Cogito ergo scribo

I'm very busy at work and have been rather lethargic, but one will never be short of time and energy to rant.

And today, i am gonna rant about people.

I am getting frustrated with stupid people, or more specifically, stupid users. You may probably want to read my old posts on stupid users and being an IT person to understand how i felt about them. And i still feel the same about them, if not worse.

People always say that we will be more patient and more mild-tempered as we grow older. I doubt this is true. Why then do i still get frustrated with stupid users after so many years of dealing with them?

(This reminds me of a quote i saw recently: "Just when you think your software is idiot proof, somebody comes up with a better idiot.")

I'm taking care of a mini project lately for the branch office in SG. Since it is not cost effective in sending my consultants from KL down to SG for the project, i will have to conduct the training and UAT personally. I am actually not required to do these tasks anymore, but then i gotta say these users are very lucky because they get to be trained by the Project Manager personally, who is also the best trainer in the team (yes, i am blowing my own trumpet here, rightfully so).

Well, lucky them but unlucky me. Besides utilising my time that could have been spent on other work (that is piling up each day), i also gotta put up with the frustration of training people who simply can't be trained, or at least their behaviours manifested so.

You see, if i have to repeat the same thing more than five times, in different ways, using analogies and demo, and with guided documents right in front of them some more, but they still do not know what to do next and need to ask me again and again, i can't help but label them "stupid".

Yes, of course there is a possibility that the problem lies in me for not having the ability to teach, but people who know me well or who have attended my training or presentation before know that this is not the case. So i will dismiss this possibility for now.

I think the real issue here is with the person being trained. Some people just do not like to think, or words just don't get registered into their brains. They are suited to be in a role whereby the work does not require them to think and act differently in different situations or scenarios; they just want to work like robots everyday, expecting that they will always open the same screens in same sequence, and fill in the same fields with the same information, EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Sorry, honey, that ain't gonna happen. Nuh-uh.

The business world is dynamic. I would expect human brains to be too. In fact, the only thing that is "dead" here is the system. Yes, technologies change everyday, but an IT system is actually written by human and it is only performing the actions predefined by the programmers - if A happens, do B, else do C. All it does is just processing predefined actions or calculations faster than human can. Other than that, it is actually stupid and does not THINK. It is the human brains that do the thinking.

Sadly, a lot of people forget about this and expect the computer to sing and dance for them.

A few years back, i was gathering some user requirements for a system design. The person demanded that when certain figures get too low, the system should automatically alert him and print out a report highlighting the issue at various places. He even asked for some very complicated things on the report that i can't remember anymore, but what i remember is that i got quite fed-up and asked him sarcastically, "do you want the words on the report in red and blinking, and with a beeping sound too?" He looked surprised and asked me, "oh, the report can do that?"

I wanted to hang myself there and then.

And i digress, as always.

Anyway, the UAT continues tomorrow. I guess i gotta pray for lots of patience, or to be more understanding towards different capability of people. If five times do not work, then do it ten times. If it still doesn't work, pray some more and do it another ten more times. If it still won't get through to them, then i can tell them to throw their computers into the sea and go back to working manually, because no super system in this world can ever help them anymore.

Labels: rant, work