That time I thought I killed a guy over the phone Tech Support |
- That time I thought I killed a guy over the phone
- "Don't do this yourself, I'm a professional!"
- Had my first "Knows enough to be dangerous" client today.
- Listening isn't a technical skill, though....
- Ultra Rude Clients!
- Unofficial USPS IT guy - 1
- What data types don't match, all hell breaks loose
- None of us can login after an update
- The Maury Show
- I was wondering when this would happen
- Parents provide best example of PEBKAC
- Just a friend helping a friend
| That time I thought I killed a guy over the phone Posted: 14 Aug 2019 06:58 PM PDT This was circa 2000. Worked at a place that handled warranty calls for computers sold through Office Max. Monday. It was already a bad day as we had a lot of calls about systems that would not turn on. Ended up being fried power supplies and motherboards from some really bad storms that had gone through the South over the prior weekend. These were usually easy to diagnose and you'd schedule a tech to go out and try to resuscitate the machine with a new power supply, but company policy required us to go through the standard idiot test first. ie: "Is it plugged in? Is the monitor plugged in? Is the monitor on? Is the power outlet receiving power?" So I we get through the first of those and I get to the last step which is to ask them to try plugging the computer into a different outlet. Guy says "Ok, the computer is under the desk. Hold on a minute." He puts his phone down on top of the desk and I don't hear anything as I imagine he's crawling under the desk to unplug the thing. About 30 seconds later I hear a loud crackle and pop sound along with the guy screaming. Then nothing. Silence. I swear 5 minutes went by, but I'm sure it was only another 30 seconds. I am screaming over my headset "Sir? SIR?!" I thought I just electrocuted this dude. Finally he picks the phone back up and says that there was a lot of smoke and blue sparks that came out of the back of the computer when he plugged it back in. He was surprisingly chill about it. I guess near death experiences can do that... Needless to say, I didn't need any further documentation to authorize a tech. [link] [comments]  |
| "Don't do this yourself, I'm a professional!" Posted: 14 Aug 2019 05:45 AM PDT A couple of years ago, I quit teaching. The hours sucked, the amount of work I did for the pay and recognition was no where near worth it and I'd never felt so worthless at the end of the academic year than I did when I was a teacher. TL;DR, teaching sucked. Which really upset me. So I decided I may as well stick to my degree and use it. After all, I did pay for it! I signed up with a job agency for an IT technician role; I had some experience from labs in uni in networking, I could manage AD, do all the usual 2nd line stuff and I was more often than not fixing issues with the school's computers myself as we had no in-house tech support, and the guys we had on contract were utterly useless. After a couple of days, I get a call from my agency contact who says he's got a couple of jobs I would be perfect for - both IT technician work in schools. "Sure!" I thought, after all, I'm going into a new field, so it would be good to be in an environment I'm familiar with and I have lots of ideas on how teachers can use tech to do what they do better. Long story short, I ended back at the first school I was placed at on teacher training, which was really, really useful as I knew the site, knew the guy who I was going to be working with, and knew the IT teachers and a good number of the kids (and I left that place on a real high note, I was gutted to have left!). So a month or so passes and I get a call from the library, where there is a trolley full of iPads used for various things. Turns out, one of the screens has a pinkish, purplish tinge to it and no one could figure out why. No settings were changed but it clearly looked like a hardware issue. I took it back across the site to our office and began to poke and pry, rummaging around the internals to see if there was a loose connection somewhere. Nothing would work. Having had a particularly long week, I had a 'moment' and ended up dropping the thing. Face. First. 'Oh, crap.' was the thought that ran through my head. Gingerly, I picked it up and turned it over. With my previous 'experience' of Apple products, I thought it was a death sentence for that week's pay, but no! The screen was physically as good as it was before on first inspection. 'Ok, it's not completely borked I don't think, have I killed the internals?' And I turn it on. And I am pleasantly surprised when the whole screen is displaying correctly in a plethora of kaleidoscopic colour and wonder, with none of the issues initially reported! I keep it in the office for an hour or so, checking it's all working, running updates, general use and so on and everything is absolutely fine! So we chalked it up as a 'potential' fix - drop it from maybe a foot, face first, onto the carpeted floor. A week later, we get another call. For the same problem, on a different tablet. "Not a problem, I'll be right down and it'll be working again in 5 minutes." and off I toddle to the library. It's a class full of (now) year 10 pupils, many of which I'd taught previously and after the usual banter I had going with all of them, asking how they were doing, etc. I crack on with the issue. I get handed the tablet and the class is all looking at me. You know the look. Expectant, anticipating, curious, judging. I look up with a wry smile on my face. "Don't do this yourself guys, I'm a professional". 2 fixes for 2 borked tablets. [link] [comments]  |
