Why do bosses insist on making people fix their own computers?

[taltamir]

There is something I keep on telling bosses that insist on having people servicing their own computers (which eventually ends very very badly), its akin to taking a guy off the street and demanding he perform a heart transplant. You might get lucky and grab a doctor (or maybe even a heart specialist), but usually he would have no idea where to start and if you weren't his boss and threatening his job he would have probably flat out refused.

This came about because I (I repair computers) actually had to fix a computer for a company where the guy literally DID tell his boss "no" when he told him to fix his computer, he took a chair and literally sat in front of his boss office saying "I haven't got any work done in 2 days, I can't fix my computer".
Naturally I fixed it in under 20 minutes, but its not something i'd expect anyone but an expert to know how to do.
Just an FYI, it was good that he stopped there, I have seen horrible devastation wrought when random employees fix computers.
Funny thing though, I had bosses have me fix computers all the time before it was actually my job; they all lucked out because I was an expert... but one time (many years ago, before I ever used linux) I had a conversation that went like this:
Boss: Fix the fileserver, I can't access my files.
Me: um, this is a linux server, I am an expert with windows machines... you know just a few days ago I manually cleaned that virus that spread across the lan to all our windows machine and that no antivirus could catch, but I have never, ever in my entire life touched a linux box.
Boss: Oh I am sure you will do fine, a computer is a computer, right?
Me: No, really, I have no idea what is going on here.
Boss: Just give it a try, I insist.

Anyways, I did look at it. it was frozen, a reboot later and the raid array shows up as unformatted... at which point I refused to fiddle with it until the guy who normally cares for it came... and he then manually mounted the array. Turns out that it required manual mounting every time the computer was started, and shows as unformatted drives unless this is done. (very weird. I don't know what the heck was wrong with their distro).

PS. I am not saying hobbyists don't know what they are doing. A hobbyist certainty is usually more knowledgeable then an on the job trained "professional" (the key being "on the job training"). But I have just observed that many people are pretty bad with computers, yet many bosses insist on having them service their own computers.

 

[Fardringle]

What companies (or types of companies) have you worked for where the boss did this? I have never heard of any company ever making employees get their equipment fixed unless the equipment was actually purchased and owned by the employees themselves.

 

[taltamir]

What companies (or types of companies) have you worked for where the boss did this? I have never heard of any company ever making employees get their equipment fixed unless the equipment was actually purchased and owned by the employees themselves.

I will not name names, but I will say they were small companies; only 1 or a few locations.

 

[corkyg]

I think you are dealing with an exception rather than the rule.

 

[taltamir]

I think you are dealing with an exception rather than the rule.

Obviously such behavior leads to eventual failure. And I never said every business does that. But a significant enough number does that I see it every now and then.