Translating Userese

[Underseer]

When I first got into IT, it took me at least a year to figure out that when users say "computer," they really mean "monitor." The monitor is the thing they look at all day, so to them, that is the computer. When you point to the big box that the monitor plugs into and ask them what that is, they will say "hard drive" or "CD drive."

I like to think that over the years, I got pretty good at translating userese, but every once in a while I get completely stumped. My elderly father recently asked me for computer help. I asked him what was wrong and he said "My Firefox got replaced with Yahoo." Apparently, that meant that he had trouble creating a new account at a web site (which was not Yahoo, of course) and didn't understand how password recovery works. For the life of me, I can't understand how he got from "I can't create an account at web site A" to "therefore, my preferred web browser got replaced with web site B."

Years ago, I made a "Userese dictionary" as a joke. Perhaps I'll post it here in this thread for your amusement, but for now, let us know the most incomprehensible userese you've encountered, and what it correctly translated to.

I once had a panicked user tell me "I can't file the file in the file! It won't file!" For the life of me, I don't recall what her actual problem was, but those two sentences stuck in my memory because it is quite possibly the most incomprehensible and bizarre thing a user ever said to me.

 

[James Brown]

Gosh, there are loads of these on the interwebs. Some that I've personally encountered...

"Does this computer come with the Internet on it?"

"Is your computer a desktop or a laptop?" "Neither, it sits on the floor."

"Something's wrong with my password. All I see are little star thingies."

When describing that a mouse pointer is skipping: "The mouse is jumping around erotically."

 

[Iznomneak]

One of my customer's was natively Spanish speaking, but he spoke English very well. It took to a while to realize that when I asked him a Yes or No question, if he answered "yes", it did NOT necessarily mean "the answer to your question is yes". It often meant "I heard that you asked me a question and I'm politely responding".

 

[Loren Pechtel]

One of my customer's was natively Spanish speaking, but he spoke English very well. It took to a while to realize that when I asked him a Yes or No question, if he answered "yes", it did NOT necessarily mean "the answer to your question is yes". It often meant "I heard that you asked me a question and I'm politely responding".

Argh--I've had a lot of trouble over the years with people whose English is limited and they pretend to comprehend when they really got maybe 1/4 of it.

 

[Underseer]

One of my customer's was natively Spanish speaking, but he spoke English very well. It took to a while to realize that when I asked him a Yes or No question, if he answered "yes", it did NOT necessarily mean "the answer to your question is yes". It often meant "I heard that you asked me a question and I'm politely responding".

Argh--I've had a lot of trouble over the years with people whose English is limited and they pretend to comprehend when they really got maybe 1/4 of it.

I provided tech support in the 1990s when most cubicle monkies never saw a computer before getting their current job (or the job just before that). I've had that same thing from fully native speakers all the time.

 

[rousseau]

As a programmer, it makes me appreciate how secure my career is. Things I know how to do, the majority of people in my company don't even know how to ask me to do properly.

 

[Underseer]

As a programmer, it makes me appreciate how secure my career is. Things I know how to do, the majority of people in my company don't even know how to ask me to do properly.

Secure?

You produce code. Thanks to the Internet, anyone in the world can produce code. It doesn't have to be someone in a particular location. So for many companies, it's cheaper to get the coding done in, say, India, where the programmers are much, much cheaper. It's only a matter of time before that starts to have an effect on programmers in first world countries, assuming it hasn't already.

 

[rousseau]

As a programmer, it makes me appreciate how secure my career is. Things I know how to do, the majority of people in my company don't even know how to ask me to do properly.

Secure?

You produce code. Thanks to the Internet, anyone in the world can produce code. It doesn't have to be someone in a particular location. So for many companies, it's cheaper to get the coding done in, say, India, where the programmers are much, much cheaper. It's only a matter of time before that starts to have an effect on programmers in first world countries.

I think the whole 'let's outsource our entire programming team' is starting to flip back to the way it was before.

Paying someone in India a third of the price sounds good in theory, until you realise you no longer have ownership of your IT department, it's next to impossible to manage the work you've outsourced, and the quality of the solutions being produced is terrible.

Ten years ago it sounded like a good idea, but anymore I don't know that as many reasonable business leaders see it as a viable solution.

In the city where I'm from the tech sector is growing at an extremely rapid pace, not shrinking, and my skills have never been in more demand.

 

[Underseer]

As a programmer, it makes me appreciate how secure my career is. Things I know how to do, the majority of people in my company don't even know how to ask me to do properly.

Secure?

