by A H Kesari Prasad, Vice President-Marketing, Xomox Sanmar Ltd.
In the beginning, when God created humans, She created two sub-species and named them Man and Woman. In the twentieth-century, when a human created computers, he /she again created two sub-species and named them Geeks and Users.
Geeks are those who know and can understand terms such as computer, motherboard, chip, bits, bytes, broadband, crash, hang-up etc. Users are those who understand music, culture, theatre, gourmet cuisine, humour (very important!!!) etc. Get the difference?
Me? The very fact that I’m writing this article should tell you the category to which I belong. Mind you, I have nothing against geeks. I really love them. They are as necessary to maintain the ecological balance as cockroaches, mosquitoes, scorpions and other beautiful species.
My first contact with a geek came up when my company provided me with a desktop. The computer was on when I came into my room and there was a nice geek waiting by to help me get
started. I dutifully noted down all the instructions in my notebook and assumed that I was on my way.
The next morning, when I came in, I didn’t know how to start the computer. So I rang up the Help Desk. The person patiently listened to me (all these Help Desk persons are so patient, have you noticed?) and then told me that I should boot up the computer. Huh? I didn’t know that these computers were to be treated like old cars. Fortunately, before I could take his words literally, he bounded up and just pressed a key. I had my notebook ready. “Tell me which key I should press” I said. “Any key” he said. I couldn’t believe it. So, like a child I booted and unbooted the computer about ten times by pressing various keys till I was convinced that he was right.
Life went on merrily till we went into SAP. For those of you who don’t understand, this is an Enterprise Resource Planning software. I’m sorry if I sound like a geek, but there is no other way to describe it. Suddenly my idyllic world was shattered. I had to learn all over again.
Fortunately, help was at hand. My saviour was this jolly, roly-poly person with a female sounding nickname from the SAP Core Team. Now I’m sure this description is so vague that no one will know whom I am really referring to.
I rang him up one day and said that I had a problem since I couldn’t open a particular file. He came up, took one look at my computer and said “Oh, you have to unzip.” “How?” I asked.
He gazed at me as though I was from another planet. I gazed back at him with my round, innocent eyes. (An innocence born of ignorance, I might add.) Then he tapped a couple of keys and the file opened. That’s how I learnt about a zipped file and how to unzip it.
Nowadays, I contact the Help Desk so often that I have a sneaking feeling that they have appointed one person just to help me. One factor which has helped me maintain my sanity through all my interactions with geeks is that they are there only to serve the needs of users like us. After all, if there were no users, where would that leave the geeks?
Bye, got to go now. There’s an “Excel” class I have to attend.
User: A living breathing human being, who happens to be operating a computer.
Don’t believe me? Go to http://teladesign.com/ma-thesis/glossary.php Still can’t access? Go to Help Desk.