What message? The CIO was behind me the whole time? Did he overhear the entire call? How unfortunate ... Tech Support |
- What message? The CIO was behind me the whole time? Did he overhear the entire call? How unfortunate ...
- User: Help, I don't have a computer!
- Subject line in support ticket says "Reading"
- Asked to cross-post an anecdote and realizing I have a LOT more over time
- CEO must think we literally perform magic
| Posted: 30 Dec 2020 10:42 AM PST So I was browsing /r/sysadmin and ended up reading through this thread about Apple Support being bad. A few of the comments were about maintaining a stock of spares in case a device breaks and that warranty != resilience. It made me think to a few old companies I worked for ... Once upon at time, I worked in second line for a company that supported niche handheld devices. The devices could cost between £600 to £1000 per unit. If an incident reached second line and was suspected to be a hardware fault, we usually wouldn't even call the user. We would configure and ship out a replacement device and email the customer to ask them to make the faulty device available for collection. The contract I primarily supported had around 3000 devices in use and around 120 spares in stock or working their way through the repair cycle and a replacement would be with the user 3-4 days after the incident was opened. To be honest, we could have had the replacement with the user the following day in most cases, but the SLA was 7 days, so ... you know ... managing expectations. That and we knew the customer had spares on each site to cover those up to seven days. Then I left and found myself working at a company that wouldn't hold any stock. If the purchase of a device hadn't been allocated to a business unit within 14 days of its arrival, it would be charged to IT and our service desk manager didn't want to mess about with cross charging different departments for devices if they were allocated to a user after that 14 day period. Our hardware vendor wasn't particularly great and our policy was for all configurable devices to go to head office to be configured by their admin team before being sent on to us, so we could sometimes be waiting a month for a requested device to arrive on site after the request was approved. And, nine times out of ten, the device would be configured wrong so we'd rebuild it with the correct configuration. This led to more work and more delays. This was particularly problematic for new staters and also meant that we rarely had any stock available for use as loaners. Returned but in-warranty devices often went out to new starters because the devices they ordered wouldn't arrive until after they had started. And then, because all new configurable devices went through the admin team in head office, if a new device arrived after an old one had been allocated to a new starter, it would be used to fulfil the next request that came in. This lasted until one fateful week when we had a larger than usual number of laptops go faulty. The company had around 20 sites, each supported by one of three service desk teams, who were themselves spread across seven of the sites. During this fateful week, my team had reached a total of four users with faulty devices, but we only had two spares to give out, spares we had dug out of the 'to be decommissioned' bin. The two remaining users were having to use personal laptops and remotely connect to our RDS. During the same week, the team based in our head office had reached a similar situation, with three users without devices. Worse for them was that their RDS servers didn't have remote access, so their users were forced to work on hot desks in the office instead of remotely. I had heard from this team that our third team had no spare laptops to give out either. So we were kinda buggered. The day after my conversation with the second team, I was on a phone call when the CIO arrived for his monthly visit to our office. I knew he had arrived because the lead developer sent me a message on Teams to tell me to keep the language clean as the CIO was sitting on a bank of desks behind me. But I couldn't see him without turning around and he shouldn't have expected me to know he was there. So, once the call was done, and after quickly glancing behind me to ensure he was still there, I knew that was my cue. I called someone on the third team and asked if they had any spare or old laptops in stock that we could use as loaners, knowing full well that they didn't. And when they didn't, I decided to launch into an expletive filled rant about our current predicament.
That was the crux of it. But it went on for a little longer. Probably 5 minutes longer as we had a moan over the phone about delays in the ordering of hardware, complaints about users ordering new screens and us getting sent 12 year old 4:3 LCD panels from head office that were incompatible with our VESA stands, complaints about laptops being delivered to head office, being built by their admin team, then sent to us and having to be rebuilt because the config is wrong and how this was causing even more delays for end users, the issue of the standard laptop spec being unsuitable for developers and the BI teams due to insufficient RAM and having to use company credit cards to purchase upgrades, etc. Everything we moaned about related to hardware ordering or lack of stock or delays in fulfilling hardware requests and I made sure to repeatedly highlight the impact it has on users and how I didn't like the fact that it was making IT look incompetent. Which is what I was hoping the CIO would focus on while he listened to my end of the call. I had to cut the call short when I had another incoming call from one of our vendors and, by the time I was done with that, the CIO had left for a meeting. So I got up and walked over to the water cooler.
