That Time I Got to go for a Little Drive in the Country Tech Support |
- That Time I Got to go for a Little Drive in the Country
- Fancy new radios...same basic problems.
- I can't troubleshoot it if I don't know what it is!
- No, WiFi doesn't use your data plan
- The pager - and who not to give it to...
- How do you turn the volume up? Ma'am, it would help if you use the knob
- What's a snapshot?
- It's a good thing I work like this. Or I'd never experienced this problem!
- On the importance of the fundamentals
- You Need to Fix This!
| That Time I Got to go for a Little Drive in the Country Posted: 23 Apr 2020 11:38 PM PDT A Completely UnhelpfulTM TLDR is at the bottom My form of Tech Support is aircraft maintenance, working on fixed-wing aeroplanes and helicopters with a value ranging from mid-five-figures to mid-eight-figures. They usually can be divided into airborne aluminium pit-ponies or their owners' pride-and-joy; even a business jet worth more than ten million dollars can be treated as a workhorse, while a 45-year-old 40-thousand-dollar bugsmasher may be pampered by its owner. The events I describe here took place last year. This story begins with an approach by [SeniorColleague]: "hey Gert, the intercom in [AircraftRegistration] is playing up again. Can you go to [OtherAirport] and have a look at it?" [AircraftRegistration] is a helicopter with a history of intercom problems. Now owned by a private company providing services for the mining industry, in a previous life it was used for Search-and-Rescue operations, which resulted in many modifications, including an audio system that featured three separate audio control panels instead of one. All of the SAR modifications were removed to turn this helicopter back into a corporate transport, except this complicated audio system. Said system has proven to have several aspects that detract from its overall reliability; the owner of the company, who is also the person who flies this helicopter, has grown to distrust said system. This distrust has transmitted to the owner's general factotum, who is also a pilot, just not a helicopter pilot.
I had already been to [OtherAirport] about a month prior to this, called out to work on the same helicopter with another report of passenger intercom problems. (As it is expensive to operate a gas turbine engine, it is always cheaper, when dealing with a single problem, for the engineer to go to the aircraft than for the aircraft to go to the engineer. This has led me to travel to many different towns and cities in several countries; occasionally I even get to leave the airport. This has helped me to be on the highest-possible status tier of the frequent-flier programme of my preferred airline for more than a decade now, the privileges of which include sitting in comfortable lounges or in the front section of airliners with other frequent fliers who tend not to do any of that talk-to-the-person-sitting-next-to-you stuff that I am never really comfortable with and only do on rare occasions. But I digress.) I had never worked on this type of helicopter prior to that point, so it was arranged that [GeneralFactotum] would meet me at the hangar and assist me. On that first visit he gave me the run-down on the recurring problems with this audio system and all of its foibles and idiosyncrasies, as well as how the system was laid out and operated etc. Thus
Anyhoo, it was a lovely late winter day (to be honest, we don't really have winter in my part of the world; the weather in August here can be more pleasant than the weather in August in much of Europe - it sucks to be you guys. But again I digress) and I am always happy to get out of the office, so it wasn't a difficult decision to spend about an hour driving to [OtherAirport], which is located in a bucolic setting a few kilometres from what was a village thirty years ago but, thanks to I jumped in the company ute ('bakkie' in South Africa, 'pickup' in the US; I don't know what it's called elsewhere) with my trusty away-from-base toolbox that could have a frequent-flier account with a high tier status of its own and proceeded to [OtherAirport]. As I had had my hand held by [GeneralFactotum] during my first rodeo ride with this helicopter, I was deemed to be up-to-speed with it and I was on my Pat Malone this time around. On arriving at [OtherAirport] I
"What did you do?" I hear you say. To quote Deane from The Curiosity Show, "I'm glad you asked". The system had several intercom control switch-annunciators mounted on the instrument panel. One of these isolated the passenger intercom from the crew intercom and, because of poor design choices when the modified audio system was installed, the annunciator was unlit when pressed to ISOLATE. I just TL, DR: "a bear in his natural habitat: a Studebaker" [link] [comments]  |
| Fancy new radios...same basic problems. Posted: 23 Apr 2020 09:09 PM PDT Not a technician, dabble in radios for fun. Organisation is transitioning to fancy new radio system, yours truly is 'voluntold' to attend an introduction session, where the organisation's technicians tell us about the capabilities. These radios are the bee's knees, digital, encrypted, able to talk and provide real-time monitoring to dispatch, seamless interfacing with other branches and runs off the phone towers of major telecom company. Everyone is nodding in agreement, with the exception of a raised hand at the back. Technician: yes, do you have a question? Me: Yes, can these radios communicate peer to peer instead of through a cell tower? Technician: no, you don't need to talk peer to peer, everything is linked through the cell tower. Me:. So what happens when the cell towers are knocked out or we are in an area without phone coverage? The technicians pause their talk and look at each other. Technician: Oh...yeah...I see the problem now. Solution pending. [link] [comments]  |
