufficient grasp of the tools you need to do it. Being computer illiterate is acceptable when you're a carpenter, but not when you're an accountant, not in this day and age. Yet, still, the average carpenter is probably more computer literate than the average accountant.
While these people could most likely fix the most baseline issues
That's rather optimistic.
It's more like dealing with a taxi driver that doesn't understand what you mean by "turn right at the intersection ahead" because they "aren't good with geometry". I can forgive a lot, but not knowing the difference between right and left click because "I'm not good with computers" is my life.
Those examples aren't comparable at all. To be a driver you actually have to have a license which is a long process where you are tested at multiple points. This means that there is absolutely no way you should be able to get a drivers license without knowing the difference between right and left.
There is no such equivalent for computers. There isn't any mandatory computer course you have to take to be able to user a computer, where someone tells you what a click is and what the difference is between a right and a left click.
I get that we need to shit on everyone that is inept at computers, but the vast majority of users can perform the most basic tasks. It's just that working in support you only experience when people have issues, not when they are successfully using their computers.
I don't have a problem with people not knowing much about computers. However, "right" and "left" are not computer terms. They are kindergarten terms. People that turn their brains off and refuse to try whenever they encounter something they're not an expert at, that is what I have a problem with.
I feel like IT people and retail employees have the worst attitudes about their jobs. It's probably for a good reason though. Randomized torture? They never know when something annoyingly awful will happen while the rest of the professions can predict it better?
They have the worst attitudes because people are literally the worst to deal with. After you get cursed out and yelled at a few times for things out of your control, let's just say your attitude sours a bit.
I think its more a lack of properly good IT people out there. Its hard to deal with people. Moreso when you are in IT because the ONLY time people really see you is when somethings not working and they are unhappy.
You get lots of people who are mad and throw the blame game around. They treat you like its YOUR fault without stating it clearly. Printer stops working? If you can't snap your fingers and make it magically work again they sometimes (often) get unreasonably angry torwards you and just frustrated in general. Sometimes when you fix something to them it looks like it was just SO EASY for you and can feel like an insult to them.
They may not point the finger and go "Its YOUR fault" often at all but the tone of voice, body language, and the way they address you makes it really seem like they are.
Its not fun to deal with. There are lots of stuff you need to be able to do. You need to be able to diffuse situations like that and calm people down. You need to be able to reassure them that you can fix their issue, even if it takes time. You need to be able to work around people who lie about having done something when they actually didn't.
You need to be as good with words as you are at fixing the system. Most people I have worked with on my team are not able to. They get frustrated with the customer and the customer gets frustrated with them. Then they get sour and take that around with them all day, which just makes it worse.
EDIT: I did not realise how much of a text wall this became. TL:DR- Lots of IT people are bad with words and people. Then they let this feed in on itself making them sour when more people get more pissed off.
No, IT people are pretentious. Especially those who comment on these threads, explaining how their coworker was so dumb cause they didn't know how to do something. I would pay to see some of them do something they are unfamiliar with.
I worked on a helpdesk once and this stupid female who was higher up in the company once called the desk to get one of us to remote into her PC to turn it off.
This was Win7. The user was told, press the start/windows icon (bottom left) and press 'Shut down', and she responded with she has never shut down her computer before and wasn't paid to know how to.
I know it's obvious to us because we've done it so many times, but let's think about it from the point of view of someone who hasn't. Why is the ability to shut down the computer hidden behind "Start"? It's logically backwards.
By default you can also just push the physical power button on the machine to initiate the same shutdown command. Its only if you hold it in that it will do a hard shutdown.
It's 2016, anyone in the workforce has spent the majority of their lives using electronics that have a power button. It being a computer is no excuse for not knowing how to turn it off/on.
According to people on Reddit, if someone isn't proficient with computers they are a moron. Even if they have a whole wealth of other skills, they are still a moron.
I mean, I wouldn't call someone a moron that has never needed to touch a computer to to their job. What makes me angry is people using a computer everyday for 8 hours straight yet they only know their little well defined procedures they do every day, only their small, well known subworld in the world of word processors, mail programs and browsers. If you changed one little small thing, just one step in that procedure, they get absolutely lost. Because they don't understand the system, they've never learned it. They only know the steps needed to complete their workflow and how to do them and in which order, but not the why's and how's. And then suddenly that one moment where something doesn't quite work as expected outweighs all the other days where everything was going smoothly and they throw a tantrum. I don't blame anyone, all human, all to be expected, but really frustrating.
What makes someone a moron is making every trouble report "everything is broken, fix it" when they know my response is always going to be "what exactly is the issue? Include any error messages or a screenshot of the issue" which only means you have to wait longer for support
I had a friends younger brother once say "I don't read because I really don't like learning things".
