User expects her convoluted Rube Goldberg pathological workflow built on ancient hardware to work indefinitely. Tech Support |
- User expects her convoluted Rube Goldberg pathological workflow built on ancient hardware to work indefinitely.
- 5.5 hour phone call. Customer is a satellite engineer with 25 years experience.
- "I don't believe in email."
- "Yes, Ma'am, I'll let my supervisor know how our 8 minute software update put your entire family at risk."
- The Missing Phone Line (with Special Guest Appearance by a Server Rack of Exactly the Expected Height)
- Failure to prepare on your part means I get to go home early.
- The little VM that couldn't (and some SQL on the side)
- Medical professionals are medical professionals not IT experts.
- Years in IT doesn’t make all of us wiser
- How I remembered why I hate Boot Camp
- A VERY expensive phone cord
| Posted: 16 Aug 2019 06:32 PM PDT I know I should not blame this person for the situation she's in. And I should blame Tier 2 for this even getting to us. I support enterprise "Unified Messaging"/phone/IM/conferencing software products, for the publisher of the products, delivering service to its internal staff. The problem statement: User loses audio when she joins $product meeting. This sounds like a fairly simple problem, that rarely would make it to Tier 3. Inside ticket history, I find the prior problem statement: "Phone Audio" feature does not prompt to enter phone number in the meeting. That one is completely useless, except insofar as it tells me that the current problem statement is out of whack by several orders of magnitude. T2 says she is running the product in a virtual machine -- but they don't say whether it's a VM locally running on her PC (supported) or a VM running on another PC but in the same building she's in (best effort only), or if she's using VPN to remote into a VM running on a server that has its own hardware abstraction layer. (Supported? What you been smokin'?) They don't say why she's running a VM. They asked her a lot of questions that were too complicated for an ordinary user to understand, and it's clear T2 didn't understand the questions either or they'd have realized her answers made no sense. She's not "available" in IM so I keep reading. Audio works when she's the first person to join a meeting. IF she's not the first to join, audio does not work. However, in the latter case, if she's the only one remaining after all others have quit, audio starts working again. My head is spinning at this point. The VM is abstracted from the hardware of the server. If she's dialing in remotely, RDP has its own abstraction layer. And what's this about using her cellphone as a speakerphone? I get in contact with the user and start asking questions. Gradually I tease out what's really going on. She's not using a VM. She's remoting via RDP to a desktop in her office that runs the product client. When she joins the meeting, she uses a feature that routes the audio through her cellphone. it's not that "audio doesnt work", it's that when she's not the first to join, the option to call out never appears. She can't do her presentation because she has no audio. Why can't she run the product's Android client? Her cellphone is a Samsung S3 running KitKat 4.4. The security software we use will barely run, let alone client software. Why can't she run the product client on her remote laptop? It's a 2010 workstation-class laptop (Nvidia Quattro) with Windows 7 on it. When she runs the client, her laptop crashes and (she says) has to be reimaged. Every time she's tried. The PC she's connecting to is running Windows 10 at least. It's a 2014-era Dell Precision running Windows 10 -- but the on-board audio doesn't work. Which is why she has been using the conferencing system to route audio to her cellphone. She can present her powerpoint slides and use her Android 4.4 phone as a speakerphone. I ask her "Have you tried just dialing in to the conference call with your phone, and presenting with the remote workstation?" Her answer: I'm not sure what you mean. "I mean, dial the conferencing center's telephone number and enter in the conference ID". Her: I told you I can't run the telephony client on the phone. Me: Trying to figure out how to pronounce "0.o" Me: Your phone has a dial pad, right? Her: Yes. Me: . . . Her: . . . Me: . . . Her: You mean I could call the conferencing center using my phone? Will that work? Me: Fighting the urge to say something snarky. <ahem> " Y e s " Her: . . . Oh! Oh wait! I get it! That's BRILLIANT! Thank you SO MUCH. Me: So aside from that, what you should do is print out this chat log and take it to your manager. I'm pretty solid sure that this conversation is your business case for getting a new laptop. This company generally keeps its staff updated with recent hardware, and has a two-year refresh cycle. I'm a contractor, and I've got a Precision 3520 -- not state of the art, but it's got a USB C Thunderbolt port, 16 gigs and an I7. I do in fact play games on it when I'm WFH or alone in the office. I know exactly how this person got to be where she's at: FNG gets the scrounged gear. Manager holds back on spending anything until s/he notices that the FNG isn't complaining about her crappy 5, 6 and 9 year old equipment. Ingenious-if-a-bit-thick user figures out how to get her job done with these ancient relics. Eventually she forgets that it was an abomination of a workflow and now can't remember what it was like to have the right tool for the job. I'm not sure what you mean. "Your phone has a dial pad, right?" Yes. . . . . . . . . . . . . OMG YOU'RE A GENIUS Like I opened up a wormhole through time or something. [link] [comments]  |
| 5.5 hour phone call. Customer is a satellite engineer with 25 years experience. Posted: 16 Aug 2019 04:53 AM PDT I worked at pre-engineer level support (subject matter expert). Basically if I don't fix it, either a manager or an engineer will be working on it next. I take an escalated call from level 2. Customer already spent 30 minutes on level 1 and over an hour with the level 2. Level 2 says the problem is a disconnected cable, but the customer will not accept it. Customer reveals he has been a satellite engineer for 25 years. He spent over $10,000 US for his setup, done by a good friend that is very competent. Swears the cables are all tied down so none of them can disconnect. I spent 1 hour calming the guy down, another for him to tell me all about himself, then another hour about his setup. I then spent the rest of the time downloading every user manual of every one of his device and finally convinced (tricked?) him to climb a ladder. He finds a disconnected HDMI cable. Plugs it in and calls me a genius. I am now 5 hours overtime. We were tech support for a brand of universal remotes... [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Aug 2019 05:50 PM PDT Hi all, Me again. I usually post my most surreal story on Fridays. Backstory: I am one of only two IT personnel at a dozen+ building facility with over 1,000 endpoints. Naturally, they smash every IT position into one role. This leads into some.. interesting interactions. Most surreal of this week (it was hard just picking one): This will be a quick one. User catches me in the hall, saying "you have to look at my computer, my boss said she sent me an important email but I never got it. Ever since you guys did network changes it's been doing this". This is the same person that, 6 months ago, told me with a straight face, "I don't believe in e-mails. If something important happens, I'll know." Go to user's area. She stands up and motions me to have a seat at her computer. She's logged in with her profile and everything. First thing I see is an Internet Explorer window with a search that says "help how do I open email". This woman has been in her position two decades. I go through [virtualization solution] to access her email, making sure she takes notes. Of course her email is at quota and full. Judging by email content, she hasn't logged in since about 2015. I then proceed to take around 45 minutes to help her clean out her email inbox, have her boss re-send the "important email" (because it bounced). [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Aug 2019 12:26 PM PDT So, I work with home security systems. Like any modern smart devices, our equipment sometimes requires updates to the