When you're a desktop support technician, it soon becomes obvious that no two end-users are alike. We often remember the most churlish users, but you sometimes see real humility and curiosity, as I learned from my days on help desk at a corporate bank in New York.
The placebo effect
One day, I was the sucker who answered a call from a gentlemen in the M&A division. None of us liked to help this particular person. He was rude and obnoxious, and he complained about anything and everything that wasn't to his liking.
[ Also on InfoWorld: Stay away from these 20 common IT blunders -- and save your career. | Follow InfoWorld's Off the Record on Twitter for tech's war stories, career takes, and off-the-wall news. | Subscribe to the Off the Record newsletter for your weekly dose of workplace shenanigans. ]
His complaint this time was that his mouse was not moving the same or as fast as it had previously. We had recently done some upgrades to his PC, so of course he blamed us for causing the problem and demanded I get to his office immediately.
I made my way upstairs, and while he stood there telling me how terrible the IT staff were, I worked on figuring out the problem. I first checked the mouse to see if anything was wrong. No, everything was fine.
I then started poking around on the settings on the computer. Needless to say, I could not find a thing wrong or out of place. Everything worked smoothly. I moved the mouse around the screen, and again all looked great.
I told him that the mouse seemed to be working without glitches, and I left, assuming that everything was all right and glad to be done with his unpleasantness.
The next day I got another call from him. He was again complaining that the mouse was not working to his liking.
I went back to his office to investigate and still couldn't find anything unusual. I looked at the computer, the mouse, the settings, anything I could think of, but all was fine. I asked some questions to figure out if it was working OK for him at that point and to better understand what he was seeing, but he brushed me off. I left, thinking it must be OK.
