What can you say about your users, not much in truth. They are the reason for your existence as a systems administrator. The users come in to whichever office that they work from, expecting the systems to be available twenty four by seven. The only time that they want to know about the systems admins is when the systems aren’t there for them, or maybe when they have had to many attempts at log in. Other reasons why they may want to know you is that with the usual intellect displayed by a lentil, they have forgotten the password that they have set up. As a systems admin you have to make allowances for the users lack of knowledge, they are in the main quite good at what they do but are only as good as the training and support that they have.
We are fortunate in that we have many thousands of users, in order to help them get on with things as much as possible we give them our undivided attention. Once we have read the papers for the day, had our breakfast in the canteen, checked the BBC website and had a little nap (well you have to after all that activity) we see what problems the users are experiencing. For anyone who has seen the IT Crowd, they are consummate professionals compared to our team.
The Users are of course important to us, they have many redeeming qualities. Every time that you think you have all options covered, the users show you that there is one or more that you didn’t even consider. In fact the user is an educational tool to be treasured, mostly misunderstood they have a penchant for teaching us that we never can know enough.