Not a flaw anymore, it's now a FEATURE! Tech Support |
- Not a flaw anymore, it's now a FEATURE!
- I set fire to the shredder
- "We just thought we'd some new phones..."
- The fuser that fused
- "My emails seem to be coming in, thank you...."
| Not a flaw anymore, it's now a FEATURE! Posted: 24 Aug 2019 07:50 PM PDT I worked as a project manager for an engineering company for about 10 years or so. This is about one project where we built 10 custom control panels for a customer a month of basically 2 very similar design. The difference was whether it had a single or dual gauge pressure controls installed. One month they order the 10 of the single design and our shop accidentally laid out and built the dual design by mistake. They refuse the order and we shelve all the cases and back panels that were drilled for the extra gauge and regulators. This was not a good thing, but not the end of the world either. They haunted my shop foreman as he could see them on the shelf every day while he worked. Many months later we get a rush order for 10 of the single units. Unfortunately, these units were spec'd for Allen Bradley enclosures and at that time there were none to be had anywhere in the country. Customer is screaming they need these units ASAP!! I tell my shop guy to get the cases down and to put hole covers in the extra holes for the pressure regulator, layout and use the dual design on the back panels for the gauges. Now I call the customer and explain that I have made an engineering change for our finished product. It now comes in a dual control ready enclosure only. This will reduce the number of variants, inventory, and UL certification issues that we have to deal with. Now if they need to upgrade a panel from single to dual in the field it is a breeze. Add the gauge, the pressure controls a couple of terminal blocks and there you go! "Bob's your uncle!", as some say. I showed my boss the plan I had hatched and he laughed at me. Brilliant! So, you are telling me we can fill the order right away with parts on hand that they refused months ago? That is correct, sir. Just wanted to run it by you before I hit the customer with our new "Streamlined manufacturing process". The customer was all for it, thought it would be great for simplifying production and inventory management, also realized this was a real selling point for their salespeople as well! Best of all, I got to get rid of those panels staring down on us for so many months!! No bonus, no raise, but I did receive the gratitude of a certain shop guy..... Thanks, TB. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Aug 2019 02:32 PM PDT This is a self burn, these are rare, but I'll caveat this that I was IT, and I was the apprentice, they paid me pittance, and I had to accept that some days I was free labour. Anyway, working at a local council I was at we had a metric shitload of old dot matrix ribbon fed printers, these constantly chugged out reports from legacy systems. Gotta love government hey. Anyway, the law said this stuff needed to be archived for 7 years, and half of it (actually 99% of it) was garbage reports you read once (at the printer) and let fall into the box. So, here I am, 7 years later working there when heaps of this stuff comes up for "Permanent Archiving" (which was great, as a lot of it was in our IT Backroom) So the boss graciously volunteers me as tribute to get it done on the basis of it helping the IT Department get some room back. So here I am, doing what I'm shown, feeding a pile of papers into the shredder, tearing off about a dozen at a time and letting them run through. For the young ones, here's a picture of the printer paper setup so that you understand what I'm about to say. Now, me being bright thought "fuck it, I'll get more done by running the whole sheets through" thinking the office lady that told me to do it manually was an idiot (I was 17, anyone I didn't agree with was an idiot) Anyway, I read the shredder "up to 8 sheets at a time" it says on the front. So I line up 8 boxes. I take the top sheet off every one and make it into a neatly stacked ribbon. I feed it into the shredder and admire my work. I'm getting 8 boxes done in the time it used to take me to do 1, half that. I'm going across the road for a coffee. Yeah, on my way back, coffee and ham, cheese, tomato croissant in hand, I see the fire alarm going off, people evacuating, and the fire brigade screaming up and running inside. I locate the IT Department and we all have a chuckle, and go down to get coffees, we'll, me to drink mine and them to get some. Midway through coffee my boss gets a call, I hear the "Really?" and "You sure?" and "That doesn't sound right" and "OK, I'll tell him" So he puts down the phone and explains to me that while yes, my idea was great, and he sees exactly where I was coming from, the shredder was never designed for continuous operation eating ribbons of paper. The duty cycle on the shredder was a whopping 45 seconds we found out when the Gilbarco guy came out, we estimated the shredder actually lasted 15 minutes. Props though, I was off the hook as when they pulled the shredder apart they found that it had a thermal overload to prevent this and that had failed. So really, the printer should have turned off before catching fire. I still had to clean it all out and throw all the burned stuff in the bin. [link] [comments]  |