software so our customers can avoid known issues as we discover and patch them out. One of the cool little features our equipment has is that when it updates, it does so in the background until it needs to reboot to install the new software. This reboot normally takes a few minutes to complete and most customers won't even notice as the system returns to it's last armed or disarmed state. During those few minutes the system is rebooting, it is basically inactive. This customer had just so happened to be coming home during those minutes and then called us to complain that her home was "completely unprotected for the entire time I was away, anybody could have broken in and you wouldn't know!" I look at the system history and explain to her that according to our records, the entire process from when it started to when she called us to complain and then disarm it was less than 8 minutes. She says that I'm obviously incompetent and don't know what I'm talking about and demands that I pass her complaints to my manager as she feels this is unacceptable and that her home could've been broken into. In broad daylight. Within less than 8 minutes. With interior motion detectors that even if somebody had the perfect timing to get in during the reboot, would have detected them once inside and sounded the alarm. She then demands to be CC'd on this internal email chain, which I inform her I cannot do for company policy, but I still offer to email her separately afterward to let her know her feedback was passed along. She then yells at me and says that I can and will CC her and that she works in IT so she knows how it works and hangs up. I keep my word and email her complaints as best as I can without laughing and still keep my promise to email her afterward. She then emails me back that I did it wrong, and demands my supervisor and my area managers names. Due once more to company policy, I cannot disclose any information about other employees and was advised by another sup to just not bother replying and let her call back if she really feels a need to. I really do try not to revel in the unhappiness of unpleasant customers, but on rare occasions like this, I just can't help the smile on my face imagining what her next irate call will sound like. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Aug 2019 02:55 PM PDT Native English speaker, writing on tablet so formatting should be mostly OK, but there's always at least one typo. TL;DR : Incompetent IT manager tells f*ckwitt-of-the-year-award level lie. IT manager gets caught out the next time someone walks around with their eyes open. Actual situation then turns out to be beyond all reasonable comprehension. TRIGGER WARNING : My last reddit post dealt mainly with some people who were mind-numbingly dishonest, and of whom I had a surprisingly poor opinion. This post will cover some of the same territory, but also venture into the more controversial topics of folks who are ; A) Bullies, B) Eye-Wateringly Inept, C) Some combination of A and B; or, D) Attempting to cover up any of the above by feigning the lesser ills of ignorance and lazyness. If you don't want to know what I think of such people, look away now. ADDITIONAL TRIGGER WARNING : This is a long post. That's partly because I feel it's the best way to convey the essential nuance of the story, but also because I had to go through this sh*t in real time, and you lot don't deserve much better. Introducing characters as they appear seemed to work OK last time, so I'll do it that way again. Buckle up. Many years back I worked for XYZ Inc. They made specialist (and expensive) production machines for a particular type of industry. This story takes place a few years after the start of my last post, and XYZ Inc.'s biggest job in hand was fitting out a new manufacturing plant for a particular customer, we'll call them ABC Corp. To give a flavour of the scope here, just phase1 of this factory took eighteen months of work after the order was placed and XYZ Inc.'s direct billing ran well into 8 figures, and we also specified for ABC Corp. to buy a similar value of other manufacturer's machinery so that it could work directly with ours. There was over a half a million in conveyor belts alone. You might think that meant we were in charge of the whole thing, but we weren't. ABC Corp. wanted to keep control and 'economise' by using their own people where possible, so they ran it themselves, and as well as being the customer they acted as project managers and liason between the architects, builders, machinery and plant suppliers, fitting trades, etc.etc. Not a problem as far as we at XYZ Inc. were concerned. We sold the job to a specification, we wrote the contract to define that specification, and we will have no problem delivering on all the promises made therein. EXACTLY as promised. Oh, but if you want to change that specification after the fact, there'll be a bill for doing it. As far as we're concerned, 'feature creep' means Uncle Fester. And if we're working away and then unexpectly find that whatever it is of yours we need to connect to, incorporate or work around isn't ready on schedule, isn't to spec, or is some new and exciting spec we didn't agree to, progress will stop and you'll get an even bigger bill. And the definition of 'yours' is anything we don't supply, because you're managing this sh*tshow, not us. Did i mention the project manager? ABC Corp.'s pick for this role was the talent they'd already recruited to be plant manager at the new factory when the place started running. Makes sense, you'd think - who else could possibly be more motivated to make their own life easier by delivering the best built, most efficient new factory imaginable? And having done that, who would then also be an in-house expert on every part of the facility able to trouble shoot production issues as soon as they came up? Well, I don't know what guidance ABC Corp. had given the recruitment agent into the kind of person they wanted, but it must have made fascinating reading. In the collective opinion of XYZ Inc.'s people on the ground, the individual selected for this prestigious role had precisely two skills ; 1) Shouting; and, 2) Lying. And frankly they weren't much good at the second one. But I digress. Part of this job was a factory data collection and analysis system. All the machines in the building had at least some level of on-board intelligence, and every single one was going to have an ethernet connection to a data collection server. That server would monitor what happened throughout the factory second-by-second and then produce a range of standard and custom reports. Not a cheap option to add on a factory of this size, but numbers never lie. So if you've got good people looking at those numbers, an system like this that never misses the detail can be an amazing tool to keep that place running efficiently, and spot future issues while they're still small. F*ck knows what ABC Corp. thought ProjectManager was going to do with it. Part of the deal with this thing was that XYZ Inc. also got to see the data. That way we can learn from it and incorporates those lessons in our next generation of machines to make them better. And if ABC Corp. felt they had some complaint about our product, the data system was there to tell the whole unvarnished story as to whether they were right or wrong. To do this, the XYZ Inc. supplied data server rack that the ethernet lines all connected to also needed an ISDN line. (If you've not heard of ISDN before, no worries, it's basically a dedicated phone line optimised for data - there's plenty more Nerdspeak in the detail obviously, but that's all we need for story purposes.) You'll remember XYZ Inc. weren't in charge of the entire project, and the ISDN line counted as being part of the building, so it's something that ABC Corp. had to arrange themselves. And like everything else, it has a specification, a location (in the phase1 server room where we been told to install the data server rack), and a due date. Sorry, I gotta go back and whine about ABC Corp.'s personel again. I've already told you about their new plant management hire. Obviously, in that case, ABC Corp. was seeking someone really special to bring the new factory on line with a bang (I know they succeeded, I heard the thud from here), and they had the budget to match. Unfortunately they hadn't been able to be quite so picky in the hiring management at their existing local plant. Oh, and the place was also a hotbed of nepotism. 