Supporting Your Free Software? Don't Burn Out

[ Thanks to steve hill for this link. ]

"The ones that are really infuriating, though, are the “babies” who want you to go through everything in painstaking detail: I once had to explain how to use a mouse to close and open windows on the screen. Or rather I once explained it—the truth is, I was well “outside my support parameters” at that point. Management wasn’t too happy when I spent that kind of extra time with people—I was constantly over budget on time-per-call.

"What finally got me down was just having my head full of other people’s problems all day long, and then not being able to get all this trivial stuff out of my head in the evening. Also, I’ve never been really comfortable on phones. I’d much rather write an email or meet someone in person: to me the phone is the worst of both worlds—immediate time pressure on every reply and no visual contact."

Complete Story

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