| I can't troubleshoot it if I don't know what it is! Posted: 23 Apr 2020 08:57 AM PDT This happened to me way back in the day when I worked tech support for a major cell phone provider. One day I get this call from a woman who is clearly already ticked off when I pick up. Me: Thank you for calling phone company, my name is OP. Can I have the 10 digit phone number for the device you're calling about. Woman: 555-555-1234 Me: Thank you for that. What issue are you experiencing today? Woman: *very angrily and practically growling* 5...5...5... Me: Ma'am I wasn't asking you to repeat the number, I was asking you what your issue is. Woman: *still mad* My headset isn't working. Me: Ok. I can help you with that. What kind of headset is it? Woman: *almost screaming* IT'S A BLUETOOTH HEADSET! Me: Ma'am, I know it's a bluetooth headset. I'm asking what kind or what the name of it is. Woman: I don't know, I threw the package away. The second she said that I knew I was in for an ear full. The problem with the headsets at the time was that different types had different fixes that our advanced support team found. Because of this, I had to do a very generalized troubleshoot which could take a while and I knew she was just going to get more irate as the call went on. I relayed this information to her and she starts to throw a fit. Luckily for me, another person who is a lot more calm takes the phone from her and continues the call with me while I try to troubleshoot the problem. None of the general troubleshooting techniques. When they didn't work, I had to go through each individual brand and try the advanced techniques unique to each brand. After a while, the woman seemed to snatch the phone back. Woman: How can you work for phone company and not know what you doing? Me: I know what I'm doing ma'am. I can't troubleshoot something if I don't know what it is. Is there any way you can locate a receipt or the packaging to find the name? If you do that, this can go a lot faster. Woman: What's your name? I'm gonna get you fired! Me: My name is OP. Woman: What's your last name!? Me: I cannot give you that ma'am. Phone company can use your information to pull up the recording of this call and make a decision from there. She hung up in a huff after that and I made extensive notes to her account about what happened. I was never fired for that call. [link] [comments]  |
| No, WiFi doesn't use your data plan Posted: 23 Apr 2020 10:46 AM PDT This story is from about a year ago when I used to work as a tier 1 support agent for a very big cell phone provider. I pride myself on being a pretty patient person, especially when a lot of my customers that are calling in are on the far side of the age range who still have basic phones, but I also have a pretty short fuse temper wise. This call nearly set me over the edge: Me: Thank you for calling, my name is phiftyopz, it seems your account didn't populate for me on my end so can I get your phone number starting with the area code? Woman: sighs 555-555-5555 Me: Thank you. Can I get your first and last name, along with the subject of the call, please? Woman: gives me her name, but isn't an authorized user on the account. Not an issue so long as it's just a troubleshooting call My husband keeps saying that we seem to be using a lot more data the past few months and I know that's not our fault because we're not doing anything different so it has to be on your end. Me: I'm sorry for any inconveniences that this may have caused, but I assure you we will get to the bottom of this issue before the end of this call. Woman: Yeah, whatever you guys don't seem to like to help your customers. Me: I'm sorry you feel that way, but I will troubleshoot this issue to the best of my ability. Woman: Whatever. Let's just get this over with. Me: Now, I can confirm that there is a data usage warning on your account, so let's see which line has the most usage and go from there. It turns out, surprise surprise, it's her line that's responsible for 80% of the used data Me: Alright so it seems my system is showing that your line alone is responsible for the majority of the usage. Do you have WiFi at your house? Woman: Yes, but I don't see how that makes a difference. Me: Well using WiFi is a good practice for saving on your data plan, so I would use it wherever possible. Woman: No, it doesn't save on data, if anything it makes me use my data faster. Me: Well a common misconception is that WiFi uses your data plan but it actually doesn't. I take it that you haven't been using WiFi recently then? Woman: How the fuck did you get a job at Popular Phone Provider when you don't even know how WiFi works? You definitely need to be trained better. Its only fitting that autists work there I guess. Now, I take offense to that comment because my older cousin has autism but he is an extremely smart guy who has a bachelor's in aerospace engineering and is now working as a casting director. We also have a strict explicit