"I don't think you have enough rank to work on my computer" Tech Support |
- "I don't think you have enough rank to work on my computer"
- I think I got the new girl fired...
- I didn't think a password expiration was that important.
- Mam, you are wrong and it is user error. Now watch as I spend the next 30 minutes explaining this to you.
- T568A and T568B are the same thing right?
- What do you mean it can't do that?
- About children, cables, call-centers and social media addiction
- Reset My Password
- The little RAID that could
- Helm Hell
- All the cables!
| "I don't think you have enough rank to work on my computer" Posted: 06 Aug 2019 08:50 AM PDT Back story- In the army working as a computer tech. Windows NT 4.0 and Office 97 time frame. I get a call from the boss (colonel) to go down and load Office 97 on another colonel's computer. Was this story insubordinate? Most likely. Did he deserve this? oooh yes he did. I go down to the colonel's office to do the software install. I knock on his door and announce that COL. "cool boss" sent me down to install Office 97 on his computer. He pauses. Looks me up and down and says "Where's major "other cool boss"?" I tell him that he's busy and can't make it down. The he asks where's COL "cool boss".. "He's busy and he sent me down to do the install". The colonel thinks about this for a second and says "I was expecting someone with more rank". "Well.. Both are busy. If you like, you can wait a couple weeks to get it installed" I replied. Being a grouchy old colonel, he replies back "Oh.. Ok... I suppose I can let a sergeant work on my computer".. He gets up and allows me to sit down at his desk to work the install. I install the package and walk out, report back to the boss it's done and move on. Fast forward 8 months later.. I get assigned a work order from LTC "I don't think you have enough rank". He is moving between commands. He wishes to move his documents down to the computer that he'll be using in his new office. I look at the work order, remember the slam I received and decide to write a nice document up (with color pictures) of how to create a share on the new computer, how to locate that computer on "network neighborhood" and how to copy/paste his documents from his old computer to the new one. I send this set of directions back to the good colonel and closed the work order. A week later, this same work order shows up again. I took the directions I sent him, condensed it down to the "readers digest" version, send it back and close the work order. Week later, same work order. Send an email referring to the last two documents and close the work order again. A couple days later.. I run into the good colonel in the hall way... "Say SGT.. I submitted work orders to move my documents from my old computer to my new one and they keep getting canceled." Me- Sir, did you read the emails and read the documents with pictures and directions to facilitate this..? LTC- Yes, but it was just complex and complicated. Me- Sir.. Why is it, a man of your rank, who makes 5X more than I do, who is supposed to be smarter than a lowly SGT, who holds a bachelors degree from university of (insert state), cannot perform something this simple...? Sir, have a great day! LTC- (catatonic state in hall way while he crunches the data of what just happened) Me- continue to walk down the hall way and onto my next trouble ticket. Later, I did stop by my boss's office to inform him of what took place on this particular work order. He just about fell out of his chair laughing. (I wanted to make sure my boss knew exactly what happened in case the good colonel came down to complain) [link] [comments]  |
| I think I got the new girl fired... Posted: 06 Aug 2019 07:13 PM PDT Some background - Started working at my current job about a year ago on help desk, recently promoted to IT Specialist about 4 months ago, while still doing help desk things. This story is from when I was still on help desk. TL;DR at the bottom. Characters: Me = Verbal_A_Saltz JM = Jerk Manager, thinks IT should drop what they're doing and help him because any inconvenience prevents him from doing his job NG = New girl JM's Assistant, been with the company for about two weeks $user=Enter username here It was a typical day. Trying to knock out all my blocked tickets, but the phone won't stop ringing. We had been getting calls about people trying to access an Excel file ($File) on a network share, only to get an error that "$user" had it open, even though "$user isn't here today" (can confirm, $user wasn't logged in anywhere, and hadn't logged in in over 24 hours) Start researching it, find out that there's an issue with this kind of document and network shares, but there's a workaround (but it doesn't work for everyone, and can't remember what it was). Also, find out that even though it says $user has the file open, it's half correct. The file is open somewhere, but $user was the last one to save the file. I don't have a ticket for the issue, so I'm not focusing on it, but I pass on my findings to my co-workers. Phone rings. It's my turn to answer. Me: IT, this is Verbal_A_Saltz, how can I help you? JM: Hey, Verbal_A_Saltz, this is JM. I need to access $File to make changes, but it says $user has it open. (He sounds kinda pleasant, but I know it's about to change) Me: Yeah, we've been getting calls about this, and we're looking