"You're IT, so you do it!" Um, I'm just gonna quit instead, how's that? Tech Support |
- "You're IT, so you do it!" Um, I'm just gonna quit instead, how's that?
- No Endgame In Sight
- The time I was paid extra after demonstrating the wonders of Incognito Mode
- Never trust a user alone in a Comms room
- I don't care if you think you know it all better.
- Go figure.
| "You're IT, so you do it!" Um, I'm just gonna quit instead, how's that? Posted: 02 May 2020 03:36 PM PDT Background: I owned a small software company. The non-profit organization down the hall asked us if we would donate an hour once a week to help with IT: Active Directory and Exchange stuff. The manager there was a friend of mine from outside work. I agreed since it felt like a nice pro-bono thing to do for a cause I supported, and she promised to be a gatekeeper. And for a long while it worked out quite well. Once a week one of us would walk down the hall to their suite, she'd give us a small list of IT honey-dos. We'd even get cookies. She did a great job of keeping users under control and appreciated our donation of time and expertise. It was good karma. Then she left the organization. Stupidly, I thought nothing would change. So I go down there a couple weeks later for the usual IT and cookies. "Karen" is moving offices and needs help moving her computer. "Dammit, Jim, I'm a software developer, not a moving company!" goes through my head. Nevertheless, I help unplug everything from her standard desktop-sized workstation. "I'm going to need your help carrying everything to your new office." I explain that I'm recovering from surgery and simply cannot carry heavy objects. She's miffed, but helps me get a cart and we move the computer. This is back in the days of heavy, large CRT 19" monitors, the ones that weigh close to 50 lbs. There's already an identical monitor, same brand, same size, in the new location. "What about the monitor?" she says. "I've plugged the computer into the monitor that's already in your new office. It's identical." "But I want my monitor," she points at the old one. "Like I said, I can't carry heavy items. It's easier if you just move all your Post-It notes from your old monitor to your new one. "That's not MY job," she says. "That's YOUR job. Move the monitor." And that was the "fuck-it, I quit" moment. I just lost it. "Karen, this is very decidedly NOT my job. I volunteer my time here. I already told you I'm recovering from surgery and I'm not moving a 50-lb monitor for the same reason you won't. It's too heavy. You're on your own." I walk out, super pissed. The following morning, I go in again to talk to the Executive Director. I explain that we can't help with IT anymore, we have to focus on our own business and would not be donating any more time. I offer to send one of my colleagues down just to finish hooking up Karen's computer, but he would not be moving any heavy objects and I'd be happy to recommend an IT consulting company for ongoing support. Of course, they have no choice, so that's what happens. Best part: when my co-worker comes back from that last task, he tells me, "GUESS WHAT?!" I oblige, "What?!" "She moved the monitor!" I can't believe it. Apparently she figured out a way to haul that 50 lb monstrosity of a monitor to her new desk. "What happened to the monitor that was already there?" I ask. "It's still there! She asked me to move it to the old office!" Now, these old CRT monitors are HUGE. There's barely enough room on a standard office cube desk for one of them, let alone two. "Tell me you didn't move it!" I plead. "No fucking way," he says. "She barely has enough room now on that tiny desk for her Beanie Babies and telephone." I still get goosebumps at the thought of Karen sitting there with two ginormous monitors on her desk surrounded by her Post-It notes and stuffed animals. So, yeah, I have a good appreciation for the folks who have to deal with this stuff on a regular basis. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 May 2020 09:02 PM PDT Thirty-nine years ago I did telephone tech support for a computer hardware company. We made controller boards to connect minicomputers to printers. I was learning on the job do I kept a detailed card file of each user's symptoms and ultimate resolution, so that over time I evolved a paper database of problems mated with solutions. I learned early on that users lie. Usually they have some sort of strategy for lying -- to avoid blame, or get something free, or make themselves look good, whatever. Then there was Randy in New Orleans. He haunted my open tickets. The board his company bought (for many thousands of dollars) arrived and he said it didn't work; not a peep out of the printer. We tested the boards before we shipped them out, but things happen, so we sent him another one, expedited, figuring to get back the one that failed later after his problem was resolved. He said it didn't work either. This was weird because we had a very low failure rate, so the rate squared (for two failures) was miniscule. We sent a third and he said the same thing. Now we were worried. Was something in his system burning out boards? I also wondered who would pay for them. We were the off-brand solution that "tried harder" so I figured it would be us. The engineers had a meeting with the head of manufacturing. Finally we decided to send him one more board, after the VP of engineering tested it himself. We didn't hear from Randy