Tell me the problem, not your solution

My job revolves around giving customers what they need, NOT what they ask for. Most of them are f**kwits that can barely think without setting off the smoke alarms. How the hell they get employed is beyond me.

Typically, I'll get a request to procure/test/install a new piece of software. Upwards of 90% of the time this kit is not needed. It's something they've seen on the TV, in a magazine or a friend's recommendation and they've invented a reason to get it. Often this thing has been written by a tiny software house, support is non-existent and there's no comeback when it won't interface with the rest of the organisation's portfolio.

So now I have to waste my time trying to convince them that they're pet piece of crap IS a piece of crap. They get defensive and put up barriers to common-sense: "My brother uses this all the time and he's never had any problems."

"Yeah? Well, your brother's IT experience was picked up during a summer job in PC World. I've been doing this for over a decade. My experience is based on years of multi-site, multi-office linkages spread over numerous separate domains encompassing the problems of security, load balancing and redundancy. I've installed and supported literally hundreds of different pieces of software and thousands of PCs and servers.

Your brother setup a home network of three PCs using wifi and was hacked within 30 minutes."

Of course, I can't offload on the customer like this. I have to let them learn for themselves.

"Hi, look I've found this great package that will save me a LOT of time. I must have it before the end of the week. It can fly backwards and whistle Dixie whilst earning a fortune on the stock market. I've ordered it and it only cost £5000, what a bargain." Blah, blah, f**ing blah.

"Ok. So what is it you want to achieve with this thing?" Yawn.

"I need to ensure all my Word documents have the company logo at the top of every page." I'm too important to turn up for my training.

"Oh well you can already do that with Word. Let me show you how, it'll take 30 seconds. How much did you say that software was?" As Frank Grimes said to Homer Simpson: If this were any other country, you'd have starved to death long ago.