Hmm, the consultants haven’t received any training whatsoever to handle the situation appropriately in the event of a real disaster or emergency. If I was a consultant, I might not know what to do either other than to run out the door. Uh oh. How many of the consultants even know about the emergency evacutation bag containing the supply of food, water, first aid kits, and crowbar(s)?
“Fun” consultations today: Taught someone how to use ReadIris to convert a scanned page of text into a Word document. Transferred a professor’s 15 MB manuscript from her non-networked laptop to a cluster computer via a USB Compact Flash reader and then uploaded it to her Leland AFS space so that it was web-accessible. Convinced a student that we really don’t have any machines that read Digital Hi-8 tapes, and then helped her find the Firewire port to import her video after she borrowed a Digital Hi-8 camcorder from who-knows-where. Helped an older woman determine that, yes, the machine downstairs doesn’t seem to accept money anymore. Sorry. We’ll call the people who service it.
Hmm… I can’t recall helping a single male user for more than 5 seconds today. (i.e. “Can I checkout a pair of headphones?” “Yes. Here you go.”) Actually, that seems pretty representative of most of my consultations at Meyer. Does that mean that women ask the majority of the technical questions or does it mean that I have less patience for the needy men and/or find those consultations less memorable overall? Hmm, not a very scientific study so far.
JUst to let you know.. The lady who came to you was indeed my rf’s freind, and the culprit is the dog, Sophie.. Apparently, it wants to be inebriated 😛
you’re right. i don’t think i would know what to do besides try to get everyone out. where is this so-called emergency evacuation bag? …and what are the crowbars for?
btw, i have found that the number of technical questions i get are about even in terms of gender ratio. although, the questions i get from guys tend to be more difficult to solve than from females… i get a lot of printing/computer usage questions from females. and a lot of this-doesn’t-work-and-i’ve-already-switched-to-computers-5-times questions from guys.
it’s like guys never stopping to ask for directions when they’re lost, ken…you know, you probably get some ten second questions from guys (i know i did) who, when you help solve their problem, go “wow, we’ve been trying to do that for three days!”
maybe girls just take the smart route sooner than guys do…
as for emergency training…are you referring to the big yellow bag? does it come with its own forklift?
Hey some of us just don’t know what is going on with computers cause we never cared to learn…besides there is always a really nice guy ready to help … perhaps you guys should stop being so helpful. You know it, you like helping girls. Oh poor helpless girls.
It’s true… the sad puppy dog eyes that just beg, “please help me” evoke much less sympathy from me when it comes from a guy. =P