Quick one for you all today. One of my developers got a new desk phone extension like a month ago. We expect to get a couple of calls a week from people asking for help or explanations regarding our applications. Since the new extension went in he's been getting calls 3 or 4 times a day for the person who previously had it. Without further explanation, the funnies exchange thus far:

Caller: "Hi I'm calling for Such-and-such Johnson, I need to speak with him, it's urgent."

Dev: "Sorry, but this is a new extension for me, you should check the directory or get the operator to connect you to his extension."

Caller: "That's fine, just get him on the phone."

Dev: "Excuse me?"

Caller: "Look, I know his extension, I know hes there, get him on the phone."

*Dev looks at me completely confused, then hands me the phone*

Me: "This is Dev's manager, is there something you need from Dev?"

Caller: "I know this is is Such-and-such Johnson's phone, I don't give a fuck who you are, get him on the phone right now or I'll make sure you don't have a job in the morning."

Me: "Oh, Such-and-such... yeah he hasn't worked here in 2 months since he got caught stealing laptops..."

Caller immediately hangs up. I dialed the number back, got a not-valid response... I wish we had those phones recorded, cause I'm 99% sure that was one of the dudes he was selling equipment to.

EDIT: Updated the language so it was clear the laptops were stolen company property xD

submitted by /u/maxwelldemonic
[link] [comments]

A pair of tales, one of customer service, one of technical weirdness

Posted: 12 Aug 2019 09:49 PM PDT

The following happened a couple of years ago while I was working for a customer-facing, remote support outfit that did the occasional in-home visit. This was an interesting thing that happened towards the end of my time with the said company its less of a tech issue and more of a customer service issue but I figured I would share. The second bonus story below that is more of a tech issue

So for your reference, the company has several levels of tech support. Also, none of the names are the real names.

L1: Essentially a trained monkey performing triage, they are as likely to make a problem worse as they are to make it better.

L2: These guys do more advanced troubleshooting, generally safe hands, they know enough to be dangerous.

L3: The nutjobs that can figure out the weird shit, lots of experience, lots of tribal knowledge, essentially a walking knowledge base.

L4: A developer, the eldritch beings with knowledge beyond that of mere mortals like myself, to disturb one was as likely to get you eaten (read fired) as it was to solve your problem.

OL1: Essentially an L1 that we would send onsite to a clients home to do something stupidly simple. Now the company has 1 or 2 people for this job in a given area, and typically another 4 or so who can be paid on a job by job basis.

OL2: Essentially an L2 agent that would go onsite and then contact an L2 or L3 acting as their eyes and ears. Expensive service.

Technically we also offered OL3, but it was far to expensive for most people to afford, and we also offered OL4 on a technicality, but only an L4 can schedule an OL4 (Typically themselves).

At the said company I was an L3, I started off as an overqualified L1 and then worked as an L2 for a year before being promoted to the level of my incompetence L3.

The customer service

So there I am watching a batch of L1's who are trying not to have a nervous breakdown as they prove they can be L2's. My job essentially is to step in if someone fucks up horribly, otherwise, its to provide technical tips that would normally require digging through the companies terrible knowledge base.

Where I am sitting I can keep tabs on things, and one of my L1's (Suzy) starts to frantically wave her hand to get my attention. I open the call at my desk and start pulling up the client (Betty's) history. It is extensive, most of our clients the case history loads instantly, for Betty it took a good 30 seconds to load. This is why Suzy is frantically waving her hand. Betty is on the phone is being patient, simply just trying to schedule someone out to her home to set up or fix her printer(she isn't certain what is wrong). Except she is also requesting that a specific person (let us call him David, which isn't his real name) not be sent out to her home, as he has been involved all her recent onsite visits and has never actually completed a job to her satisfaction.

So i get up and visit my l1, who is very frustrated because all the ol1's in her our are scheduled and none of our contractors are taking jobs at the moment. So the only ol2 in the area is fucking David. Now having worked with david many times i can tell you david is a piece of work. The issue isn't that he is incompetent, it is that he is both lazy and dishonest.

So I take over at this point and let her know that the only option is David unless she wants to wait three weeks or call in every day to try and get one of our contractors. She decides to call in every day because she really hates David.

