No, not that name... Tech Support |
- No, not that name...
- Apparently it’s my fault because the computer isn’t knife proof
- Endusers lie about everything.
- How do plugs work?
- "You sound like a robot"
- I think you just broke my server
- The tale of the Ghost Calls
- “I swear I haven’t touched a thing”
- I'm just going to start ending all the background processes...
- They’re gonna eff me up!
- Troubleshooting sometimes requires the omission of tact
- Head, Meet Desk
- Catching people for the $Demon.
- Hoist upon my own petard
- Remote Remote support
- Printer Woes - "Wait, they're both plugged in?"
- Update 2 on coworker who needed advice
- What's WIFI?
| Posted: 11 Apr 2019 07:19 PM PDT I received a ticket this morning from a user complaining about a excel error. I've come across this before and it's literally a 5 second fix with clicking a checkbox. The user is about a 5 minute walk away through the temperature controlled area of the facility, which means jacket, gloves etc. I decide to remote assist this user to save some time. Big mistake. I drafted up an email, "Hi user. I will attempt to remote to your computer to address your issue. Could you please provide me with the name of your PC. This can be located on a white label stuck on the front of the PC itself and should look this format. ABCDE1234. 20 minutes later I get back a single word response. "Fujitsu" It's going to be one of those days. [link] [comments]  |
| Apparently it’s my fault because the computer isn’t knife proof Posted: 11 Apr 2019 06:31 PM PDT Tldr: guy abuses computer and says it's our fault he stabbed his desktop. Guy walks in with a desktop he bought from us that is on its last day of a 90 day warranty for part replacement. Our policy is specific accidental damage or hardware malfunction is basically all we cover so it actually covers a lot that should happen to a normal users computer. His computer did not meet any requirements that we would cover due to the fact the user seemed to have done all the damage on purpose. He kept saying it was accidental and it is covered by the 90 day replacement policy but something just didn't add up to me or my boss, for example Long scratches along the metal side plate. Marker drawings on the front. A sticker on the glass panel that was then peeled off. A word scratched into the plate. And my personal favorite, holes that were very obviously knife stabs on the top of the case that were hastily covered with a promotional sticker he got from a radio station. My boss pointed it out and he tried to say it was the fact we sold him a cheap case that he accidentally damaged it. My boss told him unfortunately it seems he intentionally misused his property and we unfortunately don't cover that in the repairs policy. He got a little heated and so did my boss in turn but he eventually left after getting a price for a new case. [link] [comments]  |
| Endusers lie about everything. Posted: 11 Apr 2019 01:55 PM PDT I was working help desk on a Nasa/ Navy base dealing mostly with Navy guys who never seemed to know the simpilest of things when it came to I.T. So one day I had a ticket come in about someone needing a new monitor bc theirs isn't working right. Which is pretty much all the put in the ticket. We don't supply monitors, thats a completely different process and they have to go through their CTR to get a replacement. Which can be a huge pain in the ass bc the CTR's don't like replacing anything outside of tech refresh. So I call the user up and ask him the problem, we will call him (EU) and I'll be (ME). EU: Idk whats wrong it has lines all over the screen and it keeps changing colors. ME: Okay, can I get you to run through a few tests for me real quick? EU: Man I've already checked evrything. Can't you just bring me a new one? ME: Sir, if you can just check a cpl of things real quick I might be able to save us both some time. EU: Well I've already checked the cables and tried it on another computer and it does the same thing on all of them. (It was like someone told him what he needed to say to get a replacement) ME: Well I am going to have come by and check it out then as I have to see it in person before I can turn it over to your CTR for replacement. EU: That's fine, do what you gotta do but I might not be here. It's in a classified area, so when I get there I have to wait for someone to answer the door, check my credentials and allow entry. Which is why I was trying to avoid going there in the first place. EU is hiding in plain sight but not identifying himself and Idk what he looks like. So I ask if he's there and which machine is having the issue. One of the other guys directs me to the machine in question and I start looking it over. The VGA cable was loose. I tightened the two screws and doublechecked everything. It's fixed. It took me longer to log on than it did to fix the issue. I turn around and start telling one of the guys that it's fixed and what the cause was. They all start laughing and giving one of the guys shit about being dumb. That was (EU), sitting 5 feet away pretending not to be there. TLDR: User wants a new monitor, lies about troubleshooting anything. VGA cable was loose, his shipmates start making fun of him as he pretends to not be in the room to hide from me. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 12 Apr 2019 12:04 AM PDT First submission, this was an exasperating one. We are a third party support company and we often get calls from our customers' staff who don't speak to their own colleagues. We got a call yesterday morning from say, Karen: "my screens were the wrong way so I wanted to swap them over. I unplugged the power cables and now I can't plug them back in." My guy, I'm his team leader, on the phones raises an eyebrow at this and tells her to describe the plugs and the sockets etc, to make sure he heard her right." if they're power sockets, plug them into the grownd cages." Not being an IT problem per sé and it being caused by the user herself, we thought it would be the end. Karen: "I can't fit the plugs into the sockets, they won't fit in." My techie mutes her and tells me about it, I too am confused by the possibility of how inaccurate (we used a less flattering word) she is (she called before with not directly IT related issues and we're not sure if she ties her shoe laces herself in the morning). He passes me the phone. Me: "Hi Karen, I'm techie's team leader, what seems to be the problem?" She describes the problem and I ask if a certain person is in the office, he'll help her. Karen: "Who's that, I don't know him." Me: "He works on the same flour as you, ask around, I understand you're new but your colleagues are her to help, I can send my techie over but it'll take him 45 minutes to get to you and your problem can be resolved in under a minute." Karen: "Who? I don't know..." I sent the techie. The floor sockets were secured, just had to press a button next to the sockets themselves. Time of operwtion: 39 seconds. Turns out there were three others in her office but she asked none of them. For IT issues actual problems, we want to be called but not for this. She has no idea how wasteful to her company her call was. She called back later in the day to actually swap her display order, which I did while she was still describing it as we have Logmein running as a service. "Is that all?" she asked. Me: "That's all Karen." [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 12 Apr 2019 12:47 AM PDT In my last post I mentioned a wide ranging problem that affected most of our customers tv's (we are an ISP that provides Internet, TV and landline telephones). The error lasted for a total of four days before we found the error and fixed it. My last story was about a customer I had during the error who really didn't like the idea that I couldn't magically bring his tv back. This story is about a customer I had shortly after. This one isn't as detailed, because I didn't start writing it down until a couple of days after. ---------------------------------------------- The call started with the customer telling me he still had the error code problem, and asked why it wasn't fixed yet. I inform him that I haven't heard anything about it today, but if he is ok with being put on hold I can call over to the relevant department and check the status. He grumpily said ok. I called over and was told that it was solved during the night. If there is still a problem we should troubleshoot as usual. Got it. I return to the customer to inform him about this."Ok, it seems like the large scale issue is solved, so if there is still a problem we need to..."That's how far I got before he interrupted me. He started screaming at me that I was a complete moron who clearly didn't know **** about my job. How could I possibly claim it was solved, when his tv still displayed the error code? After he calmed down I continued "... If there still is a problem it is caused by something else and we need to troubleshoot to find out what."According to the guy, troubleshooting was pointless because there was nothing wrong with his equipment. I should just send a technician. I calmly explain that I can send a technician if he wants to. But if I do that, and the error is something on the customers side, the customer will have to pay for the technician. And besides, there is like a three day waiting time for any technician ever. You might get one in two days if you are lucky. So if can get his tv working right away, isn't that better? Before anyone says we should hire more technicians. We hire the same tech companies as every other ISP in the country. We literally have every single possible technician in the country on hand. We can't hire more. This was apparently an outrageous statement. And a threat, somehow. He was livid stating that he wasn't going to pay a dime, and he shouldn't have to wait since he had been without a tv for so long. I pointed out that this is exactly why we troubleshoot before we send out a technician. To make sure the customer doesn't have to pay. He, again, begrudgingly accepted. My first question was simply: "Have you rebooted your tv-box at any point since last night?"Cue screaming and insults in line with "of course I have? Do you think I am a ******* idiot?" So we spend a good 2 minutes on that instead of him just simply saying "yes" so we can move on. I continue to look up a few things as he berates me. Insults my intelligence. Accuses me of being bad at my job and blames me for the long queue. In hindsight I wished I had said something like: "Oh you are right, I should start working on that queue." and then hung up. He then point out that making complaints to me is useless because nothing is going to get done about them anyway. (Then why are you doing it?) I respond that "I can bring his complaints to my boss, however...". Again he cuts me off to tell me that I am not going to bring his complaints to my boss. He was right though, I only do that for customers who aren't rude *****. His reason for knowing that though, was that he once worked tech support. And they never reported complaints to their boss. In other words, he sucked at his job, therefore I must suck too. Once he was done I got to end my sentence: "... However I can't speak for what happens after that since it's then out of my hands." More yelling and insults, all though this time directed at my boss and the company, rather than me. A pleasant change of pace that did not last. I then had the audacity to ask if he could try another Ethernet cable to connect the box to the router."Why the hell would I do that?""Well error code XXX also indicates that there is something wrong with the connection between the tv-box and the router. It's possible that something might be wrong with the cable." Unfortunately I, as the simpleton I am, I didn't know that Ethernet cables are apparently indestructible. And there can't possibly be something wrong with the cable. When I tried to say that there are several things that can be wrong with a cable, he just got more annoyed. Thus more name calling. A lot of people asked me on my last post why I don't just hang up on rude customers. I am actually allowed to do it. I'm just really stubborn and always try to get through. I am already dead inside, so nothing they say can affect me the slightest. I usually just zone out and look at reddit or play some chess until they