Volvo Truck NA, for whom I worked 14 years, had a sort of DOS-101 class for all our end users who were trying to figure out how to use the PCs newly on their desks. Some of them actually seemed to pay attention, and came back to their cubicles understanding, for instance, what a root directory is and why it isn't a good idea to have all their documents there. So they'd start looking through their hard drive's root directory and deleting old stuff. Harvard-Graphics documents: move them or delete them. Old WordPerfect documents: if they're old enough, dump 'em. Here are a couple of utilities they never got around to using: Delete them. COMMAND.COM ... wait, "COMMAND.COM"? What's that? Another utility I never use; out it goes.
This is not the end of the world. Any copy of COMMAND.COM will work; there's no need to carefully match the correct version with the OS on the victim's machine. But one day a coworker was leaving our location, on his way to the 3rd floor to replace someone's COMMAND.COM and loudly wondering why the #!$@ users couldn't leave their %#@* files the @#*&! alone. I expostulated: "Randy, relax. This is an easy fix. And these guys who're doing this, they're the guys that'll learn eventually, and be..." well, one of the users Mr Metz admonishes us (correctly) to cherish. "In six months you'll be able to talk to this guy on the phone, instead of looking over his shoulder, and say "I dunno, maybe it's in the Windows directory; go look there", instead of saying "Ok, type this: cee dee colon backslash ess wye [and so on]...have you hit <Enter> yet? Hit <Enter>...". I like the knowledgeable ones better. The others give us the entertaining horror stories, but I don't mind investing time in training the ones who want to learn. That's actually one of the things I found most rewarding about end-user support. What ended up driving me out were the users who steadfastly declined to have their problems explained. (If you're playing on-line games and run across a character named "Teacher", there's a good chance it's me.) --- Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313 /* I think everyone who chooses to stay out of politics (which is your right) should make a mental note of where they would draw the line and feel it necessary to get involved. Then ask yourself: Is it possible that point already arrived, but it happened too slowly to notice? -Chris Evans */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Seymour J Metz Sent: Friday, June 12, 2020 12:39 On the flip side, there are some users who know what they are doing and give you the data that you need to resolve the problem. Cherish them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
