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    Friday, June 1, 2018

    Over 12 Years in Tech and this is a first Tech Support

    Over 12 Years in Tech and this is a first Tech Support


    Over 12 Years in Tech and this is a first

    Posted: 01 Jun 2018 02:48 AM PDT

    Like the title says I've been doing Tech support for over 12 years as a job, but longer if you count doing stuff for friends & family.

    I do Level 1 Help Desk for a huge US company and we have outside vendors who login via a company portal (Citrix) with these users it is usually account related stuff passwords and 2 Factor authentication setups.

    U= User / M=Me

    After the typical opening etc.

    U- I tired to login and it said my password was expired, i changed it and i still cannot login.

    I checked his account and it doesn't show a password change (this is an issue that is still yet to be addressed by upper level)

    M- If you tried to change it from the login page it doesn't actually change the password, you have to go to the website reset.Companyname.com

    U- OK so do i need to close this out?

    M- No just go up to the address bar and type that in.

    U- it isn't working

    M- are you typing it in the address bar at the top of the page?

    U- Yeah reset.abbreviationofcompanyname.com

    M- No it is (gives correct URL again)

    U- I'm getting page cannot be displayed

    (at this point i'm wondering if the site is down, i check and it loads right up)

    M- I just checked the site and it is up and running (I read the URL for the 5th time)

    U- Do i need WWW in front of reset@compnayname.com

    M- No and there is no @ in it, (I read the URL for what feels like the 10th time)

    U- I have put in (and he reads out what he typed) W E B

    (I couldn't believe he typed in website.reset.companyname.com)

    M- No you don't need to put in the word website.

    U- Yeah i guess i will have to talk to my local IT and try and sort this out.

    M- OK you have a great day.

    If feel so bad for his local IT, but maybe they will post a story here.

    submitted by /u/Cryptic-Panther
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    Nickle and Diming a company into oblivion

    Posted: 01 Jun 2018 12:25 AM PDT

    tl;dr - saving a few bucks here drains the account elsewhere

    While this is not a "Stupid User Story" (per submission guidelines), it certainly is a "Stupid Management Story" - and that's 'close enough'.

    Back in the mid-90s when I was working for |a|n|a|l|o|g| (again!), I was supporting the software that helped manage the spare parts inventory & logistics for the "Field Service" side of the organisation.

    One of my regular tasks was to access the "database" (ISAM files, but well organised enough to be classed as a 'database') via the Data Manipulation Language (DML) directly. On one of these excursions, I noticed the spare-parts inventory of repaired monitors (15" CRT, 1024x768, full colour, case colour was technocrap white) was in the thousands of repaired units waiting to be placed back into stock.

    I contacted the main user of the system, and queried her about this.

    me: Surely this is too many by at least an order of magnitude?
    she: No, that's about right.

    Then she told me a story of a high up manager in MA (USA) who just received a massive bonus because he had shaved $5 a unit for monitors from a Taiwanese manufacturer, $DarkOff. They had earnestly recommended that he purchase the more expensive monitors, as the cheaper ones are known to be unreliable, and require repair/replacement on a frequent basis.

    Of course, this begs the question - "Why the heck are you even manufacturing this crap in the first place?" But I digress... 

    The global order was for several million monitors with the brand |a|n|a|l|o|g| on the front, not $DarkOff, and the... (take a breath, calm down...) and the 'manager' had "saved" the company tens of millions of dollars - hence his bonus.

    Of course, we will ignore the consequences of his 'nickel and diming' - especially the additional resources spent in repairing and warehousing thousands upon thousands of this crap across the globe, and most especially (and I think this was a 'death-blow' to the company) the rock-bottom reputation |a|n|a|l|o|g| now had in a lot of State Government departments in Australia, and no doubt across the globe.

    He may have "saved" the company several tens of millions of dollars, and scored a nice bonus, but ultimately, at what cost?


    edit: credit to /u/SuperSecretSpare for prompting this memory with his story here.

    submitted by /u/harrywwc
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    The Rogue Mouse

    Posted: 31 May 2018 04:23 PM PDT

    I originally posted this one at Computerworld's Shark Tank. If you've never read them, they've got some good stories.

    I ran into one of the oddest problems I've ever dealt with the other day. A customer - a high-end hairdresser - was having problems with two of her Mac's, complaining about slow internet and the computers locking up. We replaced their consumer wifi product with an enterprise system, but the problems continued. Whenever I would get to the site, the problem would be resolved and everything would work fine, so I began to just randomly pop in and see how things were working.

