Help Deks/Password self service woes.

[frostytheplebe]

Ok, if this is considered... distastful or inappropriate then I apologize, but I need to make sure I am not going crazy here,

As people sign up for login accounts, they are often prompted for thier DOBs. At the company I work at, when you are prompted for your date of birth, this is what you are asked for:

Date of Birth (MMDD):

Now, lets say you were signing up for an account, what would you enter in this field?

 

[Dyret]

My date of birth?

 

[frostytheplebe]

My date of birth?

Right, but exactly what numbers? (you dont have to use your own, just an example).

 

[Dyret]

MonthMonthDayDay?

Mine would be 0420.

 

[frostytheplebe]

MonthMonthDayDay?

Mine would be 0420.

Well, guess what, you did better then 90% of the people I have to deal with, and I don't deal with the general public (I wouldn't be complaining if i did), no sir, I'm dealing with researchers and their assistants. People with Master's and Doctorates degrees. But this ALWAYS seems to hold them up.

"Well I put it in 09/10"

Does it say to put in a slash?

"no"

Well then?

"um.. oh hey it works now!"

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"It says invalid birthday, I put in 05/10/74"

Ok, in the instructions do you see anything that asks you for a year or the slash?

"oops, sorry."

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"This is not user friendly, it should have more clear instructions."

Ok, so give me a recommendation how to word it, and I'll be happy to pass it on to my superiors.

"Well... I don't have one!"

...
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(And lets not forget my personal favorite)

"I entered 4/3/1980 and its not working at all, I followed the instructions to a T."

Sir whats the number on your computer? I'm going to remote in and take care of this FOR YOU!

"I don't know, I can't find it..."

Its on the big white sticker on the bottom of your monitor that says COMPUTER NUMBER in Bold."
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Sorry about the rant. This is 90% of what I spend my 50 hours a week doing when i could be fielding more technical issues. It just gets tiresome after a while. Yes I'm an angry person.

Anyway, don't mind me. Thanks for listening!

 

[Quarto]

Sorry about the rant. This is 90% of what I spend my 50 hours a week doing when i could be fielding more technical issues. It just gets tiresome after a while. Yes I'm an angry person.

Well, you are overlooking something rather important.

People get used to things. They have habits. This is especially the case when it comes to the formatting used in various forms. You know, when you enter your date of birth into a form every week, after a while you get used to the fact that the instructions are the same every time - so naturally, when you encounter a computer prompt that has different instructions, your first reaction isn't to double-check what you entered - the program has rejected the date of birth that you entered in the correct and standard way, so clearly there's an error in the program. The idea that the programmers simply decided to abandon the standard won't even occur to you - surely, nobody could be that stupid, right? ...Except your company, of course .

So, you keep having to deal with this issue not because people are stupid, but because your company is stupid. Instead of asking them to enter MMDD, you could have asked them to enter MM/DD/YY (or DD/MM/YY, whichever's more appropriate where you live), also adding compatibility for four-digit year data. But noooooooo, your company chose to be arrogant and make up their own brand new standard. So yeah, you'll be dealing with this issue all the time - be sure thank your superiors for it .

 

[Bandit LOAF]

It doesn't seem like it would be an especially complex extra layer of logic to automatically convert inputs that include the extra digits or slashes into the four numbers your system wants. The system should be smart, not the users.

 

[ChanceKell]

I've worked for a time as technical support, intra-company. I cringed hearing your examples, not only because I've heard them all before, but because they happen all the time, in business all over the world.

I'm sorry you have to deal with people who overlook the obvious. I also wish you have some way to vent your frustration, because a job like that needs an outlet. Just feel good that you have a job in this terrible economy, and you get a paycheck you can use to buy cool things, like WC merchandise off eBay!

 

[frostytheplebe]

So, you keep having to deal with this issue not because people are stupid, but because your company is stupid. Instead of asking them to enter MMDD, you could have asked them to enter MM/DD/YY (or DD/MM/YY, whichever's more appropriate where you live), also adding compatibility for four-digit year data. But noooooooo, your company chose to be arrogant and make up their own brand new standard. So yeah, you'll be dealing with this issue all the time - be sure thank your superiors for it .

Yup, and believe me I've had this conversation with the Admin team a million times over, but they don't listen to us plebes, which is why I try not to blame the users, until they insist they were doing it right... and will not listen to reason... which does happen.

I've worked for a time as technical support, intra-company. I cringed hearing your examples, not only because I've heard them all before, but because they happen all the time, in business all over the world.

I'm sorry you have to deal with people who overlook the obvious. I also wish you have some way to vent your frustration, because a job like that needs an outlet. Just feel good that you have a job in this terrible economy, and you get a paycheck you can use to buy cool things, like WC merchandise off eBay!

Hahahaha that IS what keeps me going! Thanks man!

 

[Worf]

Just bide your time until you can unleash something like this...

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/NonCompliant-By-Design.aspx

 

[cff]

Just the usual fun at tech support. Nothing spectacular there.

That said I bet that Europeans would produce far less errors in that specific case and enter the the correct format. Why? Because we are used to have to look for the format regularly because it differs so often depending who wrote the software/webpage. Its sooo awesome to get an unlabeled date/time field and have to spend 1 minute to figure out which field goes to 31 and which one to 99. ;-)