| Had my first "Knows enough to be dangerous" client today. Posted: 14 Aug 2019 02:02 PM PDT I work at IT at my University and I was helping a professor set up their new laptop. I do this dozens of times a day and never had an issue until today. Them: "The screen is much smaller." Me: "Yeah, it does look like that, but the screen is actually the same size as your last one, it's just the bezels that are much smaller." Them: "Hmm, I'll have to measure that" Me: "Okay, let's log into Outlook now" Them: "What's that for?" Me: "It's to access your University Email" Them: "I don't use that, I use ThunderBird" Me: "The University only supports Outlook, it's really easy to just log into" Them: "No, I'll skip this" Me: "Okay, that's fine. Let's get you logged into OneDrive now." Them: "Why would I need that?" Me: "It backs up all your files into the cloud, and you'll be able to access your files on any device. You get a terabyte of storage with your University account." Them: "The Cloud? Yeah, I don't trust the cloud." Me: "Well, I guess we're done then, enjoy your new laptop, have a great day." [link] [comments]  |
| Listening isn't a technical skill, though.... Posted: 14 Aug 2019 10:54 AM PDT Customer: "I'm getting this error" Me: "OK, looks like this is misconfigured, I changed it just now so you should be good" Customer: "Ok hold on I'll show you the error" (can't get the error to come back up) Me: "Right, I fixed it, so we can just do another test if you prefer?" Customer: "Yeah Great, let's do that. Huh, why isnt the error showing up?" Me: "Well it's already fixed so it should be working now." Customer: "Hold on it's so weird that the error stopped showing up!" Me: "Well it's fixed so it shouldn't be showing up anymore...." Customer: "Just like the car dealership, you show someone who knows and of course the issue goes away." Me: "I already fixed the issue so - " Customer: "I'll just call you again the next time it happens" Me: "Ok have a great day!" [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 14 Aug 2019 12:20 PM PDT This is a story from a couple of years ago when I used to provide IT support to medium sized businesses. Part of my job was to setup new workstations and make sure they are connected to the network and that the phones were working and that everything works basically. One day a new client put an order through for 20 laptops with docking stations, mice and keyboards and 40 monitors. But when we arrived to set them up... Me: The one and only ;-) |SM: Section manager (On the side of the client)| SP: Section Supervisor (On the side of the client) | R: Recepcionist | MM: My manager We arrived at the client early in the morning at 7am, all the desks were meant to be cleared of personal belongings and staff were meant to back up data on to a dedicated network share. The department manager sent an email copying my team in and all 20 staff members with the date and time we were ariving. We booked a parking space for our van two weeks prior to our visit. The parking space was right next to the enterance. We arrived at the company and couldn't find the parking bay that we requested. Whilst my collegue waited in the car I went to ask recepcion... Me: Hi we're here from Company Name and were here to see SM, we booked this parking space but can't seem to find it. R: Ok, let me have a look........................I can't find you on my system for this bay Me: That's strange, here's the email confirmation R: O, No, that can't be right this space is for vans only Me: But we are a van, we are delivering and setting up loads of IT equipment for SM R: O, No that parking space is not for IT it's for important things like the shop and the cafe on the first floor Me: Excuse me? Look, I don't mean to be rude but we're here to do a job. R: Allow me to call SM Put's the phone down R: It turns out that we do have a parking place for you but it was moved to this space. SM is on her way down to meet you Me: Great thanks! I will just tell my collegue the parking number SM: Hi Welcome to company name, Do you have many things to carry? Me: Hi, yes we got all the requested monitors, laptops, docks, mice and keyboards you ordered as well as the cabling. SM directs me to the stairs SM: Right we're based on the 19th floor Me: Blimey! Where are your lifts? SM: Visitor lifts open at 9am Me: Pardon? Do you have staff lifts? SM: Yes but you're not staff and were not insured to carry visitors in those lifts. Me: We are not walking up all those stairs! SM: hmmm, ok let me ask security, Ok you're allowed to use the lifts follow me Me: Thank god! We got up to the 19th Floor and were shown the desks, none of which were cleaned, they were extremely dirty with rotten left over food