So we leave the ticket open and David sees this open ticket in his area and reschedules it (not unheard of). I call Betty and cancel the appointment explaining that David had scheduled himself. This happens the next two days in a row so i cancel it and add a note that David isn't to touch this appointment. David sees this and closes the ticket only to reopen a new identical one it but he redoes the onsite service from an OL2, to an OL4 and has assigned it to himself. Essentially making the price jump from about 40(for the service), to 500 (per hour with a two-hour minimum). I see this the next day that she calls in and is rather upset because David had shown up at her home to try to do the job.

I quickly run the situation by my boss (Ken), who quickly runs it by our sites L4 (Fred). Now Fred is a nice guy, but his time is expensive hence why no one bothers him. So Fred gets a wicked smile and has me call up David.

I get David on the phone and Essentially tell him to go to his car and wait. We get on the phone with Betty and let her know that we are making an exception and sending

Fred, myself, Ken and Suzy all drive 30 minutes to Betty's house and while the Fred and I are essentially redoing the last six months of work that she has had asked to be done (because of david). Meanwhile, Suzy is driving David and my boss back in the company car that David was driving.Fred and I carefully go through each and every job that David was supposed to do and ensure that they are all done correctly, it takes a couple of hours but we get betty sorted and let her know there will be no charge for the visit.

We get back to the office and David has been let go for essentially doing jobs to the "good enough" point and then calling it a day.

Bonus story an actual technical issue.

This was when I was working as an L2 for the aforementioned tech company.

Client calls in and is trying to get wifi working on his computer. This is a new client who was referred to us by a neighbor of his. One of our L1's talked to him on the phone and what essentially had happened was he was getting broadband internet for the first time. Now his new ISP had provided him with a wireless router/modem combo. So he calls us because he wants to use it wirelessly because the ISP dude told him he could. The L1 hops on our sales portal and takes payment and before he knows it he is the proud new owner of a USB wireless card.So the client calls in because he has the wireless card and needs help setting it up. So we try to walk him through hooking up the wireless card but he is being a crotchety old man and uncooperative. So we schedule an L1 to go out, L1 gets there and immediately calls for help and that is where I become involved. Our L1 cant find the USB port on the computer, we talk on the phone I try to walk them through numerous things to try and nothing. So we start talking and discover its an older computer and that we cant use the ethernet port on it because it was damaged when someone successfully plugged a USB wireless card into it. L1 and I continue to troubleshoot when they mention how slow the old computer is, and I casually ask "well what version of windows is it?" thinking maybe its running vista and needs a bit of memory. So we poke around a bit and the menus they are describing sound wrong to me, the options aren't lining up with any version of windows that I am used to, so I ask "hey it isn't a mac is it?" It was not a mac.We eventually determined that the machine has no USB ports, as it not only predates wifi, it predates the USB port and was running windows 3.1.

TLDRStory 1: Incompetent onsite tech incurs the wrath of a nutjob and an eldritch entity, and gets fired for his trouble.Story 2: Museum pieces are not future proof.

submitted by /u/hebeach89
[link] [comments]

...And when does it run again?

Posted: 12 Aug 2019 11:51 AM PDT

On mobile. I run a Network Security Team that among other things manages the Vulnerability scanning. As such, we coordinate with the patching team to ensure the database is accurate so that they're not focused on things that are no longer a concern. One of the leads just reached out to me and this is our interaction.

Patching Lead: Need you to tell me if there was any database cleanup between 1 Aug and 12 Aug

Me: Hey Patch Lead, we run an auto purge rule for entries older than 30 days, it runs every night at 1am EST.

PL: How often do you run that?

Me: It runs every night at 1am

PL: What does it remove exactly?

Me: Entries that haven't been detected in over 30 days.

PL: How many systems does it remove?

Me: It runs every night so typically only around 5-10 systems.

PL: What time does it run?

Me: 1am Eastern.

PL: When are you going to run it again?

Me: It runs every night.

PL: At 1am, GMT or EST

Me: Eastern.

