The day i got a department fired Tech Support |
- The day i got a department fired
- But the standard password doesn't have to abide by the rules!
- Wabbajacked
- Hotel Wi-Fi shenanigans part 3.1
- Its definitely a Monday.
- Oh yeah, I hope you don't have a pacemaker
- How I know no one reads my emails
- Password manager vs. the rolodex
- I changed fingers
- Password Woes
| The day i got a department fired Posted: 01 Oct 2018 06:20 AM PDT I got a message from a friend saying someone they knew wanted to replace the broken screen in their laptop, and that they already had the replacement screen. I got in contact with him, and he asked if I could come to his place of work to replace the screen, I said I would as long as I had permission from his boss, turns out he was the owner of the company. The next day I showed up at his work he gave me his laptop, and he showed me to an empty desk in the accounting/stats department, I replace the laptop screen without any trouble. He was in a meeting so while waiting for him to finish I hung out in the accounting/stats department, I see two older gentlemen working on an excel spread sheet, one was reading off each number while the other was putting it into a calculator, and reading the results back, they were doing this to calculate the sum and adv of hundreds of numbers and started over twice. I introduced my self and showed them how to get excel to do it automatically for them, and I said "this way it will only take you minutes to do a sheet instead of hours" and I heard a loud "you are all fired for incompetence", turns out the owner had been in the doorway listening. After everything settled down, he told me "I have been waiting on that sheet for 2 days, and you did it in under a minute" he ended up giving me $200, and has sent a lot of work my way over the years. [link] [comments]  |
| But the standard password doesn't have to abide by the rules! Posted: 01 Oct 2018 11:35 PM PDT So one day I got a call.Very simple request.Reset password and help the User set their new password. I don't think anything of it call the User and reset their password then help them enter the DefaultResetKey.At this point i then let the user enter their new password, but of course I first explain to them the password rules to avoid having to unlock their account due to too many reset attempts failing. So as I explain that the User needs 8 characters, upper and lowercase letters as well as at least one number.The User starts to angrily complain about the unfairness of being forced to use 8 characters since the StandardResetKey is not that long. After complaining about this I explain to the User that those are simply the Password strength rules all Users have to abide by and that it's simply company policy and that the software wont accept any weaker passwords. (also why the StandardresetKey is allowed to be shorter) At which point the User proudly proclaims that if she has to use an 8 character long password she refuses to work for the bankcompany and hangs up. I've seen angry people, I've seen smeone burst out in tears, I've seens omeone confused why IT support does not fix tables.But this was the first time someone complained to me that 8 characters are simply too hard...I mean sshe didn't even need any special characters.I was pretty stunned after that exchange and just noted her refusal to work in the Ticketing tool. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Oct 2018 12:37 AM PDT This is a weird one. I am not a tech. I know enough to restart the computer or phone in case of an issue. If the problem persists even after a restart, then you have a real problem. This is about my phone. I have a Sansung Galaxy J5, a mid range phone but good enough for my redditing needs. So one day I was chilling at home listening to music on my headphones. The phone was in my pocket. I wanted to skip a song, and so I took the phone out of my pocket. I pressed the power button to wake the screen and tried to swipe to unlock it. Well, I tried, but the screen was unresponsive. WTF?? I freaked out. For context, at this point, I knew the warranty had expired a month ago because I threw the warranty papers out a week ago after some deep-cleaning in my closet. If this phone had been taken to Sovngarde, that's a lot of money down the drain (for me). So like any rational person, I tried to restart the phone. But the touch on the screen to select the "restart" option would not register at all. So the next step was to hold down the power button for a hard shutdown and reboot. Did it work? NOPE!! Still no touch response. Then I remembered this sub where someone said to unplug any cables and start replugging to see which caused the issue. So first I unplugged the charger. Still the issue persists. Then I unplug the headphone, and just like that, the touch screen works again. Just to check I plug the headphones back in and touch is not detected. Take it back out and I can upvote again! WOOO!! I have no idea what caused that issue. That issue has not reappeard with any other headphones. TLDR - Sheogorath wabbajacked my headphones into a phone touch sensor killer. [link] [comments]  |
| Hotel Wi-Fi shenanigans part 3.1 Posted: 01 Oct 2018 10:24 AM PDT Small amusing update. Got called over the weekend because hotel customers were still complaining about the internet. Got on site and the network was working perfectly for the entire hotel. Looked at users/usage history and noticed that for the amount of guests that had been staying over the last week the amount of users that had connected/currently connected was unusually low. Luckily I had asked the hotel to document customer complaints and which rooms/areas they were having connection issues at and most of the issues were on one side of the hotel. A bunch were for "weak signal" and "password issues". After doing some digging it was found that the now ex husband that caused all the issues had small cards printed up with a neighboring business's guest network SSID and password that by sheer luck had similar name as the hotel. He then placed them in the rooms that were closest to that neighboring business and could get a very weak signal. While he was briefly running the hotel it looks like they filled that side of the hotel first. Cards removed, issue solved. A shady but amusing way to get around not paying your bills I suppose. It amazes me how much work this man went through so he could avoid paying internet/cable bills. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Oct 2018 11:53 AM PDT First call this morning.