language policy when we're talking with customers Me: I'll have to ask you to not use language like that or else I will have to disconnect this call. Now, as for- Woman: I AM A PAYING CUSTOMER TO YOU GUYS I CAN TALK TO YOU HOW I WANT TO IM PAYING YOU YOUR PAYCHECK SO DON'T YOU DARE TRY AND TELL ME HOW TO SPEAK TO YOU! YOU'RE THE ONE WHO'S WORKING IN A DEAD END JOB ITS NOT MY FAULT YOU COULDN'T GRADUATE HIGH SCHOOL! That's hilarious, since you require a high school diploma to get the job as a support agent Me: Well I'm just going to ask for us to get back on track with the issue at hand so we can get this issue resolved. If you aren't using WiFi then- Woman: FOR THE LAST TIME WIFI DOESNT HELP ME WITH DATA ISSUES IT USES MY DATA FASTER GET THAT THROUGH YOUR SMALL BRAIN DUMBASS! Me: Final warning, please don't use that kind of language or I will disconnect the call. Woman: GIVE THE PHONE TO YOUR SUPERVISOR RIGHT FUCKING NOW! Me: Sure thing. Let me just put you on a brief hold and I'll get you to him. So my supervisor finally takes the call and I continue on in the call queue. When I go on my lunch break, I followed up with my supervisor on that call as I always do with escalated calls and my supervisor said she wasn't using WiFi and she somehow took the "use wifi whenever possible" advice from my supervisor but not me. She also was trying to say that I wasn't very professional with her but he listened in on my portion of the call to see what she was talking about and said I handled everything perfectly on my end. We had a good laugh about it for a minute and I went on break. I was so close to going off on her. Sorry for formating as well I'm also on mobile. [link] [comments]  |
| The pager - and who not to give it to... Posted: 23 Apr 2020 12:21 PM PDT First time poster, long time reader. Background: (Feel free to skip to the section labeled "Story" if you just want your meat without any trimmings.) This story takes us back quite a few years; BlackBerrys were the new reigning champion in business communication, but old style basic pagers were still a thing, too. I was employed with $Company as 2nd tier tech support, and I was extremely underpaid. (No, really! My manager even told me as much, at one point -- that's how bad it was!) As such, I was considered to be one of the "hourly" employees; when you reached a certain pay rate at $Company, you were apparently automatically switched over to a salaried position, or some such thing, and I had not yet reached that salary. Our small underfunded internal tech support team had just a couple of salaried senior techs, along with a rotating roster of about four to six hourly techs. All of the techs had first generation text-only Blackberrys, but our team also had a single pager, which served as our on-call receiver; one tech got pager duty each weekend, and it rotated through the team... and no: it wasn't optional. Mind you, most employees of $Company worked the typical 9 to 5 weekday shift, so it was exceedingly rare for the pager to actually go off. At the start of our story, you'll find me hanging out and chatting with some friends on a Sunday evening. It was my rotation carrying the on-call pager -- and much to my surprise, it went off. I called the number displayed. (Conversation is paraphrased, as this was many years ago.) Cast: $Me - as stated $EndUser - as stated $Manager - my supervisor Story: $Me: Tech support, how can I help you? $EndUser: Hi, yeah, we need you to get into the office immediately; we have an emergency with the e-mail server! $Me: Alright... can you tell me what's going on? $EndUser: We just emailed out an $ImportantDocument to $Customer which is due before midnight tonight, and the delivery receipts aren't coming back from the $Customer recipients -- only from internal $Company recipients! $Me (puzzled): Well, mail receipts aren't usually instantaneous; are you sure you've waited long enough? $EndUser: Did you not hear the part about the midnight deadline?? Outgoing e-mail is DOWN, and you need to get it back up, RIGHT NOW! I got off the phone with him and called up $Manager. I described the situation briefly. $Me: ... and so I seriously doubt that e-mail is actually down, but this guy is in panic mode. What should I do? Do I need to drive all the way into the office? $Manager: You're probably right, but you know how it is... you have to go in and verify that the server is indeed online. $Me: Alright; you're the boss, boss. So I bid my friends farewell and headed out, and I got about halfway to the office before the pager went off again; it was $Enduser. I called him back, and I was treated to the most relieved (and rather sheepish) voice I'd ever heard... $EndUser: Um, yeah... never mind. You don't have to come in; the receipts are slowly trickling in from $Customer. I think we're all good here, after all. I pulled over, and Blackberried $Manager the status update before turning around to head home... and at the end of my message, I added: "By the way, what charge number do I use for this time?" I didn't fully recognize the ramifications of that question, at first. I figured, I had abandoned my social activity and gone out of my way to try to help an end user; it only seemed fair to me that I should be compensated for my time, but I believe my supervisor was genuinely surprised at the question. Mind you, I got my charge number, in due course -- but that was the last time that I (or any of the other hourly techs) had to do on-call duty; from that day forward, it became the sole purview of the salaried techs... who didn't get the "privilege" of charging extra for their weekend on-call duties. [link] [comments]  |
