When the why doesn’t really matter
When the user asks me why something unexpected has occurred (in the world of software), does that person really want to know? Given the number of times I’ve had to reinterpret a facial expression, not too often. What that person probably wants is for me to unholster the magic wand that would negate the original reason for calling me.
My educator hat (the one that is too tight and tries to compress my brain) comes with a belief that the informed user is a better user. Maybe, in a more perfect universe, my future workload will diminish.
My technician hat (the funky one with an obscure logo) comes with the imperative: tell them nothing, because this is magic. I mean, they do tell me that I have the “magic touch”. Great for my ego.
The directive from “those above me” is to tell the user what I’m doing/going to do; the user is educated and intelligent and deserves to be “in the loop”.
Try finding the solution that fits the problem; my own twist on things. But some of the calls to assist aren’t easily pigeonholed. This morning, a user wanted to know why an attached file in email seemed to “place itself where’er it wants”. Now, that’s not technically what was happening, but when I tried to explain the mystery of why Outlook doesn’t have a default setting for RTF vs HTML vs plain text, I got “the look”.
It was made clear, without prevarication, that the user in the next cubicle didn’t have the same difficulty. I had to point out that there were many versions of software, and a mix of language kits involved. Didn’t matter; time was short and so were tempers. Note to others; never change a software version at the start of the school year, because there are other variables in play.