    The other day, I popped in and the girl up front said, "Perfect timing! This ones locked up!" I sat down and dug in. Determined that the bluetooth mouse was working, but the left mouse button wouldn't click. The right clicker worked fine. A reboot restored functionality but while I was looking at what could have caused it, the other Mac lost it's left clicker. "Well, self," I said to myself, "that's interesting." I plugged a wired mouse in, but still no left click. I turned off the bluetooth mouse, no clicky. I finally discovered that I could turn off bluetooth and get the wired mouse to work.

    Looking through the list of bluetooth devices, I found 2 mice active. I start turning off mice, but there's still an "Administrator Mouse" connecting. I ask around about more mice and the owner says she has a couple in her purse. She goes and digs them out and, surprisingly, one of them is on. I turn it off and the "Administrator Mouse" disappears. Suddenly, all of their problems disappear...

    I removed the batteries from the extra mice. She promised to take them home and leave them there.

    submitted by /u/GreenEggPage
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    What could go wrong if you let employees wire their desks?

    Posted: 31 May 2018 11:11 AM PDT

    Some background first: I work as the only IT admin a medium sized branch office (approx 80 people) and we have just a basic DC-DHCP-AD server and 3 switches.

    Monday morning I got in the office as always, and a pack of 5 people rush at me screaming oh my goood there's no internet at all!!

    Well, they were right. Access points are down, ethernet ports on the wall give no signal whatsoever, and I'm starting to freak out.

    I head straight into the server room, and everything looks fine. So basic troubleshooting begins.

    Internet was up, wiring was correct (I added a switch a day before, could have messed it up), but I couldn't access our router. I had to run to buy a serial-to-ethernet adapter to access CLI and even after that, the only thing that came to my mind was that the switches died (it happened to another branch a couple weeks before)

    4 hours have passed at this point, so I contact my colleagues from HQ explaining the situation, and after letting them do some troubleshooting too, they told me either you've wired it wrong, switches are dead or there's a loop somewhere.

    Here's when it came to my mind. That moring a team moved to a different desk area, and they were let free of moving their own stuff.

    Went to check and....... they plugged both ends of an ethernet cable in the wall ports.

    I was angry. Like really angry. I removed the cable and threw it in the middle of the room and went to my desk. The problem was still there.

    They did not only caused one loop, but 2 of them. The 3rd loop (yes, there were 3 loops at the end) was from an IP phone with ethernet pass-trough with, obviously, both ports connected to the wall jacks.

    Reported what happened and removed the loops, network was fine as always.

    Never trust employees, not even on basic stuff.

    TL:DR - Whole office was down for 4+ hours due to employees plugging both ends of ethernet cables in the wall socket.

    submitted by /u/enzoglt
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    He who knows more than I

    Posted: 31 May 2018 01:52 PM PDT

    I work tech support for a security company and was assisting an end-user over the phone who couldn't connect to their camera. We often get people claiming that they work in "networking" or are "electricians" for whatever reason, I assume so we'll use our secret troubleshooting techniques not for the plebeian end-user.

    Customer: I can't watch my cameras!

    Me: Alright, is there an error code?

    Customer: No, it just loads forever.

    Me: Okay, have you tried power cycling the camera and your router?

    Customer: I know that isn't going to work, I do networking for a living! Tell me the next step!

    Me: Give it another try then, see if you can get an error code.

    Customer: (after a few failed attempts) It says error 408.

    Me: Oh, error 408? So since you "do" networking, you know what that is, right?

    Customer: (long pause) ...right.

    Me: And you know how to fix it, so we're done here, right?

    Customer: (even longer pause) ...yeah.

    Me: Alright, have a great day! *click*

    submitted by /u/zero92835
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    Do you not remember the psychic part of your interview?

    Posted: 01 Jun 2018 04:14 AM PDT

    I don't work in tech support, but as a data processor who interacts regularly with sales people and account managers, answering some of their more...unusual questions.

    My interview for this company was a suprisingly simple one. "Can you spot something amiss here?" "Can you follow these instructions?" "Are you able to tell what shape I've drawn on the left piece of paper in the next room?" Pretty standard stuff.

    It's a surprisingly frequent occurence to have jobs come back after they've gone to clients because they've changed their mind about something. It's almost as frequent that a sales person will come to my desk at 4:30pm asking why something's not been given to a client, when they CLEARLY asked for it...

