A User's Diagnosis

The standard part of any support call is when the user tries to diagnose their own problems. If they can't print in A3 landscape they'll ask if I think it's a virus. If their monitor has a blue tint and has gone blurry at the corners they'll ask if it's a virus. If their mouse suddenly has all the manoeuvrability of a shopping trolley they'll ask if it's a virus.

No, I say, it's never a virus.

I don't really mind this sort of thing. I don't think they're trying to be helpful as such, I just think they're trying to come up with something to talk about with someone they don't know. It's like if I have a plumber round, I'll try to talk about what's wrong but since I know almost jack about plumbing it ends up being a bit of a one-sided conversation.

A little while ago I was talking to one user and, while she was quite charming, her attempts at diagnosis were extraordinary. Let's call her Sue.

Sue had a lot of problems on her computer: it was slow, it had things running it shouldn't have, it had software that was out of date. It was a bit of a mess. While I was working quickly, this was still taking a while and so we had a long meandering conversation. We were chatting away amiably enough when she dropped her first diagnosis:

"I think it might be haunted by my dead husband"

I laughed out loud. Thankfully so did she. I said that was the first time I'd heard that one. She then told me how her husband had died a year ago and what a lovely chap he was. He sure sounded like a swell guy.

The conversation carried on until at some point she whispered to me in a conspiratorial way. "Listen" she said.

I listened.

"Just after 9/11, I started to get these weird e-mails."

I raised an eyebrow.

"They claimed to be from someone in Al Qaeda. Well naturally I reported these to someone in IT, but they told me there was nothing they could do. They said I should just reply to them and tell them to stop. Well, I didn't think that was a good idea."

At this point I was frantically rummaging through my memory trying to think if anyone ever asked me about missives from Al Qaeda. I'm pretty sure they hadn't. I agreed that responding to terrorists was probably not a good idea.

"Well exactly," she continued, "so a few days later I said to someone in IT that if something wasn't done I would inform the Home Office. Well, shortly after that I stopped getting the e-mails, which was a relief. But then things started happening with my computer, it became slow and strange things happened."

Yep, she genuinely believed her computer was slow because it had been infiltrated by Al Qaeda in revenge for her stopping their e-mails.

Clearly she's a bit nuts, but quite charming with it. It's calls like this that make me wish I spoke to users more often.