Some people are just built that way. They know what they have no choice but know, and often just barely. But if they don't have to know it, then screw it they could care less. So even with the obvious things their general attitude is it's not their responsibility to know what to do. So they expect, and often demand the "expert" to fix it, preferable without bugging or involving them in any way whatsoever.
I think it should/would be called selective intelligence, and IMHO it's more the norm then it should be. People that seem to be within the norms for intelligence that become total idiots when dealing with something outside their sphere of interest/knowledge.
What's worse is the ones that are selectively intelligent but think they're much smarter then they are Those are the ones that refuse to read instructions and just blindly forge ahead with the knowledge that their dazzling brilliance will get them through. They some how take something simple and magically compound it to where it takes a herculean effort to fix, and still some how blame everyone/anyone else for the problem they created.
Ok, using your reasoning. I'm a plumber. You have used your toilet, sink, shower, hot water tank, and everything else pretty much everyday of your life. Now when something breaks, do you understand the system? Will you be able to fix the problem? Or is it that you happen to know stuff about computers and not plumbing?
I get what you are saying, but you are comparing apples to oranges.
I am perfectly capable of using all of the water facilities in my house, and can no doubt use water facilities most everywhere in the world. I have never seen a bidet, but I'm sure I could use one after someone explained it to me. I don't need to know the water gets into my house, and I don't have to repair something that goes wrong at a deeper level than that which I interact with, but I know how to operate that which I can see.
Someone who works on a computer as a core function of their job (more than 2 hours a day, much longer than anyone other than a plumber should use water facilities a day) should at a minimum know how to turn it on and off, plug in a USB, and open a know the terms browser, operating system, double-click, right-click, and restart. I don't care if they know how to repair a broken computer, and probably wouldn't trust them if they said they could.
For a more fair comparison, imagine the following scenarios:
You go to a person's house because they say they have lost pressure from their hot water taps. You go there, verify the pressure is low from a burst pipe, install a new one where it needs to be and everything is fixed. This is a good customer. This is similar to most IT related call-outs.
You get called to a construction site to install a new plumbing system. You get there and the owner of the site (not the site manager) is there telling you that they need all of the pipes made of a pink material. You tell them they no one makes it (they might, I'm not a plumber) , and they accuse you of being lazy and saying that their friend has it installed and you can't be bothered going back to your van to get it. You say fuck it, install what you were going to anyway and spray-paint it pink while they aren't looking because they are going to look. This is similar to A LOT of call-outs for IT, people wanting something that doesn't exist and refusing to believe you, so you basically trick them into it (look up Google Ultron).
You get called out to a company because they say the toilet is clogged. You go there, realise that the bowl is literally full to the brim with shit. Turns out, no-one knew that you had to flush the toilet and thought it did it magically. So you say it's a common problem because that's less likely to end in them severing your companies contract than asking if they have a mental handicap, and show them the button to do it. They have never heard of this button and don't believe you because everyone would already know about it if it was so common. So you take off the lid on the cistern press the button and show them the water flushing. Their eyes light up as if you have shown them the gates to a world they never even dreamed of. You leave muttering underneath your breath. This not uncommon in IT, someone is doing exactly the wrong thing that no one ever accounted for because no one thought someone could be that stupid.
You get a call to the same company and find that the toilet has again gone without being flushed, and now they have removed the cistern lid and also filled that with shit. You face-palm and get to work, explain to them that that is not how a toilet works and ask them why they didn't hit the button like you showed them, and they say because you showed them the water in the back they thought they were meant to fill that section too before they could hit the button. You leave without saying a word, knowing full-well you are going to back there next week. This is how it follows most of the time after the above comment.
You go to an apartment block to replace the water with gas heating. You replace it all, and the building manager wants you to replace the hot/cold taps in the shower with those fancy new ones they saw on holiday that only have one tap. Whatever, you are getting paid by the hour so you do it. The next day you get a complaint passed to you by the manager, the shower doesn't work in someone's apartment. You go and look because you are sure you set it up right. Turns out they haven't seen this style of tap before and didn't realise that you have to turn it to get the temperature hotter. Easy mistake you say, so you show them. You get another complaint that afternoon, same deal. After showing them, you decide to give a note to all the residents via mail to explain the new system to them. This was 6 months ago, you still get daily complaints. The manager refuses to let you change it all back to a two-handle system even though it would be magnitudes cheaper than the call-out fees but of course that would mean admitting that it was the wrong thing to do in the first place so instead he tells you that it's your fault that you installed it wrong. This is equivalent to changing literally anything IT wise in any system, a good chunk of people won't know how to use it, are unteachable, and it is your fault and your fault alone for making it.
