cruel to be kind

Jeremy Wright on support:

“Teach a man to fix and he’ll keep coming back for the rest of your life asking for advice. Kick him in the gonads and he’ll never bother you again.”

I’ve yet to stumble upon an opportunity to use this gem, though, so you guys get to enjoy it ;-)

Well … Tech support, mainly Excel and stuff, is part of my work. And in general I do like to help people, but …

People do get help from me, but the more stupid they are and the less clever they where before coming back to me on the same / another topic, the more they have to suffer from it. Given, most of them now think twice next time before asking me. Which I find okay, especially on that kind of support where I just share my knowledge and abstract thinking to solve their problems. Also, when you ask complicated questions – even though you put them in simple words – pay in advance if you want a simple answer. And don’t complain about my answer, in most of the cases you know me perfectly well; if you still ask that is your fault.

Remember Faulty Towers? “Comes with a smile?” “Comes with sprouts, smiles extra”

On the other side, if I have the feeling that you tried to do your best, I am all for helping you – just make me feel that you tried. If you did not try, well … And if you come with the same questions over and over again?

Does this method work? Yes. One colleague, who uses my awk scripts, learned awk by himself so he did not need to come over so often for asking those simple questions. For tech support, most of the time my colleagues try someone else because I – not even by intend, just in order to figure out the real problem behind it – ask questions they don’t want to answer.

Because many times I would just enter exactly those words into google to come up with the solution. Of course they get this served with a special smile. If you serve me “I know you know it at once or can look it up on speed, and I am to lazy to think, do my job but I keep the salary”, you will get an answer to that …

But I am always amazed, why not more people bribe me to be more nice on stuff they want from me. Even though I am a women, I am not expensive in this regard. ;)

Tag(s): tech support, bribing

Tags: cruel to be kind