Over the past 20+ years in IT, users have done the most wonderful things that just made me giggle:  cutting down a 5¼” floppy disk to fit in a 3½” floppy drive; stapling a note to a 5¼” floppy disk with instructions to convert it; turning up to a training course and producing a folded up 8” floppy disk from their pocket that they want to convert; stuffing biscuits into the floppy drive because a colleague had setup a program to flash “feed me” periodically on the screen; when asked to insert the floppy and close the door, they’ve got up and closed the office door.

Then with the advent of Windows came even more giggles: when asked to close the window, they’ve got up and closed the office window; when asked to click the mouse on the red cross, they’ve picked the mouse up from the desk, placed it on the screen and clicked; after a training session on Word, they’ve asked “So how do you type with a mouse then?”

But my absolute favourite has been:  a user phones our Help Desk and one of our technical support guys answers the phone (a very loud Yorkshire man) – “I’ve got a problem in formatting a floppy disk” says the user, “Please explain your problem” says the technical support guy. “Well, I’ve taken the tray out, taken the paper out, put the disk in, put the tray back in and it won’t format”, “You’ve done what?” says the technical support guy. “I’ve taken the tray out, taken the paper out, put the disk in, put the tray back in and it won’t format … but it worked yesterday”.  It transpired that not only was the user trying to format a floppy disk in a printer, but it was a shared printer 40 yards down the corridor!!

It just goes to show that no matter how well we think we’ve explained IT to users and clients, there will always be someone that might not have fully understood the explanation and/or understood it in a completely different way.

Perhaps the phrase “… Use less jargon and more basic English …” should become embedded in our brains when talking to clients?