End Users I Hate

I think there are two schools of thought on tech support. One is that tech support is a necessary evil and we who work it are overpaid cube monkeys. The other one is that we are members of a secret caste of computer geniuses. I like to think it’s the second, but that might be my ego talking.

One of the things that we handle is password resets for various applications up to but not including Windows. Windows passwords are handled by another group and only by them, in other words the domain administrators. Quite a few end-users change their passwords and then promptly forget them and get locked out of their laptops.

Usually we have then turn the laptop off and wait the lockout period which is 20 minutes. If they really can’t remember then we will have one of the domain administrators reset the password to a company default so they can change it at the next login.

Today I had a real special kind of user call; I like to call this one the wanabe-vip. These are users who in their minds are too important to listen to us or too busy and make their administrative assistants call for them. This user had been prompted to change his Windows password this morning per the domain security policy and was successfully helped by one of my colleagues.

About 5 hours later I take a call from this same user who has not forgotten his new password. Small problem, he’s on the west coast and the domain administrators have left for the day since they are on the east coast. That seemly lack of foresight by corporate is another story for another time. I explained that he would need to follow the steps to recover from a Windows soft-lock since I did not have access to his domain account and the ability to reset his password.

It goes without saying that he was a little pissed off and yet seemed to understand the situation. Not 10 minutes later, his assistant called in for him with the same problem. I politely explained what the user needed to do and why I could not reset his password until tomorrow morning. She actually thanked me and hung up.

At this point I am thinking what a moron and how could this guy be selling software. So I pick up another call and before I can get the corporate sponsored greeting out of my mouth, the caller hangs up on me. I could tell by the background noise that it was the aforementioned user since another trait of the wanabe-vip is to call in while on the worst possible speaker phone connection. In summary all I can say is that’s another Monday for you and that guy was such a tool.

Later…………..