IT help for the parents; It should be quick – Expectations vs. Reality
IT help for the parents; It should be quick – Expectations vs. Reality
At some point I learned to set boundaries with my mom and IT help. I know I'm good at it, hell I worked geek squad for years, but she got demanding. Started calling me out of the blue demanding help even if I was in the middle of something.
"My printer doesn't work". "Okay, well I'm out right now.. I'm not even home". "BUT I NEED TO PRINT SOMETHING FOR TOMORROW" "Okay, well if it's that urgent the library has printers, or the FedEx office can do it. I can help you in a couple of days on my day off"
Me helping is a gift, it's something I give to you, it's not something I am required to do or an obligation. Since a couple of confrontations like that it's gotten much more manageable
My parents are not like that at all. They are nice and friendly about it.
This story was about how complicated it sometimes get while you thought it would be a 30 second thing and you give up after an hour.
It has been a running gag with friends when I had to help my mom save a file on a disc, it took over half an hour, and it still failed.
I get you. I have many similar stories. Where things should have been simple, a 4 steps process. And yet.
Last time was the printer no longer working from my mom's iPhone. It's supposed to detect the printer automatically when on the same network, it no longer did. And the stored/"remembered" entry did not work either.
After many troubleshoting steps, I gave up, sent the document to another computer and printed from there. So, clearly, the printer worked (for once) and accepted commands from the LAN.