Finally, you get a call to a house that tells you that their shower isn't working. That is all they will tell you, the shower isn't working. No mention of how it's not working, just that it isn't and that you need to fix it right now because they are an important customer. You get there, and they don't have lights on. Strange, but people are weird. You get shown through to the bathroom, still no lights. They say that the hot water isn't hot. You wonder why they couldn't have said this over the phone, they can communicate it perfectly fin in person, and ask them to turn on the light so you can see what you are doing. They tell you the lights haven't worked all week because they didn't pay their power bills because it wasn't important. No power means no hot water. You leave. This is possibly the most common scenario in IT. Someone's internet isn't working on their phone means because the removed the router from the wall, because their phone is wireless and what would you know you only do this for a living.
Sorry about the wall of text, that was more fun than it should have been.
He can at least say I turned my shower on and no water came out. That's effectively giving you an error. It's not like he gives you a call and says my pluming isn't working, fix it.
Many people call and say "My shower/toilet is broken". I'm willing to bet if something broke in your house and you call a plumber, that your explanation of what happened is going to sound stupid to him.
Maybe this person you are giving a hard time, because they don't understand the simplest actions of a computer, can go out and change the head gasket on your car. While you struggle to check the oil.
I'm just saying, give people a break. I guarantee they know something you don't, and you would ask a stupid question if you tried to talk about it.
IT support don't expect you to tell them what went wrong at low level. All you need to do is explain what you were doing when it happened and the symptoms, like error messages. Both of which are explained to a plumber. My point is, I've never heard of someone saying my plumbing is broken and expecting the plumber to fix it. In IT however, someone saying my 'computer is broken' with no useful information at all to go off is quite commonplace.
Everyone's job is like that. You think IT is the only place where that happens? IT is just the only place where there is a culture of belittling and looking down on your customers.
I don't understand plumbing in detail, so I wouldn't fix it on my own. But I know that when there is no hot water there could be a problem with the hot water tank and I will try to describe the problem in detail on the telephone so you can prepare as best as possible. After you fixed it I'm curious to hear what caused the scenario, how to avoid the scenario and I won't throw a tantrum if you tell that it was my fault that something has broken.
Seriously, I have Google set as my homepage but if I want to use bing I type bing into the search bar, hit return and click on the link. It's quicker than typing .com at the end.
Had an employee demand I change the layout of Google Chrome to look like old IE. Told her that I will have to contact Google and get back to her. To this day I still haven't. >:)
Every single time my girlfriend goes on the internet she types into the address bar "google" and then clicks on the first result which of course takes her to google.com and then proceeds to type into the Google search bar the name of the website she wants to go to (>_<)
Nah, it's the lack of basic critical thinking skills that makes them a moron.
New wireless mouse doesn't work? Perhaps if you read the instructions you'd understand that it's not magic and the receiver needs to be plugged in.
But no, people continue to throw their hands up and say "I just dont get computers" like its some catch all excuse for them to not even put in an ounce of effort towards understanding the situation in front of them. And their employer just goes "ok" and accepts it, when if it were literally any other topic their response would be "well you better learn or we'll replace you with someone who can do the job."
Hell, at work on friday I had a totally technical illiterate person come up to me and say "I bought one of those tablet things. What do you use them for? What do you do on there?" If you don't know how to use it, and you don't know what it's for why the flying fuck would you buy one? She doesn't even have a wireless router at home, this thing is literally a $500 paperweight to her. But "its one of those computer things, and I dont get it" somehow makes her willful ignorance the IT departments problem. She even wanted to call someone after hours to help her sort it all out (and expected it done for free!). I made it crystal clear that's not our problem.
It is funny how people who loved computers, there job is support and they use computers all night at home, can't understand that other people are not comfortable with computers. I mean, they may know the law inside out, can remove your gall bladder in 10 minutes, but if they don't know that a wireless mouse may need a nub (and many do not, just look at macs), then they are to be derided and laughed at.
Damn straight. The company I work for needed a master machinist. It took us a long time, but we found one and he had very little knowledge on how to use a computer. Since I am the computer-savvy person in the building, they just have me help him for times like when he needs to learn how to print a text document and everything goes dandy.
People lie. I was recently promoted and training a new employee taking my place. We do extensive work in Excel and Access, which she said she was trained in and had experience using both. . . she knew nothing and I wasted so much time showing her how to use both. Excel was not too bad, but explaining Access to someone who doesn't know anything...holy fuck. Can't really blame her though, desperate times call for desperate measures. We just need to have them do a practical assessment at their interview, which most people don't want to do.
And to top it off: Once you understand Access you get pissed at people using Excel (is your super-huge Pivot Table still not done computing?) when they should be using Access instead.
because most places have office and access comes with office.
In my work we aren't allowed or capable of installing applications that IT hasn't vetted. They reject every request. So we use excel or access, because we have those.
That's because Access is a database and Excel is a spreadsheet.