stop to breathe. If I do hang up they are most likely just going to call in again and be even angrier at someone else, and they might not be as resilient as I am. I remain firm in saying that he should try another cable. He curses, again, and then starts working on something, as I hear more muffled curses. I assume he is changing the cables. Wrong. After a while he says "Are you fixing my tv or not?". I ask if he has connected another cable and he goes of the lid. I am apparently completely useless. Apparently my job isn't to help customers, it's to protect the company, remove all responsibility from them and just blame all faults on the customers. Explaining that removing all possible faults that can be on the customers side ensures that the technician is free for the customer was not a good enough of an explanation. Apparently technicians should always be free. During this latest rant I take a look at his router and notice that it hasn't had a factory reset in over 1500 days. We recommend you do one around every 6 months or so. Every year at the least. I suggest a factory reset to the customer. He is still pissed, but slightly less pissed than when I suggested to switch cables. He did have another outburst when I told him that our routers take 15 minutes to reset. As if I made the router. But we have a system where our customers can send a text to a certain number and we call them back at the first possible moment. I inform him of this and send him the relevant information. I tell him to wait 15 minutes and see if the tv is working, if it's not he should use the text message I sent him. He finally accepts my suggestion, but with a caveat. If this reset doesn't fix the problem, and he needs a technician, like he said at the start. He was going to sue the company for wasting his time. And he was going to ask for me to get fired. I simply responded "Well, let's hope this works then." Before I started the factory reset I sent a command to the tv-box to reboot. No idea if it went through, because the system doesn't tell me that. I then started the factory reset. The customer then made one final complaint. And believe it or not, it was his dumbest one yet. "You know, you sound like a robot when you talk. You should cheer up a little and be more friendly to customers." Honestly, if he can yell abuse at me for 40 minutes, and then the worst thing he can say about me is "You sound like a robot". I'd say I am pretty damn good at my job. To maintain neutrality in a situation like that as opposed to telling him stick a router where the sun don't shine. That takes some patience. This guy seemed completely oblivious to why I wasn't in a chipper mood. My parting words were a short "Really?", and then I finally hung up on him. Never heard from him again. Kept track of his customer ID and checked back two days later. No further logs and no technicians hired. Either the reset did the trick and it works. Or he is currently working on his lawsuit against the company which is totally going to work, and is definitely going to get me fired for following procedure. In hindsight I really wished I had ended the call by saying "Well, what can I say? Maybe next time you could try to be nice to people who are just trying to help you, instead of being rude and yelling insults constantly. You just might get different result that way. Have a nice day." I would definitely have been reported and probably reprimanded for saying that. But it would have been so worth it. Most likely my boss would just have given me a "stern talking to" while actually really understand why I said it. [link] [comments]  |
| I think you just broke my server Posted: 11 Apr 2019 09:54 AM PDT I work as a sysadmin at the largest ISP and hosting provider in my country for medium to big businesses. We mainly use VMWare for the client's servers. Today a call got through to me (usually L1 service takes cares of the calls and opens the tickets to us.) It was the head of the IT Department for an organisation which has a vps server with us. gh0st is me and client is her
A couple of minutes go by and I finish adding the additional CPU and call her again:
The client was charged for the extra cpu and also for the time she costed me while distracting me. After I sent the recording just in case to my supervisor he came in the room bursting in laughs and I never got to hear from the client again until now edit: text formatting [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Apr 2019 10:50 PM PDT This is a long one. Back in my previous role I used to configure CISCO deskphones and softphones and assign them phone numbers, dialling extensions, etc. All the fun stuff. It wasn't very technical at all and mostly boiled down to basic Data Entry. One of our large customers was always onbosrding and offboarding staff, many of which didn't like to go through the process of asking for a new number. Many of the managers also seemed to not like bothering with offboarding requests. (These were charged at about $40 each so my guess is they were trying to save money). Thia is important to the story. Main story. A ticket comes in. Deskphone making Ghost calls. User has a desk phone and it keeps making calls by itself. I've seen this plenty of times. Mostly with new users. I start by asking for the MAC address of their phone (i later email some instructions, with pictures, of how to check the bottom of their phone for this, and their phone number). I already know the issue, I checked the user's name in our system and they aren't in there. I do a quick search through our tickets for new onboard requests with their name in them. Nothing. The user replies with the number but says they can't find the MAC. This is where i send the instructions. I search the number and find the user it belongs to. I email him as well, but of course recieve an automatic reply
