Teaches co-workers how to copy/paste and gets promoted Tech Support |
- Teaches co-workers how to copy/paste and gets promoted
- The right click button is the one on the right.
- Fancy Foot Work
- I'm starting to think we are test subjects for psychological warfare.
- How I broke their phone
- How could this happen?
- "You have to press the button?"
- No! Don’t touch that! It can catch fire for all I care!
- Is it Satanic?
- Maybe I should patent a rain poncho for server racks (or How I Outranked the Store Manager for an Hour)
| Teaches co-workers how to copy/paste and gets promoted Posted: 08 Aug 2018 01:54 PM PDT I had a friend that got a job at the DOT in our state. He wasn't a technical person just new the basics. He told me some stories about people looking at 20+ pages of citations and would print them off. They would then print the document and open the other screen where they had to look up the data and input new data. It would take them several minutes for each and they would only get through a handful of these a day per each person. He noticed this and showed a person how to highlight the citation number, ctrl-c to copy, go to other screen ctrl-f to find and ctrl-v paste in the value. It took a process from several minutes down to seconds. This employees productivity went up 900%. Word started getting around about my friend the computer genius and he was soon teaching everyone. Within a couple months he was promoted to supervisor of the department and has been promoted several times since then. [link] [comments]  |
| The right click button is the one on the right. Posted: 08 Aug 2018 04:39 AM PDT Short one but this call did take like 15 full minutes. $Me - still me $Cx - customer >$Cx: Hey, I need to print this email but I can't find any print button for it >$Me: No worries, if you just right click on the email it should come up with a print option >$Cx: I'm doing that but it's not coming up with anything >$Me: Can you confirm for me where you're right clicking? >$Cx: On the email in the list >$Me: Okay and can you confirm which button on your mouse you're clicking for me please >$Cx: The right click one - the one on the right! -This continues for about 15 minutes- >$Cx: No, nothing happens when I click it, my mouse just looks funny and has arrows *sudden realisation* >$Me: Are you clicking on the button you use to scroll? >$Cx: Yes, that's the one on the right! >$Me: Can you click on the button to the right of that one for me please >$Cx: Oh I see the option now! Thanks! tl;dr: When the customer said the one on the right they meant not the right click button, but the scroll wheel - directly to the right of the left click button. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Aug 2018 10:28 PM PDT I did tech support several years ago. I had an old lady call in about an issue with her computer. She said something kept flying across her screen and she didn't know what it was but it was driving her crazy and she hasn't been able to use the stupid thing since she got it. In the middle of our conversation she stops and whispers "It stopped." "What is it?" I asked "An arrow." "An arrow?!" I don't know why I thought of this, maybe it was because she reminded me of my old neighbor lady who lived across the street from me growing up, she used to sew and make things. So I asked her, if she sewed. She delightfully said yes! She told me about all the things that she had made and about her sewing machine. I then asked if her sewing machine came with a foot petal, she said yes. I furthered inquired if her computer also came with a foot petal, she said yes but she needed to get another one because it was too small for her foot. She thought if she moved it around, it made the computer go because when it moved it made her computer screen come on. I had to explain about how her "foot petal" was really a mouse, she then said "Wait! Mouse where?" I had to mute her to keep from laughing. I spent about an hour going over how to use her mouse and what it was used for. Still one of my favorite stories to tell. [link] [comments]  |
| I'm starting to think we are test subjects for psychological warfare. Posted: 08 Aug 2018 08:45 AM PDT I do Level one tech (Help Desk) for an large Manufacturing company in the US. ME = M / U = User. Typical call opening ask name ID # M - What can i help you with today? U - Everything, (he chuckles, I'm thinking this might not be a bad call) I can't print, they have changed all my stuff when i wasn't here, none of this stuff matches up, I have a direct printer and i can't print. (now i can tell by the voice this man is older, senior for sure.) M - They changed your computer? or was it your printer? U - Nothing matches up, i have a direct printer and can't print, they seem to come over here and take what they want and leave when they don't want. M - Who keeps taking this stuff? U - They have contractors in here all the time taking what they want. M- There are contractors stealing equipment? have you called security? (i knew this wasn't the case an never pressed it again) U - None of this stuff matches up, it's changed since Friday. M - Can i have the number of your PC (all PC's, printers etc. have asset #'s) (he started to read the numbers, stopped half way through and stated reading the numbers over again and he changed a few, I had to have him start over) U - then I have this number ****** oh and i also have this number ***** M - What are these numbers for? you gave me 3 different numbers but didn't tell me what they were for. ( I had to read them back and he had to tell me what they were for) U - My monitor is just