...Proceeds to follow up with an email to make sure he understands the clean up process

"GFTRGC's team runs a script to cleanup the database every night at 0100 GMT to clean up expired entries."

submitted by /u/GFTRGC
[link] [comments]

Smoke in the koi pond

Posted: 13 Aug 2019 05:18 AM PDT

In ages past I found myself as a priestly mage of support, second order. I resided in a cathedral of labor, present to alleviate the pains of technology from the laborers there. One vestibule of my realm was utilized by not the typical engineers who infested the land, but a bevy of receptionists, purchasers, pushers of paper, and others of the clan administrative. They occupied the second floor East, in an area surrounded on three sides with ample glass windows. Contrasting to the rambunctious silly nature of the clan engineer, these docile workers were peaceful, quiet, calm - rarely a sound beyond a softly ringing phone, muted yet brief conversations, and the gentle tap of the keys.

In short, it was a veritable koi pond, worthy of a zen destination for meditation.

As a priest of the second order I had but rare occasion to visit the oasis of peace. In the bowels of the white archcathedral of capitalism resided a cave of toil, where the lay clergy of the first order would answer the phones a-ringing to identify issues and attempt to purge the souls of the minorly inconvenienced. For all imperfections unresolvable by the first order, a ticket of routing would be dispatched to the 2nd order, some 30 miles distant, for the personal and hands-on resolution they and only they could provide.

The first order was quite occupied in their tasks, with hold times occasionally reaching some 15-20 minutes before they could speak to the troubled spirit, as what happened the day that a resident of the koi pond vocalized on the line.

I was laboring in my document of excel, a pop was heard, the screen went dark and the smoke from within the computer has been released. How can I recover my document?

To which replied the acolyte:

Lamentations, it sounds as if your computer has suffered damages physical. I shall dispatch a priest of the second order forthwith. Did you unplug your computer when the smoke did start to billow about your feet?

To which she replied:

I did not, for I have been repeatedly instructed to never simply turn off a computer without a prior click of button of start, then shutdown. When my image of computing vanished from the pane of visions I could no longer see the button of start to select the shutdown prayer and have therefore been waiting these 15 minutes to receive your guidance.

The priests of the second order were sent a urgent page of utmost priority to investigate, where they found a fried power supply, a lovely odor of burned electronics and wiring, a very passive and calm user, and a few dozen other cubicles filled with people who were not reacting to the events unfolding.

submitted by /u/FeedTheKitteh
[link] [comments]

You're not as popular as you may think.

Posted: 12 Aug 2019 07:54 AM PDT

A quick story to pop my TFTS cherry. This happened a few months back when I worked for a semi truck dealer supporting 9 shops across 2 states. Work ranged from typical help desk support to driving out to different shops to do network installs.

$user is a 70-80 year old parts specialist, only computer literate enough to do his job.

$user stops by the IT office to complain that he hasn't received email all afternoon. Typically back parts specialists receive emails from technicians requesting parts that they bring to the counter for the tech to grab and install in the truck they are working on, which happens pretty frequently all day. He's irate and is bitching about how he needs to get parts out to the techs and he can't do his job because the email is down.

Strange since I haven't heard anyone else in the company (200+ people) complain about the email being down. I've been emailing people all day. Maybe his Outlook client is acting up? $user is known for clicking anything and everything on his screen breaking things that I didn't even know could be broken. I walk with $user to the parts counter to see what the problem is.

I see nothing out of the ordinary, internet us up and Outlook is connected and online. He hasn't received an email since about 12:30 P.M. which is weird since it was about 3:00 P.M. and usually the parts counter is pretty busy.

I run back to the IT office and quick send him an email to see if he gets it or if I get some sort of message. I go back to the parts counter and see that his Outlook received the email. I then tell the other parts worker to send $user an email. A few seconds after the other worker sends an email and it goes through on $user's PC.

$user hasn't received emails all afternoon because nobody sent him anything.

$user: Ohoho well thanks for the help! Guess I'll be patient next time! (No apology for being a dick 2 minutes beforehand)

$me: Haha yep no problem let me know if you have more issues (please don't)

I head back to the office and debate if IT is really what I want to be doing for the next 40 years of my painful existence. Still in the field so it hasn't broken me yet.

submitted by /u/Jadonson
[link] [comments]

Breaking News

Tech Support

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

TFTS Top Tales - July 2019 Tech Support

TFTS Top Tales - July 2019 Tech Support

TFTS TOP TALES - July 2019

No comments:

Post a Comment

Popular

Blog Archive

Fashion

Beauty

Travel