Why you can't trust end users to follow instructions
Even seemingly competent end users frequently ignore explicit error messages, fail to attempt provided fixes, or misrepresent performing basic troubleshooting steps like rebooting. Because users will inevitably find ways to unintentionally make issues worse, IT admins learn to give them as little room as possible to break things. This constant cycle of vague tickets and ignored advice creates so much extra work that it makes some solo admins want to switch careers.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
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Why you can't trust end users to follow instructions
- 1Refusing to hand over any equipment until it is 100% ready for the user to sign in.Did this help you?
- 2Forcing users to physically drive to the office to drop off or fix equipment when they fail to follow instructions.Did this help you?
- 3Designing deployment processes that give the user zero room to break things.Did this help you?
- 4Walking the user through a factory reset to wipe the machine and re-trigger the automated setup.Did this help you?
- 5Walking users through the exact same steps repeatedly.Did this help you?
- 6Forcing users to read the error message aloud.Did this help you?
- 7Auto-closing vague tickets when users do not respond to follow-up questions.Did this help you?
- 8Confronting users directly about their history of repeating the same errors.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“This job as a solo admin has so much work, and stuff like this wants me to switch careers.”source ↗
“Whenever the app needs to be signed in again, she will tell me that there's an IT issue. I have explained to her multiple times that logging in will fix the 'u are not logged in' problem.”source ↗
“I emphasized how important it was, but then he ignored it.”source ↗
“yeah biggest thing i’ve learned is to give the user as little room as possible to break things. my policy is to have zero faith in the end user lmao”source ↗
“Never trust someone to not flub the easiest of task. Even the ones that otherwise seem competent. They will always find a way to make things worse, usually unintentionally.”source ↗
“I had the end user/s (a least three) tell me they turned the printer off and back on. So after making this trip and getting to the clients location I see the printer is on and attached to the network, it has no ip as expected. When I print out the system info sheet, the printer has an uptime that matches when the power came back on after the power outage and not any of the times the end users claim they restarted the MFD.”source ↗
“I get this kind of ticket a lot. I used to be a lot more polite. Now it's usually a form of *"What does the error say?"* "It says my password expired" *"OK, so that means that your password expired."*”source ↗
“We have a whole set of tickets that just say "It stopped working" When pressed for info, the ticket goes unanswered and eventually auto closes.”source ↗
“i also loooove it when you give them a fix and then they never respond. usually it means that the problem was solved, but there was a case with this particular end user who after seeing my message checking up two days later went: 'no it's still not working.' me: oh did the fix i sent not work? was there a new error message, what did it say? her: no i didn't try it yet”source ↗
Where this came up
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