black, and i can't print, I have this direct printer and i can't print. (Yes he repeated himself for about the 3rd time) M - (I look up his PC and see it is a thin client so i check the Citrix tool we have and see his session is hung up, I end the session) Ok can you login in for me. U - I can't login, I've tried 2 machines and can't login anywhere. M - I found and issue (i wasn't going to explain it to him) and you can now login. U - I can't login, and i can't print, all of this stuff doesn't match up. M - Can you login for me. U - I'll try but i can't login. (time passes and i asked if he logged in, as the Citrix tool was not showing any active sessions) U - I'm trying to login, I wasn't hired to be a computer expert when i started here in 1961. (I see he was finally logged in, because he never told me he was) M - So can you print now? U - I can't get clocked in, I'm probably not even clocked in and I've been here since 5am. (it was 9am so he was doing nothing for 4 hrs) M - Can you try printing, so we know it works. U - I can't get clocked in, it says user not found "I'm sitting right here" M - Are you able to print now? U - I have nothing to print, and i can't get clocked in still. Yeah i was able to print Friday and they changed all this stuff, the contractors are here hooking up AC in the washrooms, I think i need a janitor or something. (there were long periods of time her just mumbled to himself, and there seems to be this constant knocking noise like cow bells or you know the first few seconds of the low rider song on a 3 second loop) M - Have you tried printing anything yet? U - I have nothing to print. At this point i knew i had lost the battle and didn't want to lose the war, so i cut a ticket to the onsite IT team so they can have some fun. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Aug 2018 04:24 AM PDT Ok, I work with fairly unique and specialised technology and support a wide range of users but I need to be clear, phones are just not my thing. I don't know much about them and am not employed to need to. It was therefore something of a surprise when my manager decided to boast to the head of our HR that I could change his phone to sync to our company's exchange server - it was a few years ago now and for reasons I don't know our IT hadn't deployed it by default with the company phones leaving staff to sync via cables. Of course, someone with a work phone could have just asked IT to set them up, another source of surprise when I was told to do so. Anyway, I popped up to HR and had a look. It was an old iPhone (the second time I had even touched one) but I fumbled through the basic settings and found where to enter the Exchange server address and such. The sync worked. I then gave it back to the manager and said it would sync automatically. In fact I said it should ONLY be sync'ed remotely. I said this several times, stressing the importance of the concept and that things could go wrong if he tried sync'ing using the computer. I don't think I could have been clearer had I tattooed it onto his forehead. Now, as any of you real support people are already guessing, I got a call the next day that I had broken the phone and needed to fix it. When I got there to check I found that all the emails and appointments were duplicated. I asked when it had happened, and of course the answer was "Just after I plugged it into the computer and sync'ed". "But I said not to!" "Well yes, but I'm used to doing it this way so I thought I would try. Now, since you broke everything how are you going to fix it?" Now, the problem was not only duplicates, but as my city had recently experimented with daylight savings one if each appointment was 1 hour out. And we are talking about a long term senior HR manager of a very large company, there were emails and appointments stretching back years, even months and years into the future, many required for formal records. Thousands and thousands of them. And it had gone both ways, the network account also had the duplicates so we couldn't just wipe the phone. It was about that time that I remembered that I was not employed to handle such problems, that he had breached IT policy by making me do the job in the first place, and as HR manager he should be very aware of all of this. He had also gone explicitly against my instructions. So, in a moment of rare bravado I said "Sorry, no idea, I'm not a phone guy. Obviously. I better get back to my real work." The one person I feel sorry for was his secretary, who apparently spent the next two weeks manually checking everything and trying to clean the account up. The manager was too worried about push back from IT to ask them for real help (who I expect could have fixed it in a day). I say apparently as I never spoke to him again. My manager also never volunteered my phone services to anyone. Personally I consider this a win. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Aug 2018 07:12 AM PDT Like many of you, I'm not actually tech support but we do try help our customers with their problems even if they don't really fall under our obligations. Just received a call that went along the lines of: $upset_customer: Hi, we've just found out that our XYZ Service has stopped working. $me: Sorry, which service? I'm afraid I've never heard of that. $upset_customer: Of course you have, we've been with you for years. $me: That's right, you have but you have ABC Service with us. That's the only one. $upset_customer: No, no, we have XYZ too. It's not working so can you fix it. ... so: I look up this service and it's with a completely different company that I've never heard of. I inform the customer of this ... $upset_customer: No, it's with you. We moved it at the same time as ABC. $me: I'm sorry but you didn't. If you use this search and look at the records it shows that the other company is the provider. You need to speak to them. $upset_customer: Well, I don't see how that's possible as they've gone out of business but sure I'll phone them. Can you give me their number? $me: Sure, let me just pull up their website. The number is ##### ### ### but there's probably a billing specific one on the invoices they send you. ... We exchange pleasantries, the call ends and I return to normal work until an email arrives from that client ... Subject: I KNOW WHY YOUR WRONG Content: You've been looking up UVW Service but I meant "XYZ Service" $me: Hi $upset_customer: Sorry but I've never heard of that service either, I simply googled the service name that you told me. Here's the link to that search [insert link that proves XYZ is still with the other provider and they are not out of business at all] ... and an hour passes before I receive a final reply ... $upset_customer: Thanks for the help. You were right. They've been emailing me for months but I've been deleting the emails as I thought we moved this service to you. I just need to log in and pay the balance. Can you tell me the password? ... Right now I'm just trying to write a pleasant email explaining that I couldn't possibly tell them the password for their account for a service I've never heard of with a company I've never heard of either. Suggestions are welcome! [link] [comments]  |
| "You have to press the button?" Posted: 08 Aug 2018 04:37 AM PDT A few years ago I worked for a company that fitted custom media walls- basically an array of screens that displays maps. We got commissioned by a university to fit one in an open space next to their reception. Having briefly spoken to the receptionist (the designated care-taker of the system once we'd installed it), I thought we should take extra efforts to make it fool-proof. So we put in a fail-safe: a small remote with one button (not dissimilar to this) to trigger a relay and gracefully reboot the system in case of any technical mishaps. So we installed the media wall, issued the remote to the receptionist and explained- if anything goes wrong with the wall, just press this button and wait 2 minutes for it to reboot. Fast forward 1 week- we get a call. The receptionist had gone on holiday and her younger replacement (a ~21 YO fashion student) was freaking out that a big meeting was about to take place and the media wall wasn't working as intended. I asked if she'd used the remote to reboot it- "I've tried several times, it doesn't work. Can you please come over to fix it, the directors are arriving." Fair enough, the remote batteries could be dead. I drop what I'm doing and rush over (30 mins away). I get there, say hello to the replacement receptionist, take the remote and press the button. System reboots in 30 seconds. I turn around and look at her confused, and all she says is- "Ahhh, you have to press the button?" Gobsmacked, I stood there speechless for a moment and asked what she'd been doing. Apparently she'd been pointing the remote at the wall for a solid 10 minutes and didn't think to press the big red button on it. TL;DR I don't know how some people make it through life EDIT: When the 8 months of free support was up, we politely refused to renew the maintenance contract. 2x broken screens from students throwing drinks, my support team being constantly called up by the horny fat building manager (f), 'wand' girl incident above, and the director trying to change the terms of the contract for us to effectively rebuild it to a better spec for free. No thanks, we don't want your money. [link] [comments]  |
| No! Don’t touch that! It can catch fire for all I care! Posted: 08 Aug 2018 08:34 AM PDT My company used to use a recruiting agency for finding IT people. (We still do, but we used to too.) As a result, not everybody we hired was capable of keeping up with the rest of the team, to put it nicely. This is a story of one such person. This guy, who I'll call $cable, was hired as a field tech for a remote region. With a very impressive resume professing over 20 years of IT experience, he should have been more than qualified to be a field tech. Sure, he couldn't spell to save his life, despite claiming to have plenty of tech writing experience, but surely his technical skills were up to par! Alas, we found otherwise on one fateful day where I had to have him move a firewall from one modem to another. See, we tend to expand through acquisition, and on occasion we acquire a company that shares their office space with another company on certain days. We cannot work with this arrangement, so we tend to install all our own equipment in parallel: we order a dedicated internet circuit, new PCs, printers, phones, the whole shebang, then set it all up alongside existing equipment, using KVMs as necessary. This particular site I had learned of the shared arrangement too late, so I hadn't had time to order a dedicated circuit quite yet and had to improvise. Being that $cable hadn't yet been hired when this site needed to be set up, I ended up personally flying out and doing the initial setup. Since $otherCompany had a very basic setup, I ended up recreating their IP scheme on a separate VLAN on our gear and using our gear exclusively for the time being. Once our dedicated circuit was installed, all $cable would need to do is plug our gear into the new circuit, plug $otherCompany's firewall back into their modem, move