into it. (Cue his typical behavior) JM: I NEED IT NOW! Me: As I said, we're looking into it, and we'll provide an update as soon as we find out more. JM: This is BULLS**T! I'm sick of calling this line, and you can't even do what your job title says. (Probably about another 30 seconds of him ranting about how much he hates the IT dept). If you can't help me, what can you do? Me: I can continue looking into this to try and get it resolved. JM: (back to ranting) (At this point, I had a random idea on how to find out who had the file open. Open Computer Management -> Connect to another computer ($FileServer) -> Shared Folders -> Sessions. Don't know why I didn't think of it before. See NG has the file open) Me: I found it! Looks like NG has it open. JM: No, she doesn't! She's working on something else. (goes on that I'm trying to get him off the phone and argues that I'm wrong) (While he's ranting, I find out what computer NG is on, and remote into her computer.We use some remote desktop software that allows us to view/control a user's desktop through a web browser. She has FB open, and she's playing some game. I see down in the taskbar, she has Excel open, but it's minimized) Me: I'm just going off the information I'm finding. If you could go check, we could confirm my information is correct, or if I need to continue looking into this. JM begrudgingly agrees to go check and puts the phone down. I go back to watching NG's screen. She's happily playing her FB game, clicking here, clicking there. Then all of of sudden, the mouse stops moving for a few seconds. Then it starts to move towards the red X. I figured she was busted, and in my excitement of possibly being right, I accidentally moved my mouse cursor over the web browser, which takes over her screen, and moved her mouse cursor, causing her to miss the red X. The mouse stops moving for a minute. Then I hear JM yelling through the phone, but I can't make out what he's saying, but I'm definitely sure she's busted. Yelling dies down, then the mouse starts moving again. Closes FB, clicks on Excel and viola! NG had $File open the whole time. Ten seconds later, JM gets back on the phone. No apology, doesn't admit I was right, just says he's all good. Calls finally stop coming in about $File (that day anyways) A couple days later, I see JM submit a termination request for NG. Not sure why, but always thought that call had played a part in it. JM's boss submitted a termination request for JM a couple weeks after that (not sure why) TL;DR - Caller can't access a file, I find out is assistant has it open. Send him to go check and he busts her playing Facebook games. She gets fired a couple days after the call [link] [comments]  |
| I didn't think a password expiration was that important. Posted: 06 Aug 2019 07:20 PM PDT So a manager walks to my cubical saying an account reps email is no longer forwarding to him. The account rep had forward his email to his manager while he went on vacation for the week. "But I figured out what happened," the manager declares. "Their password expired." He was talking about the account rep's Active Directory password. Me: "Wait he didn't change it before he went on vacation?" Our AD users are emailed 10 days prior to the password expiration everyday warning the user that their password is about to expire. Manager: "No he didn't" Me: "Well, that was kind of stupid." Manager: I know. . . . . Can you reset it? Me: I CAN, but 1. not for sure that will fix the email forward 2. You can not have the new password (against password policy) and 3. this will mess up their mobile access to their email (so we need to contact them with the new password). Manager: Let's just try it, but I do not think we can reach him. Me: OK no problem. I reset the password, which un-expires the password. Evidently email starts flowing because I do not here back from the manager. I try to call the out of office account rep and leave a voice mail on the only personal number I have. Two hours goes by and then I receive an agitated account rep phone call. Let him know what has happened and give him the new password. "Wow I didn't think a password expiration was that important." Me: Yeah, that is why we send you emails for 10 days prior to it expiring asking you to change it." Fast forward 5 days later to today. Same rep makes it back to work and stomps in my office saying that they can not sign in this morning because their account is locked out. They tried the new password and it does not work. "You need to reset it now." Me; "Uh, you are not locked out." .....two minutes of arguing with me...... Me: "Oh I see," (fake typing) "Here try it now." He walks back to his desk, tries it and calls me back, "OK it is working now. Thanks." :::Head to coffee machine debating the existence of intelligent life::: [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Aug 2019 01:48 PM PDT Its always a bad day when I see this popup on my teams. "This lady wants to be escalated." I take a long sip of my coffee and get up to go use the restroom. I come back and answer him. "Details and send er over." Lady is using loan program to pull pdf files out of loan program and into not adobe pdf to split them before printing each pdf to pdf, all with the same file name, and re-uploading the split PDFs into loan program. Yes... my eye twitched when she printed a pdf to a pdf inside citrix.
