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For those that work in IT, what do you do?

I'm curious what you all think of this "directive" that was recently given to our IT staff from management.

"I want to challenge all of you to stop using the word "user" when referring to employee-owners that use the systems and services we provide. You can imagine how offensive this term is to someone who is not an IT employee. Please stop using this word in presentations, training sessions, support conversations, or when simply writing a note in an incident."
 
links_slayer said:
i don't believe anyone in this thread - no one has mentioned telling people to turn it off and then back on again.
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That only happens AFTER you ask the user a few questions to find out what they mean when they reported "My computer doesn't work."
 
orchard53 said:
Was a one year disaster for us.... Especially for meetings with vendors and off shore resources. Microsoft support really sucked.
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ozzman said:
It all depends on the size of the organization and how much you spend on your license. We have a team engineers helping us on our teams project

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
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We've actually had a lot of help from Microsoft.
 
Crapgame said:
nothing is more frustrating than IT guys asking people if they’ve tried restarting their computer and having no other answers. Happens at every help desk. Then they spend hours or days “researching” while I’ve fixed the problem through Google searching.
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"Did you turn it off and back on" was the first thing I was taught to ask when I started there. Actually got in trouble when I didn't ask that right away. As much as I also can't stand that phrase unfortunately quite a few problems were solved with the off/on thing. We used a program called PDQ which can see the stats of all the computers in the company, including the last time each one was restarted. Some users had been logged in for triple-digit days in a row.

As for not having any other answers...step two for me was jumping on the machine via Teamviewer and I usually found the problem quite quickly.
 
Dartgod said:
I'm curious what you all think of this "directive" that was recently given to our IT staff from management.

"I want to challenge all of you to stop using the word "user" when referring to employee-owners that use the systems and services we provide. You can imagine how offensive this term is to someone who is not an IT employee. Please stop using this word in presentations, training sessions, support conversations, or when simply writing a note in an incident."
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Does it hurt their feelings?

Our service desk only refers to the lawyers as "customers." Seems like we received the same directive as your company.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
 
Dartgod said:
I'm curious what you all think of this "directive" that was recently given to our IT staff from management.

"I want to challenge all of you to stop using the word "user" when referring to employee-owners that use the systems and services we provide. You can imagine how offensive this term is to someone who is not an IT employee. Please stop using this word in presentations, training sessions, support conversations, or when simply writing a note in an incident."
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i'm not an IT employee and don't feel offended when referred to as a user. genuinely curious how/why this is offensive? what did the recommend as an alternative?
 
links_slayer said:
i'm not an IT employee and don't feel offended when referred to as a user. genuinely curious how/why this is offensive? what did the recommend as an alternative?
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We are an employee owned company, so employee-owner or customer. It's genuinely a pain. 20+ years in IT and end users were always referred to as "users". Most of the systems I use refer to them as users. Every single day I'm in Active Directory Users and Computers doing something, or writing Powershell scripts (Get-AdUser, Set-CsUser, Get-MsolUser, etc.).

This is the world we live in though, where if one person is offended, for whatever reason, then we must make changes to accommodate them.
 
Dartgod said:
We are an employee owned company, so employee-owner or customer. <snip>

This is the world we live in though, where if one person is offended, for whatever reason, then we must make changes to accommodate them.
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what a world...*sigh*
 
Dartgod said:
I'm curious what you all think of this "directive" that was recently given to our IT staff from management.

"I want to challenge all of you to stop using the word "user" when referring to employee-owners that use the systems and services we provide. You can imagine how offensive this term is to someone who is not an IT employee. Please stop using this word in presentations, training sessions, support conversations, or when simply writing a note in an incident."
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Given that the vast majority of desktop problems are user error, I would think they'd want to remain anonymous.
 
I work in defensive Cyber operations, threat-specific, network agnostic, intelligence-driven incident response, for the United States Army.
 
I’m on the cybersecurity side of things. Specifically I’m a forensic investigator for the company I work for.
 
ozzman said:
It all depends on the size of the organization and how much you spend on your license. We have a team engineers helping us on our teams project

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
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150,000 plus users. Probably a lot more than you did on licenses. We had some interesting requirements that were met by Skype, Microsoft never could make it work. But maybe you had a better management team, ours just claimed look at all the money we saved. And when MS crashed their Texas farm, the response was look how much we saved.
 