their switch back to their firewall, and all would be well. Simple! As part of the original setup, each company did already have their own phones— ours were powered by a small 8 port PoE switch sitting on top of the rack, separate from the non-PoE switch for the rest of the gear, and $otherCompany's were powered by power bricks connected to the individual phones. As part of the transition, we put in our own 48 port PoE switch, so we no longer needed the original PoE switch but I left it in place since it wasn't technically ours (these split offices can be a bit messy in terms of equipment ownership). So after the transition, we had a 3U rack with the 8 port PoE switch sitting on top, our very distinctive-looking silver switch that rhymes with $herHockey in the top U, our $herHockey firewall sitting right below that, and $otherCompany's switch on the bottom. The two modems and $otherCompany's firewall were mounted to the wall. My conversation with $cable went something like this: $huta: so first off, move the WAN cable coming from our firewall into the new modem. $cable: which is our firewall? $huta: the silver $herHockey one. $cable: the one that says $GetNear? $huta: no, that's $otherCompany's, and it's black. The silver one, in the rack. $cable: oh, got it. And which cable do I move again? $huta: the one plugged into the "internet" port. $cable: I don't see an "internet" port. $huta: well, what do you see? $cable: there's a whole bunch of cables coming out, and there's like... 43 ports? Oh no wait, it says 48. $huta: that's the switch. Look for the little silver box right under that. It should have 4 ports on it. $cable: I see a box with 8 ports? $huta: no, that's the old PoE switch. We don't need that. There should be nothing plugged into that. $cable: so I should unplug the cable I plugged in there? $huta: wait, what did you plug into that? $cable: the Internet cable? $huta: which Internet cable? We didn't disconnect any internet cable yet. $cable: the $ISP guys gave me a new Internet cable! $huta: no, we don't need that cable. There should be enough cables there already. Please unplug it. $cable: okay! $huta: now, do you see the little silver $herHockey box? The cables go in the back of it, not the front. $cable: oh yeah, I see it! The one mounted to the wall? $huta, getting frustrated: no, that's $otherCompany's firewall. Look on the rack, between the two switches. It's sitting right on top of $otherCompany's switch. $cable: oh yeah, okay, I got it. Now what do I do? $huta: find the cable going into the "Internet" port, trace it to the modem, and unplug it. $cable: but it goes to the switch? $huta: did you trace the one in the Internet port, or port 1? $cable: oh, I got the port 1. But it goes to port 48 on the switch? $huta: yes, as it should. Just leave that one alone. $cable: so I move the Internet cable to the new modem? $huta: correct. $cable: okay, done. Hey, it's not working? It's just showing a red light? $huta: give it some time to pick up the new IP address. $cable: it's still broken. $huta: what did you plug it into? $cable: the modem on top of the rack. $huta: the modem is on the wall, not the rack. The only thing on top of the rack is the old PoE switch. We don't need that. $cable: oh, ok. Done. Okay, now what? $huta: unplug $otherCompany's switch from port 3 on our firewall and plug it into their firewall. $cable: which port should I plug it into? $huta: the one marked "LAN." $cable: there's none marked "LAN." $huta: there should be. What are the ports labeled? $cable: they're just labeled 1 through 8. At this point, what should have been a 10 minute conversation had turned into an hour and ten minutes, and we were only barely closer to finishing than when we had started. And still, here we were discussing the useless PoE switch yet again! Beyond frustrated, I finally yelled at $cable the title of this post, much to the amusement of my colleagues. Fortunately, that outburst seemed to finally startle him enough to start doing some critical thinking, and we got the 10 minute job done in only another 30 minutes. I reprogrammed our gear in 5 minutes, tested, and went home for the day, as at that point it was well past quitting time. As for $cable? I'd love to be able to say that I was able to bring this incident, as well as countless others involving both myself and other colleagues, to my boss as reasons he shouldn't be on our team. And I'd love to say those incidents did ultimately lead to his firing. And I can! He was let go about two weeks after this incident. Sometimes, there is indeed justice in this world. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Aug 2018 01:34 PM PDT I work with my dad for his consulting company, specifically I am the support for a private K-12 Christian school and have been there for about a year now. I personally am an Atheist but it has not bothered me as most of my coworkers (not all of them) are very nice and our discussions focus on the tech problems they're having, not relating to religion. There are some though that I just know are Evangelicals, and some of them are quite crazy. One older lady is convinced that her computer is possessed by a ghost named Pepe because it asks her to change her password every 3 months to login (Active Directory setting) and sometimes the computer freezes or crashes (Old computers from 2006). That's a story for another time, though. This story focuses around someone who we will refer to as AD. Last semester, she was an activities director for the students and organized the retreats they took, she also taught some middle school classes and was on a 