January 29, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:VIA TIM BLAIR comes The
VIA TIM BLAIR comes The Chronicles of George, an absolutely hilarious website about the stupidest guy on the helpdesk.
Of course, his name isn't really George, and the person who made the website doesn't provide any details by which we could verify George's existance, but that doesn't really matter. Because for those of us who have toiled in the dark bowels of the help desk, this website has a larger Truth than mere biography. In a larger sense, we have all Worked With George.
Being on a help desk is the worst job in the world. Those who work there have ony two ambitions: to leave the job as quickly as possible, and to bang the heads of their users against the computer screen until the wires uncross and their brains start working again. The users are unimaginably stupid. I actually had the CFO of a Fortune 500 company tell me that his new voice recognition software must be broken because it "doesn't work the way I want it to". When I asked him how he wanted it to work, he blythely replied "like the computer on Start Trek: The Next Generation.
Imagine yourself in a world where there are no physical laws; no actual, objective truth; no restrictions other than the imagination. Now you are in the world inhabited by users of help desk services. They make insane demands and then scream at you for not being able to meet them. A woman with a Sun workstation who demanded that I install Microsoft Word on it so she could read some bond newsletter brushed off my repeated attempts to explain that they don't make Microsoft Word for the Sun platform with a blank stare and an increasingly insistent "but I need it." It was an extremely Ayn Rand interlude, as she was totally unable to comprehend that no matter how much she needed Microsoft Word on her Sun station, it still could not be installed. She ultimately grabbed me by the wrist with a grip hard enough to turn my fingers white and yanked me up the stairs to the office of my boss, Mike P. Well, Mike was a big italian guy, a little bit crude, not very social -- the kind of guy you find huddled in the back of the comm center, surrounded by wires and open computer carcasses as he happily mutters to himself. Mike had also had it up to here with the firm, and had in fact handed in his resignation that morning. Which I didn't yet know. So you can imagine my surprise when the user hauled me through the door and screamed "I can't get what I need!" and Mike, grinning, grabbed his crotch and said "Well, baby, you came to the right place."
Users also assume that since you occupy a world in which mere physical laws or technological knowledge do not limit the demands they may place on you, so too mere physical truth should not limit the explanations they give you as to why their computer has ceased working. More than once, a user reporting a dead keyboard has sworn up and down that they did not spill anything on it. When I made to flip the keyboard over on top of the papers they were working on (on the pretext of 'checking the lithium interface' or some other babble), most of them were bright enough to stop me before the coffee/orange juice/soda ruined three days of work. One of the stupider ones actually yelled at me for soaking the month-end closings with the apple juice she hadn'e spilled on her keyboard. I never did figure out why they lied to me; it wasn't as if I had the power to say "Foul miscreant! By the power of Graythor, you shall have no more keyboards! You shall handwrite your reports and send your missals by regular mail until the sun blackens and the earth is cold!" At least the ones who pretended that they had already done the mandatory reboot were trying to get the help desk technician to their desk a little quicker; they had a dim, if stupid, idea that they could speed things up by eliminating this silly ritual. Of course, then they complained that the first thing I did when I got to their desk was reboot their computer and sit there for ten minutes while the thing cycled, instead of fixing the problem. Oddly, these cries grew no less plaintive when the problem could not be reproduced on their newly rebooted computer.
They delete things they shouldn't, and save every useless document until the server overflows with their effluvia. They install unapproved software and refuse to master the intricacies of Netscape. They cut the cord on their mouse because it's getting in the way, and then ask you why it's stopped working. They do not listen, but boy can they yell, though they never, ever communicate any useful information. They are needier than the most demanding girlfriend, and appreciate you less than your mother-in-law. They are, in short, awful. And because they are awful, only the youngest and most inexperienced techs will work with them. So when you are on the help desk, the only thing that matches the awfulness of the users is the awfulness of the people you work with.
There's the fellow who knows everything, but doesn't document any of it, so that when he disappears for hours at a time you can't get anything done. There's the sweet geek from somewhere in the midwest who thinks that the way to get a woman is to follow you everywhere, including the bathroom, and to keep asking you out even after you tell him you've decided to become a nun. There's the mad scientist who re-wired his computer to be a fibre-channel router, and also make decent espresso, but can't seem to talk a user through logging in. And then there are the Georges -- those apathetic imbeciles whose stunning incompetence is matched only by their amazing, inexplicable ability to hang onto their jobs. Before you make it off the help desk you work with many George's, and this website captures their larger existential meaning as no living, breathing George could.
The worst thing about leaving the technology field is that I no longer have anyone to tell my best stories. The time we moved the VAX across San Francisco in a stock truck. . . the time the idiot help desk manager single-handedly brought down the building by building his own DHCP server. . . the DBA who told me he didn't have a MAC address. . . no one laughs at the punchline. No one chimes in with one of his own about the guy who inadvertantly turned his workstation into a router. But for a few moments, with this website, we can all experience it. We can all remember that there's a little bit of George in us all.
Posted by Jane Galt at January 29, 2002 09:28 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links