and it stank. None of the staff members backed up their data either. SP met us by the lift SM: Right this is SP, she will be taking care of you today. Me: Hi Nice to meet you! SP: A yes very good, Follow me, this is the desks you will be clearing, there's some rubish bags in the cupbord just here. Make sure you split the rubish up for recycling. All the old computers are to be loaded into my van at this parking space. All staff members have left me their log in details on this pice of paper for you to transfer the data. (Looks in bag for pice of paper) O dear me, I must of left it in the cafe on the table, let me just go down and get it. Guess what parking space it was (THE ONE WE BOOKED) Me: You made your staff right down their log in details on the pice of paper and left it on the table in the cafe? These people must change their passwords now! That's extremely dangerous, especially since you left it unatended. You Don't ask people to right down their log in details! SP: DON'T BE SO RUDE! Me: Excuse me? We are an IT company we were promised that all this will be done before we got here! Whilst SP went down to get the log in details, I decided to take some photos and send them to my manager. I then gave him a call... Me: Hi, were at this company name job I explained what has happened MM: You are joking me right? I just seen the photos you sent, no I'm not having two of my workers putting their health and safety at risk. Go back to base and explain that you can't do the job due to health and safety reasons and tell SM to check her emails. Explain that we still have to charge the call out fee When SP got backed we asked to speak to SM SP: What You Think you're doing standing around chatting! Get to work NOW! Me: Can I speak to SM please SP: Not until you finish your work Me: It's important SP: Ok, Ok, I'll get her down for you Me: I'm sorry but after seeing the circumstances, my manager has canceled this appointment to a time when you're prepaired. He asked me to tell you to check your email and that he is still charging you for the call out. SM: THAT IS REDICOLOUS! WE EVEN PAID FOR THE BIN BAGS FOR YOU TO TAKE THE RUBISH OUT! IS THAT COST BEING REFUNDED? TRUST ME YOU TWO WILL BE OUT OF A JOB TODAY AND I WILL MAKE SURE YOU NEVER GET ANOTHER JOB EVER AGAIN IF YOU DON'T FINISH THIS NOW! YOU KNOW WHAT I'M GONNA CALL THIS STUPID **** OF A MANAGER AND HE WILL TO LOSE HIS JOB TOO! I WILL TAKE YOUR COMPANY DOWN YOU WAIT FOR TOMORROWS NEWS PAPERS. We got escorted out by security. We went back to base to witness an argument over the phone. It turned out that SM had a massive go at my manager over the phone and he terminated the IT Support Contract. Two days later we were called to a meeting with SM's lawyer but after my manager showed the photos as well as the conversation he recorded. The lawyer phoned up the client to say that he dosen't deal with clients like that and left the case. - Must have not been paid! Two weeks later and curtesy of my manager, the client has undergone a health and safety inspection which it failed, but the company was never given the chance to improve as two Months it went bust Sorry I had to remove my previous post and repost this due to a badly spelt title [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 14 Aug 2019 06:50 PM PDT My friend works for the post office as a mail carrier. Over time, the subject of computers has come up. Especially since every office has at least one now. A bunch of the postmasters are computer illiterate and ask for his help. The postmaster where he picked up his mail would put a parcel marker in his post office box, just to make sure he would come in. One day he walked in to grab his mail, he saw a parcel marker and walked up to the counter. She was on the phone and was waving him over to come in, past the counter to the computer. I'm writing the story as he said it, from his point of view. Cast Friend - Op. Postmaster- M. Poom- P. Op-What are you trying to do? M-The printer isn't working. Here. (She hands my friend the phone. ) Op-Who is it? M-The poom Covering the phone. Op-I don't want to take to him. He's about the last person I want to talk to. The poom is basically a district manager for the post office. The boss of the postmaster. My friends bosses boss. The postmaster motions to the phone and holds it to his ear. Op-Hello? P-Who is this? Do you work for the post office? Op-Yes. P-Whats your name and what office do you work out of Op-Op and xyz office. (There was silence for a couple seconds.) P-Ok. Well . . . we're having trouble with the printer. Op-I can see that. (The screen was covered with 2-3 dozen printer icons). Were you trying to uninstall and reinstall the printer? P-No. We just tried to reinstall it Op-Umm. A couple times is see. P-Yes and it doesn't seem to fix the problem. Op-Ok. (Talking to M) I assume you were trying to print something. P-What? Op-Sorry. I was talking to M. I have an idea. M-Yes. Go to the front of the computer. Minimizing the screens. He goes to the desktop. She points at a word document. M-This one. Op opened the document. File-print-ok. He went back to the printer icon page and looked over the icons and saw 1 in the queue of one of the icons. He clicked and opened it. Op-This one is the default. ( right click-default-password prompt). What's this? P-That's for me.(remotely types password) Op-Oh. That works. The printer starts up and prints the document. M-Oh good. It worked. P-It worked? Op-Yes. Now should we uninstall the other icons? P-Put M back on the phone. (Hands phone to M) M-Yes. It's working now. Thank you. (Hung up the phone) Op-He does realize the printer was installed soooo many times. M-As long as it works. Who cares. Op-Ok? Fine by me, as long as I don't have to deal with that again. Unless the office replaces the computer. It's probably still that way to this day. [link] [comments]  |