for a few days, so a put a couple of calls into him and left messages. Finally his boss called me back. Randy was no longer with the company. It turned out he didn't know how to install the controller boards, so rather than admit ignorance and ask for help he just kept claiming they didn't work. The boss tested all four, and they all worked, so he kept the first one and sent back the other three. He was a loyal customer after that because we "tried harder" and went the distance to get him up and running. What I could never figure out was what Randy's endgame was. Was he going to just keep claiming every board we sent failed, forever? Was he stalling to make it through one more paycheck? Was he hoping his boss would give up on using a printer they'd already paid for, with their (approximately $100,000) minicomputer and live without printouts? Or was he just a fool who didn't think about the future? I'll never know. But I do know that customers will lie even when it makes no sense. [link] [comments]  |
| The time I was paid extra after demonstrating the wonders of Incognito Mode Posted: 03 May 2020 12:48 AM PDT I'm not a tech support guy beyond the standard "You work in IT? Can you help fix my laptop?", but back in the day when I was still in Uni studying IT, I used to work in a hardware store (the lumber and nails kind) to make ends meet. This would have been around 2008 by my guess. Anyway, a tradesman that was kind of the go-to "shop tradesman" that we shipped odd-jobs to if people came in with issues would come in and hang out around the store during quiet periods. He was a friendly bloke, and such a classic, tradie, prone to making joking, but crass comments. He got chatting about his home life and his family, and after he learnt that I was studying IT he mentioned he wouldn't mind paying me $50 to come fix his router that he couldn't work out (I can't remember exactly what was the issue, but it was an easy fix). So after work, I drop by his house and get to fixing the router, and while chatting he dropped this line: Tradie - "Yeah it's hard mate, now I'm married with kids, can't even look up girls anymore, kids and the missus will find it in the history and that wouldn't be good either way". Me - "Oh, you know about Incognito Mode right?" Tradie - "Huh? What's that" I explained incognito mode and showed him how to get onto it.. and his eyes began to light up, like a door to paradise had been re-opened for him. It was honestly like a kid had been told he'd been bought a new console or something. He gave me an extra $50 as I was leaving, and he from then on he often seemed to give me one of those knowing slight nods on the shop floor. Seems he'd really been missing that part of his life... This was one of two times browser history and people's lack of knowledge about incognito mode came up while helping a friend with an IT problem during my Uni days, but I'll save the other story for another post. [link] [comments]  |
| Never trust a user alone in a Comms room Posted: 02 May 2020 05:42 PM PDT As promised yesterday here's my second story. Again I posted this recently as a comment in a r/AskReddit but I thought it was worthy of a post here. I received a call that a site had lost internet. We isolated the issue to a faulty core switch. The site was a 4 hour drive away so it wasn't uncommon to ask users to reboot the equipment for us if we felt they were capable, this user we'd had rebooted equipment for us multiple times, so I decided to ask her if she could unplug the switch and plug it back in. Generally we'd be on the phone with them while they do this, or better still a video call, however she insisted she would be ok as she'd done it before (they were due to be having that switch replaced soon as it was temperamental) and she'd call us if she ran into any trouble. Our office closes at 17:00 but I'd stayed a few minutes late with a colleague just hoping to get them back up and running before tomorrow, she disappeared at 17:15 to go reboot the switch, by 17:45 I hadn't heard back from her and couldn't reach anyone when I called in (they're open until 19:00, but she's the receptionist and nobody else tends to pickup the phone). We decided to call it a day and go home. I knew she finished at 17:30 so presumed she'd got caught up with something else then home home. 08:00 the next day I call in expecting her to answer and let us know if she'd rebooted it and if they were back up, but a different user answered. Apparently the receptionist was off sick. Turns out the receptionist had rather than opening the back of the cabinet (I learned later her manager had hidden the key), she tried reaching in one of the cable holes, got her arm stuck, and became trapped, in a soundproof comms room, with no way to communicate to the outside world that she was there and stuck. What must have been taunting her is there is a phone in the Comms room, it would have been within reach, but with the internet down, the phone wouldn't have been able to connect to the phone system. She was in there for half an hour before anyone found her, the fire brigade had to cut off part of the cabinet to free her, which took another 20 minutes to arrive after they were called. Since she would have finished at 17:30 I'm unsure anyone would have even noticed she was gone, so I don't even know how she was found or if they even looked for her. I haven't dared call that client since. I have to add, I felt a little bad how glfunny I found this, as she got into this situation trying to help me get their internet working. We sent an engineer there straight away who got them back up and running (and had to do a damage assessment as the Comms cabinet had a chunk missing). Also in case anyone was concerned, she wasn't injured, but did have a nasty bruise. [link] [comments]  |
