2003-04-30 8:28 p.m.

Mysteries of the Universe: Why Users Lie

Back when I was a wee supportling, I had a manager who explained to me after a particularly nasty call, "Users lie." I was horrified by his cynicism, but learned in short order that it was so very true, even for our technically-savvy callers. Especially for our technically-savvy callers.

Why, why do users lie?

Not only do they lie, but they lie about dumb things.

User: I can't run blahblah! Waah!

Me: The error says to edit lines 10 and 20 of the file /home/dumbass/blahblah.conf. Fix that and you're good to go.

User:: I did that! I still can't run blahblah! Waah!

What, they don't think that the very first thing we're going to do is look at the timestamp on /home/dumbass/blahblah.conf and see that it's dated from yesterday? And that the second thing won't be copying out lines 10 and 20, which despite the user's assertion that s/he "edited them out," are still in the file, and pasting them in an e-mail? (To the user, if they're lucky. If they're not, to the other sysadmins, with rude comments attached.)

Who are these people who underestimate both the cynicism and ruthless cunning of your average system administrator, and what are they doing in my office?

Read the manual, people. Don't be a luser. And don't make me come over there and teach you reading comprehension the hard way.

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