The lead developer knew exactly what I had done. We both frequently encountered issues with management and our solution was usually to drop a hint to someone above our management, be it the CIO, or CTO, or a managing director. Usually the results we were after would trickle down to us within a few days. And so it did in this case. Two day later, an email came in from the service desk manager for us to do a count of our stock and send a list of what we level of stock we required to keep our users running. Knowing he would be cheap and only order the bare minimum, each team ended up knocking a few figures off our stock counts and adding a few to the level of stock we felt we required. And, in the end, we got pretty much everything we needed. His department's accounts may have taken a turn for the worse. But we on the service desk were happy, and the users were happy, which made us even happier, and we all lived happily ever after! Nah. That's a lie. Six months later, we got a new service delivery manager and everything went to shit again. But whatever. As unprofessional as it was, I was happy with the small victory I achieved that day, regardless of how short-lived it was. [link] [comments]  |
| User: Help, I don't have a computer! Posted: 30 Dec 2020 08:32 AM PST Since so many people enjoyed my last tale from tech support, I decided to tell you another one. Background: As previously established, I've worked in the Industry for going on nine years and worked for a legal IT firm prior to my current employ. Working for lawyers and legal staff can be... interesting to say the least. We have/had one client that didn't have money for an on-site person in each of their many offices or anyone period, beyond bare-bones. Supporting these guys could be frustrating. Not because they were snippish, but because they had one on-site IT person that went around to each office about once every month. This client was Windows-only, and usually had older computers exclusively. The Event: Me: Good morning, this is 2bendykat, how my I assist? User: Hi, my computer's frozen, but when I restart it, it's still frozen. Me: I'm sorry to hear that. Can I ask you, are you pushing the computer button or the monitor button? User: I don't have a computer, just a monitor. Me: Okay, can you restart your computer? User: (literally 5 seconds later) Ok, I just did. The screen still says it's frozen. Me: What happens when you use ctrl + alt + del? User: Hold on... nothing. Me: Okay, so the physical button on your screen that you pushed, that's the power button to your monitor. You should have a computer as well. Is there anything on the floor or behind the monitor? User: No... I don't see anything. Me: There's no box or tower on the floor? User: Nope. Me: Well, it looks like local IT was just there, so they're not scheduled to be there for another month, so let's try to figure this out together. [queue 10 minutes of me trying to think of synonyms and descriptors for what a computer looks like and is] User: Wait... do you mean the CPU? Me: *dial-up modem sound emits from my brain*... yes, that's your computer. User: Oh, yeah. That's on the floor. Me: Ok, do you see the button on the front of the machine? User: Yes. Me: Push that please. User: Oh. The computer screen went dark! Now it's starting up... Me: Yes, it's going through a hard restart. Aftermath: It took me 15 minutes to resolve the user's issue. If you can believe it, this happened twice more from this client alone before I left this job. Each time it was 15 minutes of me describing what a computer looks like and them not understanding synonyms for "computer". Each time a different user. [link] [comments]  |
| Subject line in support ticket says "Reading" Posted: 30 Dec 2020 12:24 PM PST I'm not sure if this story fits here but it still makes me laugh out loud every time I think about it so thought I'd share. I'm a computer tech for a public school system. It's a brand new campus with mostly new staff. So getting everyone to use our ticketing system was a chore in and of itself and is still an ongoing effort. A short while ago I got a ticket from a teacher and I honestly don't even remember the issue. This particular teacher gets on my nerves because he rarely submits a ticket vs texting or reaching out on Teams but when he does submit a ticket the description is always super vague. "computer don't work" kinda vague. Then when I respond asking for more details about the issue the guy ghosts me weeks until I close his ticket. Anyway I get one such vague ticket from this guy and the subject says "reading" then the description says something like ",computer don't work". I pause and try to make a connection between the issue in the description and the subject but I can't figure out what he means. I let it go and just show up to the guys classroom and deal with whatever the issue was and don't give it another thought. Then a week or so later I get another "reading" ticket from the same guy. This time it's a wifi issue or something. Again I'm confused about the subject line. Is the wifi effecting his ability to read something? Idk again I let it go. Then a few days later I get a ticket from a different teacher with the subject of "Math". Right then it hit me like a ton of bricks. These teachers think I care what subject they teach when they submit a help desk ticket! Like somehow the subject they teach has an impact on their IT issue!! 😂😂😂 I busted out laughing right then because it was so obvious now what they meant I couldn't believe I didn't catch on sooner... And the fact that this seemed logical to the teachers is all too much! I can't get a clear description about their IT issue but I'm damn sure going to know what subject they teach! [link] [comments]  |
