My job scope includes providing desktop support to office staff, but that is not the only purpose I am hired for. I am primarily a programmer.
I have been practicing IT for years and my philosophy in this IT-driven era is that everyone should continuously get hands-on with IT. For example, learning a programming language can dramatically increase your own productivity. A computer to a Sales Manager is equivalent to a machine to an operator. If you can't handle your tools, then you deserve to fail.
However, to this date there are still people who don't know what a taskbar is, how to create shortcuts and understand why they should keep files in My Documents and not to save files in C: root.
Despite their obvious lack of skill, they continue to take for granted the IT support to the extent of blaming us for taking too long to reset their forgotten passwords as if we have a lot of time.
I believe in the long run educating these people would cut business costs by reducing desktop support staff and reduce downtimes overall. Unfortunately, it seems that most people still hold the perception of "this is your job, so just fix it while I go make a cup of coffee".
If you are IT support, what do you do? If you are not, how can I convince you to LEARN to solve your problems? I'll teach.
EDIT: I realised that people are treating my post like a rant because, I admit, it does sound like one. So, I would like to clarify:
I am not an expert, know-it-all or good teacher. Thus, I am especially puzzled by people who are uninterested to avoid/solve their own IT problems. They rather wait for someone to fix it than to explore or try out on their own first. I must say that I have no problems fixing their problems at all because it is my job afterall. What I am unhappy about is the indifferent attitude as if they have no fault or obligation. I feel that both for the company and their own good, they can be made to understand that there is a cost involved if they don't handle their tools well. But how? That is the question.
So there are suggestions on how to support their learning, but we haven't got any that can motivate them to be interested to learn in the first place. I think, I will have to accept answers that says "it's not possible" soon.