'Working from home without leave' was also rife. So some of the existing employees, in particular those who seemed destined to spend the rest of eternity in lower or middle management, were just awe inspiring in their apparent in ability to do any work more challenging than holding down the floor. IT was 'run' by one such an individual, who also had a truly jaw-dropping lack of self-awareness. Department second in command was pretty much a carbon copy, as was the one other tech I personally dealt with. If there was any qualification test at all to work there, I can only assume its main feature was the ability to recognise a PC without being prompted. Extra points and earmarked for fast-track promotion if you knew that a laptop is 'better'. Of course it's unfair to characterise the capabilities of an entire department - there were about six or seven ITfolks in total - based on just the head honcho, deputy and chief tech. I only visited the actual IT office a couple of times, and I'm not sure they were all sentient at the time, so maybe just to draw a veil over it and hope for the best. Anyway, ABC Corp's occasionally present local IT manager, hencefore known as FckwittAboutTown, as well as being somebody's offspring, was put in charge of all IT infrastructure etc. at the new factory. And if all goes well they're lined up for the cushy job of heading the IT department at the shiny new place. On the subject of 'things going well', so many things have already been totally fcked up that AboutTown has by now been given specific written instructions to do/check EVERY single thing personally. So arranging the ISDN line is their job. One of my many many jobs is to chase them up on it. Repeatedly. We're about a year into the project by this stage, so I know what I'm facing. I've simply scheduled myself to call F*ckwittAboutTown every Tuesday and Thursday to check the current status of each individual item on the ever-growing laundry list of IT failure. Take notes for the project documentation and my colleagues, and pass details of anything new that is wrong/overdue (Or, even more spectacularly wrong and overdue than last time) onto those responsible for billing ABC Corp. About two weeks after the due date for the ISDN line I'm told it's done, and I can tick it off my list. I will admit to being quite surprised. About a week later I even get a phone number for it. I pass this startling but welcome news onto the XYZ Inc. subsidiary building the data server rack. (I'll call them XYZData from now on) And those doubting Thomases ask me to check if it's really true! They even want me to plug something in at the ABC Corp. end so they can test the data capabilities of their new toy. How could anyone be so untrusting? As it happens, I wasn't planning to be on site for a couple of weeks (I still had other work apart from this project), so I call in a favour and ask one of the XYZ Inc. techs commissioning some of our other gear to take a few minutes and go up to the phase1 server room and do the necessary for our offsite guys at XYZData. I pass on the nice clear directions I've been given - the ISDN socket is on the waist-height trunking in the server room, right where the XYZ Inc. rack is supposed to go, and is labelled with both its function and the phone number - and leave the tech to organise with the XYZData what time/day best suits them both. A couple of days later I get a call from our tech to tell me that the test was a bust. They couldn't find the ISDN socket in the advertised location. Or anywhere else. It's not even a big room, and as yet had basically no equipment in it. I thank our tech for their wasted lunch break and call FckwittAboutTown. I explain the apparent absence of the ISDN line and the time we've lost by our inability to check its functionality with surpassing patience. FckwittAboutTown assures me that the line is in, tested, and they have done this personally. I express minor reservations as to the strict accuracy of these assertions. After some discussion I persuade the esteemed head of ABC Corp.'s IT department to meet with our tech at the server room. So they can personally show an XYZ Inc. staff member where the blasted thing is. A week goes by, and the F*ckwittAboutTown has mysteriously blown off two meetings with the XYZ Inc. tech. A couple of days later I ring ABC Corp. IT Department. "Hi F*ckwittAboutTown, just a courtesy call to remind you that you were due to meet with our commissioning tech in the new factory server room five minutes ago." 'Yeah, they cancelled on me, some urgent problem with one of your machines.' "Really? They're standing in the server room waiting for you now." 'You sure?' "I'm standing next to them. We'll see you in ten minutes." About fifteen minutes later (there was a cross town drive involved) FckwittAboutTown arrives to join XYZ Inc. Tech and I. A brief discussion and some pointing at walls ensues, but the ISDN connection remains frustratingly absent. Then, and only then, FckwittAboutTown plays their get-out-of-jail-free card. They have an invoice. An invoice from a phone company no less. And on this invoice are charges for the installation of an ISDN line at the new factory. Billed to ABC Corp. and signed for by F*ckwittAboutTown. There is the minor detail that the order was placed after they was told me the thing was already done and tested, but fair's fair, a solid two out of ten for effort. The XYZ Inc. Tech and I exchange a silent glance and agree that the receipt is likely genuine, forging such a thing not being in AboutTown's known skillset. Motive and opportunity are definitely there, but means is lacking, and probably always will be. AboutTown then reasonably explains that having paid the invoice they didn't bother to check the work in any way, and just said that they had, because it was obviously all going to be fine. The tension leaves their body and they bask in the satisfaction of job well done. It's now my turn to explain a few things, not least of which is that, despite F*ckwittAboutTown having ordered the thing on ABC Corp.'s account, there isn't any trace of it whatsoever. AboutTown has literally nothing to show for having spent their employer's money. The server rack will still therefore need a connection to what I'm now refering to as the 'real world', that place on the other side of the factory fence, ideally using a telecoms line of the contractually specified type. It was at about this point that the XYZ Inc. commissioning tech decided they needed to go outside for some fresh air. About a week of non-progress later, I am summoned to ProjectManager's office to explain the bill that had resulted from these shenanigans, and the upshot of that conversation was that as far as the ISDN line was concerned, I was to "fix it" so that XYZData were happy and ABC Corp. weren't in breach of contract. F*ckwittAboutTown was relieved of this particular responsibility, and I was given authority to do the job with ABC Corp.'s money. Lucky me. Well I had an invoice for work allegedly done. I had a phone number. And if you tried connecting to that number using suitable hardware it seemed as though it was a real line but with no hardwire on the other end. So I rang the phone company's tech support, explaining the situation and my new-found authority. An appointment was duly arranged for a PhoneCompany technician to come on-site and investigate. A couple of days later, I got a phone call from the technician who'd been allocated the job. Personal service, I like that. They were cancelling the appointment and it was a courtesy call to let me know. "Why?", I asked. 