Very first ticket of the day started with the word "Sorry" Tech Support |
- Very first ticket of the day started with the word "Sorry"
- Help! My computer eats my CDs!
- Farming some solitaire wins
- I'm sorry, you said it got damaged how?
- You bricked my computer!
- Can I Not Get This Prompt?
- We live in a completely different world then we did just half an hour ago.
- (One of) The (Many) Rite(s) of Passage
- See, it's still not working!
- The Hammer is an Amazing Tool
- Don't get snappy with me!
- I can't log in with my new password. Seriously.
- Google Form compatibility issue
- Built the customer a Porsche but they'd rather keep driving their old shitbox
- My emails don't work!
| Very first ticket of the day started with the word "Sorry" Posted: 29 Nov 2018 07:24 AM PST Following that was this- "attempted to switch keyboards on COW (computer on wheels), The cord is now stuck and unable to take it out or pull it back thru the metal cord holder just below the monitor." Note, the end users don't have a spare keyboard, those are all safely locked away. So what was their plan exactly? And why did this keyboard bite the dust? I grab a spare keyboard, saunter on over there and discover said COW with a note attached- "Keyboard doesn't work." I picked the broken keyboard up and about a half cup of water dumped out of it and onto the floor. Ah. Open containers, the enemy of keyboards everywhere. Mystery solved, great job gang. I herd the COW back to my office and begin the task of removing the cable management stuff, which is all enclosed in a snap on plastic piece beneath a tray, locked down with a key. The tray itself is full of water too. Luckily, it doesn't seem to have damaged anything else (fingers crossed) so I clean it up, open the cable management, undo the tangle that our end user has created and free the soggy keyboard. I slap the replacement in, button the whole thing up, and wheel it back out there. Me: "It's fixed. Try not to give it a bath this time." User: "Okay... sorry." I can't even be mad. They said sorry... TWICE. That shit NEVER happens. [link] [comments]  |
| Help! My computer eats my CDs! Posted: 29 Nov 2018 02:22 PM PST Firstly, to anyone still on the front lines level 1/T1 support roles may god have mercy on your souls. I worked t1/l1 support for an enterprise engineering company for about three years. Just when i thought i had seen it all, i had my socks knocked off by a financial controller. $user: Hi for the past three weeks my computer has been eating all my cd's! I put them in my computer and they dont come back out. These CDs have all our yearly financial records i NEED them!!!! $me at a loss for words: youre on the second floor ? (When a user request is this absurd i dont even attempt to trouble shoot over the phone, ill make a desk visit) $user: Yes! $me: ill be right over I show up and ask $user to show me what happens. $user proceeds to insert the CD BETWEEN the HD deck and the CD deck. $user: SEE! I put the CDs in the slot and they dont come back out!!!! $me looks at user, looks at the pc... opens the side of the pc case to have a mountain of cd's fall out. Kindly point out to the user where the cd insert actually is. Walk away and realize i need to get out of L1 support. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Nov 2018 03:29 PM PST Be $me, working in PC repair shop 10+ years ago. $Farmer, retired guff old dude, brings in really old WinXP dell, running slow; only uses notepad and solitaire. No internet, at all. Claims he's a solitaire whiz. Is very worried about losing his record. $Me checks it in. Cant find issue. No errors, no malware, no bad hardware. Old, but in good health. $Farmer picks it up. Vanishes for a few months. $Farmer brings back months later. Same issue. Checked in, still clean, healthy. $Farmer repeats several times, for a year. Always the same. $Farmer shows up at our shop again, same issue. Now really scared his solitaire scores are in jeopardy, claims he has amazing W/L record. $Me gets curious, asks $Farmer to show me what he's doing on it. $Farmer opens solitaire, and is no joke. Absolutely crushes it, wins in 2 mins flat. $Me is very impressed, but no issue so far. Ask him to continue. $Farmer minimizes solitaire. Opens new instance of solitaire. Proceeds to win game after game, in 2-3 mins, each time minimizing and opening a new copy. $Me watches in confusion and amazement. $Me chats briefly; $Farmer has no idea how to reboot, doesn't turn PC off for months and months at a time; just leaves it on and walks away. 25 games an hour, 4 hours a day, means $Farmer has thousands of copies of solitaire.exe running after a few weeks. Thousands of copies, and no memory left. $Me almost headdesks, before explaining. Out of curiosity, checks $Farmers record. 99% games won. [link] [comments]  |
| I'm sorry, you said it got damaged how? Posted: 29 Nov 2018 12:17 PM PST Hello TFTS, and thank you for having me again! $Me - /u/Shooxjat, ITperson at a private school with a 1-to-1 program. Primary handler of the repair process here. $Student - Student here at the school $Boss - Good guy, good boss, that covers it well. My boss and I are sitting at our desks, facing each other with computer screens between us in our small room/proper office, when... $Boss: Hey, I have a question. Does the ADP on devices cover burning? $Me: ...What now? Did they say how it was burnt?