How about now? Tech Support |
- How about now?
- Weekend tickets are a different breed
- Crazy IT Boss: "Let's install Sage Line 100 (with no experience)"
- Oh, FFS
- The problem you fixed is here again
- „When can I take it back in?“
- Management's Top Priority
- I know about computers!
- There has never been anything conected....
| Posted: 30 Jan 2021 08:22 PM PST Working cable internet tech support some years ago, handling escalations from upset customers. I get an agent telling me that he needs a supervisor, because a customer is shut off for non-payment, but says he doesn't believe it, insists it's a technical issue. I mean, seems straightforward, right? If the agent tells you it's because you didn't pay your bill, the odds are they're probably correct. But apparently he's just in some form of denial about it. Ok, send the caller to me. Me: "Ok, so I can clearly see here, it's been xx days since your bill was last paid, you're definitely disconnected for non-payment. It's just handled with a simple software thing on our end though, so if we can get a payment now, I can have you back online within minutes." Him: "No, I know that's not the problem, it's something else and you guys need to fix it!" (Now, while this has been going on, I've double-checked the dates, payments, provisioning status of the cable modem, there's no question at all. 100% non-payment) "Sir, I'm really, really sure about this. Our system is very clear about it, and I've double-checked everything to make sure there were no mistakes on the software end. Are you talking about a payment you sent but we didn't register on your account or something like that?" "No, I know I'm not shut off, because my tv is still working! Every time I get turned off for a late bill, my tv goes out too, and since it's still on, I know that's not it! Are you still soooo sure now?" (This was said with all kinds of attitude and sarcasm behind it.) "Huh, that's odd, you're right, in that case the tv shouldn't be working." (I check, and yes his cable boxes are still provisioned to "active." They shouldn't be. That part IS a software glitch, but I didn't think to check that before, I just looked at internet-related things) "So then yeah, you tell me, you tell me how you're so sure it's because of my bill because I'm watching tv right now?!" (More attitude and sarcasm) Well, reader, here's where we get to the title of this post. It's two mouse clicks on my side. "How about now?" "It just went out! You just did that! You did that on purpose!" "Yes, yes I did. You told me you were getting service you weren't supposed to be getting. I fixed it, that's what they pay me for. Would you like to make a payment now?" And that's where they hung up. Disclaimer because not everything carries through text, I have all kinds of sympathy for those that have difficulty paying their bill. Most of us have been there. I don't have sympathy for those that blame us for it, or treat us like crap because of it. [link] [comments]  |
| Weekend tickets are a different breed Posted: 30 Jan 2021 01:06 PM PST this is a 100% real ticket i just worked, I handle central/remote support for a healthcare org Ticket title: "website" Ticket body:
that's the whole ticket, no other information Reach out to user over IM: Me-----
User------
Me------
User-----
Me-----
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| Crazy IT Boss: "Let's install Sage Line 100 (with no experience)" Posted: 30 Jan 2021 11:41 PM PST About the late 1990's I worked for a small IT company in Ireland. The boss/owner was one of those crazy try-anything guys, who some said was a mad genius, but I reckon was just 'mad' - Let's call him 'Derek' - Derek had many years of IT experience. I have so many stories about crazy things Derek did (not wild crazy, but nutty/odd crazy) - Here's one: One of his main clients was a local joinery/vinyl window company, who he convinced to spend thousands of euros on Sage Line 100 - I could be wrong, but I think it was in the region of 100k euros - still a LOT of money for a business this size. The crazy part is that Derek had only ever installed and supported Sage Line 50 (for small businesses) and Line 100 was a system for much larger companies. Let me clarify - Sage Line 100 was mainly a database system that needed a LOT of configuration and setup, by professionals/experts in that system. As an in-training computer Tech, I knew nothing about it, neither did the college student ('Helga') that I worked with.. nor did Derek himself. Also, no plan was devised on how this would all be implemented. So, Derek and us 'installed' it on various computers throughout the company, with very little actually configured properly. And the intention was that it would be an all-inclusive system to track stock of parts, sales, accounts, etc. throughout the company. Knowing how much money was involved, and how much trouble this would cause to everyone working there, including us IT 'Experts' (idiots) who were supposed to know everything about it...I mentioned to Derek that this will not end well. Helga felt uneasy about it all too...but Derek always fumbled his way through, so he carried on as if it was no big deal... Several months passed and the system was not