I used to be a part-time system administrator and have a few colleagues who still are. So I’m fairly used to regular complaints about (l)users and a delusional sense of self-importance. Yet, it’s still a rare week in which I’d read a bunch of articles (with comments) like this one and had so many discussions about what and how should our users behave.

I think most comments were simply rubbish. You have no reason to complain as long as they are polite and not intentionally obstructive.

The thing I always admired about Mobitel is the way they treat their customers. It doesn’t matter how little do they know about phones, phone plans or even their own needs and desires, you can be sure that Mobitel’s personnel will take the time and energy necessary to explain, show and resolve whatever is needed. They certainly don’t expect me to come loaded with information and spend more of my time to save theirs.

I know next to nothing about plumbing and I’m sure it’s a fact well known and obvious to every plumber I’ve met. But did they ever treat me like an idiot? No, because it’s understood that they have to know so I don’t have to. I simply can’t know everything and wouldn’t want to, because there are other, more important things that I should be doing. I might help with my answers to their questions, but it’s not really expected of me to do anything more than to show the problem.

I understand frustrations when dealing with too many problems and too little time. I also know that there’s always a small percentage of users who simply are assholes. I don’t believe it’s ever acceptable to be impolite, but I understand it sometimes happens.

Life can be hard, but it doesn’t change the fact that our task is to provide a service, to serve our users and not the other way around. And if we have a problem doing this, it’s us who must resolve it not them. In fact, without them “pests” there’s little need for what we provide. After all a perfectly configured and RFC compliant mail server is just a box of toxic waste without someone sending emails through it.

Some professions get this. As Woody Allen rightly pointed out, it really is a bitch to get a plumber (on Sunday).

Is it just me or does anybody else find it easier to write:

elmList = filter( len, elmList )

then

elmList = [ x for x in elmList if len(x) ]

I don’t know why, but if I want to use the second form, I always have to look it up somewhere . I know filter and friends are frowned upon, but I can’t stop liking them.

I’m not a Plone user, but I know a few who might need a quality javascript library. Well, they got it. ZPDojo is out.