$Boss: A candle was under it, apparently. My boss had gotten an email from a parent explaining that a candle had burned a hole in $Student's laptop. After he explained this, my reaction was to put my head on my desk and laugh for about a minute. After that... $Me: Why? $Boss: No idea. We leave it sit since the email indicates that $Student will be in sometime today to show us. After a couple hours pass, $Student arrives. *Student walks in* $Me: Hi, how can I help you? $Student: Um, my mom emailed you earlier... $Me: Oh! Yes, let's see this. *$Student puts down her bag and gets the machine out. She pulls off a couple pieces of electrical tape that were used to cover the damage to the bottom case. She hands me the machine and I start looking at it while saying my next few lines.* $Me: So, how did this happen? $Student: Well, I had the computer on a box on the table, and there was a candle under it, and I smelled something and it was burning a hole through the computer so I moved [the computer]. It still works though! $Me: Okay, well, fill out our form on that computer there *$Me points at our form-filling computer* and we'll figure out what's going on. *$Me holds up damage for $Boss to see. It consists of a 2x2.5 cm hole , oval, melted through the bottom case of the laptop. You can see a solid black part that fills up the visible portion of the exposed space almost immediately against the bottom case* $Boss: Nice! What is that part there? $Me: *thinks and pokes at it* Hmm. It's hard and plastic. $Boss: Think it's the battery? $Me: Oooh, yeah, that's probably it. *Turns to $Student* In which case, YOU got very lucky with this. There's a reason they warn you not to heat batteries or throw them in fire; they'll explode if you do that. *$Student gets a little wide-eyed at this* Since it's the battery, I'd like to give you a spare and go about fixing this. $Student: Okay. *Takes spare and leaves* $Boss: *Goes to record spare* Hey, in the log, where it asks you to describe the issue and be as descriptive as possible, she just put "hole". $Me: We really should have the English department run a descriptive paragraphs writing lesson or something. As an aside, I had issues coming up with any interesting stories that took place in the past couple years; most of my good ones are from a few years ago or so. I was wondering if the students were getting better about taking care of the equipment or I was just getting jaded after a few years on the job. It's probably both, but I really appreciated the novelty this student brought me today. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Nov 2018 05:39 AM PST This is a story from a while ago, at my previous job - tech support for a game. It went something like this... $Player: I'm having FPS issues. $Me: *asks for logs, with instructions on how to get them for me* $Player: *sends empty files* $Player: Okay, I did all of that and the game is still lagging and I am losing a lot of matches. $Me: *facepalms* $Me: *asks for logs again with simplified instruction on how to get them, explained we didn't get to make any changes yet that could fix the problem.* $Player: You bricked my computer! It got blue screen and don't turn on anymore!! I will sue you and your company. At this point I was allowed to disengage due to being threatened with legal action. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Nov 2018 03:01 PM PST I've run into some odd requests over the years. I get it, not everyone knows how a system works. I don't expect everyone to be an IT expert. I don't need you to know what a browser is, though that is always surprising, because, well, I'd be out of work. Today, though, prompted me to post something. It was a whole new level from a self-professed "power" user. It started off bad, when the email sent to the support inbox was to tell us they called and no one answered. Nothing strange there. We usually screen the incoming calls. But the entire email was in the subject line explaining "We need to call back ASAP!!!1!1!!!" While on the callback, they had us remote in without even telling us what the problem is. When we see their screen, it was prompting for a password in Outlook. Ok, nothing strange. Maybe a corrupted credential. After a couple minutes of exasperated complaining about the prompt, we get to the bottom of the issue. They had just changed their account password yesterday and Outlook was prompting for a password. They didn't want Outlook to do that. They wanted Outlook to never prompt for a password after...wait for it...changing their password. They were adamant that should never happen and it has never happened before until we started tech support for them. We had no idea how to do our jobs and were just trying to make things difficult for them. They wanted to us to make sure this never happened again, because...wait, for it...they couldn't remember their new password. We could only reset the password again and say, "sorry, we are unable to fulfill this request" in so many ways until they hung up in frustration. I really don't mind the really basic questions and requests from users. In fact, I'd take someone who doesn't even know a browser from Word any day. They usually think I'm some genius level hacker because I can get the internet to work (aka open Chrome). For some reason, this one really just hurt my soul in a new and unique way. [link] [comments]  |
| We live in a completely different world then we did just half an hour ago. Posted: 29 Nov 2018 01:33 PM PST Characters: $Me: IT manager at a medical center. I work here because they invited me when they realized they were too big to rely on a part time IT (me as a consultant) and needed a full time person to deal with all the random tech stuff that goes on a medical center that's got 120 full time employees and over 40 providers, almost all using computers and EHR. $COO: An old friend of my father's, who is a coowner of the practice. Good guy, but it takes a bit to convince him and his partner that we need to have backups of certain things like switches. A bit = a disaster when something important breaks. $Someone: An anonymous person, who didn't fess up, and who tried to be a hero. The story: I got a call at about 8PM last night that nothing was working for about half the computers on the second floor of our center. No internet access, no EHR access, no email access, nothing. No one had any idea what was going on. Needless to say, I got to the office early to figure out exactly what was wrong. As it turns out, an unmanaged switch, installed by the previous network guy (not me), and not yet replaced with a managed one (my fault), had died a sudden, horrible death. Oh shit. That's...not good, considering that this switch is connected to about 20 computers, including our Sonogram machine and the computers used by the girls who call up insurance companies on behalf of certain patients and prescribe medications on behalf of those of our doctors who don't use EHR. I check a few other things as well: make sure there's no switch ports connected to each other (no), make sure the switch is definitely broken and not just off (nope, its broken allright), make sure no wall ports are connected to each other (also no). Ya know: just so nothing stupid can be causing this and making me go out and spend money for no good reason. Obviously, because $COO has not had a switch break on him yet, there is no backup. Not to fear though. A local store has just the thing: a switch I can buy and use while I order up a new one (this time, managed) and it comes in. I jump in $COO's car since its the easiest to get out of the garage, and go buy the switch. I came back not 30 minutes later with a new switch. Literally, new. Like the switch's box doesn't have a scratch on it. Mind you, I've been getting calls and texts all morning from the staff about certain computers not working. This despite our amazing office manager having already let everyone know what was happening. I open the new switch, plug it in, pop in a laptop to make sure the thing works, and start plugging wall ports from the patch panel right below. I finish, and then go check the non working computers. And wadda ya know: NOTHING WORKS. Then I notice something: all of the ports on the switch are blinking green. Except 2. I walk over to where those 2 ports are...and I'm sure y'all can guess what I see. An ethernet cable, which I had noticed had been plugged into the wall port but not into a computer on my earlier inspection (unsure why as of this writing), had been plugged into 2 wall ports instead of into a computer. $Someone had, I think, tried to be a hero and make their computer work in the 30 minutes I had been gone. Unplugged the port, and everything started working again. Good times. [link] [comments]  |
| (One of) The (Many) Rite(s) of Passage Posted: 29 Nov 2018 02:58 PM PST Dear TFTS, I'll keep this short. I've got a problem user. She's sweet, and likely good at the other parts of her job, but when it comes to her computers? Hopeless. She calls in today and says, "my email is wrong and old". After a few minutes of translation, it turns out in fact Outlook doesn't have her signature. Sure, easy. I ask her where we can get a copy of her signature - for example, an old email. She clicks over to a folder and makes a small noise of alarm. "Where are my emails?" Well, you know the story from there. I'm going to send it to the tier up and hope they can figure it out. Maybe the emails are still somewhere. We pieced the signature together from the business' website and her memory. I need a drink and it's only noon. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Nov 2018 06:13 AM PST I'm a customer support engineer for lab equipment. We do support mostly in the field, at customer's lab. Customer call us with a problem of instrument not communicating with the software. Unfortunately, for reasons irrelevant to this story, my company sold them a really cheap PC to go along with the instrument. By saying cheap, I mean front panel USB falls inside the case when you try to plug something in. Also, the instrument is controlled via COM port, PC doesn't have one, we are using Serial/USB converter... you get the picture. We (colleague plus myself) arrive to the customer's lab, and start working. The whole time we were there, the atmosphere was really tense. There were five middle-aged ladies, visibly annoyed by the problem and cheap PC, throwing poisonous comments about our company, while we take turns in solving the problem and calming them down. We quickly track down the issue to the Serial/USB converter, replace it and restore the communication. They insist on making a measurement to make sure everything is ok, and we spend about four hours trying to measure a sample that is too big (but not too much) for the instrument, whilst trying to explain to them why it cannot be measured. Finally, they sign the papers approving the work and we head out, physically and mentally exhausted. Seconds after passing the security (big plant) I get a phone call from the customer: "It's not working! Again!!!". Sigh. We go through security again, to the lab again, and they furiously point to the PC screen with a comm error: "See, still not working!". My colleague proceeds to turn the instrument on, after which, lo and behold! communication is restored. We left the premises without a word. TL;DR after service customer complains that it still doesn't work, turns out they didn't turn it on. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Nov 2018 09:41 AM PST LTL, FTP etc. Formatting criticism is welcome. My buddy and I work in a school's IT department, and because they are The fluke we use to do cable testing comes with a toning wand for identifying cables with the audible bleeps and bloops - Technical explanation, I know. Now, the wand wasn't working when we started out on the first of the cameras, so we swapped it out with a brand spanking new 9 volt and we were good to go, at least for a while. On the next camera, we went to switch on the wand and once again it appeared to be dead. "Surely not!" We both cried, taking out the battery and replacing it in hopes that it would work, nothing. My buddy started towards the office to retrieve a new battery but I stopped him. "Lemme see that real quick..." I took the wand and spun the switch between modes and not a spark of life. I looked him in the face and before he could stop me, gave it a right and proper whack on the stair I was sitting on. It immediately sprung to life, lights and all. I couldn't resist the urge to pull a Fonzerelli, complete with finger guns and the "Eyyyyyyyy!" As I handed it back to him. "That was an expensive gamble you just took." He said, laughing through his teeth. I harkoned back to whichever AvE video it was where he explained this phenomenon. (This was originally a post to /r/Skookum, though I figured it would likely be appreciated here, too.) "Percussive maintenance isn't just a joke, you know." The Hammer is an Amazing tool. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Nov 2018 12:15 PM PST So I got an email from a user who is notorious for doing any and every aspect of tickets wrong (mainly not submitting them period). It started: "I submitted a ticket like you asked but I have always been told to reach out directly to IT because the ticket system is slow..." Woah, who told you that? We have been telling people to submit tickets so much that we have practically become a meme. Anyway check the ticket she submitted and it turns out she submitted 5 on behalf of 5 other users. Each one is about Internet Explorer opening multiple tabs when they click the shortcut. As most of you probably might realize IE isn't doing that, they just have it set to save tabs from the previous sessions. It's stupid ticket but I'll go and change the setting on 5 computers, it's a slow day. I start looking through the tickets and realize they are missing names of the staff so I drive over (it's a big company with many locations, lucky for her I was right down the road) and confront her (politely) Me: "Hey I just wanted to ask if you could point me to the staff because I don't know your staff by first name and you didn't include computer names so I couldn't work remotely. Can you please include that next time?" Her: raising her voice to almost a yell "I did that! I'm going to open the ticket and show you!" She opens the ticket and all that anger immediately vanishes. Just as I said she only included the first name, no info on the computer and it had all her info in every box. It's rare that I see someone get that angry and self righteous and apologize, I will give her that. I really wouldn't have drove down if there was any way for me to identify the staff and work remotely. [link] [comments]  |
| I can't log in with my new password. Seriously. Posted: 29 Nov 2018 07:31 AM PST A couple of days ago, after helping a couple of people with various things, I was walking around the basement of this particular building when I was "sideswiped" by another user. Sideswipes, or drive-bys are a natural part of the desktop support world, and I suspect, always will be. So anyway, he says, "Hey, I've got this problem. I changed my password and now I can't log in with it. I can log in with my old password, but not with my new one." Understand that this is typical for folks with laptops around here as they have to be connected via the lan in order to log in for the first time with a new password. (I know, but that's a completely separate post) However, this user has a desktop, so wireless isn't part of the problem. I go in and ask him to show me. Showing is always the best way to really know what a problem is, because every user has their own terminology for describing an issue. Anyway, he tries to login with his new password and it fails. He is able to login to the machine with his old password, but when he does, he does something else before he logs in. He reaches over and unplugs the lan cable. I slowly shake my head and start asking questions. Has this been going on for a bit? Yes. Have you called the helpdesk? Nope. Then, I lowered my head and started shaking it back and forth. But then out loud I said, "Sure, no problem. I know what the problem is and I can fix it." It turns out that whoever imaged the machine, neglected to name the machine, and when SCCM puts a name in for you, it begins the name with MININT. Periodically, I check AD and delete those accounts beginning with MININT. This causes the users to not be able to log in. They typically call the helpdesk and we go out and fix it. Here, I changed the computer name and removed it from the domain. I rebooted, added it back to the domain and restarted again. The user was able to log in without issue. [link] [comments]  |