working well...data was being entered by each department but not connected to data in other departments. Reports from the system were not making sense. The Sage software had to be reinstalled multiple times, and the databases setup again, and again. Nothing worked as expected. Many months into the whole debacle I was fired (for completely different weird reasons - totally different story - not my fault) and I didn't have any more to do with it. A year or more passes and I meet Helga for a coffee. She tells me the system is STILL a mess. Sage even sent their experts down from head office to configure it and even that didn't help. At that point they were considering dumping the whole system...after spending so much money on it. Crazy stuff... Note: If my description of Sage Line 100 is not good, that's because I didn't know anything about it at the time, and have not used it since. I was a young IT tech learning my trade, so that system was much too complicated for me, without any actual training on it. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Jan 2021 05:08 PM PST Back in the day (roughly 1999) I worked at a large tech corp in the help desk department and there were a lot of chain emails going around that were more annoying than harmful. "Microsoft wants help testing their email system, so forward this note on to ten of your friends and you'll receive a free blah blah blah." So this email comes through purporting to be from the Gap, a clothing store. Forward this email on to ten of your friends and you'll receive a free T-shirt for helping our marketing campaign. Forward it to fifty people and you get a free pair of pants. Forward it to a hundred people and you get a free jacket. So of course this person in our department who is a clothes horse forwarded it on to several dozen people in our department plus numerous people she knew in the company. She thought that MAYBE it could be true, so she prefaced her email with "you never know..." Oh, honey. We do know. Anyone with a modicum of BS radar knows. The turnip you passed in the produce isle knows. But she couldn't help herself and the prospect of free clothes was too good of an opportunity to pass up. She got so much "positive feedback" that she stood up first thing at the next department staff meeting and said "I am SO SORRY. That will NEVER happen again." I personally sent her an email with ten bullet points on how she can tell it's BS, from the numerous typos to the bogus Yahoo email address at the beginning of the gynormous email chain. My reply was nice and factual, with no ad hominem attacks like "what da PUCK were you thinking", but it got the point across: if it sounds too good to be true, it is. [link] [comments]  |
| The problem you fixed is here again Posted: 31 Jan 2021 03:32 AM PST January 29th, Last Year. 3:30 PM "Yo Raestloz, there's a problem with the calculation result" It's Wallace, a business analyst. We're in the middle of updating a client's software and there's a monthly program that they want an entire overhaul, to fix the current bugs and add more features in one go, and I was responsible to write it in an arcane magick language only I understand. As they say: in the land of RPGIII, the guy with SQLRPGLE is a hermit, IBM's recommendations notwithstanding. Specifications were agreed upon by all parties, with various managers involved and extensive testing. The program in question has already been in production for the past 3 months so I was pretty sure it's not on my end "What? Was the formula wrong?" "Well no, but due to the changes of how another part works, there's a quirk with how it handles January" Huh. "Just make a special case for January" Easy enough. All I had to do was make a couple tweaks, but the calculation needs to be done tonight, and news broke at 3:30 PM. Between starting to work on it, testing, and the client doing their own testing, this month's numbers will be wrong. Emails were dug up about client's approval of the formula and the client decided they'll just manually calculate the number and adjust the result "Eh, no matter, at least next year it won't be a problem anymore" Wallace and I exchanged a chuckle at the expense of upper manglement and bureaucracy. Whatever, problem solved. After that a couple of new features were added, just business as usual January 29th, This Year. 9:10 AM "Yo Raestloz, there's a problem with the calculation result" Randy, my manager, called on Microsoft Teams. Seems to be a big problem. "So what's the problem?" "There's an issue with January's results, it's wildly different from December's. Which databases are relevant for debugging?" As I listed the databases required, I had a pang of familiarity, though not deja vu "Didn't we used to have this problem?" "Dunno, but we need to fix the number by tonight. The Compliance Supervisor has been called in" Compliance? "What does compliance have to do with this?" "Client notified Mr. Grizzly 2 days ago and got silent treatment, I just found out about this this morning either" Fantastic. Sure enough, my phone rang. Compliance Supervisor "Raestloz, we need to discuss your program asap. 10:00 AM or 01:00 PM?" I'd rather not face the Supervisor without knowing what exactly is going