Best pricing policy for calls?

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

We've all read the original Sysadmin Price List, but most of us work in places where the policies regarding the cost of techsupport are set by people who, let's face it, would be challenged to outthink sand.

Back in the world of functioning neurons, what would be the ideal charging structure? Keep in mind that you probably want to encourage calls about genuine issues (especially if you're a corporate helpdesk), but at the same time cut down on the amount of stupidity and annoyance coming down the line. To be honest, it would be nice to be able to run a helpdesk as an actual business component or genuine private service, not a combination of a general information line, Miss Cleo, and a talking version of the F1 key.

So what should be charged, and to who, and when?

(no subject)

[moopet.livejournal.com]

I get this all the time, and here are ( two examples )

Today in History

[grayhawkfh.livejournal.com]

On this day in 1938, the day after his War of the Worlds broadcast had panicked radio listeners, Orson Welles expressed "deep regret" but also bewilderment that anyone had thought the simulated Martian invasion was real.

Thus marking one of the earliest recorded instances of people marveling at how stupid people are, or expressing disbelief that people could be such starfish.

...huh?

[margaretc.livejournal.com]

I'm sysadmin for a bunch of academic computing space at $Private_University. I get email sent to a bunch of the webmaster@ accounts, like German, or Spanish. The other day I got an email to webmaster@german.$PRIVATE.edu, asking me to take someone off of a mailing list. It included their snail-mail address (on the other side of the continent), so I was a bit puzzled, but we do host a pile of email lists, so I checked. No german lists at all. Hmm. I sent an email to the University mailing list admin, and he looked - one german list, and this person wasn't on it. I sent an email to the administrative assistant for the German department, and she didn't have a clue what the request was about. So I asked the original sender - what web page is this from? I've looked in all of these different places, and nobody has heard of this mailing list.
She wrote me back - it's a paper publication!
I gave up, at that point.

You choose looser of the day

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

luser: so I have this text in a document and it's Quote "All on the left, how do I put it right"
Enough said I think.............

another caller:
me: open my computer and go to C: drive
L: I don't have one
me: yes you do it's called   C: Local Disk
L:no I haven't
me: what do you have then?
L:  3 and a half floppy, dvd-ram drive, local disk C
me: what was the last one?
L: Local disk C
me: sorry??
L: Local disk C........ Oh, sorry about that you must think I'm stupid

Another luser that has reminded me of:
me: open My Computer and .........
L: Your Computer?

One of these things is not like the others

[harry-whodunnit.livejournal.com]

The office noob I was complaining about in this post has been staying late to get some night shift training from me this week, and I'm beginning to thaw towards him a little bit. It's good to have him around, just because of the unintentional comedy he introduces into the evening.

( There is no clue under this cut )