| What data types don't match, all hell breaks loose Posted: 14 Aug 2019 08:23 PM PDT Here is another recollection from long ago: I was a lead developer/project manager for a software company and my baby was the insurance system we sold. We had implemented the insurance system for a large agribusiness company here is Adelaide; this was around 1988/89. They were an IBM AS/400 shop, but had a VAX/VMS system driving a Teletext server and our insurance system was also deployed on VAX/VMS systems. They used their Teletext development team to build an interface between our system and their AS/400 general ledger (accounting) system; I think as they had VAX/VMS experience. Their CIO was a very high powered hard hitting lady, not a Karen; BTW we became good friends over the years. So the interface was deployed and then the proverbial hits the fan. It does not balance, i.e. the reports from the insurance system did not match what ended up in the general ledger system. So a meeting was called with all the appropriate players, including the customer CIO, my CEO, and team members from both sides. About 10 people in the meeting, manager heavy. I am sure our system is solid, as is our side of the interface. So the meeting starts, all the normal formalities, coffee etc. We get to the core issue right up front. Everyone says their bit and it seems to be an impasse for a while. I suddenly realise something, the Teletext system is written in Fortran, and our insurance system in Cobol. So I ask the obvious two questions, A. What language did you use for the interface? and B. What data type for the money fields? Answers: A. Fortran B. Floating Point (double) Ka-ching! I looked over at the customer CIO, she looked a little sheepish, I smiled and she smiled back. Cobol uses fixed point for most data, especially money, and thus avoids the normal floating rounding errors. Problem solved. I guess people who don't work with financial IT systems don't always realise floating point is bad news. Lesson: Get the right team on your problem [link] [comments]  |
| None of us can login after an update Posted: 14 Aug 2019 01:53 PM PDT Oh man. A user from my company calls the helpdesk (for the software I develop) and I answer. They can't login to their specialized control system (running on Windows) ever since an update was applied. They've called everyone including IT (who won't work on it because it doesn't belong to them), control systems, digital shop, and every smart person and various supervisor they can to get help. It's not my system and doesn't use my software (and nobody I've called knows whose is responsible for their system), but okay I'll see what I can. do These people aren't very smart and have needed my help before. So I go down to their floor and see what's up. Just as I suspected.. They're trying to login to a local account instead of their domain account. They've been not working all day, but rather the 5 of them trying to login frantically before their direct supervisor shows up for his shift. It took all of 10 seconds to click switch user and type in the username and password sticky noted to the monitor. God. Dammit. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 14 Aug 2019 08:27 PM PDT I was called by an client's employee who said everything they tried to do on the internet was being redirected to another website or just wouldn't work. A few short moments later, I am able to quickly determine malware had taken root. Shocker I know... I explain what has happened and the work I'll have to do to remove the malware and get the computer back to semi-normal operation. I also throw in a tidbit about the 55 day uptime on a Win7 machine. This lady immediately has the gumption to tell me she never does anything not work related and has never used the administrator credentials to install something from the internet. So I flip open some history logs and had my own little Maury show. It was a good day. [link] [comments]  |
| I was wondering when this would happen Posted: 15 Aug 2019 03:55 AM PDT I work for a Help Desk that supports a massive manufacturing company, I deal with all types, from people in IT to people who probably don't own a PC, and today it happened. M=ME U=User I'll skip the usual greeting info gathering User wants to request access, and the access he wants to request has to be done by the user themselves, which isn't that difficult to do, as we walk them through the few steps needed to do this. I'll skip to the part where i'm telling him what to type M - OK enter the following (I use the phonetic alphabet) ABC_ABC (not the real access info) U- UMMM ABC M- Yes ABC_ U- is that ABC under (user is typing out the word underscore) I've done this countless times, and I was always wondering when someone would type out Underscore, well yesterday was the day. Needless to say i remoted in and completed the request for him in about 30 seconds. It seems auto correct and my fat fingers caused a hilarious typo as it was pointed out twice in comments.... but it's fixed now [link] [comments]  |