OldUser has left, but rather than request an offboard, and an onboard for a new employee. Manager decided to just pass on the desk phone. That doesn't explain the ghost calls though. I had originally assumed OldUser was still there and the using their softphone, as both devices use the same number, the deskphone would get the call as well. I can see the softphone being used, so I decide to call it. I first disassociate the deskphone as the frist user has replied with the MAC. I call through and someone answers. I inform them I am making a test call and just need their name and user ID. They provide it. I end the call and search them up. They aren't in the system either. Turns out. Manager had a user leave, and decided not to offboard them. They then had a new user come in, and rather than set them up properly, had them use the old user's PC which still had their old softphone installed. A 3rd user had started in the team and the manager gave them the old user's desk phone to use. In the end. We let the second user keep the numbergave the third user a new number, amd charged the managers team for an off board amd two onboards. [link] [comments]  |
| “I swear I haven’t touched a thing” Posted: 11 Apr 2019 12:57 PM PDT Apologies if this is long. Believe it or not this is my first post on Reddit! EDIT: I'm a dick. This isn't my first post. So I work for a company that provides, amongst other things, EPOS systems for restaurants, hotels, sports stadiums etc in the UK and beyond. Most of our customers have their servers hosted in a datacenter and have VPN tunnels going out to their individual sites. One of our customers is a restaurant chain in central London. They rely heavily on the system we provide being bulletproof, but are slightly more lax about what it takes to look after the gear that's installed at their sites. Lockable cabinets for the comms gear? Nah, just stick it under that desk. So, working helpdesk one Friday afternoon I get a call assigned to me. One of the restaurants in London. It's a SEV1 (pretty fucking dire), so I call them straightaway. RM: Restaurant Manager. BDD: Business Dev Director. Me: Me. RM: "You have to help. All of our tills have gone offline" Bearing in mind we see this kind of thing all the time. Based on the kind of checks we can do remotely we have a fair idea the nature of the problem without asking them to lift a finger. Pretty soon it's clear that we're dealing with a connectivity issue between the site and the datacenter, most likely the VPN, most likely to do with the Cisco ASA. Me: "Has anything been moved, switched off, unplugged, re-plugged, etc etc to do with any of the network equipment? The router? The ASA? Anything on the network switch?" RM: "No, nothing. And we're just about to go into a weekend so I need all those tills back online NOW." Me: "Right, so let's go through these ports one by one. I'll ask you which cable comes out of which port on one device and where it goes into on another, then we can see if anything's amiss." RM: "I haven't got time for this. Nothing has been tampered with. It's your system which is all fucked up. I need you to get here now." I explain that site visits aren't covered by standard support units and if he wants me to travel from Bournemouth (south coast of England) to central London (2hr train journey) on Friday afternoon I'll need a purchase order number for an emergency site visit (about £400, steep, but it clears out suckers). RM: "Whatever. Just get here." Cue one leisurely train journey on late Friday afternoon, going INTO London when everybody else is going the opposite way. Eventually I arrive. It's getting dark by now. The business development director has travelled across from head office. It's tense. RM: "Finally. Right, do your stuff." I look under his desk, where there is a snake pit of grimy network cables, power supplies, a router and a Cisco ASA firewall. The two senior staff members are behind me, looking on expectantly. Me: "And you're sure nobody has been messing around with any of this? None of your staff?" RM: "Nobody. This office is locked when I'm not in it." Cable from BT socket into router? Check. Cable from inside interface of router into outside interface of ASA? Oooooo....... nup. Cable from inside interface of router into bright blue CONSOLE port on ASA? Check. Ah. Me: "OK, can you both see this here?" Both: "Yes...." Me: "Watch what happens when I remove this plug from this socket...... and plug it into THIS socket." I turn the ASA around so they can see the lights on the front. The previously dull VPN light suddenly flares bright green. BDD grimaces. RM goes pale. RM: "I swear I didn't touch anything. I don't know how that happened." Me: (brightly) "Could you sign here please?" RM: (weakly) "I don't know how that happened...." BDD: "Sign the fucking form, RM." I laughed all the way back to Waterloo Station. [link] [comments]  |
| I'm just going to start ending all the background processes... Posted: 11 Apr 2019 10:09 AM PDT I work tech support for a small software company that caters to the gift and home industry. This one customer has called in probably about 6 times within the last 3 weeks for issues that none of support has been able to reproduce. Today, she called in about her email client not opening. I explained to her that I would do the best I could to correct this but I can only do so much as I don't work for said email client. Turns out the application was running in the background so I just ended it in task manager and was then able to open it from the task bar. She questioned what I was doing, so I told her. Here's where it gets good. Me: Yeah, looks like the email client was running in the background but you're all good now. Her: (seeing all of the processes)Uh what are all of these doing in the background?? Me: Those are your background processes. Her: I don't want those. I'm just going to close them all. Me: DO NOT DO THAT. Please. Unless you know what they are or what they do, I highly recommend that you do NOT do that. Her: Well then help me. Me: I can't help you with this. I would recommend contacting your IT dept or taking it to a professional if you have questions about what you can or can't end. Her: \starts ending the processes** Me: Ma'am. I'm telling you that some of these are crucial to the functionality of your PC. Her: What is this? Did this come with my computer? Her: So you're just not going to help me? After that call, my blood pressure went through the roof. I had to make sure that I documented in her ticket that more than one time I told her to not end her background processes without consulting someone that knows what they're doing because I have a feeling she's going to fuck her computer up and blame me. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Apr 2019 05:21 AM PDT Back in the 90s, I worked at a startup that built terrible CRM software, and we had merged with a company that did terrible call routing. Together, we had a cloud hosted call center solution, before everyone started using the word cloud annoyingly often, and before anyone knew how to do it properly. All of our clients were close to us geographically, so our deployments usually meant that we could be at their site all the time keeping an eye on it, however we landed a deal in a huge company based in CO - two hours time zone difference and a really long way to travel so we couldn't have a team on site. We deployed the software on our servers over the weekend, ran a hundred validations, including test calls from CO, and were reasonably sure that everything was working. First calls would happen Monday morning, so we had a crew on standby and our sales guy Bruce on the customer's site. Monday morning 9am, we are all sitting in our office ready for action. The servers look good, app performance is great, no errors in the error logs. We are feeling pretty good at this point. 11:30, time to celebrate. The team goes downstairs to the pub and starts drinking. Burgers and nachos and pitchers. Loud music, loud voices... I don't hear my phone ringing. 12:30, 17 missed calls from Bruce. What the fuck? It suddenly occurs to me; it's only 10:30 am in CO. 10 people on the team, and not once did anyone figure out that calls hadn't started yet because of timezone!! We all suck at this. Me: Bruce - I'm so sorry I missed your calls. What's going on? Bruce: They system is completely down! No calls, no app, nothing! The call queue had to be switched to manual! Me: Ok, we are on it. I will have the team at the console in five minutes. Can you keep the client calm? Bruce: Calm?!? I'm hiding in a fucking closet! They are going to fuck me up if they see me!!! I've been walking around with my phone against my ear pretending to be talking to you for the last hour!!! Me: Fuck. Turns out it was a simple fix - they changed their WAN IP and it wasn't whitelisted or something similar. We had it up and running a few minutes later. It was a long time before we could all laugh. [link] [comments]  |
| Troubleshooting sometimes requires the omission of tact Posted: 11 Apr 2019 03:02 PM PDT This one is going to be slightly different to the usual fair in TFTS, and it is my first posting so please be gentle. My colleagues and I work on design, building, installing, maintaining, and removing at end of life a large number of $BigExpensiveParts. These $BigExpensiveParts are spread all about my country, and are such critical infrastructure that if any $BigExpensivePart fails for more than a day we will hear about it on the evening TV news. My colleagues and I all used to work for $OldBigCompany and a few years ago were transferred in an not-entirely-clear deal to $NewCompany. Where both $OldCompany and $NewCompany are each tens of thousands of staff, where we subject specialists numbered only about 200. My role in this is 1 of 10 staff members who work as troubleshooters for any of the sites where $BigExpensiveParts are located. Think of the regular inspectors as being level 1 support, finding and solving the simple problems with our $BigExpensiveParts, and when things go wrong or very wrong they call in one of us troubleshooters, as level 2 support. Each of us troubleshooters has the following attributes: being a craftsman with many decades of practice in the field, lots of technical qualifications (resulting in whole alphabets of letters after each of our names), the ability to talk in a manner that falls somewhere between Harvey Keitel's Mr Wolf character from the movie "Pulp Fiction" and a highly priced courtroom lawyer, And to be on first name terms with the local bomb disposal company. Things have got so bad that whenever one of us troubleshooters turns up at a site unexpectedly, a typical first reaction is for everyone to look over our shoulders, not directly at us. This is because they are looking to see if we are being escorted by ambulances, bulldozers, or helicopters, because the nature of the escorts will determine the tone of the first conversation. The following sort of conversation occurs to one of us on almost daily frequency (dramatisation): $SiteManager: (agitated) we have just tried to install this new custom $BigExpensivePart and it broke as soon as it was in place, and I need this fixed now, or it will cost us a fortune in delays. $troubleshooter: (calmly) I guessed that this might happen, and I told $Designer in a meeting months ago. I have built another $BigExpensivePart in secret but built it properly, this replacement part is already on a truck on its way here, it will be here in 15 minutes, or 10 minutes if you have sufficient spare budget to pay for the truck driver's speeding fines. $troubleshooter: In return for doing you this favour, all I ask for is the failed $BigExpensivePart and the related documents, to use as evidence in the lawsuit that I am about to start against $Designer. We $troubleshooters know that we will never be promoted (we are too valuable doing what we do) and never be sacked and so mostly don't care for corporate politics. So know that we can get away with some very unorthodox methods for getting things fixed. A good example is a recent conversation, that occurred when an enterprising local had built a small shanty encampment out of shipping containers, on a small area of land in front of a $BigExpensivePart on the edge of $BigCity. The shanty encampment had collapsed damaging our $BigExpensivePart, and a repair crew had been dispatched to the location to make the $BigExpensivePart functional again. The repair crew was prevented access by the $EnteprisingLocal, who was scared of losing his home/business or having what he kept inside his encampment discovered. Then $troubleshooter arrives and goes to talk with $EnterprisingLocal who