Helpful Coworker Tried To Diagnose A Slow Laptop, But After Being Blamed For The Problem And Having His Advice Ignored, He Stopped Helping
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A slow computer usually cannot improve while its owner refuses every basic troubleshooting step.
This employee found a coworker’s laptop buried under weeks of open programs, files, and browser tabs.
When asked to save everything and restart, the coworker became more worried about closing windows than fixing the problem.
See how a simple reboot request ended their support relationship.
Sometimes I don’t like helping people
I’m not in tech support, but on rare occasions, I do some troubleshooting for colleagues and decide if something can be fixed in-office (software) or needs a proper technician (hardware).
A colleague asked me to take a look at his laptop. His Microsoft Word is slowing down, and Excel is not responding, with a very slow laptop performance. Turns out he has 10+ Chrome tabs open, several Word windows, several Excel windows, and has not rebooted his laptop in weeks.
The real trouble happens when I tell him to save and close the windows, then reboot. Conversation as follows:
He tried to convince his colleague to do it quickly.
Colleague: “But Doragon, how do I do work if I close them?”
Doragon(me): “Then continue from where you left off. Reboot only takes a minute anyway.”
Colleague: “I need all these files. What happens if they disappear?”
Doragon: “That’s why you should save them. Now do it.”
Then, the guy started blaming him.
Colleague: “Never mind, I’ll do it later. But the laptop is still slow. What did you do to make it so slow?”
Angry_Doragon: “OI! Hello! You asked me to check it because it was slow, and you now blame me?!”
At that point, I told him to handle his own problems and went off elsewhere. Always refused to help him after that. I swear, some people exist to irritate others.
Wow! That guy sounds like something else!
Let’s see if the people over at Reddit have ever dealt with someone like this.
This person’s go-to question involves a reboot.
Some people don’t believe things until they’ve heard them from multiple people.
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For this retiree, they don’t miss helping people like this.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a customer service rep who hung up and called a customer back to get around a time limit, but ended up getting an award instead of a reprimand after the customer praised his service.
According to this comment, helping people with disabilities is more rewarding than IT.
This helpful coworker identified the overloaded programs and recommended saving everything before restarting the laptop.
The owner refused, complained that the computer remained slow, and then blamed the person who had only just arrived to help.
He wanted better performance without closing a single problem.
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