Why we love users, executive edition

It's just a few years ago, and this executive user decides she wants a laptop with all the bells and whistles, reports the pilot fish whose job is to get it for her.

"At the time, we were using some pretty cool laptops," says fish. "They had a removable base unit that had the network port, DVD and floppy drive, and there was an assortment of different-size batteries. We even would purchase two bases so they could have one at home and one at work."

Fish sets up the user with the laptop and base unit, walks her through the basics of undocking and redocking, and figures his work is done.

Not long after, this user is working away in a Word document and listening to her favorite CD. She pops the laptop loose from the base and -- no surprise -- the laptop locks up.

User clicks the laptop back into the base. It remains locked up. She tries various things and nothing works. So she goes to the big boss -- why call the help desk, right? -- and they march to fish's cube and read him the riot act.

Fish returns to the user's desk and walks through the whole scenario, explaining that she can't pop the laptop out and expect it to keep working. He also removes the battery and reboots the laptop -- but the user's Word document is corrupted.

And fish calmly nods straight-faced during the resulting string of complaints: This laptop isn't any good. You're not giving me good service. It's not working right..

That's the first of a series of support calls that all pretty much follow the same pattern. And for each one, fish carefully documents what happens and makes sure he's covered with his manager.

Finally, after the problem user has just returned from being on the road for a week, fish looks up to see the big boss bearing down on his desk again. You've got to do something with this laptop. She comes in from a week trip and it's not working again. It never works right. She can't get on the network...

"I promise to take care of it and rush right out to her desk -- and of course she's not there," says fish. "I check out the laptop and, sure enough, the network cable is not plugged in.

"I plugged in the network cable, made sure everything worked, walked back to the big boss and explained to him that to get network access you actually have to be connected to the network and that I plugged it into the network and it was working fine.

"I never had any more issues from the big boss on this user."

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