"Our scans take ages to arrive" Tech Support |
- "Our scans take ages to arrive"
- Hi IT I am having trouble ejecting this floppy disk.
- Lying won’t get you anywhere, kid.
- The black marks are there for a reason.
- A few short stories from a previous workplace that I miss dearly.
- Manager wanted the impossible, then gets shutdown
| "Our scans take ages to arrive" Posted: 21 Aug 2019 02:42 PM PDT Company we're MSP for calls Tuesday morning. Reygle: Business name, this is Reygle! Supervisor: Morning, Reygle. You helped us get our new copier all configured last week in the office, and now when we scan documents to our email accounts, they take upwards of 40 minutes to arrive. Reygle: That's pretty odd, I know that none of your users agreed to use folders on your server for scans, and everyone wanted scans directly e-mailed to themselves- Supervisor: We're never going to scan to folders. Reygle: *urge to off myself rising\* Yep, we talked about that. I do recall sending a test email to every user we set up- and that most arrived within the minute. (There were 29 of them) Supervisor: Yep! I was there with you, all went great. Reygle: So now, the same types of scans are taking entire lunch breaks to arrive? Supervisor: That's right. --------- spends 3.5 hours remoted to the scanner's touch panel troubleshooting, as well as remote monitoring station staring at settings that aren't incorrect Finds \high compression setting we never set, disables it** literally works perfectly every time I ask them to test scan 100 pages --------- Closes ticket 45 minutes later: Reygle: Company name, Reygle speaking! Supervisor: Hi, scans were great for a bit, then I re-enabled high compression mode and they all slowed back down. Reygle: Wait- you RE-enabled it? Had you recently turned the feature on before you called with this problem? Supervisor: .... Why did you re-enable that? The 800Mhz processor in your leased copier can't handle the workload while using OCR, which you really don't want to go without. More than maybe 10 pages with that feature on will bring it to a crawl- it's not exactly an enterprise machine. Supervisor: Oh. I just scanned 273 pages. Reygle: That'll arrive next week, maybe never. Please power cycle the copier if anyone wants to use it for the rest of the day. Next time you change settings and notice a difference, please let me know before I spend a whole morning billing you. Supervisor: ... incredible pause So when I turned that on, I caused this problem? Reygle: Yes. Supervisor: What is this going to cost me? Reygle: 3.5 hours at normal rate. Supervisor: longest pause I've ever witnessed in a phone call Do you think this is why our last copier was so slow? I had turned it on for that one, too. Reygle: Have a nice day. hang up and screams [link] [comments]  |
| Hi IT I am having trouble ejecting this floppy disk. Posted: 21 Aug 2019 09:31 PM PDT I have a story from 14 years ago that has stuck with me throughout my whole IT career, it was the very first day working front line help-desk support for a government agency that was pretty far behind the cutting edge of technology. I received a call from Jane (not her real name). Jane: Hi IT I am having trouble ejecting this floppy disk. Me: Hi Jane, ok can you tell me did the you get any errors from the computer or is there any lights flashing on the floppy drive. Jane: well no errors but it can't see the disk at all, its also making this horrible thumping noise. *she holds the phone up the the floppy-drive and the noise it was making can screeching down the line* Me: Ok Jane that isn't normal I'll be right down, what floor are you on? After getting the details I went to her floor, I took the elevator down, when I came out of the lifts I didn't need to ask where she sat as the floppy drive was doing its best rendition of the drum solo from the song 'In the air tonight' she worked in a small office by herself but the noise was filling most of the floor. As I arrived to Jane's desk I see two stacks of floppy disks one still in boxes and the other stacked on her desk, the stack on her desk was a pile of broken or warped floppy drives, I assumed they were damaged during storage and didn't ask about them (rookie mistake). After 10 minutes of me going through my checklist (remember first day on the job) as well as trying to eject the floppy disk or get it t read, Jane starts getting frantic about the drives she tell me "I've been doing this for hours now, some drives work but some don't I'm worried this drive is breaking these floppies and we don't have any other copies of this data" Me: "ok why would you say the drive is breaking them, how many floppies haven't worked?" I pointed over to the pile of broken disks "did the drive do this to all of the disks?" Jane: Those are the ones that didn't work they were getting stuck but once I got them in the drive they came out fine, this is the first one I couldn't eject. She was right the eject button was really stuck, I decided the safest method was to