I was going to start this post by saying I find myself in a unique position this morning, but sadly that isn't the case.

The situation I find myself in unfortunately happens far too often. I am aware it is probably an inherent risk of working in a "service oriented field", but it still confounds me every time it happens.

The question is, where do you draw the line between being helpful and actually doing everyone's job for them? I really like that saying "give a person a fish, they eat for a day, teach them to fish and they eat for a lifetime".

If I follow that adage, I am probably putting the burden back upon myself because if I don't do a good job teaching them to (do whatever task) then is it really their fault when they need help in the future? Let me give you two examples that happened just this morning prompting me to write this post.

Situation 1

Let me get this out of the way first thing and say that I hate web pages. Trust me, I have edited and designed my fair share of them, so that part isn't the issue. What I hate about them is no one wanting to take ownership concerning the content that gets put on them.

It is very rare (especially in public education) that you can afford a person whose sole job is to update the webpage and keep it current. More commonly, you usually get a person whose job involves many tasks, only one of which is updating the web page.

Still, I would hope that is happening frequently enough that you are familiar with the interface and how to perform basic tasks like adding a link, changing text, and uploading a picture.

This morning I had a secretary email me to tell me that the picture looks nice on the high school page and could it be added to the middle school page as well. Only one problem with that, it wasn't me that added the picture. I checked the change logs and it looks like the principal made that change. I emailed the secretary back and let her know that it wasn't me and that it looks like the principal did it.

About five minutes later, I got an email back telling me that she added the picture to the middle school page. My first instinct was to email back and say "Awesome! Would you like me to email you every time I do my job as well?".

If you don't work in the service field or IT, you will probably assume I am the biggest jerk for thinking that. If you do work in one of those fields you probably just laughed a little bit.

Of course I didn't reply with that. Learning not to reply with my first thought has been a hard habit to break in the past 15+ years working in IT. Sometimes I still fail!

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Situation 2

Setting up user accounts in a school district can be pretty interesting. Admins usually need to create some form of unique system to that it is easy to identify students from each grade level. This typically means that logins are not always that intuitive for non technical people.

At the beginning of the year I have an info-graphic I share with all the staff that clearly walks through the process of how to determine what a students login would be using fun pop culture references. It never fails that I have teachers and staff emailing me constantly asking what a students login is.

Case in point, this morning I got an email saying "can I get xxxxx's email?" Already frustrated from the previous interaction in situation 1, I replied "Yes, it is the standard district format". Of course I got a reply with all kinds of excuses about why they don't know what that would be. The sad thing is, I have a feeling they didn't even try.

They could just as easily lookup the piece of information they need in our SIS (student information system) to determine the students login just as easily as I could. What they are telling me is that my time is less important than theirs so I should just look it up.

The Big Question

So that brings us to the big question: How do you deliver reasonable support with out actually doing their jobs for them? I have worked with people in the past who I thought were so inept that I figured it was just easier (and quicker for me) to do tasks for them. Eventually I realized they were actually brilliant, in that they simply acted dumb so everyone would do their job for them.

It is also easy to come across as "not caring" when you try to give people the time to figure it out for themselves. The fact is being the only IT person in a whole school district, time management is crucial. If the end users can work things out for themselves, that frees up time for me to work on bigger projects.

I realize I am probably a bit jaded having been in the industry for so long. I'd really love to hear your opinions though. I met my wife at work and she honestly thought I was a jerk when she first met me because of how I sometimes reacted to support requests. Heck she probably still thinks I am a jerk sometimes :)

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