Manuel McLure wrote:
It's becoming pretty obvious that although you are very smart people, you wouldn't last a day in a customer support environment.
Now, that's pretty funny... because I have worked in various customer support environments for quite some time, and one of the reasons that it pays to be "very smart" in that field is because *sometimes you have to tell the customer that they are wrong*, in such a way that they don't lose it (and you don't lose them as a customer).
The customer is not always right. They may think that if they just do thus-and-so ("just click", buy whatever takes their fancy, whether or not their equipment/OS supports it, plug in a wireless card and be safe from having their bandwith stolen without lifting a finger to secure their system), that they have the right and ability to change natural/physical/electronic/gravitational law, but they don't.
And when they come face to face with the real world, CS is the one who has to tell them just what's going on, and how to fix it, if it's not already FUBAR'd beyond hope (which CS also has to be smart enough to figure out from the information they can pry out of a non-expert). So if CS isn't full of pretty smart people, CS doesn't last long, because it's a very delicate dance. Of course, charm helps, as does a certain amount of compassion, but a smart person can get around lacking those, if they must.
But this is not a customer service environment. Few if any of us have paid for Gentoo; we are only "customers" in the broadest sense. And if we are not aware by now that becoming a Gentoo "customer" is a cooperative agreement, that requires some active participation on our parts, then we have definitely made a mistake in becoming a Gentoo customer-- certainly in making *our* customers rely on Gentoo as well.
"But that's so elitist!" Give me a break. Some things are just the way they are. I have to stand on a stepstool to get some pots from the top of my kitchen cabinets; my boyfriend can reach them easily, because he's like a foot taller. It's not 'elitist' that he has the advantage of height and I don't; it's the way it is.
Gentoo is designed in such a way that the 'user' has to pay attention and exert energy to keep up with the daily changes-- usually they are improvements, but sometimes they aren't, and one needs to be awake for them, either way. That's not everybody's cup of tea, but it's not elitist to say that that's the way it needs to be if you intend to be here, any more than it's elitist to say that a construction worker needs to have physical strength and stamina in order to adequately perform his/her job. That's just the way it is.
And anyway, the bloody server isn't *broken*; it's *migrating* and it'll probably be done in a couple of days, knowing these guys. So it's a bloomin' tempest in a teapot in any case.
Holly -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
