Just another demonstration of the old "those who can, do, those who can't, teach" rule. This is pretty clueless thing for someone teaching business class to say. You would have to have 1-person business not to have specialization of different roles. There are plenty of situations where "that is not my job" comes into play.
So, what exactly is the problem here? Not sugar coating the statement? Saying something at all?
Oh, and gonna disagree with Kalvan too. "I don't know" is perfectly fine response, unless followed by "and I deeply don't care". :p
Sorry, Rusty, but I have to agree with Kalvan.
I used to work for a major aircraft manufacturer. At one time, my immediate supervisor had a problem with almost constantly having to tell *his* boss(es), "I don't know." when asked why certain (many) jobs or projects weren't finished or were badly behind schedule. He *never* followed up by saying "But I'll find out and update you." It didn't help that he rarely sat down with his lead man to find out the whichnesses of the whys, parts order status-es, inspection issues, and so on.
He didn't last very long as a supervisor. He wasn't very good at it anyway.
Sadly, many of the issues that our CMs and Mentors see reported here in the forums are, for them, unanswerable. They simply do not have information that can be passed along. I have seen that many times, we're told that the issues have been reported and forwarded up the chain. But otherwise, I think the best answers--for the CMs and Mentors, at any rate--are no answers or responses at all. It's not as if *they* can snap their fingers and instantly fix things.
In response to RoMage's comment above yours (#43), yeah, the time differential between Berlin and here in the currently snow-blown wastes of the US Midwest does put a damper on things. However, we've been told by our CMs that there *are* people working in Support most hours. Maybe tossing a ticket to them in what we see as late night, even if Support can't make a direct fix, will give those who *can* try to do something about a problem a bit of a heads-up. Surely Support can pass along information about an issue.
Presuming, of course, that the person who submitted the ticket has the presence of mind to proffer a detailed description without pumping a crapton of hydrogen onto the fire. (I'm looking at certain disturbed people here.)