By saving, she goes to print and prints the split pdf into pdf using the not adobe pdf printer option. She names one file and uploads it back into loan program by dragging and dropping it into the file manager and then dragging each one into the folders.
I tell her "one second while I check something" and mute my microphone. I talk to the tech who handed her over to me and learn she gave him the same spiel. I walk into the break room and grab another cup of coffee.
She opens up loan program and pulls up the megadocument and goes to print. She starts the process of printing a pdf to a pdf.
I back out of the printing screen and go back to the file and click "save."
I open up the file in not adobe and take tell her to do her thing. She extracts pages 1-3, 7, 9, 12-13, 17, and 20-23 out of the document. She runs through the process of saving each set of documents to the same folder named the same thing and uploading them 1 at a time to the loan program.
I open up the file that she did not save and it showed a "You have unsaved changes" in the top right corner.
She may not have actually said watch this. But my brain thinks she did. She closed the loan program by force killing it in task manager to "prove a point" and then re-opened it up navigating to the file. This next part requires no embellishments. No fabrications. No lies. What happened next is 100 percent what happened to me a few hours ago on the phone.
Every single response I gave her was doubled up with a "But what about?" response. Finally I just told her it was user error and that she had been given the fix. I apologized but said I had to get back to work and hung up on her. Pulled the call log and sent it to my boss. He laughed and said she was always a huge problem. The CIO has a rule setup to send her emails to the recycle bin as she ALWAYS emails him. [link] [comments]  |
| T568A and T568B are the same thing right? Posted: 06 Aug 2019 04:39 PM PDT So here's a short follow up from my previous story. This involves the local network wiring company hired by corporate to put in the new drops as the site was being remodeled. So my two coworkers and I are on the last week of the remodel. New paint, new half walls, new carpet and desks. We're setting up the customer rental computers, printers and other stuff in the newly finished area. Now since these computer just moved and are on DHCP we haven't had to re-image them or anything, just plug them back in. Plop Computer 1 down, plug it in, everything shows as online, great! Computer 2 shows as offline, then 3, then 4 is online, 5 offline. This repeats as the place has like 10 rental computers. One printer is online, one isn't. The large format copier is offline, A copier shows as online but the attached card reader that rings up the copies isn't. At this point we're all confused. Tone for connectivity is good. I go into my toolbag and pull out my cable tester which has the ability to test the run. Plug cable into one of the problem jacks, repeat at the rack. All 8 lights blink on the rack side, on the jack side light 3, then 6, then 1 and 2, then 4 and 5, then 7 and 8. We realize the wiring guys who worked overnight have created cross connects between the rack and the floor. Talk to the GC, he gives my coworker the number of the vendor. He calls and leaves a message, emails our boss and whoever at corporate is in charge. He gets a call back that afternoon, "We'll be there tomorrow at 7:30am to fix it." We all show up the next day at 7, no vendor at 7:30. Calls to the phone go to voicemail. Repeat on day 3 as well. Day 4 a guy shows up, at 8:30am. It turns out he had punched B at the rack and one of his guys did A while the other did B on the jacks. He then had to check each drop and fix it at the rack (so now that rack has some A and some B). It took him a couple of hours to check and fix all of the drops. The whole week my coworker had been documenting and emailing our corporate overlords with the status and what was wrong. If I remember correctly he forwarded me and our other coworker an email from the PM. They were renegotiating payment with the wiring company for failing to do their job properly and wasting all of the man hours. I do remember that they had screwed up another site after the one we were at and the company had them thrown out and replaced with a different vendor. They were never seen again. [link] [comments]  |
| What do you mean it can't do that? Posted: 06 Aug 2019 07:11 AM PDT I work as tech support for a company that provides pharmacy automation solutions to hospitals, mainly in the US, but pretty much everywhere in the world as well. We get calls every day about technical issues, most of them being user errors or oversights, some of them being actual technical issues that we might or might not be aware of but, sometimes, we get a call from a customer who thinks the system is supposed to be specifically tailored to suit their every needs. PL: Pharmacy lady M: Me M: Welcome to the technical support center, what can I help you with today? PL: Yes, the labels that print out of the Zebra printer at X device are missing information. M: Okay, what information are they missing? PL: Well, it doesn't print out the prescription information and the administration instructions. Now, at this point she has me confused. For the particular type of device that she is printing the labels from, there is no such thing as prescription information. The med orders come in, the user can select an order on a patient's profile, remove the med from the drawer and administer it to the patient. The labels that usualy print on the external Zebra printers, are barcode labels to identify the medication properly. There is also an intergrated thermal