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Friday, May 27, 2011

A Good Insight On Taking Responsibility. Also How I Made A Nun Break A Monitor.

Just read this article on www.technibble.com, which is regularly a good resource for self-employed computer techs.

"One of the most powerful mindsets to have as your own boss is to always blame yourself for anything that goes wrong. That’s right, anything. Everything is your fault."

To expand on this: while this may not be true, it might as well be.  The author explains that while associates, employees, or clients may have done wrong to screw you over, it's only your fault if you don't take action to them.

Too many times has this happened for people I've worked for.  My last company had a client, a private school, that had some of the worst people to work with.  The teachers were uncooperative and usually complained about problems with machines but then refuse to explain them in any amount of detail.  The facility were incompetent and had to be tutored in basic functions time after time again.  And the principal was very demanding despite what they were paying (sometimes not at all), and has even took measures to deliberately prevent us from doing any support for them.

But at the end of the day, it was my bosses' fault.  They continued to support them after months of outstanding payments, they gave discounts for services we not able to render because of floods in their computer labs, they gave into the demands of the principal, who suffered from bi-polar disorder, for reselling and support of expensive equipment for herself including tablets, laptops, and smart phones, while the classrooms and labs had machines that were refurbished over five years prior and worst of all, they put up with their bullshit with absolutely no resistance.

I was ordered to support them even when teachers and faculty we needed on-site to help them would either leave early for the day, or not show up at all.  I had to go above and beyond the call of duty to manually organize the principal's documents, taking time away from serious issues on domain controllers or email servers, only to be scolded by both the client and employer for not prioritizing, when priorities was completely determined by my boss.  And I can claim without any doubt that I'm responsible for the principal, a 60-something-year-old nun who could not have weighed over a hundred pounds, destroying a LCD monitor out of anger because I had asked her how I should tutor the office staff to use Outlook.

After years of supporting them, they had called our company out of the blue to inform us that they were no longer in need of our services.  One of my bosses then found an proposal from a competitor for over $100,000 (many times more than what our company were charging) to buy new equipment for the entire school, and this was not including whatever support they would provide.  No other company would do nearly the amount of work we had done.  They would hemorrhage more money though manpower and resources than an Ebola victim or that one dude from Scanners.

Why did they suddenly leave us and go buy way more equipment from another company they had just hired than they had bought from us over the entire time we've supported them combined, and would do nowhere near the work we have done?  We never could figure that out.  We were their support company, not their psychologists.  It wasn't our responsibility to figure why they did what they did, but just to do what they had asked.  But it wasn't our fault because we didn't provide them enough, but because we provided them with too much, allowing them to ask for more crazy shit and getting away with making it harder and harder for us to allow us to help them while not charging another extra cent, and taking time away from other clients who needed our help more.  And it was my fault for putting up with it and not quitting any earlier.

You see, while a service company exists to scratch the itches of their clients, you don't go scratching places that don't exist.  If a client asks for something you (or anyone) can't do, you don't do it.  You don't try solving problems that have no solution, especially if they don't pay you for it.  Hell, you don't need to go out of your way to solve even remotely ridiculous shit if you're already recognized as a competent service provider to dozens of other customers.

Say you're a prostitute, one that gets tricks all the time and rarely, if ever, does any sick stuff.  Out of nowhere, you start expanding like crazy, but not to broader demographics, but to really niche stuff.  Really, really niche stuff.  Like stuff you could only find on FreeNet or hard drives confiscated by the FBI.  You're going to alienate a lot of johns when they find out you're too busy doing scat play with transsexual midgets all to service one guy who's watching like Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies.  It doesn't matter what he's paying you, or even if you like doing that sort of thing, because a lot of people who relied on you will not or cannot from now on.  You're denying a lot of people your well-needed services, and most of all you're losing a lot of income.  You filthy, filthy whore.

link: http://www.technibble.com/blame-yourself/#more-7198

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