Do not use human keyboard

There are several things that annoy me more than when I am not willing to take part in creating a habit (or culture) that makes people feel like computer keyboards. People should not be perceived as buttons that can be clicked to trigger specific functions.

What do I mean by the term "keyboard man"? Imagine for a moment that instead of typing on a keyboard or using a mouse, you would have to ask a person to perform some task.
"Go to my email."
"Show the first message."
"Scroll down a bit."
"Scroll a little more down."
"I want to reply to this letter."
Imagine how terrible the impact on performance and computer usability will have such an interface! For such a simple task as “checking e-mail”, 2 people are required - you and the “keyboard man”, which will entail double costs, double mistakes, problems in communication between them. Nevertheless, despite the stupidity of this example, similar situations arise quite often in business, in the interaction between employees who solve and set tasks for each other.

One of the subsets of this problem is when people tell you what to do to solve the problem, instead of what problems your actions should solve. For example, when, say Frank, tells you to “install Postgres on a specific server,” he comes with you as a “keyboard man”. He does not inform you about the problems that need to be solved, but speaks about the implementation of the chosen solution, which, by the way, may not work. As a result, you have a function that was called and some result is expected. But what could be the result when you do not know the problem itself and in what context was the task set? Let's ignore in this situation cases where the input data can be understood correctly in any case, for example, “install this software”, etc.

The social problem caused by the treatment of a person as a keyboard is very interesting. Who is the user in the above case? Suppose you are a keyboard, and Frank is a user. What happens if the “install Postgres on this server” instruction is executed correctly, but does not solve the problem of Frank? And although, in this case, Frank is between the keyboard (you) and the chair, you can be blamed for his mistakes. It's a shame, and you spend energy searching for the guilty instead of doing your job normally.
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Another example is when a colleague asks you, instead of checking the panel of a public internal corporate system used by your “MySQL dropped?” Command. You can reply to him by checking the status on the panel yourself instead of him, thereby making it clear to your colleague that you are a “MySQL-aware status robot”. Instead, you should say: “Check the status in the status bar” and give him a link. If you do not have such a system, perhaps you have a question and answer page and you can refer to it.

People are creatures of habit. If you “encourage” the habits of other people, they will persist and may also spread to your other colleagues. You do not want to become an interface for obtaining information about the status of MySQL across the company? You do not want to become a "keyboard man"?

You have several options to prevent yourself from becoming a “keyboard man” and the decisions will depend on the situation and audience. First, you can document the most frequently asked questions and answers. Secondly, you could (with the availability of skills, time, energy) automate responses that cannot be documented, for example, by creating a panel that notifies you of the status of the service or system. Thirdly, if you cannot automate something, then let the requests come through the tracking and queuing system (like HelpDesk). Fourth, you can try to teach the user to answer your question without resorting to your help.

If some general requests require a lot of effort to solve them, then the application management system will help you. With it, you can track the number of such requests and the time spent on their decision. This will help inform the business unit about your group's employment and estimate the amount of effort you are spending and help plan or redistribute the workload.

Often, when a regular request is a “human keyboard” call, then this is probably an annoying request or a simple request from the techie colleagues or a request with a strange solution or a request that they cannot formulate, etc.

Are there people in your company who can treat you like a “keyboard man”? Write a FAQ, set the status bar, connect the order management system. As a result, you will experience less stress, and make you happier with both colleagues and users. And the company will have high-quality support, in which most requests are resolved almost instantly.