A video casette?

[255-255-255-0.livejournal.com]

me: IT  support medium company 200+ users

L'user: how do you use a video?
me: How do I  use a video?  I  put the cassette in and press PLAY.

(Are you ready for this)
L'user: can you come and show me?

I attend and demonstrate inserting a cassette and pressing PLAY.

L'user: Oh Thanks, so I just press the big green button then.

Head-Desk

Comments

[zonga.livejournal.com]

They can't be so young as not to know a video, right? RIGHT? Tell me I'm not that old...

[255-255-255-0.livejournal.com]

no mate, she is 45 if she is a day

[zonga.livejournal.com]

That's just sad, then.

Although my mother loves to tell me she doesn't know what the play/pause/stop symbols are...

But still. My head, it hurts.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

I TS'ed for a 100-user site at one time, and I swear there might have been three, perhaps four people who would have been able to use the VCR we were supposed to record HQ's broadcasts on. And this was almost fifteen years ago.

[the-reda.livejournal.com]

This sounds like a case of: I can't be arsed to do it, come help me do it for me

[nem0.livejournal.com]

That should be, like, a job requirement. YOU MUST BE THIS COMPETENT TO WORK IN THIS BUSINESS. If you can't play a VHS cassette in a VCR during your interview, you fail, GTFO.

If you can figure out how to play a VHS cassette, and then teach the interviewers how to delay-record something, and re-wire the set with AV cables for better picture quality, you get an automatic promotion.

[canray.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, that information is not currently available.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

To minimum-wage helldesk.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Apparently some people (around 75%) just can't take anything in over the phone or by written instruction. I'm not kidding, I've seen it in action. There's some kind of mental block.

I've had marginal success by printing out and taping up photo-type step-by-step instructions (with text underneath) and, when people ring up to ask how to do it, telling them to go ask their manager to help them follow the instructions. With luck, the manager is too stubborn to admit they can't follow written/photographic instructions either, muddles through, and then blasts the underling for being dumb and bothering them.

In a percentage of cases, the caller makes the connection that existing instructions + calling for help = angry manager, and doesn't do it again more than once or twice.

It ain't perfect, but anything which gets the stupid-call level down another half a notch is worth a try.