The Magic Black Box

"The system is broken! It's been down for days!!! When are you going to fix it?!!!" asked a panicked user yesterday. I'd heard no complaints from anyone else, hadn't heard a thing from her & I've been here reading emails, walking the building & picking up the phone. I've even talked to her a couple of times, so her statement was obviously way off. This is pretty typical behavior from users that are computer illiterate, yet work on them all day.

I calmed her down, showed my concern & asked some pointed (simple!) questions. I found out that one application wasn't working & the problem was a simple drive mapping that she had disconnected. It took 10 minutes to figure it out & 10 seconds to fix.

I've never understood how someone can work with a piece of equipment all day for years & still not have the foggiest idea of how it works. Is it just because I'm a tech that I always try to understand at least the basic concepts of everything I use? I'm not a mechanic & new vehicles or my heat pump are beyond my capabilities to fix in a lot of cases, but I can generally tell what has gone wrong when something does & how to maintain it. I tend to question any technician that works on them & try to find out more. Even my wife, who makes me check her oil, is pretty good at describing issues with her car & has some basic troubleshooting skills.

But many of my users display no curiosity about how their PC works & refuse to maintain it. They often revel in their ignorance, proclaiming with pride how they know nothing about it. They're proud that - to them - it is a 'magic black box'.

All efforts at educating them fall on deaf ears or the knowledge seems to dribble out shortly after I leave. So far, the only way to teach them has been if their boss teams up with me to hold them accountable for their ignorance & that's a dicey proposition. I have to make sure EVERYTHING is documented, both sign off and it always causes hard feelings all the way around.

How else can I get this type of user to desire to know more?