Oooh! Look! A blatant attempt to trick me into pressing YES!

WARNING!!!!
YOUR USERS MAY BE SUSCEPTIBLE TO ENORMOUS AMOUNTS OF STUPIDITY.

SHINY THINGS ATTRACT THEM.

LIKE SCREENSAVERS, SMILEYS, AND PRIZES GIVEN TO THE 1,000000th VISITOR OF A WEB SITE.

CLICK YES TO MAKE SURE THEY FALL FOR SPYWARE, ADWARE, MALWARE AND ANY OTHER ATTEMPT TO MAKE SURE YOUR DAY IS PRODUCTIVE.

[YES] [NO but really yes]

Okay, we’re all aware users are stupid. They fall for anything. Your average user knows this. they perpetuate it. They want our “cushy” jobs with all our “toys” and when we come to their desk to fix their machine they always have the same lame statement to say to us.

“Since you’re here, can you do my work for me, too.”

I’m very much sure I could. As it seems you do very little more than screw up your system, forward emails about how prayer and forwarding that very email will save baby seals from getting prostate cancer, and of course, surfing the web for pretty screensavers and wallpapers.

“Hey, do you like my screensaver?” she says, pointing to her desktop wallpaper. At this point it’s always one of those creepy Anne Geddes baby dressed up as Venetian Flytrap or rolled into the shape of a basketball or something.

“Sure, it doesn’t mildly horrify me in any way. By the way, you have ugly children. Did you marry a close relative?”

I guess that part after the “Sure,” was kind of an inner monologue.

The user in the next cube knows how to fix the problem. In fact, they just scurried back into their own cube from trying to repair this machine. And by repair I mean “significantly screw up the operating system so that even replacing the computer will not fix it, as I have cursed this area of ones and zeroes forever.”

This user usually has the attitude of “I like to surf the internet and chat on AIM to all my friends all the time so I’m good with computers and I’m good at that Microsoft Wordart. I should go to computer school like you!”

This guy is usually the one to insist on a trackball instead of a mouse.

People wonder why I drink.

Heavily.

The thing is, a lot of this job isn’t really that tough, and you don’t need to know everything. There’s a lot of knowledge bases, Google, and people you work with to help you out. There’s some advanced knid of stuff we all do, and we all have our own talents.

The biggest pain in this job is developing patience and ignoring the general stupidity.

One user, Harvard educated, mind you, insists his new port replicator for his laptop is bad because his two (USB) printers, his (USB) mouse and his (requires power to charge) battery was dying.

Care to guess what the solution is? You knew it all along. He kicked the power cord out.

Then there’ s the way upper management, not VP, more director level I.S. guy who complains of strange noises every morning when he logs in.

Strange noises. Log in.

IR communication notification from Windows that lets him know his PDA, a nice $500 Pocket PC he never uncradles, is within range. Solution? Electrical tape! Why not disable it? He’s smart enough to know how to look in Device Manager and re-enable it, but will complain again when the noises start. He’s not smart enough to notice the tape over the IR port on his laptop, because as his laptop is an extremely portable Thinkpad, he would never take it home.

But he needs the Thinpad because he’s more important than a desktop user.

Now we come to the close, because the machine I am replacing for a user with more spyware, adware and various other malware, is almost done imaging.

Thankfully, it’s almost Miller Time, as I need a High Life tonight.