damned if you do...

...or potentially so.

Earlier today I was at work. This lady calls up and says, "Mr. Brown
is here from XYZ company and needs to get on our wireless network.
It's asking for credentials. What are they?"

After the usual verification stuff, I tell her the password he'll
need. She says, with a slight edge suggesting that she wants to make
darned sure she understands me right, "That's ALL he's going to need
to enter? Nothing else?" "Nope," I say, and I hear "Okay, thanks,"
and the click of her hanging up. I continued talking to the phone as
I also hung up: "unless, of course, he's got one of those clients
that defaults to 64 bits instead of 128 bits in which case he'll need
to look for that setting on whatever client he's got and change it to
the other one... but if that's the case I'll find out soon enough
because you'll call back."

Then I hear a very soft snicker on the other side of the cubicle and
begin to laugh to myself, because I realized I hadn't given her all
the information he /might/ need, not because I was trying to screw
anyone, but because I knew the chances of him /having/ that type of
client were likely slim. In the past, I'd give too MUCH information
just to be safe, and end up confusing the dickens out of someone
because 9 times out of 10 they didn't need the information in the
first place. 'Tis best, at times, to leave out typically-unimportant
information and provide it on a need-to-know basis even if it means
someone has to call back (which makes me appreciate having to call
people back, now - the person was being thoughtful about my level of
understanding by refusing to confuse me with a bunch of inapplicable
crap). Still, I had to voice this concern, so I made it known to
myself as a muttered sidenote aimed at her hang-up click.

I.T. support is an art form. In addition to reading minds, we have to
quickly disseminate only needed information for equipment we can only
make guesses at while an agreeable but intensely busy person on the
other end waits for your pleasantly helpful voice to spew forth easy-
to-understand, nontechnical information that's highly complex and
technical in nature.

~nv