TechSupport

Recommend by Bill Lester from EngenderHealth

Here's the description:

This video makes fun of moderns newbie computer users by illustrating - in a way fully understandable to them - how silly some of their questions are by creating a similar problem 500 years ago.  It's from a show called Øystein & Meg (Øystein & I) produced by the Norwegian Broadcasting television channel (NRK) in 2001. The spoken language is Norwegian, the subs in Danish. It's written by Knut Nærum and performed by Øystein Bache and Rune Gokstad.

On the UK Riders List, there have been a few threads about technical support questions.   Mark Walker is writing up a guide of the most frequently asked tech support questions and answers for accident techies.  In his post, he asks:

For example, I think I read [ie heard in a pub at the circuit rider conference] that someone had done some research into the fabled support desk response ‘Have you tried turning it off and turning it on again?”  They found the reason it is used so much is because it works in 70-90% of the cases reported to help desks ie they looked at the calls logged on a support desk and decided that it was the best way to solve the problem being presented. Of course it annoys people because it seems like a cop out but it turned out to be the best suggestion to make.

There were some hilarious responses to this thread. 

Comments

[Holly]

Love it! I always caution against making fun of the folks we support though. I try to remember that if the answer isn't obvious, it's because we didn't make it obvious enough.

[Beth Kanter]

You're absolutely right!
We always need to remember the power of the newbie:
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2006/03/power-of-newbie.html

[Susan Kitchens]

Made. My. Day.

Thanks.

[Karl L. Gechlik]

Good one... from your friends @ AskTheAdmin