You produce code. Thanks to the Internet, anyone in the world can produce code. It doesn't have to be someone in a particular location. So for many companies, it's cheaper to get the coding done in, say, India, where the programmers are much, much cheaper. It's only a matter of time before that starts to have an effect on programmers in first world countries.

I think the whole 'let's outsource our entire programming team' is starting to flip back to the way it was before.

Paying someone in India a third of the price sounds good in theory, until you realise you no longer have ownership of your IT department, it's next to impossible to manage the work you've outsourced, and the quality of the solutions being produced is terrible.

Ten years ago it sounded like a good idea, but anymore I don't know that as many reasonable business leaders see it as a viable solution.

In the city where I'm from the tech sector is growing at an extremely rapid pace, not shrinking, and my skills have never been in more demand.

That's great to hear!

 

[James Brown]

My company uses Indians to write code. They just move to America first. In my office, at least two-thirds of the employees are Indian.

 

[barbos]

When I first got into IT, it took me at least a year to figure out that when users say "computer," they really mean "monitor." The monitor is the thing they look at all day, so to them, that is the computer. When you point to the big box that the monitor plugs into and ask them what that is, they will say "hard drive" or "CD drive."

I too noticed that older folk especially women have very weird (non-)understanding how things work. They can memorize sequence of actions to get desired result very well but when something gets out of sequence they get stuck completely. When you try to explain what any actions actually does and why they display no interest in learning that.

 

[bilby]

My favorite ticket of all time was from a customer who provided a problem specification that read (in its entirety):

"Unknown Error".

The temptation to respond "Unknown Solution. Ticket Closed." was almost overwhelming; But further investigation showed that the information he had provided was a complete and accurate copy of the on-screen message his users were seeing - so the problem actually resided in the appalling error handling built into our software (not by me, I hasten to add).

It might have been nice if he had been a touch more forthcoming regarding the context, but at the end of the day, it was far more our developers who were at fault than the customer.

 

[barbos]

but at the end of the day, it was far more our developers who were at fault than the customer.

Do you outsource developers?

 

[bilby]

but at the end of the day, it was far more our developers who were at fault than the customer.

Do you outsource developers?

In this case, they were in Canada. So yes.

Quite possibly born in Hyderabad though

 

[rousseau]

My company uses Indians to write code. They just move to America first. In my office, at least two-thirds of the employees are Indian.

Yea, that's a thing I'm starting to see a bit of too, mainly in the banks around here.

 

[Hermit]

When I first got into IT, it took me at least a year to figure out that when users say "computer," they really mean "monitor." The monitor is the thing they look at all day, so to them, that is the computer. When you point to the big box that the monitor plugs into and ask them what that is, they will say "hard drive" or "CD drive."

I too noticed that older folk especially women have very weird (non-)understanding how things work. They can memorize sequence of actions to get desired result very well but when something gets out of sequence they get stuck completely. When you try to explain what any actions actually does and why they display no interest in learning that.

Oh, those pig-ignorant users. Just because they no longer need to know how to prime a carburettor to get their car started or how to reline the brakes to get it to stop, they are now under the mistaken impression that they do not need equivalent skills to get their computer to take them to wherever it is they want to them to take them to.

 

[Underseer]

When I first got into IT, it took me at least a year to figure out that when users say "computer," they really mean "monitor." The monitor is the thing they look at all day, so to them, that is the computer. When you point to the big box that the monitor plugs into and ask them what that is, they will say "hard drive" or "CD drive."

I too noticed that older folk especially women have very weird (non-)understanding how things work. They can memorize sequence of actions to get desired result very well but when something gets out of sequence they get stuck completely. When you try to explain what any actions actually does and why they display no interest in learning that.

Yup!

 

[Underseer]

(The below is humor from the 1990s. Some of the humor is obviously dated.)

Userese Dictionary

Introduction

The single biggest mistake made by people new to the help desk is assuming that users use words in the same way tech people do. This is wrong. Users have a completely different language to describe anything computer related.

An experienced technician can instantly translate Userese into normal English, but this can take years to achieve such a level of linguistic proficiency.

To assist those entering the world of support, I am in the process of compiling a Userese Dictionary. Please feel free to email me any additions or suggestions at [redacted].

Warning on training
Any attempt to train your users will invalidate the contents of this dictionary. After training, your users will begin using all new words incorrectly.

Special note on Userese grammar
All nouns are preceded by the preposition “the” or sometimes “my”. At times their choice between these two preposition can have significance.

