What Do You Do for New User Orientation?

An anonymous reader asks: "What do you do for new user orientation? I started at a company as part of a very small help desk / MIS department. Part of my job is to give orientation to all new computer users for the entire company (no more than 10 new users a week). Right now I have to sit with each user, go over logging in, passwords, email, outlook, Microsoft Office, and so on. This takes between 30-45 minutes. What do other IT departments do? I was thinking of a Flash presentation or website, and maybe even a short orientation movie. What ideas have you tried and how well did they work?"

Orientation?

[MyLongNickName]

It involves duct tape, Vaseline, five rolls of toilet paper and the trunk of a mini-cooper.

But we don't call it "orientation", we call it "hazing".

Here's what I do

[Centurix]

I sit them in front of a computer, don't tell them anything and I poke them with a stick if they do something wrong.

Re:Set up a wiki

[kitsunewarlock]

Until some vandal (inside the company* or outside) finds your wiki and has your employee jumping up and down in a grass skirt on the top of his cubicle screaming at the height of his lungs "ITS A TRAP! ITS A TRAP! THE LAWNMOWERS ARE PLANNING A REBELLION AGAINST US! WE WILL SERVE TO EVERY ONE OF THEIR GREASY, SHEERING-INDUCED WHIMS!"** Wait, that might be a good way to preemptively screen for people who don't have the balls, foresight and brain power to determine if an idea is bad or not, even if its an order. *Disgruntled workers, ho! **I for one welcome our new sheering-intoxicated lawn-cutting overlords.

Get a co-worker to just start screaming and crying

[antifoidulus]

about how he "lost his lifes work and will probably get fired because he didn't listen to the IT guy."

Re:Not the Flash presentation!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is always the obligatory legal issues (dress code, no bad language in the workplace, no molestation of the opposite sex, and whatnot).

Do you mean that your office lets you molest the same sex? Sign me up!

Re:Orientation?

[phunctor]

First I orient them in a generally inverted position, suspended by one ankle over the edge of the observation deck. Then, when I begin to actually believe their frenzied promises to RTFM, I re-orient them to a feet-down, head-up position and send them on their way. Help desk calls are down 87%, possibly due to the unfortunate slippage rate amongst those who fail to convince me that they will in fact RTFM. -- phunctor "mmmm, crack!"

Re:Swim or drown

[biglig2]

Weaklings! I give my users a bucket of sand, and if they haven't build a 486 laptop from it by the end of the day, we kill them and eat their livers.

Re:Swim or drown

[bplipschitz]

Weaklings! I give my users a bucket of sand, and if they haven't build a 486 laptop from it by the end of the day, we kill them and eat their livers.

. . .with a nice Chianti.