| How do you turn the volume up? Ma'am, it would help if you use the knob Posted: 23 Apr 2020 10:34 PM PDT Now I dont work at a best buy and I'm not good with technology but this happened at my 7th grade class The cast me - OP Idiot teacher - IT Tech Guy - TG So in english we were going to watch a video and answer questions. I see my teacher trying to figure out how to get the sound to work. She then calls tech support and I notice the knob on the smart board is off so I go to turn it off IT - OP sit down please OP - I'm just turning the kno- It - SIT DOWN I sit down and wait for her to figure it out and then Tech Guy comes in TG - Hello what seems to be the problem? IT - The volume is not working It takes him a minute to figure out it's just the knob TG - The volume was never on. IT - Oh. I'm sorry I dont know how to work these things Heres a lesson - If your smart board isnt working, make sure the volume is on [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 23 Apr 2020 10:58 AM PDT I am an electrician, I play doctor for the machines at a 24/7 automated manufacturing facility. When our actual IT contractor bailed one of the other guys in maintenance declared himself 'king of computers.' When he isn't around the task falls on whoever is unlucky enough to be in the room. One of the operating stations stopped working last night, it runs a horrendous software package that looks like a cross between HyperCard and MSOffice and only works with XP. The 'king of computers' recently replaced the 10 year old PC with a new one running XP in VirtualBox on W7, one of the rationals behind using a VM being that we could now easily recover from it's frequent failures. Apon arrival I did the obvious, rebooted the guest, rebooted the host and checked all the cables to no effect, knowing that this station now runs on a VM was giddy with excitement knowing that I could just roll back to the last working state. I open up the machine manager and find that the only snapshot is "current state," my liver begins to ache. Checking the VMs folder reveals only the one machine, no copy of copy's, no 2019_01_01.zip's. After hours of troubleshooting in german I finally get to speak with 'king of computers' who asks me why I didn't just restore the machine. I told him there were no snapshots to restore, "what's a snapshot?" He had kept the VM on a secondary drive and then made a full image of the drive to use as a backup... I left the remainder of the job in his capable hands. [link] [comments]  |
| It's a good thing I work like this. Or I'd never experienced this problem! Posted: 23 Apr 2020 12:29 PM PDT Since we're a small company we've outsourced some of our IT to a third party. There's a separate helpdesk users can call when they have trouble with something that's supported by this third party. One of the things they support are our desk phones. Including the ones used by our call center. Calling it a call center is generous. Most of the time there's two ladies crewing it, a few parts of the week there's three. Also mind: This isn't an IT helpdesk. Thanks to COVID-19 I'm working from home, and I got a call from one of the women working at our call center. Her phone is broken. She can't hear what anyone is saying, and likewise it seems nobody can hear her. She's already called the third party helpdesk but they haven't solved it. If there's anything I can do. Now there's nothing I can do about these phones by remote. This is all in the hands of the third party. But I am able to escalate calls with our service manager. This is for cases when there's real urgency or in cases when tickets get lost or misjudged in priority. Considering that it's pretty busy with all the extra phone calls I decide to escalate, I get the ticket number and call the service manager who makes sure the ticket is prioritized. All in all it takes about 5 minutes before the helpdesk calls me about this ticket. There's little I can do to help the man, but it turns out that the woman originally said it was a DECT phone, which the third party doesn't support. So they had told her they can't help her. Okay, it's a simple miscommunication then. I tell the helpdesk worker that it's not a DECT phone but one of their VOIP phones and I ask him to contact the user. Which he says he will do. Not a minute later I get another call. It's the user again, asking if I've got news. This is about 7 or 8 minutes after she originally called me. So I tell her about the miscommunication, which she denies vehemently. Never had she mentioned DECT or anything (Of course). Anyway I tell her that the helpdesk should contact her at any moment in order to troubleshoot with her. Her reply to this: "Oh it's probably going to be too complicated. I'll sit somewhere else instead." Well that's wonderful. Now I'll have to explain why the user, on a ticket that I had escalated on her request refuses to do basic troubleshooting. The problem is going to persist and next time when there's three people manning our servicedesk this problem is going to become an issue again which they will want me to escalate. On a semi-related note. I've got an ergonomic keyboard I use because of some shoulder issues. I