I have to constantly explain to my wife that if she can’t reach a website it is likely on their end and there is nothing I can do until they fix it. I explain there is a chain of connections involved and me sitting and staring at her laptop for an hour isn’t going to fix it.
The majority of people are genuinely thankful for your help. Sometimes they put off asking for help until they are very frustrated and you catch some of that heat but they calm down quickly. They also really like it if you have to sit down and work on their computer because it means they have an excuse to not work and have some coffee. There always seems to be that one person though that you dread helping because they are always pissy and sarcastic and blame you for everything.
I had this with a person who said their screen stayed blank no matter what they did. I came down, saw the power light on the monitor was off, saw the plug was not plugged in, and fixed it. She was very embarrassed.
Googling problems with Windows I find the majority of the results are MS support telling them to reset the OS. No attempt to debug the issue just nuke it and see if that fixes it. Then you read the next comments and inevitably they say “Nope, didn’t fix it”. I really dislike scripted responses like this.
I’ve been on both sides of it. One of my favorite IT moments was changing to a new phone. I couldn’t access my email until I did a two factor auth process. Of course they emailed me my code to access my account to unlock my email. Good thing I also had a pc at home with access to my email.
Then I was supporting a lab. One woman was clearly aggravated when she called. She said no matter what she did her screen was blank. I head right over and just look at it for a few secs. I check the lowest hanging fruit solution first and see the power light on her monitor isn’t on. I see it is unplugged, plug her monitor in and problem solved. I’ve never seen a more embarrassed person than her. lol
Networking has to be the most thankless job in IT. You are invisible when the system is working, which is 99% of the time. It stays up like that because they are monitoring it and maintaining it behind the scenes. When it fails though the failure can be catastrophic for everyone, we literally cannot do any work without it. Then everyone’s eyes, and criticism, is on them.
He pushed the whole “the government is the enemy” mentality which has made it almost impossible to have national healthcare among other things. The republicans also jumped into bed with Christian fundamentalists at this point and the NRA went from being for gun regulations to no regulations. It was a continuation of the backlash against the 60s that started with Nixon.