'So you don't waste time waiting for me when I'm not coming.' "No, why are you cancelling the appointment?" PhoneCompanyTech then explained that they'd prepared for the visit in advance by testing the line (all OK) and looking up its specs. And from the exchange boxes it was listed as being routed from, they could tell there was no way it could be connected to the building they were meeting me in. Not even the same part of town. So I explained that I was holding paperwork which indicated quite clearly that ABC Corp. had paid for the connection to be in that very building, and that they even had a receipt saying it now was. PhoneCompanyTech generously agreed that this was something of an issue, so instead of just closing the ticket, they referred it inwards and upwards to some higher level PhoneCompany tech department, and gave me the relevant numbers and contact details. It took a couple more days to get the whole story. Apparently, the phone tech assigned the installation job had been unable to find the new factory site for some reason. I don't know why, they had the address, other phone lines had been installed on the same site by the same company, multiple delivery trucks from half a dozen vendors had come directly to site without difficulty after journeys of up to a thousand miles. I mean it was the biggest construction site in town, the main building was the size of a football pitch. I dunno, maybe they just weren't from this planet. Anyway, having failed to find the job site, they did what any reasonable person would do in the circumstances. Chose a random phone exchange box somewhere in the local area and ran an ISDN line from that into a convenient nearby building. Tick off the job as complete and move on to the next one. Actually I'm pretty d*mn sure they weren't from this planet. PhoneCompany's super-techs were at least as dumb-founded by this as I was. Let me say that again just in case it didn't sink in. PhoneCompany took ABC Corp.'s order for an additional telecoms facility, and their money, and in response, PhoneCompany's staff member broke into someone else's building in a different part of town and installed a phone line without the owner's consent. I have, to this a day, a mental picture of a British copper collaring a criminal with the immortal line "I'm arresting you on suspicion of installing a phone line without consent, you do not have to say anything, but anything you do say may be taken down and used in evidence against you. If you'll just step this way..." It just won't go away, it's still there when I shut my eyes. So we discussed ABC Corp.'s options. What I wanted was the line disconnected from wherever it was, and reconnected in the server room at ABC Corp.'s new factory. Don't care if it's the same number or gets a new one. Sadly that wasn't an option. At least disconnection wasn't. That needed additional permissions. "But ABC Corp. are paying for the line, and they've given me authority on this? I can fax that through again." 'Yeah, we accept that, but it's not in their building, and we need the building owner's consent to remove a data line.' "Which building is it? Where? The line isn't supposed to be there anyway, surely we can just tell them." 'Oh we can't tell you where the connection is if it's not on ABC Corp.'s site. That'd be a breach of customer confidentiality.' "Do they know they have an ISDN line?" 'Probably not.' "So tell them about it and ask for permission to remove it." 'Oh no, we can't do that, it's against PhoneCompany policy to recommend that a customer disconnects a billable service.' "But the service is unused, and the bills for it go to ABC Corp. Who are prepared to pay for an ISDN line going to the right place that they can actually use." 'Rules are rules. We aren't allowed to do that and we can't tell you where the line is connected either.' In the end, I bowed to the inevitable and ordered a new ISDN line for the new factory using ABC Corp.'s money. I also recommended that they stop paying bills on the original one and demand a refund on the installation, but I've no idea if anyone ever took notice of that. Did this particular debacle affect F*ckwittAboutTown's chances of getting the cushy new job? Probably not, they were likely still seen as the best of the available internal candidates, and all they'd ever done here was claim to have personally tested something that didn't actually exist. Barely worth mentioning in the wacky world of ABC Corp. The End. You thought I'd forgotten that special appearance by the server rack didn't you. A couple of weeks later the data server rack arrived from XYZData. The new factory was laid out like a lot of big modern plants - production machines in great caverous halls with plenty of room to swing a forklift, a three storey office block tucked away on one side for the ancilliary departments, and production offices and the like spread around the machinery halls, as near possible to what they controlled. So the server room was on s mezzanine floor attached to the wall between material processing and phase1 production. At this point I need to introduce SiteManager. Because of the way this place was being built in phases, with facilities and machinery being installed as soon as their part of the building was done, ABC Corp. had had to contract an OHS specialist to control the site for them. SiteManager had no interest in whether the factory worked to spec. or even ever produced anything at all. Their job was to make sure that the commissioning techs weren't run over by a forklift driver who'd just be blinded by someone welding steelwork. Or similar. And when phase1 started operations, to make sure that those were kept separate from contruction, installation and commissioning of phases 2 and 3. If you wanted to do something, anything, on site, you needed SiteManager's say-so. If whatever it was was your speciality or had been done before, then it was simply a question making sure you had clear space to work in (kind of like air traffic keeping planes apart in the sky). If you want to do something new, SiteManager will be checking your plan versus OHS rules to make sure they're happy. SiteManager's word on this is FINAL. SiteManager was great to deal with and knew their stuff. And they were insured up to the hilt. So I drop a line to SiteManager saying this thing has arrived, where to find it, and could they have a forklift put it up on the mezzanine please. No hurry, any time this week will be fine. Thanks. A couple of days later I get an email back saying the server rack is now on the right floor, but SiteManager can see a potential problem. They'll be happy to show me the cause of their concern next time I'm on site. So I thank them again and arrange to meet. Standing next to server rack on the mezzanine landing outside the server room, the problem is obvious. The rack won't go through the server room door, it's too tall. The rack is a standard 19inch job. They do come in various heights, but this one is what we'd been expecting, just under two metres, six foot and a couple of inches (I don't remember the exact number). Close inspection of the door, on the other hand, shows that it's quite a bit shorter than normal. Most people can walk through it without stooping, but not all. There's no apparent reason for this, the ceiling on both sides of the wall is a good twelve feet (say four metres) up. It smells distinctly like a ProjectManager special. So I give XYZData a call. Once I've persuaded them that it isn't April Fools, they agree that it'll be OK to tip the server rack over on its back, roll it through the door on a trolley, and stand it up again. Just check all the screws and connections look solid before doing it. Unfortunately SiteManager doesn't like this. We can maybe use the forklift to put the thing back down at ground level, lie it down there and then lift it back up to the mezzanine again, but once it's through the doorway there's no way the forklift, or any other mechanical handling gear can reach in there to stand it up again. And it weighs too much for SiteManager to allow one or even two people to do it by hand. Either the doorway has to change, the server be put somewhere else (NOT happening), or we're going to have to put some mechanical handling gear up on the mezzanine to do the job. And that equipment not only has to be able to be lifted up there by the forklift, it also has to be able to fit through the problem doorway. There isn't anything suitable currently in use on site, so it'll need to be hired in specially. And when the equipment hire company were told that the first thing we planned going to do with their kit was load it on a forklift and put it on a mezzanine that presently lacked guard rails, they immediately added extra insurance. Combined total is just into four figures. To move a server rack through a doorway into the room it was designed for. Time to present ProjectManager with the options. Rebuilding the doorway so that standard issue server racks and moderately tall people can get in