What would you do if I was quadriplegic?! Tech Support |
- What would you do if I was quadriplegic?!
- My proudest moment in Tech Support
- No! I don't want to have to make a file!!!
- Screaming at field service may not work as well as actually working a problem
- Half-baked
| What would you do if I was quadriplegic?! Posted: 22 Apr 2018 09:12 PM PDT TL;DR A lazy user gets a surprising response. Some background: in the UK, Openreach own nearly all the phone lines, but ISPs can install their own infrastructure at the exchange. This means that depending what the problem is, engineers from entirely different companies might be sent out. As you'd expect, whoever is at fault eats the cost. If it's the customers fault, they get get to enjoy that just-been-billed-hundreds feeling. Anyway, one time a guy called with slow line speed issues. I check the connection on the exchange side. Yup, that's slow. Records show its consistently slow. I test the line, and the line tests A-OK up to the master socket belonging to Openreach, but detects a short beyond it. That reading could be wrong, or it could be a fault with something we supplied, but 99% of the time it's end-user equipment. And that means it's troubleshooting time. Me: " It's testing as having a problem inside the house. We're gonna need to disconnect everything and plug the router straight into the master socket to see if that resolves the fault." Lazyguy:" Can't you just send an engineer?" Me:"Well yes, but if they come to your house and find a problem with something that belongs to you, they'll unplug it and you'd be charged (comically expensive callout fee)." Lazyguy: "What?! That's outrageous! What would you do if I was quadriplegic?!"
Me: "Sir, that's not a hypothetical. I have literally successfully talked a quadriplegic man through these troubleshooting steps." There was no response after that. Just a few seconds of silence followed by him hanging up... [link] [comments]  |
| My proudest moment in Tech Support Posted: 22 Apr 2018 11:14 AM PDT This is a short one, I'm a techie for a pay TV company that has a particularly buggy streaming feature that I wind up having to troubleshoot a lot. This tale comes from an interaction I had a few months ago with a customer who was experiencing frequent buffering while streaming: Me: Just to make sure that this isn't an issue with your internet speed, can I have you go to (internet speed test website).com? Customer (after taking twenty minutes to get the speed test to work): It says six five kay pee bee ess (minor rule of tech support: customers over seventy will always misread acronyms). What does that mean? Me (forgetting that I have a job because people don't want to have to understand technobabble): It indicates that your download bandwidth is extremely low, which means... Customer: Slow down, son! I'm seventy-five, I don't know what that means! Me: It means that your internet connection is apparently just a hamster frantically working a morse code key, and he's getting tired Customer (after laughing for five minutes): Okay, I'll call (shitty ISP)! [link] [comments]  |
| No! I don't want to have to make a file!!! Posted: 22 Apr 2018 11:39 PM PDT So I'm sort of a all around IT guy at our company. It's small and we don't do a ton of internal network stuff so I pretty much handle everything computer related. My boss is in his late 60's and believes himself to be "tech savvy" I built a website for our company, pretty basic stuff showing the products and documentation of each type. This is literally the conversation we had as we were doing the final walk through before I made the site live. $me- ok so if you click any of those links they'll take you to the documentation page and show you the related .pdf $boss- well why is it asking me to make a file? $me- excuse me? $boss- it's making me put a file on my computer. I don't want the file I just want to see it. $me- (neglecting the fact that that's impossible to do) ok then just click "view file instead of "save file" $boss- I tried that but it's not opening a .pdf. It's showing it in the internet. $me- that is a PDF it's just shown in the browser window $boss- i don't want that. I want people to view the files in their regular programs like acrobat $me- ehhhh.... that's not actually going to be possible. You either have to "make a file" or view if in the browser $boss- yes it is I've done it before! $me- ok give me a moment.... Change web links to point to a google drive folder that stores the PDF instead of direct links to file on server. $me- ok give it a go.... $boss- this is perfect!!!! See I told you it was possible! $me- your right! That's why your the boss! Tldr; people, most of the time, have no clue how computers work and if they attempt to describe their needs to you in their language it only leads to more problems. It's best to let them go on think that way instead of trying to actually explain anything properly....even if you have to take one on the chin Tldr for the tldr: my job is painful sometimes. [link] [comments]  |
