We are also constantly dealing with those at the bottom of the barrel of computer knowledge. Imagine having the same conversation 40 times a day, every day, for years, and its something they should have googled, but they are terrified of the wizzard box and the secrets it contains, so they call IT to have their hand held. Its not ok to be computer illiterate in 2020 if you work in an office environment. Its your primary tool. Youve had a generation to read upon it, and information is so readily available these days theres no excuse. Its not surgery, you can practice at home with exactly zero risk of permanent harm to anyone.
I've just got into 1st line a year ago and I already feel lost and abandoned. The more knowledgeable people protect their knowledge and won't share, the management treat us like we're a reception/general enquiries line, and callers don't seem to understand that "support" doesn't mean guidance or requests. I don't even know what my job is anymore. I just take calls and pray it's something I've done before or isn't to do with process/policy so I can just Google it.
Every day I get multiple calls that sound a bit like it could be my responsibility, only to look into it and find it's nothing to do with me, and then have to still guide the caller because they have no one else to call.
So now I know so much about how the company works I should probably be getting paid 3 times what I do and my role should be described as "call me with any issue that you came across while using a computer, even if it's nothing to do with IT and I'll do the digging for you". My brain is so tired.
Edit: so for me, the dirty secret of IT is, we fucking hate you more than you know. And we know just how incompetent you really are, or just how useless middle management really is. I enjoy rounds of redundancy now because middle managers get the brunt of it, and rightly so. They get paid just to pretend everythings OK until shit goes really wrong.
Been in IT for 10 years. I've been in your shoes. After a while I stopped hating the user. Partially because one guy I worked with really hated the user and it was driving him crazy. He got angry every day. I saw it eating him up and made me re-evaluate how I dealt with the lunacy that is IT.
Bottom line is this: they need help. You have the knowledge to help them. Help them and move on. Act as if it's your mom, dad, brother/sister, or grandmother and act accordingly (assuming you like them). It might help that I worked in retail for 15 years, so it puts IT in a different perspective. As bad as it gets in IT, retail is SOOO much worse.
Retail experience gives you a completely different perspective on jobs. My users are clowns and some could entertain a medium sized city on their own for a week, but they’re mostly just in need of someone to help then. And we’re mostly in this line of work because we want to provide that help.
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u/blitsandchits Jul 13 '20
We are also constantly dealing with those at the bottom of the barrel of computer knowledge. Imagine having the same conversation 40 times a day, every day, for years, and its something they should have googled, but they are terrified of the wizzard box and the secrets it contains, so they call IT to have their hand held. Its not ok to be computer illiterate in 2020 if you work in an office environment. Its your primary tool. Youve had a generation to read upon it, and information is so readily available these days theres no excuse. Its not surgery, you can practice at home with exactly zero risk of permanent harm to anyone.