and out of the server room without being scalped strikes both SiteManager and I as best, but it's not our decision. Now, before you ask, it had been suggested that the pre-wired and fully tested rack could be disassembled, carried through the doorway in pieces and put back together again. But the XYZData weren't very pro anyone, even from another subsidiary, messing with the hardware they'd supplied. And our commissioning techs on site weren't exactly short of their own work to do either. Also, ABC Corp. didn't want to pay the bill for the extra labour to actually do this. Then ProjectManager announced that ABC Corp.'s IT department would do the disassembly/reassembly, at only modest cost to XYZ Inc. I think it was while I was declining this kind offer that the XYZ Inc. Tech (the same one who'd previously looked for the ISDN line with me) experienced straight face retention issues and had to leave the building for further supplies of fresh air. Cue a rant from ProjectManager about how ridiculous it was that they were constantly being forced to change their project decisions by XYZ Inc. And when we weren't doing that we handing out bills for stuff of theirs we were changing for them. Didn't us peasants understand that ProjectManager was in charge? With hindsight I think I'll now have to admit that it is just possible that "Why not try getting something right for a f*cking change," was maybe not the most helpful thing to say at this point. Whatever. It was duly decreed from on high (ProjectManager) that the doorway would not change, temporarily or otherwise, and the server rack would just have to get in the room somehow. Well the contract says the data server should be in the nice air-conditioned server room. So does common sense. And if the door can't be made to fit, we'll have to go with SiteManager's plan. I give them a heads up. "No problem," says SiteManager, and agrees to make preliminary arrangements. Obviously to confirm the booking(s) they'll need to know who's picking up the tab for this. Will it be XYZ Inc.? No. We wrote the contract remember. And the data-collection system has its own section in there. By a curious coincidence, in addition to saying what it does, and the connections and power feeds it needs, that section just happens to define the size and weight of the equipment XYZData would be supplying, and the minimum height and width of the path required to get it from the loading dock to the server room. Path to be kept clear for the lifetime of the factory, just in case XYZ Inc. need to swap the rack for another one sometime down the line. We liked writing stuff down. We were good at that sh*t. "What do you want?'" "Just a bit of paperwork, ProjectManager. This is a change note for ABC Corp. to confirm the alteration to contract spec with the smaller server room door. Sign here." < FX : scratchy pen noises > "And this is the purchase order instructing SiteManager to hire in equipment and people to move the XYZData rack through the revised door horizontally and then stand it up again in compliance with OHS. At ABC Corp.'s expense." "Sign here and here." Kicker : The forklift and other equipment doing the job was going to wind up in just about everybody's way for a couple of hours, as well as not be being available for other work. So the move was scheduled to actually happen late one Friday night when most crews were long gone. Now I'm not insinuating anything, but the rack could actually have been tipped over and carried through the door fairly easily by say four or five people, even if OHS didn't like it. And a thousand split four ways is more than decent beer money for the rest of the weekend. Kicker 2 : Guess what size ABC Corp. had chosen for their own server racks? [link] [comments]  |
| Failure to prepare on your part means I get to go home early. Posted: 16 Aug 2019 08:34 AM PDT I had posted this as a comment and was told I should post it as a full story. So I'm pasting it here and will try to add some details. Previously I worked for a Print/Copy/Shipping company, I was there nearly 2 decades from front line employee eventually ending as local IT. This is a tale from when I was an Assistant Manager of a location but asked to assist with an IT rollout. I had a District Manager who loved me, he liked how I was with customers and my problem solving skills. I also had a Regional Tech who knew I was computer literate. It was summer many years ago, maybe early 2000's, which was the slowest time of the year for my location I was asked to help roll out a major software upgrade. This upgrade was a complete re-image of the primary and any secondary production computers. Computers that processed the print jobs that was the bread and butter of the company. This was given to two Assistant Managers who were at slow stores, as the corporate provided instructions were out of order, missing information or outright incorrect. I literally crossed out whole pages of instructions and wrote new steps in some places. We had a special training session to "update" the instructions so we could properly image and set up the computers. If I remember correctly this was an upgrade from Win98 to XP along with a major update to how jobs were processed. There were a few pre-requisites:
The install took 3-4 hours on the primary machine (restoring the data) and 2-3 on the secondary machines. You had to have the primary machine at least complete with the imaging before you could start a secondary. These visits were scheduled over the course of a few weeks. I would do a couple of store visits, then work at my normal store the rest of the week. I think I had something like 9 stores to do. I'd show up at 7 or 8am at a store, verify the pre-requisites were done, then commence the install. This all goes good for a couple of weeks, I'm at my last install. It's a Friday, I'm due back at my store on Monday. I walk in at 7am and nobody knows why I'm there. I go to the primary computer and there's a note from one of the assistant managers that the backup was left running overnight. Of course it wasn't completed, they were burning CDs of the data rather than use the built in mini tape drive. On top of that there's no printer information. I get a call from the assistant manager who was doing all of this and he told me that it was last minute because he found out from the manager the night before. This was a medium sized store so I only had 2 computers to image. So I finished the backup while going around and getting the printer info. That was about 45 minutes of work, not too bad. I go to the server room and it's locked, have someone get the keys from the lockbox, and of course there's no key. So the store starts calling the manager and he isn't answering his phone and I know the managers are supposed to meet with the District Manager that day for a meeting. I called the Regional Tech and she told me to call the DM, tell him what happened and I could wait if I wanted to or I could walk out and get paid for the day. I call the District Manager and leave a message for him letting him know what was going on. The manager finally calls and says he has the key but it'll be an hour to an hour and a half for him to get to the store. He then tried to argue that he didn't have enough notice that this was happening. The managers were literally told a month in advance and I emailed each store I was scheduled for on Sunday with my schedule for the week. I called the DM back and he picked up from his car. I let him know what happened since he hadn't had a chance to listen to my voicemail, how the Regional Tech said I could leave and get paid since the instructions weren't followed and my conversation with the manager. His response was "I will handle him (the manager). Thank you for your help. Sorry for wasting your time." I called the Regional Tech back and let her know about my conversation with the DM and she said she'd re-schedule the store with the other Assistant Manager. By this point it was close to 10:30am, hadn't done much. I hung around for another half hour and then called some friends who worked in the area to see if they wanted to get lunch and left. I found out later that the store manager showed up shortly after I left. [link] [comments]  |
| The little VM that couldn't (and some SQL on the side) Posted: 16 Aug 2019 12:59 PM PDT This came up last week but only thought about writing it here tonight. Long time lurker, infrequent poster (around 75% of my "stories" would be devs being nonsensical). I've recently begun an internship in a moderately big business group of my region, with my job being to use Python to develop process-facilitating tools. Sort of important note: I'm normally closer to a sysadmin than to a dev. It's the beginning of the month of August, and us three interns are making good progress on our respective tools (in a nutshell, they're making APIs, I'm making the software to use them). Boss asks us to try testing in something that would be closer to prod than our current testing/development environment, so I spin up a basic virtual machine with as close a configuration as I can get to the actual production environment. So basically around 1/8th of its power. But at least the OS is right, so we'll all take it. All the apps are put on the server through the arcane magic of git, only thing missing is the database. Boss gives us a truncated backup of the production DB, it's nothing but your average SQL file, what could go wrong right ? So I go ahead and import the file. Except it doesn't import and spits out a syntax error on line 1. At this point, I'm cursing in various different languages simultaneously, because the MySQL shell reports an error on an SQL command that isn't anywhere near close to line 1 (and in fact occurs several times in the file, with a few of the occurences having a line number in the lower five digits long). To not help matters further, MySQL only says there is a syntax error; not which syntax error, and only some vague hints about where to look (other than line "1"). The script, in the meantime, is thoroughly checked by our local SQL shaman, to no avail. There is no logical reason the script would fail, especially with a syntax error. I go have a smoke, during which I am enlightened. Figuratively and literally, as the summer sun seems to have made the ambitious plan of melting both my flesh and my retinas today. Once I come back inside, after letting my eyes adjust to the (absence of) lighting of the abode of the IT dept, I wrest control of my machine from the other interns (who at this point in time are considering a blood sacrifice -- a practice that I clarify to them is only to be used for printers), stare into the soul of my VM, and cast an elementary cantrip that I don't think to use often enough: Lo and behold, root is full at roughly 98%. The fragment of the database, while being a fragment, was too big to fit in the remaining space. Not really wanting to cherry pick which part of the system lives and dies, I decide to merely resize the virtual disk image. Only to have that fail too. ...I don't really have a climactic end to this tale. To tell you the truth I declared that I solved enough weird [EXPLETIVE REDACTED] for one day, gave up and recreated the VM from the ground up, with twice as much disk space than we originally estimated. The SQL file worked instantly, and in a weird twist, the painful part was rebuilding the running environment of our respective programs rather than anything SQL related we did for the remainder of that day. And I still don't know why would MySQL report a syntax error when it was absolutely not a syntax error. [link] [comments]  |
| Medical professionals are medical professionals not IT experts. Posted: 16 Aug 2019 10:23 AM PDT So I am a 1st line technician so most calls are for password resets and other simple stuff like that. The company I work for supplies software to medical practices and I have learned that while these people may be trained to treat thousands of medical conditions but most are terrified of computers. The user in this story made me so very glad I am able to mute the microphone on my headset. Cast: Me - Me N - Nurse Me - "Support desk Lyncis speaking, how can I help you today?" N - "I can't scan anything into *software*." Me - "Okay if you get me connected to your PC I should be able to fix that for you." At this point I load up the remote software we use for this and ask N to go to the URL we use to connect to the PC user side. N - "What? Wheres that? I've never seen that in *software* before." Me - "No, no it's a website." N - "How am I supposed to get onto that?" Me - "Just open a web browser and type *URL* into the bar at the very top of the page." The she said it. The single most baffling thing I have heard in my time working tech support. N - "I don't know what a web browser is, I am a nurse NOT an IT expert" After taking a few seconds to compose myself after hearing this I in my sweetest voice explained that either Chrome or IE would work. The rest of the call went smoothly but I still had to mute my microphone every few seconds to have a chuckle at what I had heard. [link] [comments]  |
| Years in IT doesn’t make all of us wiser Posted: 16 Aug 2019 10:41 AM PDT Ive been in IT for almost 10 years and what I experienced a few weeks back just made me realize why I actually dislike my job. Not because of what I do or the work given to me but the level of incompetence I deal with. This might be more a rant than just a story but you can judge where you think my level of tolerance sits at. I've had my share of users but when the people that work with you are worse than the users... well, let's move on. To start our story I work in a big corporate business. We get occasional training paid for by the company that ensures we are knowledgeable in what we do. Me and my colleagues started off years ago as IT techies. They all have been around for 15 years or longer as desktop support and general office IT. Real easy basic stuff to help users with their daily functions, troubleshooting and doing PC repairs. At some point business agreed we will only do server admin work and not Desktop support anymore as that will be outsourced. Fabulous to be honest because we automatically moved into better positions due to our business and in-house software knowledge and years of experience in IT. Unfortunately this can't be said for all of us... Now my one colleague, we shall call him John, has been there long before me and you would expect John to be on top of his game for being there for so long. Very social and nice guy all around but heaven forbid, you'd swear what he learned a year ago is brand new to him now. My biggest gripe is that he is the most technologically illiterate techie I've met in my whole life yet here he is managing servers. He has no grasp of learning technical stuff by himself and can barely use office applications but use them daily. He can't google as he has no idea what to type in as search patterns or how to sift through the garbage that google spills on you after you put in your search criteria. You might have a faint idea where this is going. No, this won't be a tale of how he brought servers down but he was quite close to often enough yet I got him out of that unfortunate scenario a few times. My tolerance for incompetence in the position some people are put without proper evaluation is very low. So one morning John and me were off to go get breakfast after John was on first call doing needed server checks. Each week an admin is assigned to do server and system health checks starting from 5:45am and once done they can go get breakfast in the canteen that opened an hour later. I asked if one of the basic checks were done before we go eat just to ensure everything was done before our supervisor came in to ask the same question and get a surprise that ends up with us all getting a warning if not done. John who was busy following me, halted in his tracks and then sprinted back to his workstation to obviously do what I just asked. So I said I'll hang ten while he finishes. Something that literally takes a few seconds of opening an email and comparing specific outputs. Then he just sits there... and me knowing John, this isn't good. I asked what's taking so long? Him pointing at the screen and saying 2 of the replication servers aren't in sync according to the email. I roll my eyes and asked him what he must do next? He stares at the screen blankly with no answer. My first level of tolerance is being tested this morning, I could feel it. This stuff and the needed procedure to check it is documented and we been doing this for over a year now. How the hell does he not know this? So I step through with him from our wiki page as if he is brand new candidate. God help me. Last step if both servers are in sync is to take a snap of it and reply with it on the email where it said otherwise to prove nothing is wrong. So John, using Windows snap, takes a snap but instead of just the part that's needed he takes a full screen shot. I tell him to do just a cropped snip to focus and show what on screen must be looked at upon which he replies his snipping program is broken, IT must come fix it. My eyes roll 360 degrees in my socket almost. 1st he needs to just configure snip to draw a rectangle for the snip and he has full rights as admin himself if he needed to install stuff - he himself was once a support technician - why call desktop support? I help here again because John is incapable to fix snap, the same stuff he should be able to help users with looking at his "supposed skill level" Next, a common thing even users ran into which I remind you, we often assisted with years ago: pasting the snip or screenshot into an email. Yes, John couldn't get this done. Why? Well if your email is set to text you can't paste media obviously so you change it to html format. This was strike 3 of testing my patience in the span of 10min in asking myself how this guy still is able to work as Server Admin. With mail corrected, snip pasted and email sent I breath a sigh of relief as my first hour at work just barely passed and I had to deal with this... really? I felt like the gods were testing me to see my level of being patience those few minutes. Upon return from breakfast our supervisor just walked in and sat at their desk for 5 minutes before asking the same question I did. Wow, what a goddamn coincidence! Saved by sheer luck itself this morning for John. We could answer all is in order and confirmation email was sent by John. He just barely missed a warning if it was found out it wasn't done or that he couldn't even do such a basic check for the past year yet he ticked the step off everyday. I won't even go into that... I could also mention how basic functions like keeping a share name in place and moving it to another drive to make space does not logically cross his mind when recreating it - and he's been doing this since the Server 2003 days. Still a great guy but some people I believe must be periodically evaluated for their work skills as well and not just for being a nice person. Being nice will not bring those millions back when a server keels over due to incompetence. Tl/dr: colleague who used to do desktop support unable to even troubleshoot himself yet was moved up in rank as server administrator while not keeping up. [link] [comments]  |
| How I remembered why I hate Boot Camp Posted: 16 Aug 2019 07:22 AM PDT I'm the IT guy for a mid sized company. We do catering for bigger companies or highend private events. Therefore the tech we use (visible for the clients) must look nice. (This is going to be some sort of a rant, so apologies in advance.) A couple of years ago (before my time) some genius had the idea to buy a couple of iMacs. Because they look cool. The then IT guy agreed, because although we run everything in a windows domain with AD, Exchange, the works, you can install windows via boot camp and no problems because apple. Yes, they were convinced, that this was a brilliant idea. Some time later, I was a trainee, they bought a couple more. iMac late 2013. And because I'm the trainee, it was my job to install windows on them. I fought my way through this particular hell. It took me two days researching and try and error to figure this out. On the third I was able to install the three iMacs (after help from some cool apple msp dudes, one of whom I spend nealy two hours on the phone with troubleshooting).That was the day I decided to never ever agree to install windows again on a new apple device. (Well, I broke that once. But when your boss comes up and tells you to do something, there's only so much you can do as a trainee...) Today, a good five years later, I remembered why I hated the process. One of the users with the last three iMacs complained that it took almost 10 minutes for the iMac to boot, for a couple of days in a row now and the USB ports are acting up for a while now. He had a two weeks vacation comming up and I decided to do a clean reinstall of OS X and Windows 7. So, I back everything up and do a proper backup and away we go. Boot into OS X, delete the windows partition and update the OS. Ran the boot camp assistant. Oh. They only support Windows 10 now. Great... format the drive and reinstall whatever OS the iMac came with (Yosemite). The rest of the day I spent rerunning the process and driving around town to gather what I needed. Only had a USB3 drive, so needed to buy a USB2 or Windows 7 throws a fit. Then it turned out the assistant wanted you to have a dvd (now I think about it, I may have misread something). So I had to borrow a super drive from someone (because I started to remember some of the BS of the process and I didn't want to use a non-apple device just in case it decides to throw another fit). At the end of day 1 the setup ran and I went home. Day 2. I come in, look at the iMac. Won't boot because a certification error of a .sys file. It automatically downloaded the one Boot Camp version with uncertified files... Super... The next couple of hours were spent putting out fires, because after two weeks with next to no people in the office (because vacation time), suddenly everyone (of the 10-15 present) had urgent problems, while simultaneously finding the right boot camp drivers (because there's only one version that works and if you don't use that specific one... error message for you. And tell you what, it's not the latest one supporting windows 7). The neccessary proccess, if you don't know, for a generation or two of apple devices, is that you needed to recreate a very specific constellation to be able to install windows via bootcamp. The thumbdrive with Boot Camp needs to be in the leftmost port viewed from the front, the Windows setup medium needed to be in rightmost. Not both on the same drive and don't you dare plug in something other than those two things. You needed to have a bluetooth mouse and keyboard, otherwise drivered weren't loaded properly and no setup for you. So, after almost two days of headache, I remembered why I hate boot camp... Because it's ... moody at best. Thank goodness I was able to talk them out of this nonesense of buying macs just to put windows on them. I don't care if they improved upon the bootcamp process. Either you use OS X or you get a proper windows machine... [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Aug 2019 02:11 AM PDT backstory: I work at a very small ISP that offers DSL internet, at the time of the story I had been working in the support call center for about 1.5 years (I think). nothing is embellished in fact i left out many vulgarities since they were gross and also may not remember them exactly. Anyways rewind to 5 months prior and I had my first run in with ** customer** so I knew when we were dealing with a total idiot once i realized who he was later. OP>hello IT customer> my internet is SO slow. You need to fix it! OP> okay, what are the speeds your getting? customer> TOO SLOW CANT STREAM NETFLIX I politely ask him to run a speedtest, we even have a speedtest server in house. And he indeed was getting slow speeds. About 6/10 mbps. And I can see total upload saturation. (Usually cloud backup). I tell him this and he doesn't buy it. Nothing could ever be his fault. OP> do you have a laptop with an Ethernet port? Let's try directly connecting your laptop and disconnecting your netgear (for his wifi) customer>so what I'm hearing is you don't support net neutrality?! I'm totally confused at this point shrug his weirdness off and state that in fact yes our company name fully supports net neutrality. customer> scoffs okay its connected it says 11mbps OP> great! I'm glad to hear that! Cue 5 minutes of me explain 3rdy party equipment and if he uses his own wifi equipment I can't provide the same level of support than if he just used the router/modems built in wifi. He doesn't believe me and the call ends with him being able to stream again. 