| Screaming at field service may not work as well as actually working a problem Posted: 22 Apr 2018 07:13 AM PDT tl;dr: Field service versus Big Shot Boss doesn't quite go down the way BSB thought. Reading this TFTS reminded me of my first dealings with a screamer of a Big Shot Boss. Circa 1996, I'd been doing field-circus for less than six months and out on this call for a FruityOS desktop issue; before this I"d worked as a FruityOS depot repair tech for two years, so this isn't unfamiliar territory. I arrive on site at this small (apparently fewer than ten employees) company and get a brusque-finger point and "that machine isn't working" for a total of a description from BSB. There's four desktops in that area, and my technical omnipotence hasn't fully grown in yet at this phase of my career. Fortunately, the woman using the problem system is much more helpful and walks me through exactly what causes the error she's getting. I don't recall the exact issue, but it was about half an hour to troubleshoot, test, and confirm working. I track down BSB and inform him she's all set and working. He grunts "the database isn't working". Now, in this era and for this size client, an actual relational and/or transactional database really isn't a thing. On the PC side of the house it's usually Abscess, and most FruityOS DBs are FileMangler; it's the big seller at the time, usually a workgroup share off the main user's desktop - servers are for those fancy folk who deal in High Financetm environments. Fortunately[dubious] two years of depot has brought me into close contact with FileMangler and its innards for layout and scripting. I poke around the system a bit and determine FileMangler's back end (running on the same system that had the issue I worked on previously) is hung up and I restart the application. BSB comes out and completely loses his shit, how I should never have touched the database and now its broken, etc. Surprisingly, this is the first time I've had a customer screaming in my face in my tech career, and I BSOD; Once he's done running up the front of me and down the back I sit down and wait for him to give further instructions. Nothing happens for fifteen minutes, and I finally pull out my flip phone (such a luxury in the era!) and call HQ to describe the whole scene, including how I think I've major-league screwed up. My boss (one of three partners) tells me not to worry, and to leave for my next call. It's a day later when I'm called to the boss's office. She doesn't lay into me, but explains BSB is obnoxious like this on the best of days. Their database is a grossly-unstable beast because of his 'fixes' put into it and my actions of trying to fix it were perfectly reasonable. "And oh, by the way, he continued to yell at people for the rest of the morning, and his executive assistant walked out," I'm told. The executive assistant, I'm informed, is his mother who, after seven years of this nonsense, apparently had enough of her brat of a child. Epilogue Six months later the same BSB was on the phone with my boss, and I got waved into her office as I was hitting the parts depot to hear her tell him, "No, we're not renewing your service contract. You completely alienated our only FruityOS technician and he refuses to set foot in your office again." [edit: Oops, forgot to anonymize things] [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 23 Apr 2018 12:26 AM PDT This story isn't very exciting, but more unique in the sense that it is a parent tech support call. It is Saturday night, a day off for me and the landline rings. I look at the phone and it is my mother-in-law. I just want to eat my diner in peace, but I hand the phone over to J to decide. J listens for a few minutes.
After a few minutes of walking her through verifying the input on her tv, J looks up and holds the phone out to me.
I shake my head and smile.
I sit down with my baked potato and start eating. Our toddler though isn't making things easy. The next thing I know I have the phone and J is trying to stop the little one from wiggling off the couch. My first tech support job was new installs for a cable company and J knows it.
I don't hear static and she isn't mentioning anything about a no signal message which are both good signs.
If you are confused with the slightly changing story, just roll with it, that is my mother in law.
E is her on again off again boyfriend. I sigh at my baked potato. I hadn't eaten an actual meal the entire day juggling housework and a toddler. I had two reasons for the power cycle, but neither made sense to explain to her. 1 mother in law is the type that could have been on her dvd player and not even realize it. 2 She leaves her tv on nearly 24/7 to make sure her cat is never lonely, ie the issue might not be a remote one. With the potato calling my name, the toddler off the couch, and the realization that if the remote really was broken, I would have to dig out one of my old remotes from work and deliver it to her that night, I hand the phone back to J. J tries to explain what happens when a box power cycles, but gives up. Less than two minutes later, my mother in law says she will talk to us later because she has been on the phone long enough (she considers it rude to be on the phone when anyone is over at her place) J gets a text 10 minutes later that all is well. I sigh in relief at my empty plate and smile that I actually read through my mother in laws ramblings without having to hop in the car and check on her in person this time. TL:DR- I manage to walk my slightly batty mother in law through troubleshooting her cable box on my day off. [link] [comments]  |
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