System Administration: The Use Of Humor In Effectively Communicating With Wide Ranges Of Customers.

One of the first painful lessons you learn as a sysadmin is that customers do not pay attention to a word you're saying. You tell them important things, things that matter to their experience on your network, and they look at you attentively and with great focus; then five minutes later they're trying to change their password to the word password (all lower case). I've tried Serious Face, I've tried repetition, I've tried repeating myself, I've tried making them sign things. None of it penetrates. You know what makes them perk up and actually hear the words I'm saying? One really not-so-funny joke. I've got a standard patter I spew out like a robot when I'm handing out accounts, and the second line involves telling them with a deadpan expression they'll get chocolate if they report certain problems. You can see the 2-second delay as their brain catches up to the lecture, then they laugh in surprise. So they remember that thing, and their brains don't shut back off right away - the next thing I say is an instruction we want them to remember, since it makes less work for us, and their brains are sill *on* just then from the surprise of the laugh. Over two years we've reduced the number of people complaining they didn't know about the policy by almost half, because they remember, because you surprised them jsut a teensy bit. It doesn't even have to be a good joke. You don't linger on it or overdo it; you throw one little wake-up comment in there, something clean and amusing, and let them snap out of their "oh man this is another lecture" mode into "wait, what?" and then you take advantage of the fact that for something like 3 seconds you've actually got their attention. It helps that the lecture is very short; don't waste their time. If the policy needs half an hour to teach to someone, it's a terrible policy and you need to figure out how to simplify it.