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Language
of the British End-user
by Graham
Parks
 I
have been reading your “Language of the End User Section” and can
confirm that these strange types of life form have somehow managed to
migrate to England. All of them. Every type you mentioned has been observed
here. But some form of strange mutation has occurred and I have observed
behavior not catalogued by yourself.
 Power
Pointers (not related to pointer dogs)
These users are obsessed by PowerPoint and do almost everything with it. I
have even seen a group leader (manager or mangler we call them) write up an
annual performance review in it. They load in frightening amounts of clip
art and sounds and then complain that it takes forever for the recipients to
download them via dialup. And this behaviour is getting worse and spreading.
Clipart fever (Clipartus Overthetopis) is spreading to other apps. Word is
now suffering the same overload. Excel, thank god, seems immune to this so
far. The problem is made worse by Microsoft changing the clipart gallery
every time they force a new version of Office out into the wild. This
confuses these strange creatures and they lose their old favourites and howl
at the moon. Or a sysadmin. On one occasion a hopeless case tried to
convince me that someone else in the pack had a newer version of Word than
they did, just because they discovered someone had a piece of clipart that
they did not.
Colour
changers.
Black text on a black background, or white on white, I’ve seen both. And
do not even talk about the custom colour schemes. Curiously, despite the
effects on the optical systems of people seeing these abominations, vomiting
does not occur.
Reluctant
Adventurers
These creatures have the belief that out there, in the big wide wonderful
world, there is an application called Nirvana. This application is the
answer to all their prayers and will change their lives, for the better, for
ever.
The only problem is they want someone else to go and find it and know
nothing about what it is they want.
A creature once approached me to carry out such a quest. I usually avoid
such encounters, but this creature was known to wear stockings and
suspenders with short skirts and so my guard was down. Postcode (Zipcode)
software was needed.
”OK”, I said, “What do you want it for?”
”What can it do?” was the reply.
To cut a long story short, the creature had no idea what such software
actually did, but was sure it was needed.
I contacted three suppliers and got product literature delivered, which I
then delivered to the user.
”What can it do?” I was asked.
”I don’t know, that’s why I got you the literature” I answered.
”Well can’t you read it and let me know?”
”I do not understand how your department works” I answered “Surely it
would be easier for you to read it and see how it could be incorporated into
your work”
”But I don’t understand all this technical stuff”
”This is not technical” I answered “It is sales literature designed to
give you a clear overview of what it can do”.
And so on……….for a long time
Stalemate. Nirvana was never found and the whole thing was a complete waste
of time.
Smart
Monkeys
The users resemble monkeys in all ways, yet they are sure they are smarter
than sysadmins. They go and buy things on their own. Sorry to scare you like
that, but it is true. Hence the USB device for an NT4 workstation.
Sometimes they make even bigger mistakes. A monkey with a laptop, having
given up on recreating the complete works of Shakespeare, thought long and
hard (2 seconds) about dialup communications, then went out and bought a
cellphone and appropriate PCMCIA card. Card software trashed all laptop
network settings on installation and said monkey came into the office the
next day asking for it to be fixed. Despite this fault monkey is looking
very smug and pleased with himself at having bought some hardware himself.
He sees it as challenging the sysadmin even though it deleted his network
settings. Not warned by this experience, the monkey carried on using it. A
few weeks later the monkey comes back unhappy and reports the phone goes
slowly.
”Yes, it does” I say “Because it only works at a third of the speed of
your normal modem” (This was in the days of 9.6k mobile comms and 28.8
desktop modems). Interesting point here. Monkey is also a PowerPointer and
is sending big presentations.
”Can you speed it up?” asks monkey.
”No, that the fastest on the market” I reply, delighting in being the
bearer of bad news. Not the right attitude for a support person I know, but
if the monkey had sought my support in the first place none of this would
have happened.
So the monkey leaves, humbled. But the story gets better. Monkeys boss get a
massive bill for mobile comms and kicks monkeys ass big time. Now that is
what I call a happy ending.
Proud
to be stupid
These users break their PCs and then say laughing
”Well, I know nothing about computers, my 5 year old is better than me”
All this is delivered in a proud manner. Words fail me.
I
could go on forever. There is one creature who cannot press F1. Another
continually talks about “her box”. The light on the horizon is that
these creatures are sure to become extinct soon as they cannot deal with the
common objects in the world they live in, are proud of this fact and will do
nothing to rectify it.
I’m going down to the watering hole now to observe some of the more timid
creatures discussing cat behaviour.
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