So I had the following conversation via chat on Wednesday.
Happy User [4:49 PM]: hello Me. my mail is not working. I cannot send or receive mail through outlook. is started acting up monday and has not been working since. I would email you but i don't know if you will receive the mail. Can you take a look at it? thank you
Me [4:49 PM]: does it give you an error?
Happy User [4:53 PM]: no, when i log off it tells me that there is mail waiting to be sent, but it does not give me the option to send it
Me [4:56 PM]: in the bottom right corner does it say you are online?
Happy User [4:56 PM]: no it says that i am offline
Me [4:56 PM]: there is your problem, reboot
Happy User [4:57 PM]: ok, thanks!
He didn't reboot till later the next day.
Just to add to this, there is a standard procedure to reboot when you experience a problem with programs. We also have basic troubleshooting procedures on an internal wiki and all employees have attended a four hour class (broken over three days) on basic computer skills, including collecting the basics of an error and timely notification. Granted, this guy is planning on leaving soon because he just graduated so I guess he is a little distracted. However, the scary part is that he just graduated from the Police Academy.
He just graduated from the police academy and he can't follow the simple procedures for a software problem. If he can't follow them can he follow more complex procedures for evidence? I just hope he's not going to work in Fort Worth or Dallas!
"Police Academy" was a series of comedy movies in the 1980s and 1990s.
More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_Academy
and better yet:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087928/
with the most inept students graduating somehow and, in the end, becoming "good cops".
I strongly suggest you watch at least the first one to understand the humour in the original posting.
But back to the original issue, this user is either badly in need of more training or an attitude readjustment. It is just as likely that he was too shy or proud to admit needing more training, as it is that he was blatantly ignoring instructions from the tech department. Either way someone needs to talk to him in a non-threatening situation to clear what needs to be done.
On a side note, training lasting four hours broken over a three-day period is only useful if there is some type of "homework". Better to have it it all in one day, broken into two two-hour sessions, or even four one-hour sessions. For if the users will forget it all anyway, at least they should not use the excuse of "it wasn't enough training, an hour and twenty minutes a day for three days"!
yeah I wanted to do it in one day but everyone was complaining about the impact on their jobs, blah, blah, blah. I should have pushed harder and the homework idea is a good one. I think I will incorporate that in future classes.
I have had other issues with this individual before along the same lines but to no avail.
Not to demand that everything work this way, but my own conclusions after more than three decades of being trained, plus designing and delivering training over half the world, with all sorts of audiences and for many (mostly) technical purposes...
When you get folks into a room for a full day, or for days on end, retention is consistently abysmal. The most important features become 'lunch' and 'over'. People, and jobs, are not wired for learning, just doing. The best plan is for short structured sessions, early in the day, over three or more non-sequential days, covering material relevant to the students. Oh... and with the public approval of management, and commitment from BOFHs for the time so they don't just demand the same workload from everyone as if nothing important is happening.
Of course, this is naive and ridiculous. I know that. No point in trying it just because it works.
I ran a 14-day class for all the supervisors in one of our divisions. They were being given ToughBooks to use in the field.
I had one group in the morning and another in the afternoon. Tuesdays and Thursdays were reviews of Mondays and Wednesdays. Fridays were overall reviews.
I had wanted to assign homework but the devices were not assigned to individuals yet. Also, only one of the twenty supervisors had a computer at home and had ever sent e-mail before. Oddly enough, almost all of their staff have computers at home with e-mail they use regularly.
Where I worked (I'm thanKfully retired now), many users NEVER bothered to log off (the screen saver locked the computer, but they never logged out). So they would not see the password expiration warning (if they did, they would simply ignore it). A common occurrence was that when their passwords expired whilst they were logged in, they would be locked out of Exchange and the network. This produced the complaint described above. I was always having to get them to log out and back in again to change their passwords. Some folks never seemed to learn from this.
from the websiteisdown.com
Web Dude "How many times did you reboot?"
Sales Dude "Three times like you always tell me"
You can't arrange it by ....!
Gotta love that Web Dude.
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Comment: Okay, you say you can excuse
Okay, you say you can excuse him due to probable distraction. But what does attending a police academy have to do with accessing email?
If he just graduated M.I.T. or something like that, it'll be a different story.