Anyone who has worked the IT desk knows how users are. Reading is against their beliefs.
this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
359 points (94.3% liked)
Facepalm
3382 readers
3 users here now
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
As someone who has raised tickets with IT desk, I’m pretty sure that’s true for them as well.
Me: Outlines extensive troubleshooting steps undertaken, starting with turning it off and on again, and ending with research that pins the problem down to a specific known platform issue with a clear fix.
Service desk, a week later: Have you tried turning it off and on again? Here’s a helpful KB article that tells you how to turn it off and on again. Thanks for contacting the service desk. This ticket is now closed. Have a wonderful day. 😇
I wish this wasn't hitting the nail on the head.
My workplace uses VPN and 'digital' printers so you can just scan your badge at any printer to get your documents. Except, the network is basically held together with hopes and dreams so a common issue is network just won't see the printer or lose the configuration and basic users can't fix it. IT guys have sent me three different sets of instructions how to fix it, none of them work, and one of them got me flagged by offsite IT for trying to do something malicious. So now when anyone asks for help printing a document I just tell them to keep trying a different computer until they get one that works.
Been working IT at a public school for almost a year, have never once got an answer to the question "and what did the error message say?"
Got a ticket yesterday with the text "I can't install addins in office anymore. I only get this message"
Then they attached an image of office telling them exactly why they can't install addins (optional experiences is disabled) and exactly where to go in the settings to enable it again...
A friend asked for some computer help and when I asked him to replicate the problem, he closed the error window before I could read it. I think that was when I gave up helping people with their computer problems.
That's when I tell them "Do it all over again, and this time don't close the error message. I'll be playing sudoku on my phone, call me when you have the error message for me."
That time had passed by then. If I remember correctly, it ended up being a simple problem they could have solved themselves if they had read the message and understood the words.
I'm unofficial IT in my workplace cause our IT guys are corporate indoctrinated so just utterly incapable of communicating with other departments that aren't front office of management. Assuming it's not a network setting or printer screwing up, most of my IT assistance starts with 'Read it back to me' so I can see where they are at. Had one new girl, maybe 22ish, read the sentence to me three times before she even considered the thought she was doing something wrong.
yyyy-mm-dd supremacy
ISO 8601 FTW
Rather go with RFC 3339, a standard that is openly available for anyone to read.
I was going to write something sassy, but separating the date and time portion with a T is marginally superior. I love them both!
I know it violates all standards, but what works for me is 2025-09-02.13:32:56.25. I.e. using . between date and time AND as fractional seconds.
It's pretty close to standard, doesn't contain whitespace, and looks much nicer to me than having a T in the middle.
Stop bike shedding. Use the standard.
than having a
Tin the middle.
But then how will we know it's a timestamp?
I haven't ever had a date that was followed by a period and a decimal digit that wasn't a timestamp, but if you do encounter (or can reasonably predict) that ambiguity, I defer to a standard format.
I find the . significantly easier that T to deal with when I'm looking across timestamped backups of config files or whatever. The T really throws me off as a "separator" character, it makes both the day and hour harder for me to read.
Hey man, try reading the words on the screen above the inputs.
You ever tried to do that AND be a redditor at the same time?
Tsk... these elitist lemmings... smh.
load more comments
(1 replies)
"Date of birth:"
As a person who grew up in a country that does dates correctly, I have the opposite issue all the time
ISO 8601 supremacy.
YYYY/MM/DD
Hear me out
There are an infinite number of years*
So stating the year first brings you down from infinite to 356.25 days, on average.
If we then specify the month, we are down to 30** days
But if we instead specify the day. We get down to 12** days, instead!
TLDR: yyyy/dd/MM reduces our search space faster than yyyy/MM/dd.
However, it’s also stupid.
- true for our purposes, here ** ish
TLDR: yyyy/dd/MM reduces our search space faster than yyyy/MM/dd.
This fact makes makes me irrationally angry for some reason, and I blame you for making me think about it!
However, it’s also stupid.
Thank goodness for that!
I like my dates sorted by how likely it is that I need that information.
Most things I refer to by date happen in the current year and the current month. So using day first means in many cases I can stop right there.
If something's not happening this month, then it's likely to happen in the current year, thus month next. And only if that fails I need to put a year.
Following the same logic, you get the opposite for time:
Most things referred to by time happen sometime today but likely not within the same hour (otherwise I'd rather say "In 10 minutes"). And often the hour is precise enough and I don't need minutes. So hour first.
If hours are not exact enough, minutes likely are, so minutes next. And only when that is not precise enough will I mention seconds or milliseconds.
This gives me a format of dd.mm.yyyy and hh:mm:ss.msms
load more comments
(9 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
There are some user interface experts who say that there is no such thing as a user error, only usability errors.
While no system is completely idiot-proof (especially for an idiot this clever), they still could have done a better job. It's good that they highlight in red the non-conforming field, but the error message says "Please enter a valid date", leading the user to conclude incorrectly that the date itself was a problem, not the "Month" field.
They also could have used the international standard format, YYYY-MM-DD.
User just can't read, would have found a way to mess up any interface. YYYY-MM-DD would have probably been filled in 0005-16-99
While this problem is dumb, you could eliminate the class of user errors by having months be selected by name
Done…
New month names just dropped:
- Joctober
- Novemy
- Deculyary
- Febrarch
- Munepril
- Septanugust
Ah yes the month of febroctougust
Oh no
Perfection
load more comments
(1 replies)
Technically, we can eliminate this class of user errors by holding up YYYY-MM-DD as the one true method of dating and smite the nonbelievers.
We're generally not allowed to smite the end users at work, satisfying as that may have been.
We can mostly just hope to keep that standard within the codebase, and seek alternative means of eliminating error classes for end users
Who is creating a RuneScape account in 2022?
Someone born in 1999
How do kids born in 1999 know about Runescape?
load more comments
(1 replies)
People born in the first 12 days of any given month live happier.
better if month = day
load more comments
(2 replies)
In all fairness they’re creating an account for Runescape 3 so they’re probably not old enough to read yet. Perfect age for a disgusting amount of in-game microtransactions though!
Do you not have quattuordecember in your territory?
I wonder if anyone's implemented a date entry form that changes by a regions default date format
load more comments
(8 replies)
view more: next ›