haven't had it since I've been working from home and I'd resolved to pick it up today because my shoulder started to act up again. So I figured, while I'm there I should take a look at the phone. Well the user is back at that desk when I get there and she is bloody annoyed because I need to be at her desk in order to examine her problem with the phone. This left me a little bit pissed, because you know, the first troubleshooting steps should have been done over the phone with third party helpdesk. But nevermind that. I look at the phone and pick up the nifty wireless headset we recently installed on all these phones because the people using them asked for them and well blow me down, it's working flawlessly. I pick up the horn, and yeah that's dead. No sound coming out of the damn thing. But when I jimmy the wire there's still some sound. One swap of the cable later and everything's working again. I go find the user to tell her it's all working again. I asked her why she didn't try the wireless headset. "Oh I never use that one. Good thing too otherwise I'd never found this problem!" That was when I knew it was whiskey o' clock. [link] [comments]  |
| On the importance of the fundamentals Posted: 23 Apr 2020 08:03 AM PDT A dear friend of mine, who isn't terribly good with tech but surprisingly stress-free to support, put out a call for help on Facebook: The text on screen had become ridiculously huge for some reason. Cue me asking her to hit Print Screen and upload the result, then a brief mutual misunderstanding about what to do after pressing it (turns out she'd upgraded the clunky old XP netbook I'd helped her out with previously and I couldn't remember what directory Win 10 sticks screenshots in) which we quickly cleared up... and then she said something that slightly took me aback.
Important life lesson: Never assume a user, even one who's smart enough to know what they don't know and generally only needs telling how to do something once, is familiar with technical terms that even a complete PFY would know. Oh, and the issue was resolved by hitting Ctrl+- a few times. Not sure what happened there, but it's fixed now. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 22 Apr 2020 09:42 PM PDT Im a long time lurker, I eventually got the motivation to start posting storys from my workplace. I never post on Reddit, so I apologize in advance for any poor formatting/typos. Anyways. I work in the position of a on support Technician/helpdesk job at a University. There is this Higher up in another department that is what you would easily define as… "entitled". Which will be named E: It all started out with just 1 ticket out of 200-300 current opened tickets, and a time period where we receive client communication once every 1-2 minutes. So, we have more than can handle with only 6 front line employees. E calls the president of our department demanding service because E did not get service within 20 minutes. Note that we have tickets that we struggle to get to that are almost a week old, and are higher than normal Priority. This was a simple Outlook inconvenience issue. E has a reputation around our workplace for being very unpleasant and no one wants to service E. I took the ticket. Can't remember why, but I don't have regrets. I go over to her office and try and help with her Outlook issue, and this is roughly the summarized dialog: Me: Knocks on the door – Introduces myself – offers to fix the issue E: Well, its about time. Me: Whats the exact issue you are experiencing? E: The emails to my Outlook are slow. Me to myself *probably just needs a restart, or re-add account. Time to troubleshoot* Me: Okay, so lets do a restart as it cou- E: I know how to do that! Its not going to solve the issue! Me: When is the last time you restarted your computer? E: Like... 5 minutes ago Me: Okay, well If thats the case I would like to re-add your account E: That's going to take a long time, and I have work to do! Just fix the issue! Me: Okay, well, I need to figure out whats causing the issue, and Troubleshoot E: *sighs with a snarl* Fine. As I do some further troubleshooting she walks around the room all pouty and dramatic. Its hard to ignore the 5 yearold in the skin of a 50 yearold. Especially when E got snippy after I recommended Webmail as a temporary workaround when Outlook has poor performance. After much more complaints about how long it is taking, I re add her inbox which turns out to have resolved the issue.. Mostly. I got it syncing, but her computer was in need of replacement. It quickly became apparent why no one wanted to replace her computer, as I regretfully ask: E: Yeah, My cell phone is really slow when I am doing <confidential information tasks> when I am off Campus. It's a huge issue, It's a matter of Life or death and is unacceptable! Me: So.. Is this an issue with Wireless or Da- E: The Internet! Me: Okay, Well I need to know if you are connected to a network or using data. How old is your phone? And do you experience this issue on campus? E: I don't know Im just using the internet when im in the car or not at home. But its slow and you need to Fix it! Me: I have no control over Data Service mam, that's a veriz- E: Fine What ever, you all don't do anything. Can you just Fix it please and do your job! Me: I'll get right on that Mam' TLDR – Fix, no Troubleshoot. Just fix. [link] [comments]  |
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