Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
The only thing that counts in most CS departments are policies and numbers.
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That may be true, but there's a reason why there are troubleshooting steps: they can save time.
I once drove an hour, parked in a expensive zone (we're talking downtown Washington D.C., within blocks of the Monument) and went into a building to solve a difficult network printer problem, only to discover that it was out of paper. The employees who faithfully reported each and every time that "nothing came out of the printer" never saw fit to notify us that there was a message on the printer screen, and we assumed they were smart enough to add paper on their own. That mistake cost the company hundreds of dollars. Similarly, we would sometimes discover that a computer wasn't plugged in - which helped to explain why they couldn't see anything on their screen.
Phones obfuscate. We can't see, we assume, and without a protocol we may make mistakes that cost the company a lot of money. But policies can be inane as well, because they assume that the person handling the call lacks intelligence. You might be an exceptional employee, which suggests that your future does not lie in answering telephone support issues.