Episode: 354
Title: HPR0354: The Jerks Among us
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0354/hpr0354.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 17:06:27

---

music
Give me your hand to hold in mind, and I will give you my heart.
Give me your hand to hold in mind, and I will give you my heart.
Hello, this is Lost in Bronx.
Many people in the technology sector or computer world complain about the stupidity of the average user.
This is backed up by daily experience, no doubt.
People contact and interrupt the IT and infrastructure folks all the time, with all sorts of self-made problems.
Couple that with bad software, bad hardware, or the bad implementation of either, and you have a losing battle on your hands.
People call you up, or email, or IMU, or pay you, there's no escaping them, with stupid problem after stupid problem.
A lot of times it's the same people, over and over.
What the hell is with them? How can people that dumb even find their way out of the house in the morning?
And if they were only dumb, it wouldn't be so bad, but it's the attitude as well.
For crying out loud, they create the friggin' emergency on their own when there certainly wasn't one to begin with, and then they either expect you to fix it on their schedule, or blame you for it to begin with.
In fact, the gulf between reality and their perception of it is so great, you might wonder if stupidity is the problem, or dementia.
Seriously, in what other walk of life, or supposedly professional environment, can people get away with this kind of incompetence and churlish behavior on a regular basis, and still be considered worthy of the time it takes to hear them out?
Well, the answer to that is, every walk of life.
If anything I just said rings true for you in the technology sector. It's not because I work there myself and have experience with stupid, belligerent, obtuse, or just plain ignorant co-workers and clients in that environment.
I'm not a computer professional. I've never worked in that field. Most of my life, I've been in retail. And every day, I dealt with the same thing.
If I wanted to stretch a metaphor, I guess I could come up with some clever way to directly contrast these two fields, but really they're very different.
In fact, about the only thing they do have in common is people. And I guarantee you that the same asshole who crept incessantly to you all day about the most tangential and picky nonsense, like the fate of the galaxy depended on it.
After five o'clock, he saltered into my place of employment and did the same thing to me. Or did, I'm out of it now, thankfully, though who knows for how long.
But you say you have hard days at work, you have a hard time dealing with these people, these thick, nasty, ugly people. I'll tell you what, you work in a toy store during the Christmas season and then you talk to me.
You work in a used bookstore near the end of term and you deal with somebody whose thesis and therefore degree depends upon a single, out of print monograph that the store's website says you have, but which isn't on the shelf.
Any shelf in the store, or in fact on any shelf, in any store, anywhere. You do that for a few years and then tell me how nasty people can be when things aren't going their way. And for at least that moment, they have your attention.
Do you have knuckleheads who click on everything whenever they surf and forward every chain letter that floats their way and in fact any machine they touch like Typhoid Mary?
Do you have blue screens to deal with on a daily basis or dumbbells for bosses who refuse to try anything new because, well, it's new, but only to them because they don't ever want to try anything new because, you know, it's new.
This is the kind of crap you have to deal with. Welcome to the club. The fact is dim with surrounded. They aren't just something that IT created and they aren't just tech supports across the bear.
We are surrounded by them. You, me, all of us, and since we're all surrounded by them, that means some of us are them. Yeah, and some people seem to run into an inordinate number of jerks.
That's generally a sign of people who carry that jerkness around with them wherever they go. It's a fact of life that most rude, impatient, ignorant people describe most other people in these exact same terms.
Exhaustive, scientific tests that I have conducted at great personal expense and effort prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that seven out of ten people are flaming, roaring, raging anuses.
Of the ones that are left, number eight is basically good, and we'll try to help you whenever they can.
Number nine is basically bad, and we'll try to use or abuse you when they can. And number ten is a grim realist who could care less if you live or die.
But who is honest about that, so at least you know where you stand? If you're in IT, and people you have to deal with flow crap at you day in, day out for things that aren't your fault,
and shouldn't be your problem, but which nonetheless are. Well, the only words of comfort I have are these.
But Jeff, for fuck's sake, you think you're the only one? Chances are those other people haven't even worse than you do, because they're in better company than you are.
I'm about to whip somebody's ass. Oh, I'm about to whip somebody's ass. Oh, if you don't leave me alone, you're gonna have to sing me home. Cause I'm about to whip somebody's ass.
See, here's my point. If you start treating your users like crap, because they can't look at the system without turning it to stone, then you're the asshole. That's right. The hardware, the software, that stuff's the bulk matter of your job, but not so for them. Those things are the tools of their jobs, not the jobs themselves.
To put it into perspective, if some great big bag of assholes in Singapore or Glasgow or Shaboygan is running late on his end to the company's priority project for this quarter, does that affect you? I mean, so long as the system is ready for him to pull his act together and submit his part of it all, what's it to you if he's late?
Well, what if you can't replace a failing server, or even reboot a crash desktop, until this character gets his work done? Your job might not be like that in real life, but what if?
You'd be screaming in this guy's local colleagues' faces if you couldn't scream in his, because now your job depends on someone else doing theirs, and you really don't know what their job entails, or what kind of on the scene pressures they face.
And if you think computers are hard to manage, then you really haven't worked with enough people. You get a machine running, right? And it stays running right.
Assuming we're not talking about Microsoft products, of course, that's a rant for another day. Sure, things do break down occasionally, but that just means something has changed. Fix or replace the offending element, and you're up and running again.
People? Oi, you get them running right, and everything's just dandy, until somebody misses their morning latte, and then suddenly the world is ending.
You see, you can't predict it, and half the time you can't even fix it, except by giving them exactly precisely what they're crying for, when they're crying for it, up to and including some time in the past.
So unless you can get your DeLorean up to 88 miles per hour, there is simply nothing to be done. That will disappoint them to say the least, and they will let their disquiet be known.
See, they need you, and the tools you provide and maintain in order to do their jobs. You, on the other hand, do not need them in order to provide and maintain those tools.
Except that you do. Because without them, there's no company. No company, no job. No job, well, enough said. You do need them at the most fundamental level of business.
They are skittish racehorses, every one of them, and you are their groom, trainer, and groundskeeper. You fix the track, you wipe them down, and you clean up their crap.
They don't run, you don't work. If they winny and kick because the gate don't open when the bell rings, it's because they cannot run, and they're losing the race. They lose enough races, they go to the glue factory.
Owners whose horses lose too many races quit the game, and the grooms who work for them stand in bread lines, cause, and effect.
I'm telling you, seven out of ten. All you can hope for, the very most you can do, is to not be a jerk yourself.
There is no way to avoid them short of a hermitage, because most of the time, 70% by my count, to be human is to be an asshole.
It is our collective gift to the world. Hell, we only became tool makers, so we could throw better sticks at each other.
So, when someone dumps on you for doing your very best, don't get defensive, and don't bite back. Complement them on their basic humanity.
And where do I see myself fitting in? Well, I ain't bowderek, but I'm a ten baby, and I'm giving it to you straight.
This has been Lost in Bronx. If you want to prove your basic humanity, you can write to me at Lost in Bronx at gmail.com
That's L-O-S-T-N-B-R-O-N-X at gmail. I can't guarantee anything, but I'll try my best to ignore you. Take care.
Thank you for listening to Haftler Public Radio. HPR is sponsored by Carol.net, so head on over to C-A-R-O.N-C for all of her team.
You
You
