Most difficult Users to deal with

DevilWAH

Thread about weekend made me think, what's the worst user you have ever had to deal with?

the one I personal found hardest was a few years back, One of the users had been accused and convicted of downloading indent images of children (spent time inside). he looked the very image of a pedo, thick rime glasses, skinny, gaunt, gressy hair the lot. As well as a terrible stammer that made him very hard to understand.

In these situation you have to be professional and polite and helpful, but he made my skin crawl. I was one of the few people in the office that would actually work on his cases, many of the females and a few of the guys who had children point blank refused.

he wasn't rude or arrogant, and to talk to him him came across as very nice. But knowing his history and that while he was only convicted of downloading he had been also accused in the making of images as well, he was a very difficult person to be motivated yourself to want to help them. I use to feel a sense feeling sorry for him as he did not fit in to society and at the same time an intense disgust and dislike.

Forsaken_GA

I don't discriminate. If I had moral issues with an employees history, and those issues were at conflict with my job duties, I'd talk to management and explain the situation and if that didn't result in a satisfactory resolution, I would leave the company.

Otherwise, I do my job, and I do it to the best of my ability, regardless of race, gender, religion, or past history. I may do my job a little bit better if you're female, blonde, and have padding in the right places, but sometimes the lizard brain has it's way

Roguetadhg

I like to consider myself a professional. To that end, even if they a certain way - as long as they have the money and can pay for the help. If they work, I don't care that i've been called out to the person's desk 50 times. For me it means I didn't fix the source of the problem, oftentimes I can't - a programming issue... politics and the maze of red tape come into play...

I mean, look at it this way: Would you want someone to not work with you for a way you've dressed? Maybe you're just horrible at dressing and finding fashion. My fiance scolded me for wearing thick socks with my sandles, wearing dress pants and a "Official Lucky Shirt". Meh. Fashion.

Yeah, I'm not saying you judged him based on appearance. Obiviously. But keep in mind that treating one person a special way may become infectious, and you'll treat someone else you don't see eye-to-eye with differently. Now if the guy was a jerk I could understand. But a nice person - even at face value, means he's better to deal with than that of some people! I just wouldn't be his best friend.


Personally I hate dealing with people that aren't in IT the way to do my job. I admit, I do consider their thoughts and suggestions as their views may help something click in my mind. But generally the direct suggestion usually isn't right. But it never hurts to entertain the possibilities.

DevilWAH

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

I don't discriminate. If I had moral issues with an employees history, and those issues were at conflict with my job duties, I'd talk to management and explain the situation and if that didn't result in a satisfactory resolution, I would leave the company.

Otherwise, I do my job, and I do it to the best of my ability, regardless of race, gender, religion, or past history. I may do my job a little bit better if you're female, blonde, and have padding in the right places, but sometimes the lizard brain has it's way

I was not talking about level of service provided , but personally what kind of customers you find hard to work for. Like you say there are the ones who you smile when there case comes in, and the ones you groan.

DevilWAH

Roguetadhg wrote: »

..

I mean, look at it this way: Would you want someone to not work with you for a way you've dressed? Maybe you're just horrible at dressing and finding fashion. My fiance scolded me for wearing thick socks with my sandles, wearing dress pants and a "Official Lucky Shirt". Meh. Fashion.

Yeah, I'm not saying you judged him based on appearance. Obiviously. But keep in mind that treating one person a special way may become infectious, and you'll treat someone else you don't see eye-to-eye with differently. Now if the guy was a jerk I could understand. But a nice person - even at face value, means he's better to deal with than that of some people! I just wouldn't be his best friend.

Um slight difference to judging some one based on there aperance, and some one convicted of child pornography. It don't matter if they look like Brad Pit, when you know they have been taking pictures of naked 5-6 year olds and sharing them with other like minded people, I don't like to be around people like that, no matter how "nice they seem". I would rather some one rude and dismissive, than to have to spend time around people like that knowing what they have done.

(out of interested the guy was arrested a second time on more serious charges while i was at the company but committed suicide before the trial)

CodeBlox

The ones that call in as if they know it all. The next most difficult type of person to deal with is the flipping IAMs (Information Assurance Mangers).

FloOz

i work at a law firm so dealing with attorneys is the absolute worst.

Forsaken_GA

DevilWAH wrote: »

I was not talking about level of service provided , but personally what kind of customers you find hard to work for. Like you say there are the ones who you smile when there case comes in, and the ones you groan.

I don't find anyone particularly difficult to work for. If someone decides to cop an attitude or get uppity with me, that happens precisely once. I let them know the facts of life, and invite them to speak to their boss or mine about it. I do not get into prolonged debates with users, nor do I let the monopolize my time. If it's something I can't deal with right away, I get the pertinent info, I give them the best time frame I can, and then I follow up with them when it's done to make sure their satisfied.