| Parents provide best example of PEBKAC Posted: 14 Aug 2019 12:34 PM PDT So, here's a little story for y'all. Not much tech support per se, but the best description of a PEBKAC I've seen. The cast; Me: Dental Student, home for summer break, general gaming and pc nerd, I know enough to not break my pc Dad: 40 year old architect. Arguably tech-savvy The scenario; Parents recently (ie a few months ago) bought a Smart TV with Netflix and have been using the shit out of it alongside my little sister on summer break, nothing untoward, works as advertised, Dad finds internet speed on TV to be around 80Mb/s wired. I come home and a few days later the internet speed has hit the floor; it's lucky to hit above 0.5Mb/s. *OhShit.jpg* Guess who gets the blame. >Dad: Elkubik get down here right now! What have you done with the internet! Have you been messing with the router!? >Me: No. (I mean, sure I game and watch YT and stuff upstairs but that *really* shouldn't) >D: Well fix this! >Me: Have you tried turning it off and on again? >D: Yes! Jesus! Ok then. Let's have a looksee. Router looks like it's working. Fire up speedtest first on my phone as it's on hand. 50Mb/s. Fine, acceptable. Go over to the only other wired PC in the house (everyone else is on laptops, and the computer is the one my dad *borrowed* after his previous died and I went to Uni, really quite a coincidence if you ask me), in the office. Fire up speedtest on there, 70Mb/s. Everything works perfectly fine. Go back to my parents restarting the router (because it's clearly the router's fault seeing as every other device Queue 10 minutes of attempting to connect the TV to the router. Can't find the wired network, fails to connect to any WiFi network that it could connect to. Notice while browsing through settings that it's on Android. Remember that my own Android phone tends to derp out every couple of months and refuse to speak to any other device. On/Off fixes this. >Me: You are *certain* you turned it off and on again? >D: Yeah. Look. Presses power button. Screen turns off instantly, no "power off" or anything. Instant red flags. >Me: You're sure that isn't sleep? >D: No way, look, all the lights are off! *facepalm.png* So I take the remote and "turn the TV back on". Lo and behold it's still displaying the settings menu, with no boot or anything. Long press of the power button on the remote gets me a "powering off" notification, and the TV actually, finally, powers off. For the first time in months. What a surprise when, upon powering back on, we get a nicely animated splash screen and a long wait (ok I exaggerate, maybe like 2 minutes) until we're greeted with the main screen of the TV. Go into settings, reconnect to WiFi first, takes me a good minute (of which most was typing in the password with the stupid ABC keyboard layout that every TV and console maker seems to love). Wired took the best part of 10 seconds. Netflix's own diagnostic gives us a speed of 70Mb/s. And that's how my parents discovered that the TV can be turned *off* and I discovered not to trust the user to be able to perform even the simplest of tasks. /Elk [link] [comments]  |
| Just a friend helping a friend Posted: 14 Aug 2019 05:50 AM PDT I lived in a small town up until a few years ago, and was good friends with a lady who had a small insurance business in said small town. When she had problems with her computers, she would call me. I wasn't really techy then, but I wasn't afraid to mess with computers. I would google, reinstall, reboot, etc., and nine times out of ten, I could fix her problem. She thought I was brilliant. :) One day I got a call as I was leaving for a dr's appointment. I couldn't turn around, so I had her explain the problem to me over the phone. Her laptop suddenly stopped connecting to wifi. I told her I wouldn't be able to help until I got back from my appointment. But then, before I hung up, I remembered something. My laptop would lose wifi connection at random times, also. After a bit of searching (I probably had to google it), I finally realized that there was a little toggle button on the front of the laptop (accessible even when the laptop was closed). That button could turn on/off the wifi (why?!). Additionally, that button could be unknowingly toggled when I would lean forward and brush it my body (terrible design!). Her laptop was the same brand as mine! Ha! I knew what had happened to her wifi! I told her to look for a button at the front of her laptop, and to toggle it back on. That did it! That's my incredible feat of techy heroics! :) She thought I was brilliant, of course! [link] [comments]  |
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