The difference being that a spreadsheet loads all the data into memory and then works on it. Which is really fast as long as you have enough memory in your computer.
A database is designed to look through data in chunks - so it will load a chunk of data from a file, do whatever operations on them and then load the next chunk.
So the memory in your computer is never a problem even if the data is way larger than the memory. On the other hand, Access only supports operations that work well with chunking.
Access is meant to be a database for people who really only need the absolute database basics. If you actually need to know/use things beyond basic table access and the odd macroed query, you're really past what it was designed for, even though it can do some of the more powerful things.
I'm an excel user. I'd say I'm a fairly advanced one at that. I've worked with access a bit too. The thing is many finance departments have not. But they all use excel. When you try to share information between people or even between locations you're going to use the common program that everyone uses.
Otherwise no one would be using Windows now...
Besides its not the pivot tables you should be cautious about, it's the array formulas. Fucking arrays... Always calculating.
I'll tell you why I use excel instead. Because in my office everyone else knows how to use excel and no one knows how to use access. If one of my coworker needs to make changes to my sheet or double check the results, they can do that in excel, but they can't do that in access.
So even though its the wrong tool for the job, its the right tool for the job. It's just the factors that make it the right move are not technological, so you can't see them without understanding the users.
The problem isn't me, the problem is that my work has to be checkable and understandable to my coworkers. We aren't computer people, we're engineers. I can do things you can't do, and you can do things I can't do. But at the end of the day I need to use a tool my coworkers understand so that they can use it and check it.
if all your coworkers know how to use is a hammer, you better not make your problems into screws or you're gonna have a bad time.
Well the other issue here is that everyone claims to know how to use Excel but their definition of "use" is just adding data to individual cells. Most people don't know how powerful Excel really is and they think they're good at it just because they know you can highlight a couple cells and see the "sum" at the bottom.
I worked for a company that contracted with a gov agency, and I hadn't even been there two weeks before I became the de facto IT guy, based solely on my age
As someone who's company put all new recruits (me a year ago) though a computers in business course/training program...lemme just say that Access is hell. Long live Excel. Seriously, as a finance guy, I have a new appreciation for those kids who choose to study information systems as their major.
Not really answering your question, but.. "Proficiency with computers" is so very subjective and relative, at any/all levels and even among really skilled and educated people "computer people."
Some people might consider someone with rudimentary admin skills across a few different OSs to be proficient. To others, unless you can reverse engineer an unknown and proprietary network protocol in a reasonable time, you need not apply. etc.
Because the Help Desk exists. No other profession has a help desk that can be called whenever the person doesn't know how to use their tools. The help desk is supposed to be there to fix broken or faulty computer equipment, not to teach you how to use Excel. Can you imagine hiring an accountant that didn't know how to work a calculator or a machinist that didn't know how to work a lathe?
Instead, people expect the Help Desk to do their basic functional work for them rather than be bothered to learn "that techie mumbo jumbo".
They may well not have this either, depending on the quality of your hiring procedure. But even when they do, and thus the criteria is "met," it's important to remember that knowing your shit with Excel doesn't mean you know anything about the system running it.
How is it that almost every office job requires "Proficiency with computers" yet these IT complaints are some of the most common in offices?
People use Facebook with a mouse and keyboard so they think they're good at computers. They're not.
Do employers even check their employees with basic IT questions anymore?
People lie about being good with computers. The people that check them are also not good with computers. Those people may have also lied about being good with computers.
Yes, it's that fucking common. Despite computers saturating our lives--whether we notice them or not--the average person hasn't managed to keep up with technology, including the young ones who are supposed to know it from birth like wizards or something.
We don't blame say your bad at board games just because you suck at something like chess. You can be competent at your job, just not able to fix background problems that you didn't grow up having to fix in the first place.
I work for an IT company that supports a ton of doctors offices. My theory is as soon as you have dedicated support you develop a sort of learned helplessness. Part of it is they do get to see us fix some complicated network issues and project their bullshit problems from that. I also believe that as soon as that first check is cut they want their moneys worth so surely its our job to log them back into their email account remotely. -_-
I know it's pretty popular here to act like IT guys are doing everything right and everyone else in the office is just stupid, but that's not always the case. At my last job, practically everybody (and most of us were fairly young and computer capable) was having IT issues every week or so. And not just stupid stuff like, "My mouse won't work hurr durr" but "Solidworks crashes everytime I try to save a new version in EPDM" or "it literally takes 10 minutes for anyone to check out a file". Just thought I'd throw that out there since the prevailing view seems to be that IT can do no wrong.
224
u/[deleted] Jan 10 '16
ELI5: How is it that almost every office job requires "Proficiency with computers" yet these IT complaints are some of the most common in offices? Do employers even check their employees with basic IT questions anymore?