explains that we are coming in, whether he likes it or not, and the only issue is what punishment $EnterprsisingLocal will receive from holding up the repair crew. Then troubleshooter points at a helicopter flying nearby and explains. $Troubleshooter: (while pointing) that helicopter is carrying $TopGovernmentLawyer to the airport on the other side of the city where he/she will meet up with soldiers, then they will drive here, and force access for repair crew. $TopGovernmentLawyer is there to selectively change the law to make whatever the soldiers do, become legal. Now the best thing for you to do is to disappear before they get here. The shanty encampment was demolished, and $BigExpensivePart was repaired in record time but it still made the evening news, (we can't win). Now onto the I.T. part, (to remain in keeping with the spirit of this thread). Even though we do this for $NewCompany, they don't have any software capable of tracking any of or job products (designs, reports, documents etc.), so we are forced to use a VPN to remote into $OldCompany's networks and use their databases. But the management of $OldCompany are not too happy about this and give us the worst possible access, by bandwidth throttling, forced 10 minute logouts, no new software functions, random server shutdowns, and very limited access to tech support. There are no listed telephone numbers either at $OldCompany or $NewCompany to contact any of the tech support staff, it is rumoured to be 1 guy who made the software and sold it to $OldCompany, and used to proceeds to live on a remote beach and uses a satellite phone once a week to pick up his emails, then he remotes into the server to fix the latest batch of problems. For example, last year we were given 24 hours notice that the whole system would be shut down for 4 days over a weekend for an upgrade. 1 month later the system came back online and the only change was the removal of the "works best in IE6 on windows XP" logo. The main system that we all use, or take turns in using, because the system cannot cope with all of us accessing the databases at the same time, is a network of about 30 different databases, and the one system at the centre of it all is a heavily modified ancient MS Access database with a web front end. Using any of these systems causes many interesting swear words to be uttered on a regular basis. So management of $NewCompany has commissioned a development company to write a new system that replaces the functionality of the current collection of databases, so that $OldCompany can be cut out of the picture. The Problem is, that the requirements were collected and given to the development company, by the management of $NewCompany before the staff transferred to $NewCompany. We all use the phrase a committee-of-the-not-involved-twice-removed. So none of the intended users of the eventual new system are allowed to have any say in the requirements, or are allowed to contact any of the development team, and the only people who are allowed to contact the development team are a constantly rotating panel of senior managers from other disciplines, who will never have need to use the final product. So my reason for writing this is to ask the internet: is there a technical term for an IT project that has been going on for so long that the project itself has reached legal drinking age? So the proposed replacement IT system is many many years behind schedule, has spent all of the budget (including contingency), is no where near what the end users need. The end users need a database, and the developers have produced something like MS paint. For the past year or 2, is has been in court where the developers are saying "give us more money" while $NewCompany management and lawyer are saying "no, show us what we have already paid for", and the argument has been going round and round in circles. While the court case about the "new" system has been debated, a retired troubleshooter heard about our woes on the grapevine and decided to undercut the developers by writing a "new-new" system as he already knew the processes that we worked to. The new-new system was on progress to be rolled out last month, but 2 months ago a senior manager at $NewCompany heard of the existence of the new-new system and asked for a few extra features to be added. I know, I know I can hear your laughter already. It turns out that these few extra features are basically the graph wizard from Excel and will take another 1-2 years to write into the database. Meanwhile we poor end users have to continually perform CPR on the hamster the drives the server on the existing system. While writing this we had an incident that I will post as my next TFTS, when I get round to it. It will be titled "Driving a bulldozer through a brothel" and I wish I was making it up. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Apr 2019 06:58 AM PDT A quick one from yesterday, but I was entertained so I thought you folk might be as well. Background: I work as half of a two-member "IT Catch-All" team. We cover everything from the network, domain, hardware, software, displays...basically if it's even remotely electric we get asked about it. Luckily, the company is full of great people (one of the reasons I moved from my last job at a mega-corp) and everyone is very kind and supportive (yeah, I basically live in the land of make-believe...it's fantastic). I don't have to deal with a lot of drama, but I do get some moments like the one below that make me simultaneously groan and laugh. Cast: $Me: That guy with the pants $Sales: Sales staff member. Nice guy but zero tech skills. Story: Got an email from one of the sales staff, essentially says "both of my screens are blank, I can't work like this, can you please help?". We have three buildings that are all in a row and of course we are on opposite ends of the campus. I $Me: Hey $Sales, yeah, it looks like your dock and laptop aren't on speaking terms. These docks like to start fights with the laptops sometimes, but if we power-cycle the dock it usually makes it forget why it's angry and they'll be best friends again! I ask $Sales to unplug the laptop from the docking station, and then