| I don't care if you think you know it all better. Posted: 03 May 2020 03:48 AM PDT Years ago when I was working for a wholesaler of CCTV equipment, we had a terrible customer that was always rude, and instead of asking about pricing he always said something like; I want ABC, and I want to pay XYX and I need it tomorrow. I was working there as a tech support / CCTV guru and when the phones are busy from the internal sales we took te calls instead. So we have $ME and rude customer $Dipstick. $Dipstick; This is $Dipstick, I want 3000 meters coax and want to pay € 1500 and need it tomorrow. $Dipstick and I kept debating this for a few moments and I'm just taking the insults (as long as they don't become personal) and eventually he told me he was going to buy the cable from somewhere else. Whatever. I don't care. A few weeks pass en $Dipstick is furious (again or should I say as usual) on the phone with our sales director complaining about the terrible quality of our cameras. Hardly any colors appear and we need to resolve it. I overheard the conversation and asked with project it was and recognized it as the project he wanted to buy the cable for. So eventually I was added to the phone call and told him that I was confident it was the cable. This obviously made him more furious, since he thought I just wanted to move the blame to our competitor. So we agreed (or actually our spineless, weak-kneed sales director) that I would come over to the project and investigate the issue on the project. So I went there, saw the issue, and knew it was a cable issue. So took as camera, connected it to a few meters of cable next to the DVR to show the cameras were just fine. Obviously $Dipstick disagreed and told me that the cameras didn't have enough power to transmit the signal over longer lengths of cable. But I was prepared for this question and had a reel of 500 meter cable with me and connected one end to the DVR and the other end to the camera and the camera delivered as expected a decent image. So eventually, the customer had to replace the cabling which was nicely poured into the concrete, but couldn't be replaced since it was stuck in cabling. So saving € 1500 on cabling cost him, in the end, multiple times that amount since he had to replace the cabling and mount conduit on the ceiling for the cabling, which made customers unhappy since he wanted a nice ceiling without conduit in his parking garage. Of course, the customer didn't change its attitude. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Apr 2020 10:50 AM PDT Got this one close to a year ago. A user called in saying that their laptop kept overheating. It never turned off or told them that it was overheating, but they said it was too hot. I ran OBD and didn't see a significant spike in temps and everything passed it's test. I did notice that it felt pretty warm, but after a three hour intense OBD, I figured it may be expected. So I assumed "Eh, the user just thinks it's hotter than it should be. Maybe they're blocking the fan intake/exhaust making it extra hot." I gave it back to the user and told her that I didn't see any issues, but to be sure that the intake and exhaust are never blocked so that air can move freely through it. She's happy with the suggestion and I don't hear back from her. Until about a month later. The user calls again saying that now it's shutting off and saying that the temperature is too high. So of course, now I need to take a closer look. When I got the laptop to my desk, I run a primary OBD and within 2 minutes, it cuts off. The thing is SEARING hot. I noticed something was smeared on the keyboard as well, so not wanting her dinner from last night on my hands, I grabbed some wipes to sanitize it. However when I wiped over the keyboard, I noticed what looked like a light colored pet hair come out of the keyboard. So I wiped over it again to get it, and more came out. I wiped for a solid 2 minutes before I finally decided it was time to figure out what the hell I was dealing with. So I unscrew the laptop and all manner of pet hair comes out of this thing in a cloud. It coated the motherboard, it was in all of the cracks, it was in the fan, it was packed into the keyboard, it was inside the trackpad, I mean everywhere. It took me 2 full hours to clean it out in gloves and mask, wiping it all down with germicidal wipes and alcohol. I didn't even bother with the keyboard and trackpad, I just grabbed one from a parts laptop and tossed the originals in the garbage. Lo and behold, when I reassembled it, there were no more heating issues. Go figure. Why did it take so long to get to this point? My guess is there was just enough clear space around the CPU and fan to get by a month prior. I took it back to the user and told her about the pet hair and asked why there was any in there, to which she responds, "Well my cat really likes to get on it when I'm working, so I let her sleep on it every night." I promptly told her to never let the cat on the laptop again. Never heard back. [link] [comments]  |
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