    The stars:
    $Me: Data Assassin, consumer of bagels and lacking in psychic prowess.
    $ESG (Expectant Sales Guy): Knows what they want, but not how to get it.
    $ClientManager: Only gets passing mentions, but writes the specs I work from, and makes sure it's what sales want. Patience is their virtue.

    $ESG: Hey, $Me, I've looked at what went to $Client but it's missing a few things that are pretty integral to the contract.
    $Me: I don't think I missed anything, let me bring up the request and you can point out what's missing.

    I promptly go to the job folder and bring up the processing modules and the spec.

    $Me: Ok, so P1 and P2 are initial processing relating to these parts of the spec, and P3 outputs like this part of the spec says.
    $ESG: Where's the completely unmentioned part?
    $Me: What?
    $ESG: You've not included completely unmentioned part!
    $Me: Nothing I've seen mentions that once... I mean, I could look at doing it, but it's usually a day or two of work.
    $ESG: No! This has to go out today. I can't believe you've missed this out! They even confirmed the details in an email to me yesterday!
    $Me: Was $ClientManager cc'd?
    $ESG: No.
    $Me: Did you send me or $ClientManager this email?
    $ESG: No. You should have just known to do this.

    Oh look, my eye twitch has returned!

    $Me: This requirement isn't even remotely standard for a job of this kind, we'd only do it if explicitly told to do so.
    $ESG: Well it needs doing. They're unhappy it's missing.
    $Me: I can take a look, but you'll need to send the details over in an email to me and the client manager. It won't be today though, as it takes hours to run. You'll nee...
    $ESG (interrupting me):BUT IT HAS TO GO TODAY!
    $Me: ...eed to tell the client there's a delay.
    $ESG: WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO TELL THEM?

    "That you screwed up and expected everyone else to be psychic" Oh wait, what I actually said was:

    $Me: Something about a communication error and the spec not being updated with a new requirement, and that we'll resupply to them ASAP.

    $ESG then proceeded to walk off mumbling something about incompetence and commission. I then got to work with this extra processing, which I actually managed to get sorted for lunch time the next day. $ClientManager passed the data to $Client, who thanked us for fixing the mistake and getting it over promptly.

    Turns out, the client wasn't expecting the file to be output until that day anyway. Were impressed they got it early, impressed that we noticed a mistake (admittedly after they received it), and impressed we still managed to get it completed on time. What the client doesn't know won't hurt them.

    Guess who got an award for "getting a high profile job out on time"? If you guessed the person who actually did the work, you're not jaded enough for corporate employment.

    submitted by /u/darkkai3
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    You need to use our software if you want transmissions tracked by our software...

    Posted: 31 May 2018 01:58 PM PDT

    Hi TFTS! Long time lurker, first time poster.

    I work at a Data Integration and Managed Services company that also happens to sell and support a few specific data-focused applications. The application i Support is a robust File Transfer application that consolidates various transmission protocols.

    One of our customers has been using this software since before I even started with my company. He frequently writes in with the most basic of questions that should have been learned the first day using the software. Today's, though, takes the cake.

    For some background, this customer also uses our VAN services for the transmission of data, rather than a direct connection with a partner.

    LEGEND:

    C=Customer

    M=Me

    S=Our Software

    OS=Other Software

    C: I was viewing a transaction from the VAN portal and I see that we received a transaction, but it's not showing up in our software. Please advise.

    M: Good afternoon C! I'm more than happy to help with this issue. Could you please provide the <Relevant Identification information> so I can look into this transmission issue further?

    C: Provides <Relevant Identification Information>.

    M: I see from the header information that the data was not transmitted with S. It appears that OS was used for sending the data, as well as the acknowledgement.

    C: Yes, we're experimenting with another application. Why didn't the transmission show up in S?

    M: Well, since you used OS for the transmission of data, the acknowledgement would have come in via OS as well. That application is from a completely different company that has no association with us or S. S can only track information that is processed through it.


    I have it on good authority that C makes at least twice as much as I do.

    submitted by /u/unrehearsedgaming
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    I'm a Kevin

    Posted: 31 May 2018 09:20 AM PDT

    But I prefer to believe I just pulled a Kevin once. ( r/storiesaboutkevin )

    Worked as tech support for a very large company with stores all over the country. We'd have to regularly remote in to their store servers, which supported their cash registers.

    Due to the fact that the company used xml files to post prices and sales to each store, updates would take hours for each store.

