S: being family tech support

[avlena]

GAH! sometimes i just despise being a tech person. just cuz i work in the computer field, my family thinks i'm their personal tech support. i finally managed to fall asleep tonight after tossing and turning, when i'm ripped awake by the phone - it's my father, very angry and upset, ranting about how he has a presentation and he can't burn a CD, demanding i fix it. beats the freakin heck outta me what's wrong, only time i ever used XP's built in burning tool is to write a detailed set of instructions for him on how to do it, and then i've never touched the thing since. after much frustrating trouble shooting to make sure he wasn't doing something stupid (like putting the CD in the wrong drive, which he's also done wrong before), i finally spat out: "did you try rebooting???" "umm... no, k, want me to do that now? " and of course, it fixed whatever weird bug windows was having. and then, i get praise about how my 4 years of college was coming in handy. joy. i spent 4 years of college so i could be woken up by an angry man who blames ME for all of technology's faults, and so i could do a magical solution by suggesting a restart. wow, i sure did learn a lot in school. i must be a freakin' computer genius. grrrr... a CS degree doesn't mean i know every little detail and bug of your computer, so leave me the f**k alone! if you wanna b*tch about how bad the sw is, or rant about the bugs in Windows, CALL THE PROGRAMMER WHO MADE IT!

/end rant

[nickel]

ahhhh yes, and not just relatives , and it happens for other fields too - like the neighbor that knocked on my door at 2AM one Sunday morning because his girlfriend was in a lot of tooth pain, and what should she do?

[caribiner23]

My heart goes out to you, avlena. I have the same deal over here. It's to the point where I want to start charging people for my time spent troubleshooting at family holiday parties.

I was sitting in a bar one night talking to a buddy and one of his neighbors, a retired guy, came up to say he was hit with a virus. I cringed as my buddy told the neighbor that I was a computer guy. Then the neighbor proceeded to outline all the steps he used to successfully fix the problem-- stuff he learned from the other senior citizens at the local library.

[cheapie]

haha...i'm an account manager. a function which is practically useless to everyone else.

altho, i do get a lot of q's regarding how to approach getting a job, increasing sales, or getting out of a sticky situation.

[ray]

I get those calls and emails all the time avlena! The best is when the 'rents can't figure out how to open internet explorer.

[Maarchk]

Being known for your tech savy is the worse. My response to my friends has become 25 an hour.. and when they say but i'm your friend or whatever, i say, Yep, thats the friends discount you would be getting.

Hmm and its very upsetting when people assume taht since you are the technological one they can tell you how stupid computers and programs are and assume you will have some great answer... I finally gave up and gave them the answer to all their problems... Linux

My new profession is kite flying.. If you are on a nice beach somewhere and you can't get your kite in the air, i would be happy to help.

[avlena]

I get those calls and emails all the time avlena! The best is when the 'rents can't figure out how to open internet explorer.

oh gawd, yes! i've gotten phone calls before because my dad knows how to open one attachment, but he's bewildered what to do when someone sends him two.

now that i've had some sleep and i'm a bit calmer... i guess i can understand why people do it, cuz i know i've asked for help from my family members that are accountants, electricians, mechanics, etc. but i think the prob is that most people don't really understand computers that much, and assume that if you work in any area of computers, surely you must be an expert in everything relating to it. i just wish they'd use a bit more common sense and manners. call me up and ask me a favor to look at your comp with the promise of dinner as repayment, fine, i'll try (assuming i'm feeling charitable)... but call me in the middle of the night yelling, w/o so much as a "how-do-you-do", and demand my help, and i'd just as much like to tell you to lick a circuit with your tongue.

[hoey222]

lol - yup got one of those calls form my dad the other day....

"my dsl connection crapped out, i swapped out routers, tried every combination of network card, and still nothing...."

i ask - did you check to see if there was an outtage? ......".....no"

needless to say i got to give my dad a load of crap for being impatient....

it was kinda funny....

[DarkFury]

Heh... fuggedabout being just "family tech support"... now I'm "everybody's tech support"...

But eventually I smartened up and now I CHARGE for tech support. Trust me...when they are paying, they can ask all the questions that they want.

[eSDee]

That does suck I agree. My pops is a smart guy but when it comes to computers he just doesn't have the patience to try and understand it. It can be frustrating talking to him over the phone to get him to do something. Sometimes I just want to tell him to put my little brother on the phone (he's 12) so I can tell him what to do instead

A couple of years ago it got out that I design websites and a couple of my family members got in touch with me to design their websites. Problem was they didn't have any content, so the one website I did design I basically had to make up everything including finding graphics for everything. When my cousin then said he wanted to put a shopping cart on the website so that he could sell his little items, I told him that I couldn't help him anymore. People just don't understand how much time that kind of stuff takes!

[Maarchk]

call me up and ask me a favor to look at your comp with the promise of dinner as repayment, fine, i'll try (assuming i'm feeling charitable)... but call me in the middle of the night yelling, w/o so much as a "how-do-you-do", and demand my help, and i'd just as much like to tell you to lick a circuit with your tongue.

I bet if you find the right person, they would lick it.

that would be amusing.

[baggio248]

I get it from all my family that has email. Not only there but I get it at my office. I'm at a satellite office away from corporate where all the IS guys are. They are a phone call/ email away, but i still get questions. Even my director who is in the corporate office still calls me to ask me formatting questions.

