I’m sitting here during my “job” when I noticed a funny thing. I seemingly partially aware comptuer user was trying to print from the Mac Desktop Publishing System. She had a Word document open, and I only noticed when she had gotten up, went to both printers, come back, sat down, gotten up went to both printers, sat … 2 more times. I looked at her screen as she clicked Print and then stared for a while. Eventually she changed cl_laser2 to cl_laser1, which was the correct solution. She got up, went to cl_laser1, and printed her stuff. I saw an enormous smile enter her face after she saw the paper coming out.
Now you have no reason to know why that was the error, nor would she. Because of the new renovations of ccl, the temporary nature of our situation prevents us from fixing the issue, but cl_laser2 does not exist at all. cl_laser1, cl_laser3, and cl_color1 all exist happily, so there is no reason the user should have known. Yet, and this might show you how bored I am, I could tell the entire time that she would notask for help/ I even opened this window in preparation.
So why is that? The user after her has since asked for help 3 times, one computer would not let her log on and another froze twice. For her like the user before, it was entirely not her fault; in the first case their was no ethernet chord so it could not connect to the network, and in the second she was on a mac so her experience sucked. The girl before my subject also had no problem asking, although she had no idea what she was doing. Ah and right then the smart one had the same cl_laser2 problem, but asked me about.
So the answer is fairly clearly insecurity about how much she should know. But that fascinates me. Why would I expect that she know cl_laser2 from _1, or even anythign about computers at all. Many of the smartest people I know need daily or weekly instructions on computers. I can’t play the piano or write poetry, but if I was required to I would certanily take all the help I could get.
I think the situation says a lot though. The less savvy girl who had me install office2003 for her (uh, insert the CDs) had no problem asking, so it doesn’t seem to be about skill. The smarter woman with the same problem asked also, so it’s nto skill in that sense. I also think it is different with computers, as if not knowing comptuers as a young person in this day and age should be embarrasing to the point of not asking the guy who is sitting under the ‘Computing Assistant’ sign, who’s a CS major and has worked on the job for 2 years.
Man I love people.
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