@Setanta,
Setanta wrote:That is no "they do it too" deflection. I was just pointing out that it is not true that i have a history of kvetching. As far as i recall, i've done this exactly twice in the more than seven years that i've been here. And i have no such long history as you allege--you indulging hyperbole to try to make yourself out to be an injured party, long-suffering and noble. I do not "frequently" heap verbal abuse on the site, you're making **** up.
I'm not, though. Yes, you have only used the exact title "WHAT THE BLOODY HELL" only
one other time when complaining about the site but you've had a chip on your shoulder about technical bugs ever since you've been here.
I just ran one quick query and found
an early example (and for an example of a legitimate gripe if this goddamn, lame, shitty site, those bastard developers, had a better search engine I'd find you more). There we were having our session bugs on the old software and I was doing my best to resolve them but you were still leading with that "customer is always wrong" chip on your shoulder and making the bug reports confrontational. There was also
that thread where you left the site in a huff over the ads being placed on it (which made your later complaints about site performance doubly irritating, you complained about the ads that bring the revenue to improve the performance you also complain about).
Look, I don't know what bad experiences others may have had with IT but I'm simply not IT and almost never have been (I've helped out, but this has never really been my role). I don't get why you (and several others in this thread) are trying to foist their negative experiences with IT on me.
In my line of work (development, not IT again, I am one of IT's clients usually), I am the computer's customer, and usually if it does something wrong it is my fault. That is usually the case with computers, who lack a mind of their own, and on a theoretical level ALL computer bugs are a human's fault. At some point a human made a mistake.
Now I get that this assumption can lead to tech folk assuming the "customer" is wrong and how that can be annoying but because that is so frequently the case that is just the first place they look. It's not meant to be insulting, we treat ourselves the same way. We know that computers don't tend to become whimsical and if something starts going wrong changes in input or use are the first place we look when we are solving our own problems too. This feels to me like trepidation from bad IT desk experiences spilling over here. In the case of the password problem I spent a long time trying to find a possible error in the code (it's just comparing input to the saved password so there's not a lot of room for mistakes) but couldn't find any. This isn't because I think the "customer is always wrong" but yes I do think that in that case you might have mistyped something and been sure you hadn't. I type a lot of passwords and that happens to me frequently, where I'm absolutely sure I am typing it right and then it suddenly works. Sometimes I even detect what mistake I was making but sometimes I don't.
Not finding bugs like that isn't meant to be insulting it's just the result of the computer science. I looked, I didn't find any and nobody else reported another incidence. My educated guess is a mistake on input, and that doesn't have to be a confrontational conclusion.
Quote:You justify that kind of conduct on your part constantly by claiming what a thoroughly bad man i am--which must be, therefore, your equivalent of the "they do it too" deflection. Sauce for the goose makes sauce for the gander, Bubba.
I agree with you.
This kind of argument is tempting to make and in this case the appeal is that you justify your abuse of others on what you claim is prior art in that regard and in this case I use the same justification and you seem to object to the treatment.
But to be honest, even though there may be a legitimate point to be made there I do agree that there is a fine line between parodying a behavior to make a point and using that as a pretext to engage in the same behavior and I do actually agree that everything I said would have been the better for not having included such epithets.
In that spirit I would once again appeal to you to avoid derogations that you may or may not be frequently guilty of.
Quote:Many other people have complained about losing long posts. I suppose that you now contend that i am scurrilous because i didn't start a thread to thank you for solving that problem. Thank you for solving that problem.
Not at all actually, I don't really like the thanks for that kind of thing. I love doing this and this is why I do it and being thanked for it is awkward for me.
I just want reasonable responses to negative things. Sometimes things are out of my control and being blamed for it (even indirectly through criticism of your work) can be annoying. And when those things going wrong are out of my control I am in the same boat with you of being somebody else's IT customer.
I'm trying to.
Quote:Verbal abuse may be unpleasant to you, but it is hardly reasonable to claim that it makes it more difficult to do your job. There's enough melodrama in your responses here that if it were water, you could float the Pacific fleet.
We'll have to agree to disagree then, I think almost any user-facing person has had experiences where verbal abuse makes their jobs more difficult. Mainly because they are supposed to hold back and not call their customers rude even if they are. After a while that restraint becomes taxing.
I don't have a customer service profile, and this is the only place I've ever had to perform such duties. Such emotional restraint in the face of no such emotional restraint on the user's part isn't something I have the natural personality type to deal with (there are folks who do, and we used to test for it very accurately when choosing our customer service folk).
I could be a more tolerant guy, and take things less personally for sure. But even the most angelic customer service person has their limits and verbal abuse does make the work harder.
In my case I don't just wear one hat, I am the host's customer, and am trying to fix things at the same time as trying to handle the user feedback. Failing to respond is bad customer service so the complaints are something I have to deal with and caustic ones make it more difficult.
Interestingly, in this particular case I was dealing with IT people from our host, and look at the terms of use I signed up for with them:
Quote:Harassment and Abuse
WiredTree does not tolerate abuse of any kind towards it's employees. This includes all verbal harassment, yelling, swearing, rudeness, threats, and any intentionally disruptive behavior directed at WiredTree or any of it's staff or agents. Client agrees to engage our WiredTree in a professional manner whether in email, helpdesk tickets, live chat, forums, or on the telephone. Any abuse will be construed as a violation of this Terms of Service agreement. No refunds will be provided for any service termination which arises as a result of a violation of this clause.
http://www.wiredtree.com/legal/tos.php
So in this particular scenario, I pay them a
good amount of money and their service failed on me (was actually an upstream problem for them too though) but I can't verbally abuse
them, so why should I have to tolerate verbal abuse from
you about the same issue when you aren't any customer of mine and when you are blaming the site for the problems we are facing upstream?
You aren't my customer and I'm not a customer service person (and no we don't have money to hire one) and being told I am supposed to just suck up abuse in such a role is legitimately taxing to me. It's one of the few aspects of this site that I thoroughly disdain and I'm being sincere when I say that having someone piss in your corn flakes only makes it more difficult to eat.
This is a free service offered as-is. Many other forums simply boot users who are verbally abusive towards the moderators and all but we don't. But that doesn't mean as individuals we don't have our personal limits Setanta.
