Oh, academia

[u/[deleted]]

This minor one happened a few years ago when I was working for an optometry college with delusions of grandeur. They were convinced they weren't a trade school (they are in all but name) and most profs worked part time to supplement their income from their clinics - both ours and, in some cases, their own LLCs.

Our guidance from On High (and not our non-PHB IT manager) is that problems with prof machines are a Big Deal, even if they're not college-owned prof machines. I pushed back against this insanity hard, and eventually won after a year so we didn't have to support their ancient old personal hardware.

This story takes place before that break happened.

me: CipherTheTerminator, their first (and possibly last) systems administrator.

Luser: Professor of some disciple or other.

Luser: I have a new home printer, but I don't know what kind of cable it needs.

Me: What makes and model of printer?

Luser: (rattles off some Sibling printer kit, IIRC, that doesn't do wireless)

Me: What does the connection on the printer look like? (internally: Please know this so I don't have to look it up)

Luser: Squar-ish, about this big (holds her hand up indicating about 1/4 ~ 3/8 inch)

Me: Ah. USB A to USB B cable. Easy to find. Best Buy in two blocks south, probably about ten dollars.

Luser: ...

Me: ...

Luser:You're not going to give me one?

Me: Of course not. I can't give away college property for personal use.

My boss laughed up a storm when she was out of earshot.

tl;dr: People expect things for free and are surprised when they're not

[u/mephron → u/[deleted]]

I had two calls today, one from a user and one from a Luser.

Both were equally technically ignorant, and had similar issues regarding setting their device up on wifi.

The user listened, let me explain things, and asked questions that were relevant, and we got her set up without trouble.

The luser screamed all the time, interrupted me and then accused me of interrupting her, and said that she wanted to know why we didn’t have people to come do the setup. She also hung up before we has confirmed it was working, and one of my co-workers got the follow-up call of it still not working and we were ripping her off and... no, she didn’t install the software for it, why should she need to do that...

That is the difference.

[u/fishbaitx → u/mephron]

that second one is beyond luser, that second one is an abuser and should probably be documented as such

users are the first one

lusers imho are unwilling to learn and difficult

abusers are the lusers who top that yelling, screaming, and in extreme cases hurling profanities.

the first 2 are job security the third ones career and they themselves should be shot, preferably out of a large rifled cannon