4-person tech team that is only there to ask us for help and to install certain extensions on the Chromebook devices that the students have. Last semester she was not too involved with our work, this summer she was promoted to the I.T Director and works alongside us now but she has no background in PC repair or Network Administration, her only qualification is using domain apps and teaching other teachers how to use those domain apps. The school has a 1:1 Chromebook program, and they did not purchase any accidental repair, is this sounding like a disaster to you guys? Because it is. Anyway, there is no accidental repair warranty so as you can imagine we are left to fix them. I'm only allowed to work 10 hours a week and of course I still had to deal with user issues and changing projector bulbs while fixing the Chromebooks in my office. The students were extremely irresponsible with them, when we first got the account we had to fix 60 that students had broken from the last year and nobody repaired because they thought they had accidental warranty because of a lack of communication between the former I.T director and the administrators of the school When school was in session, we had at least 3 broken chromebooks come in a week usually with broken glass on the screens because they dropped them or did some other stupid thing with them. I fixed them as fast as possible, and never got asked about my progress or anything by the High School tech team leaders, but AD was always pushing for more Chromebooks to the middle school. She would text me or ask me if I had any repaired Chromebooks on the daily, and would invite me into her office and discuss things relating to teachers needing tech help in the middle school. This annoyed me because she always took up my time when I could be fixing things instead of putting in a request like everyone else, but my dad said I was doing what I was supposed to be doing and she would always give me soda when I went into her office. One day, AD texted me and asked me to come in her office because of a Chromebook problem she was having. I went over there and let myself in, she was on the phone with someone and talking about something unrelated when I came in. After she hung up the phone, this is the conversation that followed. AD: Okay, I am having a BAD day today. Me: Alright, what's going on? AD: This student was looking at spam advertisements on his computer! We saw them on there, how is he getting them? We do not have any filtering software, just a firewall and Google settings to protect kids from seeing anything bad on the internet. They can see anything they want when they bring the Chromebooks home for the day. Me: Okay, well it could be that he got onto a website with advertisements that wasn't filtered through the firewall, or maybe it's a bad extension. AD: Oh my god you have to help me. That's not the only thing, look at this. She takes the Chromebook and turns it to face the screen towards me. I see on there a Spotify album that the student had opened and was listening to in class. The album was "Demon Days" by Gorillaz. AD: How did he get onto this website!? He is listening to this album called DEMON DAYS by the Gorillaz! It's like.. Satanic!" I had trouble keeping my sides from not launching into the next hemisphere. I love Gorillaz and used to listen to them all the time. I decided just to tell her what I was going to tell her originally, that I will fix this. Me: Okay, I will look at it for you. Maybe there is a bad extension or something and I can clean it up. AD: Oh, can you you? Thank you. These students are driving me crazy! Me: I used to listen to this band. It's not Satanic music, it's just electronica rock. AD: Oh, you used to listen to them? It's just very scary to see a child looking at these things. Can you please help me? Me: Sure, hand me the Chromebook and I will take care of it. Needless to say, nothing was wrong with the Chromebook, all the student had done was go onto Spotify to listen to music. I took a look at it and uninstalled a few personal extensions that the student had installed, did an operating system wipe, and gave it back to her. TL;DR Student at a private Christian school was listening to the album Demon Days on his laptop. A tech team teacher thought it was satanic music and freaked out and enlisted my aid. I exorcised the Chomebook for her and it is now free of demons. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Aug 2018 04:57 AM PDT FTP/LTL/Mobile/etc. Insert any other acronyms you want. I am a field support coordinator for an in-house IT department of a regional grocery chain. We had some bad ice storms over the winter, and I was on standby for a store whose front end went down hard during one of those storms. I get to the store and I can hear the controller alarms from the sales floor. I open the computer room and find that the AAC (ancient air conditioning unit) had failed, and the roof had opened up over the server racks, pouring water on the equipment. Luckily, this store's management followed orders very well. Within minutes, the rack door latches were off, air movers in the rear of the racks, and thick plastic sheeting was over the racks like a poncho. We only lost the primary front end controller to water damage, but the failover to the backup never happened. I worked with the software vendor to complete the failover. The store was back in business... until main power went minutes later. I lost my troops at that time for product recovery, but this still makes an interesting story. [link] [comments]  |
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