The second someone expects something more than that, they get to talk to my boss, it's *his* job to manage those types of customers, and he's made it clear that he doesn't want us dealing with the distraction of difficult users. My boss has a bit of a reputation within the division, and as a consequence, folks tend to tread lightly when dealing with our team, which makes our job much easier.

Forsaken_GA

pruspeter wrote: »

i work at a law firm so dealing with attorneys is the absolute worst.

You know, I've done work for law firms, and while the litigators tended to be difficult to deal with, most attorneys weren't that bad.

Their secretaries, otoh..... yeah, they were a chronic pain in the posterior.

the_Grinch

I have a list:

1. Tie between lawyers and doctors
2. Sales people

Doctors and lawyers are definitely the worst, but I always find sales people to be the hardest to deal with. I find them all two faced and they usually don't acknowledge the fact that they don't know something. Ironically, and I never thought this, programmers and graphic artists are my favorite people to help. They usually try a couple of things and acknowledge my skillset when they call with their issue. Plus their usually people with real deadlines (unlike sales people, who always seem to be behind and love blaming IT for it), but they never seem to let on that they are.

ptilsen

Accountants, CPAs, controllers, etc. Non C-level accounting staff is absolutely the worst. That has consistently been my experience doing work for numerous organizations.

the_Grinch

ptilsen wrote: »

Accountants, CPAs, controllers, etc. Non C-level accounting staff is absolutely the worst. That has consistently been my experience doing work for numerous organizations.

I've always had a 50/50 experience with this group, sometimes they have been really cool and other times not so much. Definitely a good one for the list.

bigdogz

+1 with ptilsen.

How about a place to work...
When I did some consulting my boss had arranged for me to perform some server/networking work at Planned Parenthood. At first I didn't care. I thought, "Who am I to judge?" but I can tell you after the second day I just could not do it. I did not mind the room of baby dolls they used to give kids at school as part of some school project.
The way the buildings were laid out, I ended up seeing some teenage daughters with their mom's near the exam rooms and they had that look of shame in their eyes and would always look around to see if I had known them. I told my boss on the second day that just being there gave me the creeps and I never went back there again.

rsutton

Executive assistants or anyone who is the whipping boy/girl of a CxO

Krunchi

I work for a Vendor/Computer MFG.. doing Enterprise Pro Support with OS and Hardware. 90% of my calls are from System Administrators and the other 10% just a mix of office type personal that have zero knowledge of IT. The worst though has to be the Admin that starts off by saying I have been doing IT for X number of years or I am a _______Insert Cert or Degree. They end up being the worst because they think they know it all but the end up making there self look silly and as soon as I hear those statements I cringe.

Hypntick

I can deal with any type of user, provided they aren't rude. That's the only thing that gets to me, as long as you're not a total jackass, i'll be more than happy to help. But I will agree with the doctors comment, they tend to be more rude as a whole.

zenhound

I find it really hard to work with people who smell bad. Smell is just a sensitive area for me. But, you put it aside and do your job. You never know, could be a medical problem.

I can work with just about anyone though. And working in government, it seems like I have. State government seems to be filled with people who are otherwise borderline unemployable. I worked with a guy who yelled at the drop of a hat for a while, that was pretty frustrating. Part of it was just cultural, he was just loud all the way around and the slightest frustration brought out the yelling.

dustinmurphy

The ones that really make my blood boil are the back stabbers. I had one user... call me on a Saturday (Office is closed on Weekend, however she had things to do). She told me she was having a problem with the accounting system. I told her to give me about 10 minutes (since she had interrupted me while playing with my kids) to get up to my office... and get connected so I could help her. She told me she didn't want to be there much longer... and didn't want to wait. So, we made an agreement to get together first thing Monday morning to get it taken care of.

I get a call about 30 minutes later from my boss chewing me out. Apparently, she had told the CFO that she couldn't finish what she was doing because the system was broken and "IT" wouldn't fix it until Monday morning. I was like... "WTF?!?!?!?" I was so pissed off... I ended up spending about an hour on the phone with a consultant (newly implemented accounting system) and we got it fixed.

As for the known law-breakers... that's a tough one. I've never had to deal with... other than... we hired a guy... I worked with him for 2 weeks or so before his background check came back... he was going to trial for 2nd degree murder.... that freaked me out a bit. LOL.

Krones

I work for a small cc, swing shift, where I am the sole support for anything IT and no office administrators are around. I am more of a babysitter than traditional help desk support. If I receive any questions it is something with formatting for a paper or something to do with microsoft word. Technically, our students can look at anything they so desire. So, if they do decide to look at legal pornographic content, I have to ask them to move to a computer pod that is more private. I kid not. It does not really happen that often; however, there is this one person, who likes to look at nip slips and foot fetish photos off google images but seems to pick a computer next to the printer which receives the most foot traffic in the lab. It is very disturbing in part because of the weird giggles and noises which is how I detect something is awry and how the attention is brought upon nearby victims that happen to be printing out their documents... If you talked to this kid you would know something was scrambled upstairs.

