They May Have A Degree But Their Outlook Is Grim

I work internal IT support for a big retail company. A decent portion of my job is phone support. When I’m asking a user to go somewhere on their computer, I’ll give them directions and then spell it out phonetically, i.e., “Type name, N as in ‘November,’ A as in ‘Apple,’ etc.”

A user calls me for an issue with his Outlook and I end up needing to remote in to further troubleshoot because I can’t quite understand where the issue is.

Me: “Okay, I’m going to need your workstation so I can remote in and take a look. Can you go to your start menu and type the word ‘name’?”

User: “Type ‘mane’?”

Me: “No, ‘name.’ N as in ‘November,’ A as in ‘appl—’”

User: “I know how to spell ‘name’! I have a bachelor’s degree in engineering!”

Yet you’re the one who doesn’t know how to use Outlook.

It takes him another few minutes to find the name because he keeps trying to look at video card info. I finally get connected to his workstation.

Me: “Okay, can you show me what the issue is?”

User: “I’m getting bounce-back messages when I try and email this employee even though they’re an active user.”

It took me about twenty seconds to see that he was emailing the wrong address and another five minutes to explain it to him because he kept trying to tell me he wasn’t doing anything wrong. “I have a bachelor’s degree!”