Translating Userese

[Kharakov]

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.

That's smurphed up. The other day, I was having a smurphy time, and while on the way to the store to pick up some smurphberries, I smurphed across a couple of smurphs. Hey diddily doo, smurpheroonies! I said, and we proceeded to smurph the smurph out of eachother.

Smurph.

 

[Ruth Harris]

One more for the software section of your Userese listing:

Download v. Install a program update. "Yes, I downloaded the update."

I have a half dozen clients who insist on saying that. And every time I have to clarify whether or not they actually mean install, or if they just downloaded it. The one time I didn't ask - a client used the correct terminology. You can't win for losing in this field

Ruth

 

[Cycad]

That's smurphed up. The other day, I was having a smurphy time, and while on the way to the store to pick up some smurphberries, I smurphed across a couple of smurphs. Hey diddily doo, smurpheroonies! I said, and we proceeded to smurph the smurph out of eachother.

Smurph.

Its to smurf not to smurph.
Do you smurf ?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

Yup. People think of us as writing arcane logic. However, the vast majority of the job is two things:

Removing all the fuzziness from the requests.

Translating the resulting directions into computer-speak.

The higher up the skill ladder you go the more of the job is the first part.

(And, when you're dealing with the users it's surprising how often the first part is impossible, the request must be rejected because it's not internally consistent.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

The problem is outsourced code is usually shit.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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--I've seen it many times. When you try to deal with tech as a series of actions rather than by understanding it doesn't work very well. Sooner or later the series of actions won't work right and you're stuck.

 

[prideandfall]

i got one recently that even after 20 years in IT kinda floored me.
a 65 year old asked me recently "how do i know if i'm firefoxing?" and i'm really glad i've been doing this long enough that i just found it adorable.

another one i got just this week was "when i click on an attachment it tried to open outlook. what causes that." and not even approaching the stupidity of the question itself, i was a snarky ass to the way it was asked and replied with "well, when a car won't start, what causes that?" and he says "lots of things could cause that, you'd have to look at the car, you can't answer that question without more information"
and then we sat there and stared at each other and i refused to break eye contact until about 7 seconds later he went "..... oh"

i think the thing i love most about IT as a profession is how much of my day is spent getting people to admit they're fucking idiots without ever having to actually say it.

 

[Elixir]

i got one recently that even after 20 years in IT kinda floored me.
a 65 year old asked me recently "how do i know if i'm firefoxing?" and i'm really glad i've been doing this long enough that i just found it adorable.

another one i got just this week was "when i click on an attachment it tried to open outlook. what causes that." and not even approaching the stupidity of the question itself, i was a snarky ass to the way it was asked and replied with "well, when a car won't start, what causes that?" and he says "lots of things could cause that, you'd have to look at the car, you can't answer that question without more information"
and then we sat there and stared at each other and i refused to break eye contact until about 7 seconds later he went "..... oh"

i think the thing i love most about IT as a profession is how much of my day is spent getting people to admit they're fucking idiots without ever having to actually say it.

LOL! I'm 67. I am also CTO of my Company. Good thing I have a great contractor to help me on the frequent occasions when network architecture leaves me mystified.
But to your story... I often have several browsers open. (I use different ones, leaving one "clean" of history, cookies etc so it will give me a true idea of our organic rankings for various words and long-tail keywords.)
I prefer "Firefoxing" to "Exploring" or "Safariing" or "Chroming", but it often takes me longer than it should to figure out which browser I'm looking at!

 

[Underseer]

One more for the software section of your Userese listing:

Download v. Install a program update. "Yes, I downloaded the update."

I have a half dozen clients who insist on saying that. And every time I have to clarify whether or not they actually mean install, or if they just downloaded it. The one time I didn't ask - a client used the correct terminology. You can't win for losing in this field

Ruth

Good one.

This was made in the 1990s. No way would I have allowed any of my users to update anything themselves.

- - - Updated - - -

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--I've seen it many times. When you try to deal with tech as a series of actions rather than by understanding it doesn't work very well. Sooner or later the series of actions won't work right and you're stuck.

Bingo! And when you try to explain the concepts involved, they get annoyed with you.

 

[Underseer]

i got one recently that even after 20 years in IT kinda floored me.
a 65 year old asked me recently "how do i know if i'm firefoxing?" and i'm really glad i've been doing this long enough that i just found it adorable.

another one i got just this week was "when i click on an attachment it tried to open outlook. what causes that." and not even approaching the stupidity of the question itself, i was a snarky ass to the way it was asked and replied with "well, when a car won't start, what causes that?" and he says "lots of things could cause that, you'd have to look at the car, you can't answer that question without more information"
and then we sat there and stared at each other and i refused to break eye contact until about 7 seconds later he went "..... oh"

i think the thing i love most about IT as a profession is how much of my day is spent getting people to admit they're fucking idiots without ever having to actually say it.

