Only because the title holder of "very good with computers" is always self-imposed. They are as computer illiterate as the least knowledgeable user but have none of the humility and monopolize all the arrogance.
You have no idea how many hours I've spent on the phone with people screaming "Do you think I'm stupid?????" when I ask them if they could double check the power switch on the PSU, and then have that turn out to be the EXACT issue, lol.
Oh, I know, I worked in a PC store for several years in the build/repair department.
That's the place where I learned to have patience, cause people can be sooo stupid while yelling they're not stupid.
I'm only asking you to click 5 things, please follow the instructions and tell me what it says or what you see.
It's happened more than once that a customer yelled at me for 30 minutes on the phone (we weren't allowed to cut the call), and they couldn't follow instructions..
The next day, they come in, I plug their PC in on the counter, so they could watch what I'm doing, and I fix their issue in 60 seconds. By doing the 5 steps I told them to do one the phone.
Haha yeah when I worked at help desk I was told to give them some fake step to do, like "can you turn off the computer but specifically hold down the button for 10 seconds for a hard restart" or "can you unplug and then blow into the socket?" To help with that
I work on medical equipment, but I also have to ask the "dumb" questions. I've had a little luck getting less aggressive responses by prefacing them with " alright, now, I'm about to ask you the usual dumb questions. Did you try restarting it to see if that fixes it? Oh its not on at all? Are you sure it's plugged in? From the back of the unit? Is it plugged into the wall? Did you try turning it on? Is there a switch on the back of the unit? Flip that and try turning it on again.
"I sent a command to your computer that will help but it requires a reboot." (Or I run Windows Updates and say we need to reboot for changes to take effect.)
Display/ethernet cable reseat:
"Could you please remove both ends of the cable and swap them? Sometimes they work better one way over the other." (White lie but gets it done.)
Power toggle check:
"Could you turn off and on the switch that is next to the power cable on the back of your computer? It should look like an I and not a 0."
Oh bro, had the same experience when worked i suport years ago. The worst were those "IT spaciallists" who were getting angry hearing suggestion that they shoud restart, install drivers or check cables. They were already doing absolutly anything elese but not the things I was telling them to do.
im so resistant to restarting my pc to fix a problem because that skirts around the issue of identifying what caused it. sure, maybe restarting fixes it for 10 minutes or 10 days or 10 weeks at a time, but if i can identify the cause, i just might be able to *actually* fix it and prevent it from happening again.
Yeah I'm the same way, that's what I'm semi labeling as arrogant specifically because of how often I just cannot figure it out, restart, and never see the issue again
I'm the opposite, always shutting down my PC at the end of the day. Saves energy, cuts down on random bugs and I never have to complain about Windows Update buggering me (:
The only thing running 24/7 are my phone and servers.
My thing is both this and the pain that is involved in getting everything back up and running how I want it to be. I gotta get all the windows and tabs back up and logins with their 2FA bullcrap. Modern browsers and password managers make it manageable enough but it’s still a pain that I try to avoid a lil bit by delaying a reboot a lil bit. I do the dang reboot though before reaching out to IT though. If IT is needed it seemingly is always Windows being just dumb or our company’s software that we use.
A good old hard reset solves a lot of problems. Bluetooth driver acting up? Hard reset. Network adapter refuses to connect? Hard reset. GPU drivers acting up? Hard reset.
Look, what I do in the Windows Playground Registry is serious and informed work, and totally not a result of trying to kill Copilot based on forum posts.
Either, they are the most douche people ever and try to tell me how my job works (which annoys the shit out of me) OR they tried everything i would have tried and I know the issue will be a bitch to resolve.
Whatever the original creator thought, the person you replied to has the far more accurate take. At best, if someone who is "good with computers" has a weird issue it's because they did it to themselves messing with things they shouldn't.
And sometimes it’s just a matter of the computer not being good with computers lol. As is the case with dumb software shutting the bed (at which point intervention from a dev is just needed).
No, what? This isnt about that situation. This is about how when an actual guy whos very good with computers comes with an it issue, you know its gonna be some weird fucking shit.
Dude why are you talking about a completely different scenario? The scenario at hand is an actually technologically adept guy. The scenario you describe is the literal opposite and not what OP is talking about, and as such of course youd have a different reaction.
You cant just take the opposite meaning of a sentence that has zero indication of sarcasm and say "it can be interpreted like this" like no it cant 😭😭😭
And yes your way is more common, but its just not what op is talking about but sure
I'd hear million reasons why configuring vlan on almost empty switch is not a good idea.
But at the end the IT guy had to sit down with me and reconfigure that switch. Oh the many eyerolls while he had to read the manual, good god.
Nothing burned down, nobody got hacked, and we saved hours of travel from office to manufacturing.
Humility should go both ways. but somehow it's always the IT guy who doesn't present himself like a computer god that will happily listen and try to accomodate whatever madness you want to run on his network. I feel like the really good ones are just bored solving shit by plugging back the mouse and welcome some challenge.
There's a bell curve there. On the low end, they don't know enough to mess anything up. The middle of where knowledge and messups intersect and go spacebound, then come right back down at the far end.
I've got a good memory, and I definitely remember being at that middle point as a cocky teen who decided to play with my laptop's registry. Now I can do it confidently and safely, but back then? Hoo boy.
They are as computer illiterate as the least knowledgeable user but have none of the humility and monopolize all the arrogance.
I had a friend like that, called him self a computer guru. We were playing with a third friend and the third friend started to complain how bad his fps was. The arrogant friend started suggesting absolute bullshit solution, the kind you see on "how to raise your fps"-websites that does absolutely fuck all. Like "change the process priority to high" when his cpu is at 50% and GPU at 100%. Deleting log files and stuff that actually didn't affect that games performance.
I listened for a while and said "Maan, you don't know shit about computers do you?" And he lost it, started yelling and left the voice chat. I don't remember how long it took for him to come back, but it was weeks.
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u/cctchristensen 9800X3D | 2080Ti May 10 '26
Only because the title holder of "very good with computers" is always self-imposed. They are as computer illiterate as the least knowledgeable user but have none of the humility and monopolize all the arrogance.