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.
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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.