It's been a long time since I worked tech support, but I used to keep a desk bell around. If I got an unusually stupid caller, I would ring the bell. This allowed me to vent my frustration without changing the tone of my voice or losing my cool and provided amusement for my coworkers.

 

[Lugubert]

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".

Supposedly for Greek as well - "Yes, we have no bananas"...

 

[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".

Supposedly for Greek as well - "Yes, we have no bananas"...

I used to help people fill out applications for LIHEAP (low income heating assistance program). On the form was a checkbox for whether or not the person applying was receiving food stamps. So I would ask "Do you receive food stamps?"

Obviously, I just wanted a yes or no answer so that I knew whether or not to check the checkbox. But as it turns out, if you ask that question of an American or Russian (we got a lot of Russian applicants) and the answer is yes, instead of just saying "yes," most of them respond by reporting the dollar amount of their food assistance.

The vast majority of Americans and Russians respond this way, and I have no idea why.

 

[barbos]

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".

Supposedly for Greek as well - "Yes, we have no bananas"...

I used to help people fill out applications for LIHEAP (low income heating assistance program). On the form was a checkbox for whether or not the person applying was receiving food stamps. So I would ask "Do you receive food stamps?"

Obviously, I just wanted a yes or no answer so that I knew whether or not to check the checkbox. But as it turns out, if you ask that question of an American or Russian (we got a lot of Russian applicants) and the answer is yes, instead of just saying "yes," most of them respond by reporting the dollar amount of their food assistance.

The vast majority of Americans and Russians respond this way, and I have no idea why.

I presume you are not american? I agree it's weird even for a russian.
In Russian If you ask "You don't have any bananas (do you)?" answer "Yes" means they agree with your statement that there are no bananas (Yes, there are no bananas) and "No" means disagreement (No, there are bananas).

But it is highly confusing for russians too, so people end up asking again "Do you have bananas? or simply don't use that form of question.

But in russian "yes" could simply mean that they hear you, especially when answering phone. So basically it's like "OK" in english.

Annoying thing in russian IT slang for me is them not using English pronunciation of english words. Even worse I recently learned that in school they don't use correct English pronunciation of english alphabet. They basically use german pronunciation. So I had to switch to it too when spelling a username.

 

[Underseer]

I used to help people fill out applications for LIHEAP (low income heating assistance program). On the form was a checkbox for whether or not the person applying was receiving food stamps. So I would ask "Do you receive food stamps?"

Obviously, I just wanted a yes or no answer so that I knew whether or not to check the checkbox. But as it turns out, if you ask that question of an American or Russian (we got a lot of Russian applicants) and the answer is yes, instead of just saying "yes," most of them respond by reporting the dollar amount of their food assistance.

The vast majority of Americans and Russians respond this way, and I have no idea why.

I presume you are not american? I agree it's weird even for a russian.
In Russian If you ask "You don't have any bananas (do you)?" answer "Yes" means they agree with your statement that there are no bananas (Yes, there are no bananas) and "No" means disagreement (No, there are bananas).

But it is highly confusing for russians too, so people end up asking again "Do you have bananas? or simply don't use that form of question.

But in russian "yes" could simply mean that they hear you, especially when answering phone. So basically it's like "OK" in english.

Annoying thing in russian IT slang for me is them not using English pronunciation of english words. Even worse I recently learned that in school they don't use correct English pronunciation of english alphabet. They basically use german pronunciation. So I had to switch to it too when spelling a username.

I'm American. Chicago is part of America.

 

[Ruth Harris]

I'm American. Chicago is part of America.

You sure about that?

Ruth

 

[dendrast]

 

[prideandfall]

It's been a long time since I worked tech support, but I used to keep a desk bell around. If I got an unusually stupid caller, I would ring the bell. This allowed me to vent my frustration without changing the tone of my voice or losing my cool and provided amusement for my coworkers.

heh i don't do phone support anymore... i never could, lockheed martin broke me of my ability to do that. collectively, the dumbest bunch of mother fuckers i have ever encountered in my life.

 

[Underseer]

I'm American. Chicago is part of America.

You sure about that?

Ruth

You don't consider Chicago to be part of America?

Do tell us why you think that. I'm sure your answer will be fascinating.

 

[Ruth Harris]

I'm American. Chicago is part of America.

You sure about that?

Ruth

You don't consider Chicago to be part of America?

Do tell us why you think that. I'm sure your answer will be fascinating.

(Using my best Foghorn Leghorn voice) “That’s a joke, I say that’s a joke son”

Which, apparently, failed miserably. It just struck me as funny that someone missed your location in your information at the left of your post and thought you might be Russian. I really didn't have any ulterior motives at all. I apologize for any offense given to anyone and I will now go eat worms.

Ruth