| "We just thought we'd some new phones..." Posted: 24 Aug 2019 04:56 AM PDT A client of my company had sent in a ticket complaining about one of their DECT phones shutting down when taken off the charging station for only a few minutes. This is usually a result of old chargeable batteries that just won't charge properly after a couple of months/years depending on the quality. We let them know that we suspected this was the problem and that we would order some of those batteries for them. The order would arrive next day and we had time to drive it out to them the day after that. The receptionist thanked us for this trivial service as she had no idea what kind of batteries the phone needed (chargeable AAA). The manager didn't agree though. But didn't let us know any of it. 2 days took way too long apparently. If he had decided to get some batteries himself that would fit and be chargeable there wouldn't even be any harm done. We needed new stock anyway. But instead of listening to us and checking the batteries, he'd decided he'd just buy a new set of phones with base station and everything. Keep in mind that this was for one out of three phones not working properly. Here's the kicker. They used VoIP, he bought a landline compatible DECT set (with only an rj11 socket). Meanwhile we hadn't heard anything after we'd spoken to the receptionist. So when the manager called us why his new phones wouldn't work we didn't really know how to respond. When we got there with the new batteries we saw what he'd done and for the life of him he couldn't understand how these new phones wouldn't work. He managed to get power to the base station without any other cable plugged in so the handsets got a signal from it but the line was dead of course. After putting in the replacement batteries the problematic handset worked fine and we switched everything back to how it used to be. I dont think you can get a refund on entirely unpacked hardware so that was tough for the manager. Communication wasn't his strong suit. I'll post another story later about him and his printer. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Aug 2019 10:19 AM PDT This is the story of the printer in a small dental practise that I described in my previous post with a manager who doesn't really listen. I'm part of a small tech support company which supports all types of businesses. This practice naturally had a waiting area with a receptionist desk. Behind it were two PC's which had the dental software and a printer. The area behind the counter was rather small as in you had to scoot behind whoever was manning the desk by pressing yourself against the wall behind it. The printer itself was placed ontop of a small stool past the two receptionist against the far wall from where you entered. One fateful day the receptionist calls us because of a paper jam. They explained they tried to get it out, but only managed to rip off a few pieces. They are afraid to do anything else to prevent further damage which I give them credit for. Not that it mattered but you'll know why later. I make an appointment to come check it out asap as they need to be able to print and dont have another option. On my way I go with some basic tools and cleaning stuffs to prevent any further jams. When I get there and set up my tools in the cramped area I can see little bits of torn paper sticking out from where the paper usually comes out when printed. Usually you can solve such a jam by opening up some side panels, but there appears to be nothing there. Where is the paper stuck then? I soon come to the conclusion that I can't service this printer any further from that cramped location with the tools I had and ask if I can take the printer with me to the office for further inspection and maybe additional help. Receptionist is ok with it but in walks the manager. "You can't take that printer with you, I need to be able to print my forms." But... You can't print anyway... Going back and forth a bit and he finally agrees if I set up an old canon printer he had in storage or somewhere. I do the needful. When I take the printer back and pry it open I finally found how it was jammed. The fuser apparently got dirty due to cheap refilled ink/toner cartridges that leaked too much ink/toner to handle. (The fuser fuses the ink or toner to the paper using heat) We warned the practice the last time we had to clean it and we advised to get better quality so we don't have to come back for it another month as using refills is pretty much playing Russian roulette. Get a cartridge that's only refilled once you're in luck, get one refilled 6 times you're going to have trouble. Also your warranty is void when using these cartridges. Anyways, due to too much ink the paper sheets got stuck to the fuser roller one after another and after sheet 3 the printer ate the paper. Explains why I couldn't get to it through the side panels. We contact a hardware partner to see what we can do and they advise we just get a new printer because the fuser costs more than the printer (I know, doesn't make sense but it's true). We contact the manager and explain how and why and why there's no warranty. He isn't happy of course but knows we can't help it any further. We let him know we can order a new one for him and it will be there in 2 days. Sound familiar? (Reference previous post) That's the last time we heard anything from him untill about a week later. We need to setup his new printer because he can't... Why do you have a contract with us if you don't use it? We could've gotten it done in 2 days including setup... [link] [comments]  |
| "My emails seem to be coming in, thank you...." Posted: 24 Aug 2019 12:12 PM PDT A customer had came into chat/IM-style connection and was confused where all her emails were hiding. Confused by her unclear typing, I did my due diligence and got connected to her computer with her permission to do so. Looking into it revealed she just had one email from July, and I decided to send her a test one as well from my email. After verifying the email worked, she was still confused where the rest of her emails were at. As one would expect, I verified whether she has multiple emails to choose from ([c-email1...], [c-email2...]) which it turns out she does, and has two gmail accounts! So, of course, I advised that she would need to log into [c-email2] to see the emails she's expecting to see since she's currently logged into [c-email1]. Notes from a previous case indicated that she didn't know the password for [c-email2] and trying to reset the password was unsuccessful (or as unsuccessful as "We'll review and reach back out in 3-5 days." can be). Regardless of that though, we did the same thing again today, to the same end result. She decides she doesn't need further support, ends the session, and I go about my merry way. An hour later I get an email from her, as a response to my original test message. It says: To: [myEmail] I somewhat feel bad that she doesn't recognize she didn't send that from the email she thought she was sending it from. [link] [comments]  |
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