Some advice when encountering every day IT problems.
There is little more frustrating than being unable to find your own mistake, especially if you are doing something at which you’re generally good, if not great. I’ve seen my programmer friends throw temper tantrums to rival a 4-year-olds’ because they couldn’t find the typo that is making their program error.
In my support role, I generally talk to people at their rope’s end dealing with an issue. They are frustrated and angry … and chances are, in this state, they’ll blame the product and assume it is broken. After several years of helping frustrated IT managers sort through their issues and help solve their problems, I have one suggestion: breathe.
The most common error I see occurs when configuring IP addresses and other basic configurations. Perhaps surprisingly (or maybe not) this seems to happen more often when IT managers are comfortable with the products they are using — probably because they were in a hurry and made the changes quickly. Who can blame them; we all have too much work to do and IT managers are expected to make changes right away. So what ends up happening is they rush to update the configuration and make a mistake. Then the longer it takes to find the problem, the more frustrated they get and the less likely they are to actually find the mistake. It is a vicious cycle, and one that can only be broken purposefully.
When I speak with frustrated IT managers, I, of course, do everything I can to help, but oftentimes the problem is something they could have fixed on their own if they weren’t annoyed. Their frustration is only compounded by sitting on hold or waiting for support to get back to them — something we’ve all likely experienced. And then, when the fix is something simple (which is often the case), the very competent IT manager gets embarrassed. Walking away from the issue and then going back to it before calling support just might provide clarity needed to fix the issue on their own.
Of course, there are plenty of times when I speak to someone with a more complicated issue — when the person is new to a product and wasn’t given a proper run-through before using it on their own. But, of course, don’t be afraid to ask questions if something is confusing you; our job is to help. It just might help to take a deep breath or two beforehand.
