(continued...)
Oh, what was happening?! I even used my other laptop to download the latest wireless card driver for this laptop, stuck it on a thumb drive, and updated the driver. Nothing. It obviously was my laptop at fault and not my network...but guess what I did next?
Right. I tore my LAN apart and rebuilt it. By then it was about 2AM, and I was completely freaked out: my precious laptop - my connection to everything outside my house - my work, my friends, my parents, the news, television, access to web-search...wasn't connecting. Oh, my God. I was really upset! I was swearing like a drill sergeant. I had yelled at my dogs and nearly kicked my cat, and I'm pretty sure I flung a shoe at the wall in a fit of enraged frustration.
4 hours had passed, and I had done everything I could think of that made sense, and a number of things that clearly did not, and I was no further along than when I opened the lid the first time. While I was sitting there pondering the problem - and panicking - I told myself to slow down and think. Think. THINK. What was the last thing I had done with the laptop prior to the problem? Why, I'd set it down, of course....but! It had caught on my sleeve! Then my eyes registered what I should have seen immediately: the little green WiFi light on the top part of my keyboard was not lit. ...O, RLY? I looked at the side of the laptop, and what do you know? Yeah. There's a nearly invisible slider bar on it that turns the wireless on and off. I flicked it back on, and everything worked just as it should.
"..."
Panic over, I sat there feeling incredibly stupid. All that, over a tiny little slider bar I didn't even know existed *and* when I had another, perfectly useful laptop? Really? Yes. Really.
Moral of the story: Techpanic is utterly irrational and can happen to anyone.
If you're still with me, here's the point of my post: Be nice to people who are caught in it. They're going to feel plenty stupid and embarrassed enough when it's over, without any help from anyone else. In fact, it is what makes a lot of those angry people in support queues...angry. They *know* they're doing something stupid or ignorant, and asking for help in that situation puts people - especially people who are specialists in computers in some way, or in some other field - on the angry defensive right out of the gate. I know perfectly well that if I had called support during that little episode I would have been aggressive and very unpleasant, primarily because I was really embarrassed.
Being familiar with the pathology of this particular emotional cycle can be really valuable when trying to defuse someone in that mood: in order to actually fix a problem, you need a cooperative user, and angry people just plain don't cooperate very well. Getting them past the fear, rage and humiliation into a functional mode is the key to getting them off your phone, out of your inbox, and out of your queue.
Final thought: The above is impossible if you, too, are perceptibly angry.
Truly final thought: Never trust a telephone's mute button. ;)
--
P.S. For those that did not get the references, the titles of this post and the previous one are riffs on the immortal Hitchhicker's Guide To The Universe. Douglas Adams, you are greatly missed.
Can I join…
18 hours ago
They're going to feel plenty stupid and embarrassed enough when it's over, without any help from anyone else. In fact, it is what makes a lot of those angry people in support queues...angry.
I think that's an excellent insight. It certainly hadn't occurred to me! I've never been able to figure out why people get so angry when calling tech support because I am so utterly clueless myself in anything computer or generally tech-ish that I already know that whatever it is that is going wrong is my fault and is really stupid. If the tech support person is kind and patient, I'm just purely grateful that they are willing to work a high stress job to help a dweeb like me.
And then I realised "but no, I already knew this." In teaching dog training, I've seen it over and over: when people run out of options with how to deal with their dog's behaviour, they get angry with the dog. And that just makes everything worse because the dog freaks out and, well, it's never pretty.
As a dog training instructor, I've learned that it's not enough to just give the dog owner the answer because when they are in that state of baffled anger, they're often not able to implement it correctly. I learned that what worked best was to let the owner know that the two of us were equals and on the same team. I'd make a statement of empathy like "wow, it is really frustrating when a dog does that." And then, once I had the person focusing on me and what I was saying, I could say "I learned that the easiest way to deal with that is to try this first."
And at that point, when they felt like they were with someone who empathised with them and understood how upsetting their dog's behaviour was, they could implement my suggestion calmly and voila! the dog responded as predicted and the owner was left feeling happy with themselves and remembering all the reasons they love that silly mutt anyway.
It sounds trite and insincere but, at least from me, it isn't. I do know how frustrating having a dog that is barking constantly or pulling on leash or any of the other things dogs do can be. I was once a new dog owner who didn't know how to fix that stuff. Empathising with the owner also reminds me of how to handle their anger because I do have this reflexive "get pissy with me and I'll really show you pissy!" That's not helpful and it just escalates the emotional response. Helping them calm down helps me remember to be calm too.
I've also used this with success in those uncomfortable grocery store scenes with an adult who is having a meltdown with a small child. I say "gosh, it's so frustrating when children act like children. Can I help with this?" The reaction has almost always been frazzled mother bursting into tears while I hold their frazzled child. They aren't bad parents, they're just parents who have been pushed by circumstances beyond their coping abilities temporarily. (note: this works in part because people tend to be less suspicious of middle age women around small children than they would be of, say, a man)
Um, I'm rambling, when all I really meant to say was "Yeah!"
Thanks for the comment, Shirley. The frustrated/embarrassed = angry most certainly is universally applicable, I think.
And no, it's not insincere coming from me, either. I know just how infuriating computers can be, and how incredibly stupid they can make a person feel. I may be tired and frustrated because I've been dealing with computers all day, but my empathy is never insincere.