turn off the PC pull out the floppy drive and manually retrieve the disk. Upon opening the drive (which took 25 minutes because I was new and really not confident on what I was doing) I finally figured out the issue, the floppy drive was not only back to front but also upside down. Me: Jane can I ask how did you get this in the drive, its upside down and facing the wrong way? Jane looks at me like I was exercising a demon from her body after the longest most awkward pauses ever she replies in a soft voice. Jane: Floppy disks have a right and a wrong way to go into drives? Me: .........Yes, I really don't understand how you got this in there like this can you show me. Jane proceeds to pull out a small hammer from under her desk. Jane: The disks that didn't go in correctly I used this to get them in the drive, why is IT equipment so complicated? Me: I'm going to have to talk to my manager I'll be back soon. I'm not exactly sure what happened to poor Jane, she was moved to a different section soon after, I still wonder sometimes if she is now chiselling in USB keys into PC's [link] [comments]  |
| Lying won’t get you anywhere, kid. Posted: 21 Aug 2019 09:09 PM PDT Obligatory "I'm on mobile so excuse any formatting weirdness but I tried my best." So I work in a store for a major wireless carrier in the US. My job is primarily sales, but we do get tech support requests from time to time. These run the gamut from pretty basic stuff like doing a soft reset or (my personal favorite) flipping the silent switch on the side of an iPhone, to more involved things like signal issues and devices not powering on. Anyways, onto the story! A woman came in with her teenage son. She had just bought him a new phone a few months prior as a birthday gift. According to the son, he put it on the charger when he went to bed and it wouldn't power on in the morning. I did some basic troubleshooting like trying a few different cables and cleaning any dust or funk out of the charging port. Still nothing. Phone won't even acknowledge that it's plugged in. Oh, bother. The phone was still under warranty, and at this point that looked like the next step in my process. Now the warranty does not cover physical or liquid damage, and if the customer sends back the device and the warehouse finds any damage they will be charged a fee for it. As the woman and I wait on hold for tech support- we aren't able to do warranty replacements in carrier stores- I inspect the phone a bit more closely. The son swears up and down that there was no damage to the phone and it didn't come into contact with any liquid, but I still have to check for any and all damage. No damage to the body or screen, buttons feel nice and clicky...but there's condensation on the rear camera. I open the SIM tray and shine a flashlight into the phone, and what do you know- the water damage indicator is a nice shade of pink. It's supposed to be white. Yup, definitely water damage. Oh, bother...again. I explain this to the woman- who is still on hold by the way- and she doesn't believe me at first. I show both her and her son the condensation in the rear camera, as well as the indicator inside of the phone. Sorry, it's water damage. Warranty won't cover it. I can tell she's mad, but less at me and more at the situation and her son. I press him a little more, asking if he could think of any possivle way the phone would have gotten wet, even if it was just condensation. Turns out he got into a fight with some kids at his school and they shoved him into a snowbank when his phone was in his pocket. The phone got wet, his ass got wet, and his ego likely got a bit bruised. The woman look at him and said "Oh, that's fine. Things happen. Tell you what; I have my old flip phone back at the house somewhere. We can just activate that for you to use." In my neck of the woods, giving a flip phone to a high schooler is apparently tantamount to a big red A on their shirt, to reference one of my least favorite books I had to read when I was in high school. TL;DR: Kid lied to his mom about water damage on his shiny new phone. The phone stopped working and the truth eventually came out. Now he has a flip phone that might be as old as he is. [link] [comments]  |
| The black marks are there for a reason. Posted: 21 Aug 2019 07:48 AM PDT I don't know if this is exactly the right place for this but I guess the comments will decide. Background: Back in the early '90s I was a computer programmer for the army and one of my duties was to maintain systems that transferred officer and enlisted records from my duty station up to and down from the department of the army. These records were the changes to soldier's personnel files and were pretty important because they would not get paid for new ranks if finance in D.C. wasn't aware of their promotions. The system we had to use was a few years old and worked fine (but very slow), the problem we had was that the phone lines in our building were VERY old. So old that they still used cloth