Last Friday, I was called over to a woman’s desk because she claimed to be having trouble with her email. When I sat down and investigated, I found that everything appeared to be working normally, but let her explain her problem in detail to me anyway.
After carefully listening to the first part of her problem, I took a joking tone that has served me quite well in the past several years, and told her that I didn’t see how it could happen. As she was explaining her second problem, me still not believing that any of it could happen, because everything I saw indicated that it was working perfectly normally and as intended, her manager walked up behind me. At one point, the woman I was helping turned and saw her and looked back at her and said (less than jovially) “he thinks I’m crazy”. I simply smiled and nodded, thinking she was trying to be funny without actually accomplishing it, particularly because she had hit it right on the nose. There was nothing wrong here, and I had no explanations to provide.
At that point, her manager asked me another question and we eventually trailed back off to her desk to look at something unrelated. Later that evening, as I was staying late working on a special project, our VP of Finance happened to come into the server room where I was sitting to see how things were going, knowing we’d hit a snag earlier that day. He happened to mention almost in passing that the woman I’d been helping earlier was about ready to kill me. With honest surprise, I asked him why, and he said he didn’t really know, that I’d smarted off to her or something. Well, I was genuinely confused, since I hadn’t envisioned myself doing anything anywhere near inappropriate or out of the ordinary. I hadn’t been rude by any means, and I’d tried to keep a polite tone as I explained the best I could that I basically had no answers to give her, because everything seemed to be working fine (which meant that yes, she was wrong). If nothing else, I could have been much more rude and abrupt, even if I wasn’t as courteous as one could have been (although I don’t know of anyone that could have been, save Mother Teresa, who probably wouldn’t have had any more answers than I did anyway, so it doesn’t really matter). In any case, the VP said that I might want to apologize to her on Monday, otherwise she might bake some cookies or something and try to poison me (I was being scolded with humor, do you see why I was joking with her when I said she was crazy?), since she was normally an easy going person.
Well, I was able to refrain from telling him that no, she was an easy going person before she got moved to this new department, at which time she’d adopted the same personality as everyone else in the department: generally evil and ready to stab you in the back at any moment without giving you the slightest hint of warning (which was precisely what she had done). Instead of telling him how I really felt, I simply nodded and we continued our work without mentioning it again.
Well, Monday came (after I thought about this all weekend), and I thought I might run into her sometime and be able to slip a half-hearted apology and explanation in casual conversation (I have commitment issues… they stem all the way into apologies, it’s sad, I know…). I was too busy to give it much more thought all day, until things started to wind down about 4:30 when I hit another snag in our plan. So, I reviewed in my mind what I was going to say and I went over and did it. It was probably one of the easiest physical things I’ve ever had to do, but one of the most difficult mental things, since I felt I had actually done no wrong during the incident. She was, however, happy to accept my apology, and simply told me that sometimes she thought I needed to lay off the attitude (WHAT ATTITUDE?! If she wants attitude, she should hear me talk to my mother, or my boss… they both get the same treatment, and they don’t care in the slightest and dish it right back 99% of the time. If anyone has an attitude, it’s her, and it’s bad…).
In retrospect, I’ve had some time to put more thought into all this (I tried my best to ignore it all weekend, hoping I’d genuinely forget about it), and I still believe I was in the right the entire time and that it should have been her that was apologizing. However, I’ve thought of 2 very good points that I think I’ll keep in reserve for the next time something similar to this should arise. Here they are:
When working in the IT support industry (as I do primarily), you learn two very important things very quickly, as my coworkers will also attest to:
1) If a user says something is happening, and it sounds impossible, it probably is. Not to disrespect the user in any way, but typically they’re not at all computer literate, and if they say something’s not working, it’s probably working exactly as intended by the developers, and they simply don’t realize how it’s supposed to work.
2) If a problem seems like it should be incredibly difficult and time consuming, it probably isn’t. It sounds totally bizarre, but when you think about it, it’s true. As weird as it is, no matter what the problem, 90% of the time, if it seems difficult, it’s not at all. The converse is also true: if it seems like it should be a 5 minute fix, it’ll probably take at least 10 times that long to accomplish.
Perhaps I’ll come up with a list of guidelines that I should hand users to read when I sit down at their computer and investigate a problem. A list of guidelines, assumptions, and reasoning for them. If nothing else, it would help spur conversation with some of the cute chicks at work, particularly if I do it in a humorous manner (and when am I serious, I mean, come on…).
But anyway, that’s my gripe for the night. Now that I’ve thought this all out, I really feel much better; especially knowing all 3 people (maybe?) will read this and probably agree with me, even if 1 of them is totally drunk off her ass…
Babble Blabber
RSS