[look_ma]

I never tell anyone that i am good with computers. My neighbors always ask me waht I do, I just tell them Sales. Because honestly, no one is going to come knocking at my door at 2am asking for me to sell them something. And if I do have to let on that I know something about computer, I just say I know very little, or just about how to fix that one thing so they dont drag me into all their problems. My family knows I will help them with easy stuff, but witht he hard stuff (hard to explain over the phone) I tell them to either learn or pay a pro.

[johnnymk]

You could tell them a fix that's worse than the problem and then they'll never come running to you again.

[OC]

My mom, hotred, and THO are about the only people that get free support from me, and then only because they actually listen to and remember what I say.

I hope to get into renewable energy consulting after I move to NC. When people ask what I do, I'll tell them I sell batteries.

[ufcrusher]

My father will sit there and argue about what I tell him to do, until he tries it and it works at which point he wants to know why his way was wrong. Loads of fun.

I made the mistake of building a PC for my mother, which started my whole haunted PC issues from way back when. As such, whenever anything went wrong with that PC I was to blame (never got kudos for when it worked flawlessly) and I always had to fix everything right now. So when the haunted PC killed itself, I bought them a Dell and told them that they could deal with Dells tech support and leave me alone. (That of course never happened and I end up having to do everything including make the calls to Dell now.)

In fact, I have shown my mother how to do the same thing no less than 20 times (burning a CD to backup her HD) and even written out a step by step guide and she still calls me to do it!

When I dropped off my brother at school last week, I watched as this kid was trying to install a new wifi card. I really didnt want to help him, so I hid the fact that I knew anything about computers. After 20 minutes of messing around with the card and it never gaining power, I finally asked him if he was sure that his PCMIA slot was active or if he had it turned off. He had no clue, so I told him to first check the card in another PC to see if it was defective or not before I went through any difficulty. Of course the card was defective and thus I saved myself a lot of hassle.

[Showtime]

rant

Amen Sister, Amen.

...family always taking advantage and stuff.
-j

[dsuds]

I get tech support issues from EVERYBODY!! My family, co-workers, people who know somebody's cousin whose computer I fixed, etc. All expecting me to fix them for free... I don't think so. I'll fix my family's stuff for the cost of parts, if it needs parts. I've discounted my standard rate ($40 / hr) for people I know and personal friends to whatever I think the job is worth. Like $20-$30 for removing spyware. But they must bring the computer to me. I quit making housecalls.

The really frustrating part is that now everybody comes to me for any question on everything electronic. I don't know jack about ham radio, so don't ask me!!

TRUE STORY: I had been working tech support for a software company for a while back in the mid 80's on Radio Shack TRS-80 computers. One lady was having trouble with her floppy disk so I told her to send me a copy so I could fix or recover her data. SHE SENDS ME A XEROX COPY OF THE DISK!!!

[OC]

I get tech support issues from EVERYBODY!! My family, co-workers, people who know somebody's cousin whose computer I fixed, etc. All expecting me to fix them for free... I don't think so. I'll fix my family's stuff for the cost of parts, if it needs parts. I've discounted my standard rate ($40 / hr) for people I know and personal friends to whatever I think the job is worth. Like $20-$30 for removing spyware. But they must bring the computer to me. I quit making housecalls.

The really frustrating part is that now everybody comes to me for any question on everything electronic. I don't know jack about ham radio, so don't ask me!!

TRUE STORY: I had been working tech support for a software company for a while back in the mid 80's on Radio Shack TRS-80 computers. One lady was having trouble with her floppy disk so I told her to send me a copy so I could fix or recover her data. SHE SENDS ME A XEROX COPY OF THE DISK!!!

Am I running the latest version of the internet?

[KCEnder]

I have friends who do the same thing. People who i only talk to 4 times a year and three of those are fixing their stupid issues. Last time i fixed their puter i "accidently" installed some malware in the hopes that they wouldn't call back. Wishfull thinking

[Mike_N_Ike]

GAH! sometimes i just despise being a tech person. just cuz i work in the computer field, my family thinks i'm their personal tech support. i finally managed to fall asleep tonight after tossing and turning, when i'm ripped awake by the phone - it's my father, very angry and upset, ranting about how he has a presentation and he can't burn a CD, demanding i fix it. beats the freakin heck outta me what's wrong, only time i ever used XP's built in burning tool is to write a detailed set of instructions for him on how to do it, and then i've never touched the thing since. after much frustrating trouble shooting to make sure he wasn't doing something stupid (like putting the CD in the wrong drive, which he's also done wrong before), i finally spat out: "did you try rebooting???" "umm... no, k, want me to do that now? " and of course, it fixed whatever weird bug windows was having. and then, i get praise about how my 4 years of college was coming in handy. joy. i spent 4 years of college so i could be woken up by an angry man who blames ME for all of technology's faults, and so i could do a magical solution by suggesting a restart. wow, i sure did learn a lot in school. i must be a freakin' computer genius. grrrr... a CS degree doesn't mean i know every little detail and bug of your computer, so leave me the f**k alone! if you wanna b*tch about how bad the sw is, or rant about the bugs in Windows, CALL THE PROGRAMMER WHO MADE IT!

/end rant

I totally feel you on this one.

What really kills me is that I make a point to avoid buying low quality crap so that I run into as few problems as possible - so trying to fix a computer that has so many problems that if I owned it, I'd throw it away and start from scratch, can be extremely infuriating.