Warning on beginning the call
Never begin a call with the phrase “How can I help you?” You should begin every call with the phrase “Please describe the nature of your problem.” If you fail to do so, you will begin every call with the following exchange:

Tech: Help desk, how can I help you?
User: It’s broke. Fix it.
Tech: What seems to be broken?
User: (long pause followed by exasperated sigh) The computer! (Under breath) What, is he stupid?
Tech: Ok, what on the computer seems to be broken?
User: It’s not doing it.
Tech: What is it not doing?


Hardware

Modem n. 1: The computer.

Computer n. 1. The monitor.

Hard Drive, The n. 1: The computer. 2: 3.5” floppy disk drive.

Hard Disk, My n. 3.5” floppy disk. The way to tell when the user is referring to a floppy disk as opposed to a floppy disk drive is not so much the use of the word “disk” instead of “drive” (see The Hard Drive above), but rather the use of the word “my” instead of “the”.

Printer n. Most of the time, users are pretty good about using the word “printer” to refer to printers. Be aware however, that the word is sometimes used to describe anything with paper in it, e.g. photocopiers, fax machines, filing cabinets, etc.

CPU n. This word is only used by advanced users (i.e. “knows just enough to be dangerous”). Usually refers to either the computer or the monitor.

Box n. 1: Computer 2: Monitor 3: Uninterruptible power supply 4: AC adapter 5: Printer 6: Scanner 7: Dongle. Also see entry for “Box” in the Software section.

Cup Holder n. CD-ROM drive. (refer to Urban Legends.)

Memory n. The hard drive.

RAM n. The hard drive.

Hard Drive Space n. RAM.


Software

File n. 1: File/Document (accidentally correct) 2: Folder/Directory 3: Icon 4: application 5: shortcut/alias 6: Menus, menu selections or buttons 7: v. To save a file 8: v. To move a file or directory 9: v. To create a file or directory 10: v. To enter data. Example (actual user quote): “I can’t file the file in the file. It won’t file.”

Folder n. 1: File/Document 2: Folder/Directory (accidentally correct) 3: Icon 4: application 5: shortcut/alias. 6: Menus, menu selections or buttons.

Directory n. Any list of items.

Icon n. 1: File/Document 2: Folder/Directory 3: Application 4: Shortcut/alias 5: Icon (accidentally correct) 6: Button 7: Menu selection 8: Scroll bar 9: Cursor.

Box n. 1: Icon 2: Button 3: Window 4: Status bar 5: Toolbar 6: Dialog box 7: Window frame 8: Text input box 9: Drop list 10: Window tab 11: Radio button 12: Checkbox. Also see entry for “Box” in the Hardware section.

Program n. 1: Process 2: Action 3: Macro 4: Icon 5: Dialog box 6: Subroutine 7: Buttons 8: Menu selections 9: Spreadsheet formulas. Don’t laugh. You probably misuse this word from time to time yourself.

Rolodex n. All contact management applications and all data used by contact management applications. Be careful. If your company uses more than one contact management application each using more than one document, All such applications and documents will be referred to as “The Rolodex”. Can sometimes refer to any database or part of a database.

AOL, My n. 1. Any email client 2. Any web browser 3. The Internet.

Screensaver n. 1. Desktop wallpaper

Word / Word Document
WordPerfect / WordPerfect Document
WordPro / WordPro Document, etc. n. Once a user becomes familiar with a word processing application, ALL word processors and word processing documents will be referred to by that product name. The same holds true for any category of software, e.g. “123” for all spreadsheets, “Photoshop” for all graphics software, etc.

Mouse n. Cursor.

Trackball n. Cursor.

Arrow n. Cursor.

Cursor n. Icon.

Click v. 1: Double-click 2: Triple-click.

Right-click v. 1: Double-click 2: Triple-click.

Ctrl-click v. 1: Double-click 2: Triple-click.

Shift-click v. 1: Double-click 2: Triple-click.

Open v. 1: Double-click 2: Triple-click.

Start v. 1: Double-click 2: Triple-click.

Select v. 1: Double-click 2: Triple-click.

 

[Underseer]

My company uses Indians to write code. They just move to America first. In my office, at least two-thirds of the employees are Indian.

Let me guess: they all have H1-B visas?

H1-B is supposed to be for highly specialized skills. It's supposed to be used when an employer can't find any American with the necessary skills. But these days, it seems to be used to bring in people who are willing to work for less, as yet one more method for suppressing wages.

 

[Underseer]

"My Firefox god replaced by Yahoo"

Someone with experience at help desk might translate the above to "I somehow changed my home page in Firefox to Yahoo, and now I'm all confused," but in the case of my father, if the Firefox home page is anything other than Yahoo, he becomes agitated and confused, so he definitely did not mean that. I'm still at a loss to understand what exactly he meant.