printer that prints a slip for certain transactions, whether it be a removal, a return or things such as meds that are stocked out or are getting critically low in stock. This can be adjusted individually for each device but, then again, no prescription information. M: Just to make sure, we are talking about X device, right? PL: Yes! The nurses remove medications and give them to patients to go home with, but the label doesn't provide the prescription or the administration instructions. M: But, m'am, the medications that are removed are to be administered by the staff and are not expected to be used to as take-home prescription medications. The system is not tailored for this type of procedure as we do not keep neither prescription information or individual medication administration instructions. Now, at this point, she begins to get noticeably irritated. PL: We had called a couple of months ago for the same thing and they had also told us that you couldn't do it but we think this is unacceptable. You see, we pay for the printer and also pay for its maintenance contract and we expect it to work as we please. M: I understand, but the system is not designed to hand out prescription and drug administration information. It is designed to automate in-house medication administration and we do not keep any of the information that you want to have on the labels. Plus, the information on the label is hard coded and there is nothing I can do to add or remove any of it. PL: You can ask your programmers to change it. With this statement, she was actually serious. She thought that I could just turn around from my desk, shout real loud from my desk to just "ask the programmer" to make the change for this machine, as if it was just a question of changing two or three lines of code for a product for which we don't even release a version a year for. I ended up finding the old ticket she had called for a couple of months prior and the other agent had told her the same thing and even had the product support engineers involved to confirm exactly what I had just told her. We also have an "idea portal" where customers can submit ideas that is about as efficient as you'd expect from something called "idea portal". I walked through the procedure of submitting a resquest with her and she asked to be provided frequent feedback about the "progress" of the request. She also wanted to file a formal complaint but I have never heard anything about it since. [link] [comments]  |
| About children, cables, call-centers and social media addiction Posted: 06 Aug 2019 02:25 PM PDT So some time ago before I moved away from my parents city I was considered the "tech support" of the family and all of our friends / colleagues. I never complained because I liked doing it, it gave me experience for the career I am starting now and sometimes a few of the people I helped even threw in a few bucks for me. I was doing some stuff, can't remember what exactly, when my father called me in panic telling me I have to go to a colleague of his right now because her internet connection is not working and she needs it urgently. I assumed for work. When I arrived there not long later I found a grown woman - not kidding - in tears about being unable to access the internet, primarily not work related stuff but social media. But I couldn't find out what was wrong. The router was connected, cable plugged in on both ends correctly, the internet was reachable from all other devices, I even tried to turn it off and on again. No luck, the windows computer did not recognize the Ethernet connection. At that point said woman told me to just call the ISP and let them tell me what's wrong. At first I didn't want to, as this didn't seem like an ISP issue to me but she kept telling me to call so I did. I was greeted by a nice man listening to my problem and going through a check list with me. I have to admit I was annoyed. I thought I was smarter than this stupid check list. Of course I checked all of these things! Then we came to the cable. ISP: Is it plugged in? Me: Yes. ISP: Are you sure? Me: Yes, of course. Do you think I wouldn't check that? ISP: Could you please follow the cable the entire way with your hand? Me: Are you serious? ISP: Yes. So I moved back the desk and did like he said, while feeling smart. Then I suddenly felt stupid. In my hands I held two ends of a freshly cut Ethernet cable. Turns out the previously mentioned child had access to scissors somehow and felt the need to cut the Ethernet cable. And that my friends is how I learned to value checklist troubleshooting and to never think of yourself as too smart. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Aug 2019 01:33 PM PDT This was from just a few minutes ago. Background: My company has a bunch of different programs/systems & not all allow for Single Sign-on. Would be nice, but not realistic. Most of these we are able to reset at the IT Service Desk & others we can't. This is a story about one of those that we can't and the user has to reset themselves Caller: I need my password for (program) reset. Me: Okay, for that you would have to reset the password by using the "Forgot password" link under the sign-in. Did you try that? Caller: Yes, but it didn't do anything after that. Me: Did it give any message or anything? Caller: It said "Password has been sent to your email". Me: Did it arrive yet? Caller: You mean I have to open my email for that? Me: (internal head banging). [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Aug 2019 02:49 PM PDT A little context: I work as a Onsite MSP guy doing maintenance for a very large CCTV and access control system. 