These are some of the notes sent to Tier two support from the help desk by a man who is referred to as “George,” on a Web site called: “The Chronicles of George”

[Name] is havening problems with getting on to network,shesays she gets nocked of the network.

[Name] is havening problems connectioning to the network

[Name] needs to dell servers  need to be installed

[Name] needed access microsoft network

she doesnt  have any off her driver install ,she said they aregone so when she went reinstall them back she recieved an error message that said”rp server is not availble”

he tried to install [program].but it said admin right ,he thinks as something with server.

he needs access  to the raz server

[Name] is not able to access her email throught the web base

[Name] needs access  to manger discusion datebase

[Name] needs permission to [Shared Network Drive]

[Name] is havening problems replicating his emails, he says gets and error that says he cannot find mail file server.

[Name] called and he is havening problems getting onto the network.

[Name] is recieving anerror that states  the server is not responding.

I had to type that out in Notepad because Word would automatically correct all the errors. 

So, why am I sharing this with you?  Because the help desk staff are, in far too many companies, the first people, besides the users, to know when there is degraded application performance.  And while 99.999% of help desk personnel are well versed in their field and their written language, sometimes you get George.  (And yes, the author points out that George is a native English speaker who is most likely not dyslexic.)

One of the reasons that it is so important to be proactive with network trouble prevention – having the guys in the NOC be the first to notice application performance problems – is because when you rely on the help desk, you’re hearing about the problem third-hand.  George illustrates the problem with having the end-user, who may not have the technical knowledge to adequately describe the problem to begin with, passing the information along to another person before it gets to the people who might be able to solve the problem.