rather than rubber as insulation and were very finicky in how they had to be kept for them to work properly. We had so many problems with keeping the phone lines working that the computer was kept in a certain location and never moved or the connection would not work due to the physical stress the phone line was under (its own weight) and we couldn't connect to D.C. The story: I was but a lowly E-4 Specialist (SPC) and worked by myself downstairs as the 2 E-5's had moved on to other bases and their replacements had not yet arrived to replace them. The fact that 2 SPCs (there was another SPC downstairs doing a different, very easy job, as he was waiting to be medically discharged) were working unsupervised downstairs really got on the nerves of a E-6 Staff Sergeant (SSG) upstairs who didn't have a whole lot of work after I had created a program that did 90% of his previous work. Since this SSG now had much less work to do he was forced by our E-7 Sergeant First Class (SFC) to assist in the data entry section which I think he was not happy with. The SSG talked with our SFC and had the great idea that he should spend ½ his time supervising me and the other SPC who worked downstairs because ofcourse 2 SPC can't be trusted not to f things up. As a SPC I had no say in the matter so I now had a SSG supervising me that had no IT experience and no understanding of the weird issues we had with the wiring downstairs. Well of course once the SSG began his supervisory role downstairs his first order of business was to move everything around to suit whatever vision he had of how the furniture should be set up. The other SPC and I began moving the heavy as hell desks around in a way that the SSG had told us to until it came to moving the desk with the data transfer computer. This desk was against the wall with permanent marker where the legs should be, electrical tape on the desk to mark where the computer should be, and was never to be moved because of the wiring issue. I informed the SSG that if this computer was moved at all I did not think I would be able to connect to D.C. to do our data transfers. The SSG was not impressed with my explanation and forced us to move the desk while I once again told him this was a bad idea. He also had us try and clean the floor and desk of the permanent marker, but we were unable to full get it clean (thankfully). Over the next week and a half I had to report to our SFC every afternoon that we were having comms issues and were unable to transfer our daily updates. When Thursday of the second week came around our SFC came into our section and wanted an update on our comms issues as we were missing over a week's worth of updates as well as our "large" monthly download of records they needed upstairs to update their systems. I tried to explain that the issue was with the location of the computer, and the stress on the old wiring, but I was interrupted by the SSG that I complaining too much about the issue (which of course I did as I knew how to fix the issue I had to report everyday) and I needed to just do my job and fix the problem. The SFC told me to just fix the problem and I started doing everything I knew how to over the next few hours to try and get the computer to connect. None of it worked, and at the end of the day I had to once again report that we were unable to send data. On the next morning the SSG and SFC came down stairs and the SSG started to tear into me about how I was a shitty "computer guy" and how it shouldn't take almost 2 weeks to fix a simple issue with a computer. After being told I was basically a P.O.S. for 10 minutes, I got pissed, snapped, and I told the SSG off and that this issue was completely his fault and that I was F'n done with his crap and then walked out to the front of the building. This kind of thing would, in most cases, have caused me to get in a lot of trouble and probably even lose a rank or 2. My SFC came out to the front of the build and asked me WTF was going on as I was not known for being disrespectful to leadership and I explained to him that all the issues I had to report to him every day were caused by the SSG moving "that god damn transfer computer". The SFC decided to let me prove my point and asked the SSG to go back upstairs (which he smugly did as he knew the failure was because I didn't know what I was doing) while telling me to get the computer working in any way I needed to. I knew that if I was unable to fix it that it would be my ass on the line. I asked the other SPC to help me move the desk and computer back into its original location and line it up with the marks on the floor and push the computer into the marks on the desk as it had been located in the past. 10, very stressful, minutes later I was transferring the last weeks' worth of data up to D.C. (after f'n with that god damned phone line for a bit) and preparing to download the needed data (which we usually did over night as it was very large for the time and the data rates were very slow). I then went upstairs and reported to my SFC that comms were back up and by that afternoon we should have the files needed to update their systems. The other SPC and I spent the rest of the time I was in that unit unsupervised downstairs, the permanent marker was redrawn on the desk and floor, and the SSG continued to do data entry upstairs with the SFC. [link] [comments]  |