250 cameras and a rack full of storage and servers to run it all. Generally a very robust system, but not today. On to the story, TL;DR at the bottom. It was a very peaceful day so far, I spent most of my morning getting the ticketing system sorted out and doing some backlogged work. The client (a senior IT sec guy, very cool, very respectable) asks me for the serial number of one of the storage arrays, who had a failed drive after only a month, so we could warranty it. I decided to be As soon as I pulled it out a second red light came on in the drive just next to it. Fuck. This is a RAID 5, so if two disks are gone everything is gone. I went into the office to check if the storage was still online, it wasn't. It was after this point that the client could read the despair in my face and I had to explain what happened. I had to call my boss who managed to get the second bad drive back online and rebuild the entire thing without losing data, all while I finished almost half a pack of cigarettes and was considering restarting my music career. And I learned the most valuable lesson of all, don't touch anything important unless asked. All in all I could go home with a job. TL;DR: pulled out a failed drive from a RAID 5 storage only to have a second one fail as soon as I touched it. Had to call my boss who could put the second disk back online without loosing data. I didn't loose my job. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Aug 2019 05:41 PM PDT I work for the US Navy. I'm on mobile. I'm a native English speaker, just can't spell worth a damn. I was holding off on posting this till the second part got resolved, we also just got back from a long underway yesterday. For those not familiar with ship controls, the helm controls steering, the lee helm controls thrust. Both stations are manned up by seamen and Bosun Mates(BM's) while being supervised by a master helmsman (another BM), helm safety officer, Conning Officer (Conn), and Officer of the Deck (OOD). None of these watch stations have seats and are forced to stand there for the 4 hour watch. That is the origin for both problems. Story 1: Carpal Tunnel Due to previous problems with the helm wheel being hard to turn due to watch standers leaning on it, we have to take a torque wrench and test it before getting underway. A few months back, it tested at 40 inch-pounds. That is less force than it takes to turn your steering wheel with power steering, but is considered out of specifications on the high side for our purposes. We place a new wheel and some of the assembly on order and was received a little over a week later. We go up to the bridge to replace it. While putting the new one on, the BM sanding helm looked at us and said something along the lines of "Oh cool, you're replacing the helm wheel? I was starting to get carpal tunnel from this thing." The three technicians up there with me, my Cheif, my Divisional Officer, lee helm, Conn, master helmsman, and the OOD all stared like he was an idiot and the ten of us conducted training and corrected the deficiency on the spot. Story 2: Mind as blank as the screen The lee helm has no wheel to lean on, so the watch stander leans on the console. Evidently these guys have a fetish for leaning on the power button. There was hardly a day that goes by without us getting a call that the screen went blank. Every time we went up there we got the same variation of "It wasn't me, it just turned off." We knew it was BS and told them as much and instructed them not to lean on the screen, they never listened. They kept doing this till it broke, the screen wouldn't come up to the right channel and the menus controls no longer worked to to the frequency of having to be used. A war was waged between us in Combat Systems, Navigation, and the triad (Commanding Officer, Executive Officer, and Command Master Chief). We got petty. We placed a new screen on order and replaced it. Guess what happened, the fault followed to the brand new, proven good screen. My division is no longer required to respond for the lee helm screen turning off. As an added bonus, the BM's now need to build a don't touch that box to put over the power button so they stop "accidentally" pushing the button. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Aug 2019 04:14 PM PDT u\atleastiamfree's tale reminded me of my time as IT in Print/Copy. It's not pure IT but we were the ones who got to witness this level of dumb. I'm helping my coworker with a store remodel. The store is staying open during the remodel so we have to move computers, copiers, printers around the place so the construction can take place in phases. As registers are being moved around the security camera company has their guy out moving cameras and getting everything set up. We come back from lunch and we can hear the camera guy swearing under his breath a bit. I've known him for years so I go see what's up.
Camera guy starts tracing cables. He finds that his no signal cameras have no power, which is odd since it's part of the cable he's run. Then we hear the loud expletive while he's on the ladder above the ceiling tiles. He comes down, goes marching over to the GC and drags him back in. Points up to the ceiling and makes the GC go up. Talking to the camera guy later we found out that while we were on lunch the GC had his guys start demolishing a wall that was coming down. In his wisdom he had his guys cut all the cables that were going to the wall coming down. Unfortunately the new camera cables went over that wall and his guys cut about 7 cables they shouldn't have. That honestly was the least of the problems that happened at that site. The network wiring was the stupidest issue and got a business fired. [link] [comments]  |
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