| Google Form compatibility issue Posted: 29 Nov 2018 06:23 AM PST One of our projects right now is getting subcontractors to fill in a brief, two-page Google Form to update our contact information for them. We sent out emails with a link to the form in a month ago. The deadline is approaching, so I've been assigned to call the laggards and walk them through the process. Most of them either apologise and fill it in, or claim they never got it and so I send them a new one. Until this last guy: Me: Did you get the email? Him: Yes, but I can't fill it in. Me: Oh, what's the problem? I wrote the form, so if there's an issue I need to know. Him: I can't complete any Google Forms. I'm on a Mac. Me:... Him: So I can't use Google Forms. Me: What? Him: So, if you can send me a .pdf of the form, I'll print it out, fill it in by hand, scan it back in and email it to you. Me: But... but... you can fill in Google - Him: No, I can't, I'm on a Mac. Send me the .pdf, bye! <hangs up> After a few seconds of stunned amazement, I told the guy running the project - who was all for the .pdf email-print-scan-email plan. Fortunately, his boss was walking past and stomped on it. Now I have to go find the test iPad and demonstrate that you can complete Google Forms on Apple devices, so I can email this guy and tell him to fill in the form. Only another sixty calls to make... [link] [comments]  |
| Built the customer a Porsche but they'd rather keep driving their old shitbox Posted: 29 Nov 2018 12:12 PM PST I'm a web developer, and I provide support and maintenance (bug fixing as well as new development) for several clients. A year ago we did a major upgrade for one of my clients, rebuilding their website on a newer version of their CMS on new servers. Their site had both an English version and a Spanish version. We built out all the language functionality on the new platform so that they would not only have the English and Spanish versions as before, but also be able to create a whole bunch of microsites for other languages as well. After several months of work the functionality was all done, and just waiting on the clients to build out the Spanish content. They wanted to go live with their new English website but hadn't finished creating the Spanish content yet, so they decided to update their English URL to point to the new site but leave the Spanish URL pointing to the old server. I warned them that I would not be able to do any development work for the old Spanish site, as I no longer had the ability to make any code changes on their old site. It's been a year now, and they're still using the old Spanish site and asking me to support it and fix bugs. I can add CSS and Javascript to the page content (adding inline css and js to the html content), but that's about all I can do. I can't access logs, I have no access to the server, and I have no ability to deploy code changes, as this site is obsolete and we stopped officially supporting it when we deployed the new website. They have this perfect, shiny, new website which I can easily support just sitting there not being taken out of its box, but instead keep using their old, obsolete website and asking me to do support work on a site that I have almost zero control over. Of course, when I asked my project manager if I could tell to fuck off with the problems with the old website and build the content on the new damn site instead, I was told that no, I have to try to help if I can. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Nov 2018 04:16 AM PST As a tier 1 technical support at a hosting company, we have a lot of tickets regarding the email account associated to a clients domain/s. Additionally, our client's are not that tech-savvy and often skip vital information which results in the scroll bar of a ticket to be the size of a baby ant. $Me- Tier 1 technical support. $Client- A Typical client who is frustrated that his emails aren't working and doesn't provide much information. A wild ticket comes in $Client- My emails don't work again! Fix it as soon as possible. I do a quick check, the guy has 4 domain in total and above 20 email account. $Me- Please specify which email account/s are not working as they should. $Client- I pay for your support every month. Fix it now before I cancel my services. Check the logs or escalate to a higher authority I just want to send emails. At this point, it's safe to say that the client is having a bad day and ain't that happy. Additionally, little does he know that his money is for the server space which he uses, not our support but oh well. I send one email from each email account associated to his 4 domains to my inbox and they actually arrive. Nothing surprising until now. I resent the received emails back to the original sender, and they actually arrived, it did take about a minute but nobody cares about that. After doing so, it's safe to assume that all of his 20+ email accounts work. Considering this, a take a couple of screenshots and put together a solid reply in the ticket. $Client- I do not believe this. My emails don't work on my phone. Lo and behold, the root of the issue has been finally spotted. In short, the test emails I sent were from her cPanel where there is a build-in tool called "Webmail" which can send messages from email accounts created in cPanel. In order for his email account to work on his phone, he needs to use an email client of his choosing and specific credentials such as outgoing and ingoing server names as well as specific ports. I put together another long-ass reply which explains why his emails aren't working on his phone, give him the correct credentials and ports and informs him that if a specific error pops up, it be great to update us via the ticket which the exact error. $Clien- You can find the error in the attached file. I look at the attachment and slam my head against the desk. The error in the attachment goes something like this:
After I told him to enable 3G/4G or Wifi on his phone and use the previously provided credentials for his email client, he said it worked, however, this took way to much time. Alas, such are our clients and this is why I don't specifically enjoy in resolving email related issues. [link] [comments]  |
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