I unplug the laptop from power ($Sales desk faces a walkway, so I am essentially standing behind his monitors). We do small talk for about a minute and then I plug the power back into the dock. $Me: Ok $Sales, can you plug the laptop back into the docking station again? $Sales: (Fumbling with the USB cord) Hmm...why won't this plug in again? $Sales continues to flip the USB cable over and over, but the "rule of 3 attempts" fails. He tries moving the cord down the side of the laptop to find another port but is unsuccessful. He looks at me, his eyes begging for the help that his mouth refuses to request. $Me: Here, let me come take a look. I walk around $Sales desk and take the laptop, only to find that there are ZERO available USB ports on that side of the laptop. $Sales had originally managed to plug his USB cable into the ETHERNET port on his machine. I moved the cord to the other side of the laptop and plugged it in, and his external devices came to life. $Me: Well, that should do it! $Sales: Oh....thanks. No other words were needed. Like any good IT technician, I quickly disappeared into the mist, awaiting the next chance to tell someone to try turning it off and on again. [link] [comments]  |
| Catching people for the $Demon. Posted: 11 Apr 2019 11:22 AM PDT $Me: The only IT support at this company. I manage our servers, network, desktops, tablets, phones, website, write apps when we need it, software support, etc. One-stop-shopping techie that is horribly under paid. $Demon: Company owner. DOES NOT understand how difficult the things I'm asked for can be. Owns all things apple. $Morgan Freeman: He narrates some of my life, not sure why. Hey, TFTS! This one is kinda short, but includes a preamble for context. So, one of the multitude of things I take care of is chasing down info on people who defraud us, to either get the jerks to pay us, or to turn their info over to local police. Half because I'm the techie here, and half because I used to be a cop. I don't have to do this often anymore thanks to the security I built into the new site, and the preset triggers on orders that cause them to get flagged for attention. Recently though, I was made aware that an order using a stolen CC had been allowed through from human error. So, I dug into the matter. $Demon: "Where are we at on pulling down some info on this guy that screwed us out of $500?" $Me: "Well, I have 3 email addresses, his social media profiles, 2 phone numbers, his real name, his company info, a static IP address, and his home address. I can also connect all these things, plus the fraudulent CC use to him in a way that will stand up in court." $Demon takes the phone number, and calls the thief. After he introduces himself, and tells him why he's calling, he gets hung up on. $Me: "He has no reason to listen to you, and he probably thinks you don't have anything on him. Hold on, let me do this." $Morgan Freeman: "So, $Me emailed the thief. He sent him proof of the fraudulent transaction, the email addresses used, the connection to his own company, showed him he had his physical address, static IP, and so on. He also clearly stated they would involve the police if they weren't paid back." ::0630 the next morning:: Text from $Demon: "Hey, what was that guy's full name? He called me twice last night to talk about settling up." $Me: "Awesome. Glad to know this got handled." :gives him the thief's full name: $Demon: "Yep, he definitely got worried after I called him yesterday." (Keep in mind, this arrogant POS recently told me I had no skills as a tech despite running all of his IT for 4 years, and that I must have been a shit cop. All of his knowledge of LE comes from TV. He told me this because I asked for a raise for the 2nd time in 4 years. 1st time directly. He said other awful things in that conversation that a younger me would have kicked his ass for. Sometimes, adulting is far less satisfying. But, my "lack of skills" dug up that treasure trove of data in about an hour. But hey, the guy was clearly scared of a phone call, not an email that basically said "I know everything about you, and I will ruin your ass. ) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Apr 2019 03:04 PM PDT Sometimes you walk into a trap of your own making. Last week, on a day I was working from home, I woke up to a Slack message from a manager, $M, sent late the previous night (note, we run Ubuntu on workstations):
At this point I'm thinking, hmm,
Uh-oh.
Apparently I've installed a fairly rugged OS then. I assume he has somehow nuked the credential cache, so I tell him getting back on the office wifi should fix the problem. At least I really hope it does, since I'm over 100 miles away and am the only person in the office who knows enough about Linux to fix issues with auth daemons... Thankfully I'm right, and when he gets into the office, I get a message that once it regained network connectivity to the LDAP servers, he was able to log in again. I SSH into his machine and start poking through logs and bash history. Nothing really jumps out - Nonetheless, his statement of, 'my laptop has strangely stopped working, could it have something to do with me deleting a load of random files as root?' goes straight on my Wall of F/Shame. Me and a few colleagues have a good laugh at it. I never did get to the bottom of why it actually occurred - butterflies or cosmic rays not being discounted, something seemed to invalidate the Today, at around 4pm I get another in a very long series of errors from Landscape with another colleague's laptop. This usually requires a complete purge and reinstall of the client, and even that doesn't always fix it. So I SSH into the machine, and just as quickly, my connection dies. I ask the guy about it while he's on his desktop and apparently his wifi has been flaky for a while (don't you just love it when users keep problems to themselves?). I ask for his laptop "for an hour" to fix Landscape and look into the wifi issue. So, step 1,
Hmm, no landscape folder? Sure?
What do you know, APT actually got it this time. Okay, onto the other folder. If APT got that one, did it get the second? It'd be pretty miraculous, this hasn't happened before...
