Lengthy conversations

I’ve had these sorts of conversations before, but in a smaller company, like everything else, it’s usually not as frequent an occurrence as it is now. Anyone who’s worked supporting users knows exactly the sort of conversation, and while we all appreciate the fact that the user is curious and wants to learn, we all wish we could say “because I say so” and be done with it sometimes, don’t we?

Let me give you some examples:

When I access email through Outlook Web Access at home and someone sends me a link to the corporate intranet, why can’t I click on the link and go there?

Why can’t I just plug my kid’s laptop in the network jack and use the network like I can with my work computer?

Isn’t using Outlook Web Access the same as Secure Remote? Why isn’t it?

See, you appreciate the fact that they want to understand, but you also know this is not going to be a short conversation. I don’t generally mind explaining it to people who want to learn, but sometimes I really have something else I need to be doing. It can be difficult to extract myself from these conversations to get to those other things without coming across as rude. How do you do it?

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