| Asked to cross-post an anecdote and realizing I have a LOT more over time Posted: 30 Dec 2020 09:45 AM PST So in a HFY post there was a discussion about humans and their influences on technology. My comment was marked with an ask for a cross-post, which I'm not sure how to do so I thought I'd join, read, and add a small story of my own here. I've worked in radiology technical support in one capacity or another for over 20 years. I started with wet film processors, advanced to wet laser printers and film handlers, then proceeded to hit everything from X-ray to PACS. [TL/DR: Lonely machine has a friend for a weekend and works for no good reason] Back when I still worked on machines instead of software, I had a film handling machine (take the exposed film out of the cassette and automatically process it, while refilling the cassette with the correct film size as quickly as possible) that would for lack of better terms get lonely once in a while. Most often at the beginning of my call weeks (Friday through Thursday following). One time, as I was driving home, I was diverted for a call on this machine - I arrive, ask what is going on, get to work on the machine. There is nothing to be found - the error suggests there is film stuck in one of its elevators, but there is not and once checked, the error goes away. I cleaned and tested the mechanical/optical sensors, but everything checked out correct. I put the machine back together and the site started using it again successfully for about 45 minutes, when the site manager asked why I was hanging around - so I packed up and left. 1/2 block out of the parking lot, I get a call from my dispatcher that the machine is down again. I turn around and walk back in the building - when I get to the machine they say it started working again about 5 minutes ago (approximately when I got out of my car). Now the machine is working and the site is busy, so they don't want me to do any troubleshooting. I've been joking with the staff that the machine just gets lonely sometimes and wants to see an FSE once in a while. Eventually, they get caught up and let me look at the machine again. No indications of why the error happened. So I draw a caricature of myself and show it to the lead tech, explain that I'm going to put it into the machine where it can't cause a problem and see if that solves it. They laugh and say go ahead. I got to stay home on a call weekend for 72 hrs - the machine worked through the weekend without issue. When I checked on it on Monday and took out the picture, it started having intermittent failures again. Eventually, discovered a bad stepper board causing issues (with major backup from the manufacturer). Perhaps stepper motor control boards will be the topic of my next post. [link] [comments]  |
| CEO must think we literally perform magic Posted: 29 Dec 2020 04:00 PM PST Hello Everyone! This one is frustrating but also amusing for you. It involves me (a tier 2 helpdesk guy) and the CEO of the company. A little bit of background is the CEO absolutely expects the IT guys to provide him with personal favors. He needs his home WiFi fixed? thats us. He needs security cameras set up at his cabin? that is also us. From what I've heard, the head of HR is expected to put up his Christmas lights each year, so its not just IT he takes advantage of. Anyways, on to the story! The CEO comes into our office earlier today with two phones in his hand. He explains that he got his wife a new iPhone and he wants us to set it all up for him. So I get it signed in to their apple account, get everything synced, get their email account added. All good to go, except it is not able to make/take phone calls or messages. If you went into iMessage or FaceTime it would pop up with a message saying "Failure to activate phone". Here is how my conversation went with the CEO: >Lorixs: Okay Bob, I got your phone all set up and all the accounts are on there. However, it looks like the phone is not activating so it is not able to make calls or send messages. Apple support says this process could take up to 24 hours, but if it still is not activated by the end of the day you will probably have to call Verizon to figure out what is up He didn't really like that answer but what else was I supposed to do? Well end of the work day is approaching and I get a call from the CEO and here is what he had to say: >CEO: Did you swap out my SIM card? >Lorixs: No? I just set up the phone like you asked. When it wasn't activating I followed Apple's troubleshooting steps, which include resetting the phone and signing back into your apple ID but I did nothing with the hardware. >CEO: Well there is a different number on this phone now so Verizon is telling me the SIM card must have been swapped. Are you sure you didn't swap the SIM card? >Lorixs: I don't have anything that I could swap a SIM card with, so no I definitely did not swap the SIM card. >CEO: Well Verizon said it must have been swapped so I guess it must have been magic then. >Lorixs: Well what might have.... >CEO: Thanks. Bye. Hopefully Verizon gets him squared away, so I don't have to magically come up with the "SIM card I swapped" haha. [link] [comments]  |
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