My favourite luser story from about a year ago

[superbus.livejournal.com]

At my last job - my first one coming out of school - I had a salesperson that I was dealing with, and he had a problem with Outlook. I ended up (surprise!) uninstalling and reinstalling Outlook, after taking his PST file out.

I spent some time explaining to him exactly what happened, what I did, and why I did it. He looked at me thoughtfully, even running his hand along his chin a couple times; he seemed engrossed in my explanation of his problem and my fix (I typically describe things in detail to lusers, despite warnings not to; depending on the person, I'd rather educate than talk down to someone. Call it naivety), so I explained in great detail; I felt like I was teaching him something.

After I was done, he nodded, then asked me one question:

"Are you Canadian?"

Every word I'd said went in one ear out the other; he preferred to concentrate more on my accent than what was actually coming out of my mouth.

From that point on, I shunted that person into my "dumb lusers" group (meaning, fix the problem and get out of dodge ASAP, usually a group I reserve for those that think they know everything because their kids showed them, or people that think they're going to bully a tech with some job title they have).

Comments

[hikari-neko.livejournal.com]

So...are you?

[kayfox.livejournal.com]

Inquiring minds want to know!

[superbus.livejournal.com]

Well, let's see... I used a Canadian flag, talked about my Canadian accent, my journal's title is "Diary of a Displaced Canadian", most of my interests - and my second profession - involves ice hockey, where I am a semi-professional referee.

Obviously, I am Portuguese. :)

[hazelwitch.livejournal.com]

Portuguese Canadian, naturally! ;)

[vortex.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have that problem as well!

I finally decided to put forth an effort to stop explaining everything when confronted with the teaching of my parents on how to use the computer.

Especially with my mom, I realized that after the first sentance or two, I've lost them with no hope of recovery until the next lesson. Sales people are the same way. You have exactly 5 seconds to get your point accross or their brain is fried...

[karopanda.livejournal.com]

You made me LOL. It was awesome. In the luser's defense, accents are ridiculously distracting and fun to listen to (as opposed to, you know, words.)