... Uh-oh. See, while I typed the correct command, what I actually ended up running was:
For want of a simple Ctrl-C, yes, I completely deleted the entire After a few moments of figuring out the idiot mistake I made and getting a handle on what to do next, I start fixing it. I grab At 5PM, the user finds me hunched over the laptop's keyboard frantically hacking the OS back into shape. At this point I'm forced to quietly admit the damage I caused. Of course, this is in earshot of one of the same colleagues I was joking with last week:
Stay humble, folks. The most beautiful part of this was me telling $M: "in the words of one of my university friends, And yes, I did manage to fix the laptop without reinstalling it! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Apr 2019 06:42 AM PDT Many years ago, I worked for a company that provided back office software for a large chain of petrol stations in the uk. All of these sites had EXACTLY the same set up - PC, Printer etc to make it easier to support. Calls were received and logged then picked up by one of (I think 10) support advisors and called back. I picked a call up from the queue about a printing issue. Now, they used Lexmark laser printers, which were pretty dire anyway, but I guess they were cheap, so they got bought. On the phone to the user, ran through all the normal questions - are the lights on, is there paper in it etc etc to which I got the answer "it's all normal" Then I asked the killer question - "Can you print off a report for me" to see if it would print at all...... Customer : "No I can't do that" Me: "How come?" Customer "I'm at home!" 'Advised' him to call back at a more 'convenient' time where he was in front of the computer, could actually answer our questions truthfully and get his problems sorted. [link] [comments]  |
| Printer Woes - "Wait, they're both plugged in?" Posted: 11 Apr 2019 12:30 PM PDT $banana: Long time printer tech & SysAdmin, help with user support when needed. $user works in one of our off-site locations where we've had to make some concessions on how we usually set up our printers because they can't connect to our main network. Currently they print direct-to-IP due to another story I'm not ready to recap today. Simple setup, hard to break, but our IT helpdesk isn't really trained in doing anything more with printing other than installing print queues from our printserver so I handle most of his support directly. I receive an e-mail from $user: Now it's a Thursday, and I know they work over the weekends, so I wanna help them out. $banana: Hey $user! Yeah, sure, lets just hop on a Zoom call and we can run through some troubleshooting, it's probably something easy. A few minutes later we're on a call and we're running through the most common things I can think of.
$banana: Uh, damn, I'm actually not sure what's going on here. Everything looks fine but the job's not going through, this isn't working for anyone in your office? I'm going to just head on-site, I'll be there in a few minutes? $user: Yeah, it's been down this whole time, but the other printer's working. Just noticed the other data cable doesn't seem to run anywhere though. $banana: Other data cable... Wait what? $user: There's two cables plugged in, and only one of them has those flashing lights, is that a problem? $banana: Wait, they're both plugged in? There shouldn't be two ports, are the cable ends the same? $user: Yeah, one's just grey, and the other's yellow. Now I'm thoroughly confused. I ask him to send me a picture of them, and where they're plugged in, while I search around for a manual on this printer. $user: Oh, it's working now. I get the picture, he pulled the cables out so I could get a good view, and side by side there's a yellow ethernet cable and a gray USB 2.0 B, about the same size, but very different connectors. $banana: Wait.. How did you fix it? So, always take care not to get tunnel vision, and never-ever forget the basics. [link] [comments]  |
| Update 2 on coworker who needed advice Posted: 11 Apr 2019 09:45 AM PDT This morning the same coworker approached me again about the issue, and rather than putting another update in the same post, I felt the conversation warranted a new one.
Typing this out has jogged my memory on what could be the issue:
If CW approaches me again, I'll tell him that but I'm not going out of my way since he didn't really listen to protocol on making sure it worked for database in the first place. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Apr 2019 09:25 AM PDT So i worked for mobile phone support for over 3 years. Now i got stories for days, but the one that always sticks out in my mind was the country bumpkin. key = me - yours truly, CB - Country Bumpkin me: Hello thank you for calling me... etc etc opening call script repeated. how can i help you? CB: girl farmer accent Hello i bought this phone and would like to know how to use it, and what part of it needs internet? Me: ummm most of it needs internet if you would like to use the apps. CB: Oh ok how do i use the internet on it? Me: Well you use your carriers data or you can connect to wifi. CB: Wait wifi whats that? It was at this point i knew i made a fatal error in life. My AHT flashed before my eyes, all the days hard work gone in an instance... Me: Wifi is a service that allows you to connect to the internet without plugging into your router. CB: oh how do you get that? Me: you have to contact your local ISP and have your service setup at home, or you can just use your mobile carriers data. CB: ok how do i do that then? Me: did you setup phone service with a carrier? CB: No i just bought it, and the guy at the store said to call you all. Well thank you store rep for the lovely call. Needless to say 1and a half hours later she had me go through all the apps and tell her what each one was used for. Im all for helping, but this is the troubleshooting help line not a personal how to line. But due to policy i cannot hang up ever until the user says bye. [link] [comments]  |
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