    Due to the fact that the people who set up the prices and xml files, as well as regular failures of the update process, the registers wouldn't show the correct prices when customers tried to purchase items on sale.

    So often, on the day after new updates were done, we'd get tons of tickets about prices being wrong. We'd telnet into the server, check whether the xml file had the item and price, and if it did, rerun the load. If not, call the marketing team and have them regenerate the xml, and then we'd rerun the load. I don't remember if we did the push to the store or if they did. Even after the load finished, you'd have to check to make sure the prices were correct now. If not, you'd have to do it all again.

    But there was no direct way to see how far the load was. You had to run a command to see what it was doing. Even then, it didn't say how many records. So you could type the command to view it, and then repeat the command, but it was easier to wait and do other tickets while this was going on, and then check later.

    I had one store where the load didn't work, so I figured out the problem and reran it. Problem is, it's been hours now and the store manager is getting frustrated about these price issues today not being fixed. So I needed to wait until it's done and then verify it as soon as the load was complete.

    But it was annoying having to keep rerunning that command to see whether it was done, so I had I brilliant Kevin like idea. I would create a batch file that would run the command every few seconds on this store's server.

    It worked wonderfully. Would scroll showing the status, and I could just sit there watching it.

    I could, until we got another call from that store screaming about how their registers were hung. Oops. Boy the manager was pissed.

    I aborted the script, and kept my mouth shut, pretending it was just a fluke server problem. Afaik no one ever figured it out.

    submitted by /u/nosoupforyou
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    The definition of Insanity

    Posted: 01 Jun 2018 02:45 AM PDT

    RSA - great in theory, but when you start to include users... it crashes and explodes.
    Here's another offshore story for you.
    not even entirely sure where this offshore person is even from.
    Name definitely says India, but the company is based in Japan, so not sure.
    I get an email that somebody can't login through RSA.
    OK, we get that a lot.
    Some people forget PINs, some don't use it very often, some people can't type, etc.
    So I go in and see what the error messages are, and I see a ridiculous amount of login attempts.
    36 failed login attempts.
    They were locked out after 5, which means they tried 31 more times after being told they were locked out.
    And then they wonder why they can't get in.
    What makes you think that 31 more times might do the trick?
    So I send him the info on what I found, and instructions for how to log in the right way.
    The thing I love hate about offshore is that they love to send you an email asking for help, and then they're fucking gone.
    Every time.
    3 and a half hours later, I get another email from him.
    "I tried follow these instructs, and still not work."
    Super.
    I log into the console again, to see.
    24 more failed login attempts with the same exact error.
    I can also see that they're apparently remembering their password correctly.
    So they can remember their password, but not a simple PIN.
    I cleared his PIN, assuming he just doesn't know it, even though he was able to login successfully literally 1 day earlier, and many times before that.
    2 hours after that, I'm still waiting.

    submitted by /u/GreekNord
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    Customer has pre-existing issues outside of the scope of the repair i'm doing? must be my fault when I don't prevent further issues.

    Posted: 31 May 2018 08:33 AM PDT

    So I work as a computer repair tech. One of our clients came in yesterday. He needed a screen replaced on his laptop because it was cracked and wasn't working. We opened the computer up to find that there were some screws rolling around.

    The thing is, he said the computer was working just fine before he took it in. That's all great and dandy, but that doesn't change the fact that there are now a dozen screws rolling around in your laptop.

    So, I make sure to find and re-screw in any and all screws that I need in order to do this repair, along with any screwholes I can get to easily.

    Some of the screwholes are inaccessible without removing more component that are entirely outside of the scope of this repair. I decide to finish my repair and tell the customer about this. I can tell that whoever last repaired this device didn't know what the fuck they're doing because honestly it isn't hard to screw in a screw properly.

    So, I tell her i can do that for a small extra fee. In the past my boss (Senior technician, he's been here a long time.) has been really strict on the ROI for repairs. If it takes too long to do a particular repair, I get reprimanded for taking too long because that's money we can earn doing someone else's repair.

    So, I decide to do the bare minimum in order to make sure this repair goes smoothly and suggest the customer come back later to ask my boss for a discount on getting his shit fixed because its #notmyfault and his existing issue with screws coming out isn't preventing my repair from working properly.

    I then get a call from my boss, reprimanding me, because apparently a screw got loose and fucked up his computer.

    So I:

    1) either removed all loose screws

    2) or tightened any existing screws

    but because another screw gets loose I get reprimanded.

    Sometimes you can't win.

    submitted by /u/dmfreelance
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