Wait, you restart the computer by closing and opening the lid? Tech Support |
- Wait, you restart the computer by closing and opening the lid?
- “I am an IT Professional”
- Is it plugged in?
- I am an idiot.
- Setting up a classroom full of iPads
- Have you tried checking the button?
- What is a password?
- Purgatory
- A tale of Tech Support. Or the lack of.
- of communication skills
- Oh stories I can tell from the college radio station.
- The screen is broke, again. And again.
| Wait, you restart the computer by closing and opening the lid? Posted: 13 Dec 2019 09:42 AM PST Oh jeez. User comes in to my office complaining of a real slow machine, Chrome is slow, Word is slow, everything is slow and computer is pretty hot. i was finishing up a draft of something real quick, don't remember what %me: Could you save and close everything down and restart the computer for me please? %user: Of course, sure. Not even a minute later she had closed everything and "restarted" the machine and hands me the machine. The "restart" of the machine went surprisingly quick considering that the %user was here for a slow machine. User proceeds to give the machine to me. %me: Did you restart the machine? %user: Yes. I found it odd so I decide to check the process monitor and oh god. I lost count of how many Chromes I saw, how many winword.exe and everything else I saw. CPU 100%, RAM 100% %me: Just a curious question, how do you restart the computer normally? %user: I close the lid and open it again and then I come to the login screen. I try to show her the right way to restart the computer but it would not even turn off for 5+ minutes. I end up force shutting down the computer but explain that it's the wrong way to reboot the computer and why I had to do it. During reboot I get a "CPU fan error". Poor guy had worked so hard it had died. I guess because she had never rebooted the machine she had never got the CPU fan error. User later tells me that shes had this machine 2 years and never intentionally rebooted the machine the way I showed her, only close and open lid. After a new fan is installed and a fresh installation I could almost hear the machine thanking me. The computer must have restarted itself atleast once, right? Or did she continuously postpone every cry for help? What do you think? Rest in peace unknown fan. You did your best. Live your best life in the recycling center <3. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 13 Dec 2019 09:29 PM PST While working for a major OEM, I was given what I thought was going to be an exciting assignment. I was going to man our new special line for IT Professionals. This will be great I thought - they will have done all the troubleshooting in advance before making their requests. This is a golden ticket. Boy, was I in for a shock. "I'm getting a boot_device_not_found. Send me a new hard drive" was a common call. Me: "Did the system diagnostics find any errors?" IT Pro: "No." Me: "Is the hard drive seen in BIOS?" IT Pro: "YES." Me: "Did you reseat the hard drive?" IT Pro: "No, I don't have time for that. Just send me a new hard drive." Me: "Maybe the boot sector's bad. Did you run the bootrec tools?" IT Pro: "The what?" Me: Thinking they would appreciate the education. "Bootrec is great! Let me show you..." IT Pro: "Are you telling me you're not going to send the drive?" Me: "I see you have a RAID setup. Let's reload the pre-OS IRST drivers." Did you do, literally, anything? <snip, you get the picture> IT Pro: "Look, I've been in the business 2 years. Just send me the dang drive. Let me talk to your supervisor. Are you talking down to me?" Repeat. Day after day. Maybe they were overworked and wanted to follow the path of least resistance. I don't know. I just know that my dreams were shattered. They were just another user base, and possibly more snippy. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 13 Dec 2019 08:42 AM PST Decades ago, before I moved into development, I did tech support. Often I'd have users say; "I'm so stupid" because they didn't know something. I'd let them know they were not stupid, just ignorant and that's fine since this wasn't their job. I would then tell them a story of a client who called me on Wed; "We haven't been able to print since Friday. Please come asap." (This was early 90s) I get there, check the cables, then check the printer. The LCD said; "out of paper" (good OLD HP printers) so I pulled out the tray and light heartily said; "You might want to check if it's out of paper." (That call in cost the company $50 for that) Kinda stupid, but again it's not their job. So I'd tell that story to make people feel better, since most people would at least check if there is paper. So, now to the real story. I worked at a big bank in San Francisco. I supported one floor of about 50+ people. Then a reorg and now I am part of a bigger team supporting hundreds in many buildings and there is an official ticket system. So, I'm about to run out the door and a user comes running up to me in a FULL on panic mode; "I CAN'T PRINT. I NEED HELP RIGHT NOW!!!" Now this wasn't a VP, so she'd have to wait. Told her I have to be at another building 10 minutes ago and they have to place tickets now. At which point she went full on scream; "I NEED THIS NOW!!!!!!" I just knew what the issue was... so I walk into the room, pick up the unplugged power cord from the floor (in FULL view) and hold it up; "You're now one of the stories I tell about stupid people." to which I drop the plug on the floor and walk out. I have been a developer for 20+ years now, and to all of you who do tech support you have my utter respect for the work you do. It's difficult and users can be, well, fucking idiots. Best of luck to you all. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 13 Dec 2019 04:20 PM PST Sorry guys (and girls). I am about to hurt you. So i got a new internet contract and a new connection when I moved. The connection date rolls around, the technician comes and leaves, says everything is perfect. I, not wanting to be annoying, say yay, great, thanks for coming out. Two hours later (he was here at 6:30, wtf) I check... Nothing works. No connection. I call the Hotline. They say their wires are fine. I check again. Nothing. I call again. They say everything up to my apartment works great. I am confused. The next day. Nothing works. I check a different cable. Nothing works. I call customer service. $Me: Your sh*t is broken. $CS: no it isn't. $Me: yes it is. I felt like I had done everything. Self checks and diagnostics of the router, factory reset, try a new cable etc. So it must be their problem, right? After nearly a week of internet failure they agreed to send a technician. Within 20 seconds he confirmed the cable was the problem because for some reason their out of the box cable was broken and the second one I checked with was broken too. Lesson learned: always use a cable that you know works, when testing for faults. I had about three others but didn't even think of trying them. I am an idiot. [link] [comments]  |
| Setting up a classroom full of iPads Posted: 13 Dec 2019 09:53 AM PST I had to help out in a class today getting people logged in to new iPads, here's how it went: Cast: The three of us arrive to the classroom with 20 iPads to hand out. I was told we would be doing groups of four and cycle around the room, but as we walked in the teach runs over and tells us they only have time to do everyone at once. We start by having TA1 and TA2 hand them out while LT puts the instructions on the board (about 15 steps). Teach yells out "Everyone sit down and shut up! No talking with your neighbors! We only have a short time to get through this so PAY ATTENTION! Do exactly what LT tells you and nothing else!" With that as our introduction LT started showing the students step 1 and step 2. "Anyone have an issue with steps 1 or 2? No? Ok, let's move on to step 3. This is a little more complicated" (signing into WiFi) "so TA1 and TA2 will walk around and help." As I circle around the classroom I noticed about a third of the students were still on step 1 while another third were on step 8+. One student yelled out "What's the password for step 12?" and then all chaos broke loose as others started yelling questions about every step from 1 - 15. LT, TA2, and (myself) TA1 ended up running around helping the students one on one as everyone tried to get our attention (including teach who only added to the chaos pointing us to students who were done with setup and had customization questions). At one point I was helping one student who couldn't understand the difference between his email address and email password, with another student across the room yelling "TA1! TA1! TA1, I have a question! TA1!!!!!!" and waving his hands in a way that would make inflatable waving arm men jealous, and the teach on another side of the room waving the WiFi login as if to say, "Why isn't this working!?! It's your fault!" The students were of course happy to have the chaos to mask the fact they spent the entire time socializing instead of trying the steps on their own. After the amount of time it would have taken us to do everyone individually, (as that is basically what we did and the amount of time we had scheduled for this) the teach practically pushes us out of the classroom muttering about how she doesn't have enough time now for her lesson plan and how we should be better prepared next time. Now I know this story might sound like a normal day to school IT techs out there, but I work for the government and this was a class full of 70K+ salaried auditors that use iPads every day for their job. I feel really bad for TA2 who, instead of standing back learning the procedure, was thrown to the wolves and had to teach herself. [link] [comments]  |
| Have you tried checking the button? Posted: 13 Dec 2019 04:15 PM PST I'm not in tech support myself, but found myself doing some impromptu work in the field earlier today. My wife and I were at the dentist's office for some routine cleaning and x-rays. I stayed out in the waiting room for a few minutes to finish paperwork, and when I head back I find my wife standing helplessly by the x-ray machine while two nurses and a dentist (all of who were clearly capable, competent people) staring at the little screen on the machine. After rebooting it twice the dentist shrugged and declared it broken, asking the nurses to call tech support. Morbid curiosity led me to look at the screen, which had a big box declaring that the emergency stop had been pressed. The most cursory of examinations revealed a large, prominent red button on the side. And I couldn't stop myself from asking "Did anyone check the emergency stop?" "Yes, but that can't be it," a nurse said as she reached over. "It isn't-" Click. One light tug, the button popped up, and the machine happily hummed into life. And I'm sorry, but how was that not literally the first thing you tried? I've always had some doubt about the most egregious users on this sub, and. I do not. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 13 Dec 2019 11:48 AM PST Hello, first time poster here! There's not too much excitement to this story, just thought I'd share about one of our regular clients. I work for a local company that fixes computers and phones. We have a lot of elderly customers because of where we live (retirement central). Elderly man, who is a regular, purchased a newer MacBook Pro to replace an older one. He writes picture books for children through pages. He brings us cupcakes and food every time he stops by. He stops by often because he can't ever remember his Apple ID pw and doesn't have anyone else to help him reset it. He came in this time because he couldn't get his new MacBook connected to his home wifi and it turned into a 2 day long event. Day 1: $Elderly man: walks through the door, says hello, looks around quietly for a second... "what is a password? " $coworker1: explains what a password is and looks flabbergasted considering what his main complaint is every time he comes by. $Elderly man: "...what's my wifi password? " $coworker1: advises old man to contact local internet provider to reset it. $Elderly man: thanks us and leaves. Day2: He calls the next day and I get the call. $Elderly man: "I can't seem to get pages on my MacBook Pro. I cant remember my Apple ID so I cant get it from the App Store. I found a link on the internet instead that said you can get pages plus two other free programs so I downloaded that but it didn't work. I went and found another link and downloaded that too but it still wont work. " $me: "Okay. Come back and bring the MacBook with you and we'll get it sorted out for you." He comes in later that day, drops off his MacBook. I tell him to come back later, give me an hour. I removed everything he downloaded because they were NOT anything he wanted to have on his computer. He already said he doesn't remember his Apple ID. He doesn't have 2fv turned on (because we turned it off when he came in for the 5th time to reset his pw). I guess his Apple ID from the only email address he uses in the Mail app and go to iforgot.com to reset it. I reset his Apple ID pw by sending the reset link to his email. It comes to his Mail app and I open it, reset pw. Download pages for him from App Store. He comes back. I ask to see his phone (iPhone XR) and enter in new Apple ID pw. I don't want to bore him with details so I tell him I removed the programs he downloaded, advised him to use the App Store to download from now on or call me first. Also told him I reset his password and I saved it in his notes. I also remember what it is now so he can call me if he cant remember it. I still remember his password, and with ease. He's awesome, just needs lots of help. I only do this kind of thing with a customer's password and device because it's him and we've known him for a long time now. He's due to come in soon again......I wonder what kind of cupcakes he'll bring this time. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 13 Dec 2019 10:15 PM PST Now I used to be a freelance IT helper for small companies who might need it. I used many remote tools (and only required an unused laptop/PC with Linux/SSH to access the network). This worked for a while until the last thing I did that made me quit. Context, I am 16 with mild IT skills and worked with teams that were not usually developers/IT professionals in any way. Let's name the characters Now when I was first brought on by TM he told me "You will be working with programmers, and people with both programming and other IT skills." I thought "Well this is different" as the previous team I worked with until being replaced for a paid IT person was an online graphic designer team who designed art, backgrounds, and other things and hired me to run their servers they did not know how to run. I thought "Well this should be easy, they should know what they are doing." No, they did not. Day one of 5: The next hour hits. PR1 calls me. "Heyy, what's meson and ninja?". I reply "What you mean? The compiler tools?". PR1 replies simply "yeah..." and I said "Oh they are command-line scripts like git we dealt with earlier. You can install them with 'sudo dnf install meson and ninja-build'" and she said, "issue, meson not found." I asked how she typed it and she said "M - E - N - S - O - N," and I told her "Ah you spelled it wrong, don't worry I do that all the time." I told her how to spell it and how to properly use the command, and did not judge her too much as I make the same errors all the time. This was by far the best day Day 2 - 3 of 5 TM time. He asks me simply "Hey [real name]. I have an issue." I ask "Yes sir, what is the issue?" "Why the h*ck is the Linux VM I am using saying "Kernel Panic"???" I reply "it is usually a spec issue, normally with RAM or CPU (although rare, is possible. How much RAM did you give your VM". "One byte, RAM doesn't grow on trees!!"... I'm not kidding. I wonder how he even knew what RAM is. "Uh sir, just understand that most Linux distros require at LEAST 2 gigabytes of RAM." "How so?" and then I explained how RAM works. He screamed at me and told me to make it work or else I was fired, and I was not legally part of the company, just a volunteer. I accessed his PC remotely then asked for 10 minutes and he said "Fine, do what you need to do," then I gave the correct amount of ram for the Ubuntu Mini ISO he was running. When he came back I told him "I request not to mess with the settings until I have a chance to make it better." and that "however everything should work fine." The next day he told me it broke. I asked, "how?" and he said "I saw the settings had too much RAM," I told him not to mess with the settings. he screamed. The programmers/testers. They all asked the same thing "The link shortener is not working." Now for reference, we use BitLY and ShortCM, one for our corporate only links, the other for our public links. Now, this day was short because I told them "make sure to log in and to not be dumb." but in a much nicer way. The 3rd day it was the same situation but with our mail server, which was a paid Zoho mail system. 4th day out of 5 this one is what made me quit [and is shortened because I will get overly emotional if I don't limit myself]. Everything I explained in over 50 calls (most of those stories are pretty boring but dumb). TM "Hey we are having an issue with the WiFi." and I worked it out and then that day had 50 calls about WiFi and file collection problems. Stuff I had to help with and was fine with. TM calls me back and tells me about an issue. I could not find a fix. I politely tell him "hey I am sorry, but I cannot fully diagnose the issue and as such cannot fix this." Imma leave it off with TMs reply, and the fact day 5 was me making a shell script that destroyed everything a week after I left on an always running server with a timer on when to set off in another shell script. TM simply said, " I knew a d*rn [term used to bully LGBTQIA+ people] like you to do this s*uff, y'all are [word used to bully people with mental disabilities] that should be killed." I hung up, sent him a formal email reading "Dear TM, the call earlier today was severely offensive and unprofessional in all manners. I hope you can understand that I am fully cutting myself off from the company you run as I refuse to be called terms I do not deserve to be called. I understand that I couldn't fix the issue but I am not an omniscient being who can know everything, including how to fix it. I hope your company does well, however, I refuse to be a part of it after our call." Signed it then left. That was my horrible story. [link] [comments]  |
| A tale of Tech Support. Or the lack of. Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:54 PM PST A recent discussion reminded me of a 'Tech Support' story that was I able to observe, but do little to interact with. To Start with; I am a field technician, specifically for Laser printers. I'm the guy who comes out when the printers are spouting weird errors, or not printing at all. I have a big bag of screwdrivers and parts, then after checking google I can fix the machine. In this case, I was the 'pro-active technician'. The customer was a big food distributor, and I visited this one location once a week to inspect and clean the printers. I would replace rollers and fuser as well as to manage the toner for the site. Things that few IT professionals like to deal with. I knew the IT guys here pretty well, as they make my life easier, and vice versa. To make things a little clearer, the building was a warehouse, offices on top, massive warehouse with freezer below. The office printers were HP machines, and the warehouse had Lexmarks. This started about 8 years ago, give or take. Maybe a touch longer. The economy was not great, and companies were looking for a way to cut back. In this case, the entire IT team. I show up for my weekly visit in September and check in at the front desk. She's gloomy, tells me there were more cutbacks, and I really needed to check in with IT. Off to visit I go. When I walk into the IT area, I could almost feel the depression. I ask what was going on, and what happened. In Summary:
So they had their permissions revoked, meaning they could not do the job they were expected to continue doing? They nodded. The Head of the IT department, an ex-marine commented "A couple of us were still logged in. So we just granted ourselves the permissions back. The idiots."
And that was that. The couple months pass, and I say my goodbyes to the team before I head on the Holidays. I return after the turnover. I check in with my new contact, the woman who handles the mail room. She's now also responsible for delivering toner. She's talking with the head of HR, and I 'innocently' ask "How was the changeover to the new IT company?" They both burst out laughing. "It was horrible!" Turns out the new IT company was told they could expect about 300-400 calls a day. By Noon, on the day of the changeover, they had received something around 1200 calls. The help desk had TURNED OFF THEIR PHONES. The HR manager mentioned that things hadn't gotten much better, and there was much pointing of fingers for blame. Also, they were having trouble getting and keeping that 'part timer' who would handle things that the help desk couldn't. Like handing out mice, and keyboards, driver updates, laptop imaging. That sort of thing. Items fairly important to a company with a field sales force. There was smoke in the air, and sales saw it. A couple guys came in, found out what would be expected of them, and simply left. Sales wasn't getting replacement laptops when they broke. Things they NEEDED to bring in money. A few left, taking customers with them. A part time IT guy was finally found, but he didn't know how to do anything. He was kept by the outsourced company simply because he didn't leave. One of the previous IT guys had managed to stay in the company. He was transferred to accounting, as he had a long tenure and knew the systems. It wasn't long before I often saw him helping the part time guy do things like imaging of laptops, and driver updates. The part-time guy though just couldn't seem to retain what he was taught. Ex-IT became half time IT. The company NEEDED him to help keep things going. But he was just one guy. A couple months later he told me, with much pain in his eyes, how e-mail stopped working for the company. Or mostly stopped working. People stopped getting emails, or most of their e-mails. E-mails that were sent out, may or may not have been received. Took a day before people realized there was a problem, and two more before it was resolved Business and money was lost. It started to affect my work as well. I'm the printer hardware guy. As a rule, I'm not allowed to touch customers systems, and for damn good reason. But the 'new' IT part timer didn't know how to install a printer so people could, you know, print to it. I had to show him how to install the machines on computers. Then the warehouse started getting new printers! This was an exciting day! Brand new HP machines to replace their aging, old Lexmark t612s. The part time guy turned off the lexmarks, turned on the HP's in their place, and gave them the IP information… And that was it. I tried explaining that he also needed to replace the drivers! Printers can't work that way! He claimed everything would be fine. Sure enough, they were not. I put the Lexmarks back, and explained to the warehouse manager why his new HP printers were not working. And he was pissed. The part-time guy just didn't understand. The offices had a handful of HP Laserjet 8100 and 8150 MFP printers. The 8100 line were really good machines, nice to work on and fairly reliable. The scanner portion to make them into copiers and digital senders? Those sucked. They worked, but barely, and rarely well. To make matters worse, the software that ran the digital Sending Service (DSS) had to be run, and stored on the network, generally the print servers. If the DSS on the printer stopped working, you just re-initialized the DSS on the server, and all would be good again. Of course, this happened. I spoke with the EX IT guy, after I explained what happened, and how to fix it.
A call was made to Texas. They didn't have a clue either. Took two months before the DSS software was found and restarted. After two years of this mess, the company announced that 'Mistakes were made', they would be looking into internal IT again, and the Once Ex-IT guy would likely be made into the new IT manager. Shortly after this, I said my goodbyes as I moved on to a new company, and this one was no longer my customer. Moral of the story: Never outsource your entire IT services. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 13 Dec 2019 05:39 AM PST TL;DR communication is key $coworker: not happy $me: obvious $application admin: has no clue about procedures or projects $coworker: "@&^%#*&^%*$%$&^%" $me: "Que? What's up" $coworker (looking like he wants to do a tableflip): "Them bastards! Them idiots!" Oh noes, it can't be $coworker: "You know the $application that we have been working on to get it to run on the new machines? For about 3 weeks?" $me: "Yeah, we finally got it to rollout without errors and the licensing drama has been solved because we appear to have another license that we can swap around between the systems" $coworker: "I had made an appointment for the vendor to come over so we could migrate the whole thing in one go. Then he informs me there's a new version of the web portal that has basically all the functionality included that they are using the client software for." $me: "@&^%#*&^%*$%$&^%" $coworker: "Well miss $sh*tforbrains that is supposed to manage this software apparently knew this was coming." $me: "For how long did she know?" $coworker: "Considering the new portal already has been rolled out to the production environment, at least a FEW WEEKS" $me: "I guess I'll remove the shortcut to the client software so all they need is the shortcut to the web portal then" (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ I give up. The level of incompetence of some people around here isn't funny anymore. [link] [comments]  |
| Oh stories I can tell from the college radio station. Posted: 13 Dec 2019 02:52 PM PST This maybe about 8 years ago now, however stories never really get old form that radio station as a student I was the Chief Engineer, at campus radio FM radio station Class A (3,000 Watts of pure power), run by the Students for the Students, and fund by Students, and admins at the school might hate us more at some point then campus newspaper. Therefore, my time there was really fun as things we did made a difference. Here one my favorite phone calls to get, about the 2nd Tuesday of month, around 1 to 2 in morning, I would get a phone call from the Transmitter, Hello this is W____, Hello this is W____. Then enter the passcode, which person before never change default password pin (it's open secret that most radio station do not change those codes, so if have the phone number transmitter, you can have a lot fun). Then voice press 30 to here alarms. I think myself oh what did we do know. It turn out no audio, we just broadcasting silents. Which means I have get up early drive 30 min to school in morning figure what happen. So I turn off the transmitter and go back to bed. Then I get up drive to school and get in the studio. Then I see the automation computer restart by itself. I was new to working with this window 7 computer. I was like what the hell. I get automation started and go on my merry way. Then next month rolls around and the 2nd Tuesday of month and happens again this goes on 6 months or so. Then someone tell me in passing it from the IT department pushing down the Window Update overnight. Then by this point I am like that nice. I say could stop doing that, and like really don't want too. I am think back my head well you not getting the phone call in middle of night waking you up. Then I am like you know the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) does not like the whole broadcasting of silence. After few more arounds IT department (which can be difficult, because well state university, which might CIO fired for not reporting data breach like required on state law) they turn off auto restart on computer to install the updates and I get duty to restart computer at time where the station would not be taken off the air. I don't if this stupid user story or more dealing with difficult client or difficult IT department. Stay tune for more stories tails for college radio station. Where the computers meet tech from 1990s and early, and where wonder how the does this work. Let just say one time I found doorbell button that shock people when press was 120 volts AC and no 9 volts DC..... [link] [comments]  |
| The screen is broke, again. And again. Posted: 13 Dec 2019 08:36 AM PST Heyja! First ever post on reddit, so here we go! I used to work for a marked leading company as basically an IT allround guy. Did the onsite support, 1st level and sometimes some 2nd level tasks. We got a call from a consultant that his screen is not working anymore. I am already not really happy about having a consultant to support, since they were pretty... well, overpaid and acted like it. Anyway. Since it was in the same building, I decided to just take the basic stuff for troubleshooting and go over. Going into the room and already there is a big crowd of about 10-15 consultants all gathered up and talking about the screen problem. Looking at the screen, you could definetly tell there was something wrong, basically a black line going up and down blocking like 1/3 of the screen. So I do the usual stuff. Try another port on the device and on the screen, nothing changes. Decide to change the cable. Problem solved. I went back to our office, 5 minutes later I get another call, same person, stating the screen still does not work. I go back there and somehow the whole screen is just scattered, like someone punched it or something. Nothing I can do about it, so I just get back, get a new screen and set it up. Customer is happy, back to my office. 10-15 minutes later, again a call, stating the screen is broken. What now follows is one of the funniest things a customer ever did. I get back there and check the screen. No problems. He demands to show me the problem, so I just watch him. He opens paint, just makes a few lines and fields and fills all of them out with different colors. He begins to move the window with the different colors over the whole screen, until he finally can show me that if the color purple is over a specifc place, one pixel is not working. And sure, since the cable and screen have been switched already, he demands a new laptop and would like to just take the old device home. End of the story. He had to pay for the scattered screen, after he demanded to speak to my manager, because I refused to get him a new device for this issue. One of the most funniest, but most raged days of my carreer so far.. [link] [comments]  |
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