He gives me his name and I am unable to find him in AD at all.
I pulled the call from the logs and sent it to my boss. He found it hilarious. Disclaimer. We are an internal support service only. We do not speak with outside users at all and when we do, we are to terminate the call immediately. Per VP over IT. If an external user is rude to us over the phone, all bets are off. Call 2
I look him up in AD. Down arrow of death.
I left him onhold for 5 minutes before the line hung up on its own.
Transfer call, send email to my favorite HR person with message. "I'm Sorry... no I'm not" and hang up. Instant phone call.
All she could hear was the sound of skull shattering head desks as I pounded the brains from my head. All of this was within the first hour of my day. It has not gotten any better. [link] [comments]  |
| Oh yeah, I hope you don't have a pacemaker Posted: 01 Oct 2018 05:49 PM PDT Kinda clickbaity title, so TLDR first: TL;DR Client has me look at a medical machine, ignores safety warnings, only tells me "I hope you don't have a pacemaker" and something about the machine's magnets would stop it. So as I said in past stories, the company I used to work at had many clients, including many in BioTech. I don't really know what any of them do, but this client I think was working on heart medication. And as most BioTech I worked with, you were supposed to use disposable gloves, or various safety devices when entering certain labs. They also had a plethora of warning signs posted everywhere for all the warnings. This was the only client I had to wear a lab coat (surprisingly heavy) when standing in a certain spot, but 1 meter to left was safe in regular cloths. Anyway, $Scientist came to me saying some $BigMachine wasn't working and he needed me to look at it. I hadn't been there long, but had followed the safety gear warnings, unless I was following someone and they were ignoring them (meant I didn't have to, right?). So we get to the $BigMachine; I don't know what it did (some kind of Science-Magic), but I got in close to look it over. Then he asks me
Me, now I go bug-eyed, because Holy Shit! I know I am (was) young and healthy, but that's the kind of thing to warn someone before going up to the giant death machine! I also had my phone in my pocket, but that was safe. I had 1 other instance of entering a room with live mice, also following a different scientist who didn't put on gloves, before I diligently wore the safety gear everytime, no matter how ridiculous. [link] [comments]  |
| How I know no one reads my emails Posted: 01 Oct 2018 11:01 AM PDT At my job I handle all account creation for staff onboarding. I ask for three things: their name (duh), the new users ID, and the three digit number assigned to their program. I got this ticket for a new user and had a wonderful email interaction that told me that no one actually reads my emails. M = program manager S = Secretary that helps him X = me M: "We are hiring a new employee can you set them up with an account their name is John Doe." X: "I can do that I will just need the ID and the program number he will be working for." M: "His ID is #### and he started the 28th." At this point I had gotten distracted with another ticket and did not see the email but we can see that he didn't provide all the info I asked for. About 2 hours later my boss (why she emaiked ny boss and not me idk) forwards me an email from his secretary basically stating they updated the ticket. Seeing they ignored the program number stuff I decided to take a different approach. Me: "I see that M is listed with this program number: ###. Is this also the program number of the new hire?" S: "SOUNDS GOOD!" that's not exactly an answer to my question but I'm going to take that as a yes. Considering most managers manage more than one program (all with different numbers) it could very well be the wrong number but I'm not paid enough to investigate further. It's a simple 3 important things I need that no one ever gets right. [link] [comments]  |
| Password manager vs. the rolodex Posted: 01 Oct 2018 12:06 PM PDT My parents work from home, and nearly every time I visit, I hear them on the phone with some company or another trying to retrieve a forgotten password. (What's terrifying is that their primary email service would just tell it to them whenever they called, with no more verification then a name and address.) So I set them up with Lastpass (and strongly advised a new email service), and showed them how to use it. After a few days, they seemed to have the hang of it, so I went home assured that things would be better for them. They were recently evacuated from their homes during one of the various weather-related events of the past month. After a few days of no ability to work, they were telling me about a major job they were going to lose, since they don't have access to their email, and it's sitting in their inbox with no response from them. I told them they could access their email from anywhere, it's a miracle of present-day technology. Just open a browser, go to Gmail, and log in! THEM: Can't, though, because we don't know the password. ME: Why not? THEM: It's too complicated to remember, since it was created by Lastpass, and so we have been writing them all down in the rolodex to remember them, which we left behind when they evacuated. [Ditto for all their secondary services.] ME: Aaargh, that's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. Well, good thing it's a simple fix. Because they are probably saved in Lastpass [though now I'm second-guessing that], and Lastpass is just like email! You can access it from anywhere! THEM: No, we can't. ME: Why not? THEM: Because we don't have the Lastpass password. It's in the rolodex, remember? ME: <headdesk> Sorry, can't do much to help you. I'm sure there more solutions, but at that point I was too exhausted to think about it. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Oct 2018 10:41 AM PDT I work in SEO and as an add on I'll help with social media if required. Self employed 7 years this month, one of my earliest clients that I've known all this time called me an hour ago. I emailed her the URL for her latest blog post. She's in her early 60's and yells down the phone at nuclear level. She's a sweetheart and I've never failed to help her. She also bakes the most awesome goats cheese, feta cheese and cherry tomato pastries I have ever tasted. Every Christmas she brings a large gift: Sloe berries. For sloe gin. Food hampers in a wicker basket. Wine. Lots of wine. We have a great girly relationship outside of shop. Note: When she calls previous problems have been: I HAVE NO EMAILS! Someone has emailed me 4 times today! Webmail and ISP are <profanity>Not allowed to say the words</profanity> I taught her to sorting by date as she said her last message was in 2016 4 months later "I HAVE NO EMAILS! YOU HELPED ME LAST TIME! Webmail and ISP are <profanity>Not allowed to say the words</profanity> I taught her again by sorting by date Today's update: Emailed her the latest blog post to publish to Facebook as I can't be a FB admin because reasons She hasn't added email to her iPhone as 'she can't be [bothered]' so she can't use the iPhone to copy the URL Anyway I FB messaged her the URL and told her to hold her finger over the URL to copy, then open FB Pages app and paste. She told me she changed fingers so the copied URL not be affected. Yes I laughed like a drain at her over the phone and told her I loved her [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Sep 2018 10:17 PM PDT Here's a painful story from early this week. My heart is still recovering from the shock (sarcasm). Background: I work for an MSP (managed service provider) which is basically out-of-house tech support for a bunch of different clients. Some clients have in-house and we are hired on to help them or they are tier one and we are tier two. Some clients—we are all they have. I'm a network engineer, but a large part of my job is simple tech support stuff. "Oh your computer is being slow? well I see that is was last power cycled 65 days ago. Let's go ahead and turn it off and on." Onto the story: For this particular client, we are slowly rolling out Windows 10 computer— batches of 5-10 at a time, two-three times a month. I was reading through our list of computers and found that they had one computer still running Windows XP. I call up their in-house tech manager and said "Send me a Win 10 machine, [user] is still on XP." In-house: yeah he doesn't like change. We were just waiting until you guys said something so we could tell him you were forcing the upgrade. If I would have know he was still using XP, I would have personally given him the computer off my desk. This particular user is in a laboratory that deals with a ton of proprietary information. No way in hell should he be using a machine that is no longer receiving security patches. I just happened to see this computer in a list of over three hundred computers. Never mind that the in-house tech demands that he handles all of the delegation for this project. We are just here as additional help. So I get my hands on the new computer at my office, get everything the user will need on the computer, set up the VPN, join the domain. I go to log on as the user for some last configuration of some of the applications that are user specific. I call the user for his password, on lunch. I call my in-house tech, on lunch. So jokingly I type Password1 while making a joke about [user] hating change. And the Windows Welcome screen popped up. Me: what the actual f***? Coworker: everything okay over there? Me: I just got into this users account by being a smartass. Wanna guess the password? Him: Password? Me: oh, no, it's much more secure than that. It's Password1 Him: No, s***? Me: I'm changing it. I looked into his profile settings and whoever set up his account is probably a moron. He had pretty much unlimited access. And yes, I changed his password, he called after lunch panicking that he "may have gotten possibly hacked." I also got ahold of in-house to get his account knocked down to the appropriate access. In-house: well he's been here for twice as long as anyone else, and when we started all this domain stuff we weren't sure what we wanted so we just gave users whatever they might need. [link] [comments]  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Tales From Tech Support. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment