When an Unstoppable Addiction Meets an Immovable Web Filter or A Cautionary Tale on AD Privileges Tech Support

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• When an Unstoppable Addiction Meets an Immovable Web Filter or A Cautionary Tale on AD Privileges
• The mouse WAS working...
• The mysterious GSM modem (aka manglement is excited about new business plans)

When an Unstoppable Addiction Meets an Immovable Web Filter or A Cautionary Tale on AD Privileges Posted: 08 Feb 2020 10:52 PM PST Greetings, and welcome back to another tale of tech failure support. Sit back, relax, pick up some questionable health insurance from Bub's Concession stand, (google it), and please do the needful. To set the background $Me works as an L2 tech, which is to say the end of the line. My team gets tickets for $Org that were not able to be resolved by the helpdesk. If we aren't able to resolve the issue, then we will generally engage the engineers at the relevant vendor. That, or we tell the $user they are out of luck. We handle everything from diagnostics to AD administrative tasks. The way our system works is that tickets get assigned to our queue, and we have dispatchers who assign tickets to individual technicians on our team.   Let's set the stage:   $Me - The protagonist of this story, runs on coffee and lo-brau brand beer. He also has a cape that flutters in the breeze of a "hero-wind" branded fan. $User - Fateful ticket generator. The source of the story $L1 - Level 1 Helpdesk $TM - Technical Manger, our resident IT Dr. House who makes final decisions on process.   My office is right next to the area the L1 phone jockeys are in, and I'm the unofficial L2 point of contact for the helpdesk. If they need help with a ticket and it's quicker for them to ask me as opposed to just following the escalation process, I will generally jump in and help out with their callers. Before I begin, I should explain that we basically have two types of AD accounts. The first kind is the standard user account that most employees have. They get a generic set of access to various applications, and any additional access they need requires them to submit a request to be added to a security group in AD.The second type is a special kind of account that has certain privileges that are usually reserved for special use cases. These accounts have unrestricted web access and that's where this story begins.   $L1 gets a call from a user. $L1 - Thank you you for calling company helpdesk. How may I assist you? (Goes through the usual opening questions (NT ID, etc)).   $User - I need unrestricted web access. I am completely unable to do my work!   $L1 - Ah, do you have a "special" account?   $User - I don't know what that is, I just need unrestricted web access. Can you give it to me or not?   L1 - Unfortunately I cannot directly. You will need to go to (link) and submit an access request. It will need to be approved by your manager.   User - This is ridiculous, just give me the access I asked for! Are you people stupid or something? Get me someone who knows what they're doing. I don't have time for this.   L1 - Please hold.   The $L1 agent comes over to my office. I should note here that while I technically do have the access and ability to create these AD accounts and/or assign the necessary permissions, it is not the norm for me to do so unless it's for diagnostic purposes. We have a separate team that handles these requests. I check with $TM who says TM - Find out what websites they specifically need access to. We can add temporary access to those sites if need be until the request goes through. I inform $L1 of this. They come back and say $User won't tell them due to data sensitivity, yada, yada. TM - $Me, go check their web filter logs and see what websites are so important that they can't tell us what they are.   I dutifully go check their web filter logs and oh boy, nothing prepared me for what I was about to see. Endless amounts of requests to some very shady NSFW websites being blocked by our web filter. I let $TM know. TM - That's what I figured. Go ahead and have $L1 submit a ticket for the user. Send those logs to their manager to let them know about all the important websites $User needs access to. Me - Okay, you're the boss, I hope this doesn't go sideways.   I took over the call, and advised $User that we understand how important this issue is. I let him know that we could forego the usual process, and I'd pull the site list from the web filter and email his supervisor personally so we could get a temporary exemption until the process went through. $User - ....... $Me - Is there anything else we can help you with? $User - No. Me- Fantastic! Have a great day!   I grabbed the logs, and sent an email over to $User's supervisor cc'ing $TM with an email along the lines of "$User says they are currently unable to do their work due to web filter restrictions. We can provide temporary access until they have the (special) account we just need your approval. Here is the list of websites they need to access...   -——————————————————— Stay tuned for part 2! submitted by /u/blueblood724 [link] [comments]

The mouse WAS working... Posted: 08 Feb 2020 10:58 AM PST Another story from my time as a cash register repair man back in the late '80s. We had one customer, a large market, that had a problem with one of their cash registers coming up short with regularity. Usually in multiples of $20. The first few times they'd just discipline the cashier but eventually they figured out that it was happening to every cashier on that register. So they called me in to see if I could figure out what the problem was. So I get there and run the reports, do a few test transactions etc. Everything is fine. So then I get down under the counter to check the network connections and there I find it. Wedged in between the register stand and the counter is a price gun holster and in THAT is the most expensive mouse nest I have ever seen. This mouse had been sneaking up the cable run to the till. The hole it went in was just large enough for the cable and a small mouse to fit through and was located directly above the 20's tray. Going back through the register reports there had to be on the order of $300 worth of torn up 20's lining that nest. I put some aluminum tape over the hole and fished out the mouse nest and handed it over to the store manager. Amazingly he took it to the bank to get them exchanged! Apparently this is something the Federal Reserve will do for folks. Fortunately nobody got fired over this event and those who had been disciplined got apologies. Got to love family owned businesses. submitted by /u/bradley547 [link] [comments]

The mysterious GSM modem (aka manglement is excited about new business plans) Posted: 08 Feb 2020 02:59 AM PST I just got my first job ever. Of course, it's at a telco, as T1 tech support in an Eastern European country. Freshly out of training, ready to tackle on the world... and I get this crap. User: "Hello, I have some issues with my internet, I cannot connect to it." Me: "Hello, can you give me a phone number, a billing code or a personal code?" User: "Sure, here's my phone number: <phone number>." Me: "Alright, just a few moments to check what services are on your contract." Those moments turned into several minutes of me squinting at the screen. This person had an internet service installed, but instead of a multitude of buttons and data about the service, I just get the string "GSM_NET_BUSINESS". I tell my client that I need to do some additional checks and I put them on hold as I rush to my boss to ask him what I am dealing with. Me: "Boss, I have a client whose internet's not working. The database just spits out "GSM_NET_BUSINESS" and nothing else. Wat do?" He scoots his chair at my desk to see what's happening, and he just sits there silent. Boss: "I don't know what's that." Me: (internally screaming) "Should I panic? This wasn't in the training material." Boss: "We'll panic together once I check what's happening." If that was supposed to make me feel better, it didn't. Here I am, a total tech support noob, taking his third call ever, facing something that not even my boss dealt with before. Did I mention that I panic easily? Because I totally felt the need to panic. I return to my client and pretend to do some settings remotely while my boss sends calls and emails up the corporate chain. Eventually I hear an "Oh, alright, I got it." and my boss scoots back to my desk. Boss: "Business internet modem. Works using GSM. It shouldn't have been released this year, but corporate decided it should anyway. No documentation on it whatsoever because of that, and database barely has any data about it. Oh, by the way, there's also a VoIP plan using this modem. I have a headache but let's sort out this client." He then scribbles quickly a speech for me to recite to my client while he opens a ticket and sends it to the GSM team to deal with. Client ends the call happily while I sit there wondering. Boss: "By the way, this is the first of many calls to come. I got word that a pretty decent number of these modems weren't configured properly. Prepare for an angry wave of displeased accountants, since it's business we're talking here." He gets ready to leave. Me: "Um, you didn't tell me how I should handle these accountants." Boss: "Calm them down and escalate to GSM." I first needed to calm myself down. First day on the job and instead of simple "have you tried turning it off and back on?" I get undocumented business modems. The next few days were great. Queue filled to the brim, everyone complaining about their fancy GSM internet for business. One client took their modem at a cabin in the woods for some "teambuilding experiences" and then screamed at my colleague. Apparently we were ruining his awesome activities because he had barely any signal. It didn't help that it's still winter. facepalm submitted by /u/DragonSkyMusic [link] [comments]

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