As for the latest end user to strike a chord, a professor berated me "do you even do your ******* job! This is bull ****!" since the copy machine was out of ink and it took me 10 minutes to find a cartridge (in my boss's / IT messy office since we just nuked 100+ computers for surplus) and replace the toner. Granted, the adjunct... professor was stressed and late to class and the students had a test. Still very inappropriate. Overall, I am extremely thankful for the job. I live in a place where any job with more than 10 plus computer network environment is equivalent to winning the lottery without the awesome pay...

swild

Previous job: Doctors obviously know more about everything than anyone else.

Another previous job: dial-up internet tech support for people who still use dial-up.

Current job: Salespeople are all two-faced just to get things their way.

I think things are getting better for me.

zenhound

swild wrote: »

Another previous job: dial-up internet tech support for people who still use dial-up.

Oh man. I did phone dial up support for AOL a hundred years ago when dial up was still standard. It was awful then, I can't imagine what the typical dial up user is like now. Scary.

Tackle

Wow. Some of those stories are crazy. Every co-worker here treats me very kindly. Usually I'm saving them from a mistake that they made in the first place. Never have I had someone be "difficult".

There are a few people that lie when I ask questions about what they were doing when they got this virus, or if they rebooted after I sent out two emails saying it is necessary for updates.

I was on a client site upgrading the ram in their server a couple weeks ago and the receptionist offered to get me DQ while they waited for the server to come back online.

CodeBlox

zenhound wrote: »

Oh man. I did phone dial up support for AOL a hundred years ago when dial up was still standard. It was awful then, I can't imagine what the typical dial up user is like now. Scary.

You don't want to imagine... On our helpdesk, users with laptops have the ability to RAS into the network and surprisingly (not often) we from time to time get people who are trying to RAS IN OVER FLIPPING DIAL UP!!! So slow that snails could run circles from here to texas and back!!!

afcyung

CodeBlox wrote: »

The next most difficult type of person to deal with is the flipping IAMs (Information Assurance Mangers).

Don't make me mad and I won't call you.

CodeBlox

afcyung wrote: »

Don't make me mad and I won't call you.

Really, I had to deal with one calling in for a user the other day. He was calling in with a user who was claiming that two users were logging into the same account at the same time blaming it on us when really, one of the users never even had an account and both logged into the same account at different times. Both have the same first and last name at the same location coincidentally. The darn IAM was conferencing people in on the call. Ultimately, he had to submit a request to have the other account created. Serves him right. The IAM seemed to be oblivious to what I was telling him too. I wonder if they all are told to be aggressive when calling the helpdesk.

paul78

pruspeter wrote: »

i work at a law firm so dealing with attorneys is the absolute worst.

What kind of lawyers?

I work with lawyers on a regular basis (3-4 times a week), both in-house counsel and customer's counsel. In general, I enjoy all my interactions with them. And the mutual professional respect has always been very cordial.

traceyke

In my experience, the most difficult users to deal with are arrogant senior citizens.

arwes

I've really only had a few lately that were difficult to deal with. One branch office employee claimed to be a former IT worker at another insurance agency, and would constantly berate our software and tout the software she used before. Never mind that her stuff was meant for about 10 users, and we have 150 or so. Her first few months she would also BCC my CEO anytime she felt she was wronged by our help desk, which of course ticked off our CTO since she was going over his head. HR eventually told her to knock it off. Thankfully she parted ways with the company last year.

The other is a manager who has terrible people skills. This is her first time working as a manager, and not long after her promotion several of her employees transferred to other departments or quit/retired. There's been several instances where she's made a snide remark or two about me, and I know she's had it out for me for a while now. Pretty much because she demanded I work on a telephone issue she was having while I was working with a very hard to contact tech to solve a major issue we were having with their document imaging software (we were about 3 weeks behind on our scanning and it was piled high). Asked her if she could wait a few minutes and explained what I was doing, and she said she thinks her problem is more important than what I was working on. When I said that it wasn't, she stomped off down the hall and slammed her phone on the desk and said she fixed it herself LOL. I've had plenty of run-in's with her, especially since she's a few doors down from me. After she snapped at me while working on her laptop with the HR manager in the same room, the HR manager agreed that it would be best for my sanity to move to the other side of the building so I'm out of her warpath LOL.

snokerpoker

Users who think they know how to fix it and f** it up worse. As far as a particular department goes, sales is the worst to deal with.

Edit: Also wanted to point out users who never have time to let you fix their issues. They open tickets and email you complaining about all the problems they have but never allow you on their machine to actually fix anything.

rsutton

snokerpoker wrote: »

Users who think they know how to fix it and f** it up worse. As far as a particular department goes, sales is the worst to deal with.

I find this problem to be more common in systems admins...

CodeBlox

rsutton wrote: »

I find this problem to be more common in systems admins...

This goes for pretty much everyone... My first call today on the helpdesk today was cleaning up another techs mess... Customer went from "I can't access this website" to "my desktop never loads, only the wallpaper"... I got it fixed for him though.