Scorpion12 said:
For those that know of them, STIGs. I don't apply them. My team checks for compliance for them. On top of that, RMF. At least the STIG portion. There's a lot more to it.
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Is that fun or what?!?!?!?! 😒
 
Dartgod said:
I'm curious what you all think of this "directive" that was recently given to our IT staff from management.

"I want to challenge all of you to stop using the word "user" when referring to employee-owners that use the systems and services we provide. You can imagine how offensive this term is to someone who is not an IT employee. Please stop using this word in presentations, training sessions, support conversations, or when simply writing a note in an incident."
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Years ago when I worked the support desk about 95% of our call report comments just said 'SUE" for stupid user error. I wonder what they'll write now - Mindless Employee-Owner Miscalculation just doesn't have the same ring.
 
Dartgod said:
I'm curious what you all think of this "directive" that was recently given to our IT staff from management.

"I want to challenge all of you to stop using the word "user" when referring to employee-owners that use the systems and services we provide. You can imagine how offensive this term is to someone who is not an IT employee. Please stop using this word in presentations, training sessions, support conversations, or when simply writing a note in an incident."
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Frankly, this demonstrates poor leadership and management. If 'management' is concerned about offending people, they should re-read this statement. How do they think IT staff will react to a statement like this? That's right. They'll find it offensive and it is.
 
Maric said:
Years ago when I worked the support desk about 95% of our call report comments just said 'SUE" for stupid user error. I wonder what they'll write now - Mindless Employee-Owner Miscalculation just doesn't have the same ring.
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ID-10T Error
 
Maric said:
Years ago when I worked the support desk about 95% of our call report comments just said 'SUE" for stupid user error. I wonder what they'll write now - Mindless Employee-Owner Miscalculation just doesn't have the same ring.
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PIBKAC


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Dartgod said:
I'm curious what you all think of this "directive" that was recently given to our IT staff from management.

"I want to challenge all of you to stop using the word "user" when referring to employee-owners that use the systems and services we provide. You can imagine how offensive this term is to someone who is not an IT employee. Please stop using this word in presentations, training sessions, support conversations, or when simply writing a note in an incident."
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We had a similar directive which prohibited the use of certain words. The times they are a changing...
 
leftshot said:
Frankly, this demonstrates poor leadership and management. If 'management' is concerned about offending people, they should re-read this statement. How do they think IT staff will react to a statement like this? That's right. They'll find it offensive and it is.
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The thing is, our management is usually pretty good. I work at a great company. My supervisor, director and CIO are all really cool.
 
Dartgod said:
I'm curious what you all think of this "directive" that was recently given to our IT staff from management.

"I want to challenge all of you to stop using the word "user" when referring to employee-owners that use the systems and services we provide. You can imagine how offensive this term is to someone who is not an IT employee. Please stop using this word in presentations, training sessions, support conversations, or when simply writing a note in an incident."
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Hah.:ROFLMAO: Management doesn't realize that user is about as nice a word as can be used... there are many other words that aren't so nice that shouldn't be used in polite company... but the directive from your management doesn't surprise me. Can't have anyone offended.

JohnSinVA said:
Is that fun or what?!?!?!?! 😒
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If I say yes, can you tell I'm lying?:ROFLMAO: Seriously though... the programs we're supposed to use to accomplish this task in a word, suck. If I could code and come up with something that could ingest STIG XCCDF files, and talk to Microsoft, Linux, Unix, Cisco, and everything else reliably, I think I'd be rich once I sold it off to whomever paid me the most money.:D
 
I'm a nerd herder. CIO for a printing company in NJ. My staff goes from developers to desktop and most in between. I came up through the ranks, starting as a PC builder.
 
Scorpion12 said:
Hah.:ROFLMAO: Management doesn't realize that user is about as nice a word as can be used... there are many other words that aren't so nice that shouldn't be used in polite company... but the directive from your management doesn't surprise me. Can't have anyone offended.



If I say yes, can you tell I'm lying?:ROFLMAO: Seriously though... the programs we're supposed to use to accomplish this task in a word, suck. If I could code and come up with something that could ingest STIG XCCDF files, and talk to Microsoft, Linux, Unix, Cisco, and everything else reliably, I think I'd be rich once I sold it off to whomever paid me the most money.:D
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You’d be a day late and a dollar short ;)
 
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