5 MONTHS LATER A co-worker I enjoy working with was on shift that night it's the evening shift. She was new to the call center but I don't think this was her first call center job. I usually half listened to all my coworker's calls so in case I picked up something they didn't I could offer a fresh perspective, or I learn something myself. I listen to what my coworker was telling the customer and everything seemed normal; slow speeds have you tried turning it off and on again ETC. I tune out and go back to scrolling. 25ish minutes go by and she's still in the call, which in our call center we don't worry about lengthy calls. Just that progress is being made and that the problem is solved, this is because we serve many elderly and have to go slow sometimes. I disregard and figure its problem some nice old person that can't find their router (frequent "I don't have a router"). I hear a coworker in a less spunky tone than usual> hey, OP? Can you take this call for me? She's nearly in tears OP the nerd to the rescue!> of course transfer him! I ask what is going on and leave him in call queue limbo for a moment and pull up his info. She goes on to explain how he won't listen to her and keeps saying how she clearly doesn't know what she's talking about and keeps saying he needs someone who knows more (while at the time I was more knowledgeable than her with computers and networking, this call was so far well within anyone's in the call center's capabilities that I knew customer was full of crap). How he's basically putting her down for being a woman, huffing a lot and despite everything the problem persists with his connection. And then how he became a whirlwind of profanities and blaming the company for having a terrible product and it's all our fault. I crack my knuckles and take a deep drink of the go juice. Looking back this was my first tech support call fueled by spite and malicious compliance. This guy was a bigot and I was going to piss him off as best as I could by throwing the book at him. No one gets to treat my shift-mates like that. Cue montage music before I released him form limbo, I checked some things to try to paint the picture of what the hell could be happening. I looked at his ping time from our center to his router, it was acceptable delay time when it did check in but was only making the round trip about 50% of the time. So low latency but his packet loss. I looked at his actual connection strength (attenuation, margins, retrains etc) from the DSL equipment's port to the router, and something was fuckey. And I had a feeling coworker had covered her bases and he might need a ticket or a router swap. I take customer out of the clutches of our dry hold music. In my most considerate voice possible>company name tech support, my name is OP how can I help you? customer was now suddenly very calm and polite but seemed like he was on edge. So I start at the basics. He explained his problem and how its SO important that he gets it working again. OP> have you tried turning it off and on again? Audibly taken aback at me asking him that> of COURSE I have, do you think I'm STUPID? Knowing he surely doesn't want the real answer, in a grossly positive and helpful tone I respond> no of course not, we just need to go through all the steps, I don't believe anything until I see it! And your connection seems funky so let's start from the ground up customer> well we don't need to, I KNOW what's wrong already. It's your guy's crappy lines. I've had trouble since the day you installed! hmmm, you don't say I then quickly start to look at his documented history farther back than before OPstill 100% enthusiasm> oh that DOES sound frustrating! Did you call? I then continue forcing him to do every basic troubleshooting step there is (as per required before a ticket can be submitted hehehe) and can now see that he complained before (4 month prior) but refused to pay the company for the trip or time so we only check up to his Demarc. And his connection from the Demarc directly to us was BEAUTIFUL, exceeding speeds of 90mbps download. (I was slightly envious as I can only get 30mbps max at home using my aggregating router) During trouble shooting now his connection dropped and no matter what I do it won't comeback customer> yes you guys even came out. But wasted your time and didn't fix ANYTHING. (He didn't let us) OP> was it just like this before? customer> NO it was slow and shitty before! But now you've broken it! And you will fix it before 7PM! At this point I had done everything phone trouble shooting could accomplish (30 minutes due to his attitude). He blew his top when I told him that it's going to be one of three things, his modem/router, the inside wiring of the house itself (after the Demarc) which he would have to pay for ** customer** blew up even more at the thought, or it would be the lines before the Demarc. He was PISSED and refused to listen that if it was past the Demarc it was not company property and he would be financially responsible for any rewiring done inside the walls of the house. customer> THEY ARE YOUR LINES YOU INSTALLED THEM! NOT ME! IM NOT PAYING FOR YOUR SHITTY WORK! Next up was either swapping the modem/router for FREE because he could come to our building and we can hand them out as long as the old one is returned (call center 24/7). Or a trouble ticket is placed and an installer goes on the next available day (usually next day for irritated customers). And looking at the time it was 5:30 PM OP> okay ** customer** I don't think we will be able to get it working by then unle- customer> YES you WILL. You WILL call one of your tech people and have they come fix it by 7PM! OP> look ** customer** we have done everything we can on the phone the only next step you could take is if YOU drive here and swap out your router and its cords for a new one. Or we submit a ticket and looks like there is an opening for tomorrow. There's no fee for the swap if you come by and- customer>so you're going to deliver a router before 7PM?! OP> no you have to come pick one up customer>well IM not doing THAT, company name can come out and do it! OP> sure can, tomorrow in our next available slot customer> so what your telling me is that *company name is interested and reimbursing me? I was SO confused at this point at he was talking about. He sounded like I was supposed to be afraid. It was also this phrase that made me realize he was net neutrality guy LOL. customer> my wife has a VIDEO CALL scheduled for 7PM and we had to pay a lot of money to schedule it. If you don't fix your shitty internet by then and we miss the call company name is going to pay for it! OP> in here we are just tech support for billing questions you will have to talk to our billing department during business hours. customer refuses to accept this and we go in circles of "it's YOUR fault FIX it!" He eventually gives up and I was able to schedule at ticket. I sling an email off to my supervisor and our CO department so they know what to expect in the morning. The CO supervisor had not left yet, I walk over and explain verbally why this ticket was extra special. I wheel back over to coworker who now looks much less distressed and I spill ALL the hilarious and petty details. THREE DAYS LATER It was coworker and I again, she was back from her weekend and she asks what happened to ** customer**. TBH I had almost forgotten he existed. I pull up the ticket and it looks like he was very rude to our installers that went onsite, TWO very senior installers went. And using the through notes I left they started with the simple thing. They replaced the 4ft phone cord going from the phone jack to the modem/router. BINGO internet fixed and speeds back to nominal. He is billed for the full charge for the trip (usually if the call takes less than a few minutes the installer will waive the minimum service fee and labor charge. But in the end it up to the installers discretion). Meaning he payed nearly $200 for a phone line he could have had for free before 7PM the night of the call. We both laugh to near tears and drink more coffee in celebration. We usually NEVER get such a satisfying outcome. I'm pretty sure this is the customer that made me realize how much I love talking to the angry customers. I'm pretty bored at work and angry ones are usually a hilarious change of pace; since its almost always easy fixes. also a few days later coworker and I both get a talking to about he appropriate time to end a call due to abusive customers EDIT: Typos [link] [comments]  |
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