| A few short stories from a previous workplace that I miss dearly. Posted: 21 Aug 2019 11:48 AM PDT I assisted the IT guy, John, at an elementary school for a while. John was both a teacher and head of IT, so he didn't always have time for support. Here I met Kevin. Kevin was also a teacher and technically challenged. Kevin needed to print something, but the toner filter was full. The staff are supposed to call John or me to service the printers. Kevin didn't want to wait, so he found a screwdriver and tried replacing the filter himself. Kevin and the small room where covered in black toner powder. I explained to him that printers don't need screwdrivers for this sort of thing. He learned nothing from this. Some time later, he needed to print again, but the printer was out of yellow ink. This printer used long, see-through cylinders full of colored powder. Again, he didn't want to wait, so he pulled out the yellow ink cylinder and tried inserting a new one. It didn't fit, because he grabbed the wrong one; it was for a different model of printer. So, Kevin kicked it in. Kevin and the small room were covered in yellow powder. Luckily, the printer wasn't damaged and John told Kevin not to try anything like this again. Another time, Kevin came into my office with an external hard drive he had brought from home. It wasn't working and he asked me to look at it. Right away, I noticed that he had brought the wrong power supply for the drive. I mentioned this and he said that this was the power supply that came with it. It clearly wasn't, since the drive had the Western Digital logo on it, and the power supply said Toshiba on the back. He still wasn't convinced and we went back and forth a little bit, until John came in and assured Kevin that I was correct. Anyway, I opened up the external casing, but couldn't see any damage. I tried hooking it up to my laptop with a SATA to USB adapter, but I got no reaction. I could only assume that it was fried, because he used the wrong power supply. Otherwise, Kevin was a pleasant enough guy and we got along well, when he wasn't wrecking electronics. I was only hired for a year, to assist John setting up new equipment and preparing most of the building for an updated IT system, since he didn't have the time to do both that and teach. It was probably the best job I've ever had. Plenty to do and wonderful, appreciative people. I really miss it. [link] [comments]  |
| Manager wanted the impossible, then gets shutdown Posted: 22 Aug 2019 02:42 AM PDT Hey just wanted to share another story that kinda frustrated me but working in IT department you get allot of complaints that could be easily fixed & then you hear the annoying " IT staff are dumb they don't know shit". Ofc you work your usual hours & if you go the extra steps you won't get anything in return just more work and no bonus or overtime. Yes no overtime for IT is crazy. There is a problem with the IT department honestly but it is because management keeps saying "Just do it, but I can't accept this cost". So most of the things we have are based on the little budget we have available. So when the staff ask for tasks that require things over the budget they usually just regret". Sometimes other departments do something on their own and they cause malware or get infected with ransom ware locking essential files that should be sent to the government, otherwise there would be a fine. The dumb people don't even have back ups. So yea dealing with such people is tiresome. Anyways one of the managers wanted other systems to communicate with each other. That is a problem since some of our software are not compatible or are decades old. So usually is not supported anymore. Upgrading those software will cost millions. I found entire eco systems that are cost effective and are up to date & can do all the things we want." My manager said " Why would we go for a Camry when we have a Ferrari" . Basically my manager wanted the Ferrari 2019 without the cost. So all the alternatives are bad to him. I was confused I said in my mind " we have a Ferrari on life support & fixing that Ferrari cost us millions" I replied " Well our current Ferrari cannot do what you ask, a new Ferrari cost x10 the cost of this software, so you have a choice of either choosing this alternative, getting the new Ferrari or just decline your request. I just want you to know that this isn't IT department fault this is your decision after all. So do not blame IT" The manager said " You know what I like our existing system, yea I won't ask you to do that task". [link] [comments]  |
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