on, so I picked 01:00 PM, might as well gather some ammo first. She created a meeting appointment at 01:00 PM, several names I usually only see in cc list when the figurative excrement makes contact with the proverbial aerial impeller is on the guest list. Shit, this is serious. A Teams group was created, consisting of me, Wallace, Randy, and Albert. Albert is a junior business analyst in charge of the client, he inherited this mess from Shane who quit 5 months ago and didn't bring Albert up to speed on everything. The fact that he was denied his promised pay raise may have had something to do with it, but that's not really my business "Alright Raestloz, Albert, refresh me on this program, I had forgotten about it". Wallace sounded unhappy, he's Grizzly's underlings and Grizzly has a reputation of throwing his underlings under the bus. He needs to get to the bottom of this before he finds himself at the bottom "Okay, well first things first check if the schedule data is there" "What schedule?" Huh? "The schedule. You know, for override? Whatever, humor me for a moment, the database name is CalcSchedule, check it for me" "The database isn't here" What? "Don't be ridiculous, it should be there. They asked for that feature 5 months ago" "It's not there. Whatever, just assume it's empty, will the program still work?" "Well yea sure, pull down the data and we'll take a look" "Gimme a second" Wallace connected to client's servers and pulled down everything we needed. "Here, have a look, tell me how you calculate these things" Albert stammered a bit. "Uh, well, the formula should be something like this", I took a look at our source code and confirmed it. Albert guided Wallace step by step but at a certain point he did it wrong "No that's not how you do it" I said "You take this number, not that one" "Wait, you take that one?" Wallace sounded genuinely shocked "that's not how it worked" "Wait, seriously? You ARE certain that this is MY program we're talking about right? I mean this program was written from scratch, and this step never changed" "Well yes, your program's name is NewCalcProgram right?" "That is indeed mine, no program with that name existed before I created it, as the client requested" "So yeah we're on the right track" But that doesn't seem right. I contacted Randy privately "Hey you're sure this IS about my program right? That scheduler feature is 5 months old, no way in hell my program won't have it, you're sure this isn't the old program?" "Well the program name matches, yours is new and unique, so it can't be wrong. But you know what, have Wallace check the program version, just to be sure" Just as I finished with Randy, Wallace sent a message "Hey, didn't we used to have a problem like this before?" "I'm pretty sure we did. Matter of fact, didn't YOU bring it up to me?" "I'm pretty sure I did" "Humor me for a moment, check the program version currently in production" "Gimme a second" NewCalcProgram, Version: November 19th, 2 Years Ago What in the actual...? "Raestloz, what's the latest version of this program?" "December 19th, Last Year" "%&÷@$" For whatever fucking reason they never deployed the updated program. Ever. The client had consistently asked for more features, but they're never brought to production. The answer to why is the domain of the gods My manager contacted Compliance Supervisor to make it clear this was not our fault. Supervisor cancelled the meeting, but I was still stuck to the group anyway because they needed me during the blamestorming and manually calculating the correct number for this year's January Wallace assured me that this time they're going to deploy the update and this won't happen again next year. Heh. That's what he said last year [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Jan 2021 04:32 AM PST I was working as tech support for a major bank institute. I wasn't dealing with bank customers but with bank clerks themselves. One day a lady called in asking „My mouse didn't work, when can I take it back in?" I was confused and asked „Take back in from where? What is the problem with your mouse?" She then explained that her mouse is glowing red on its bottom. Her colleagues said, that this means the mouse „went too hot" because of the long time of usage. They basically told her to put it on the windowsill outside to let it cool down. She left it there for 2 hours and finally called because it's still glowing red. Had to tell her that her colleagues are some f*cling clowns. At the end we both laughed. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Jan 2021 02:05 PM PST I posted 40 year bug fix yesterday, and referred to the flustercluck of the belated Y2K remediation project that the Company who hired us told us was their top priority. So top that they let these things happen: OnboardingWe had maybe 15 people passing through over the four months of the project. All of them needed PC, logons, id badges. network access from their Day 1. It was seldom that someone had all of that by the end of their first week. Delays. Testing environmentsWe needed several dev environments completely separate from their usual ones. The process of setting them up took several weeks of endless committee and security meetings. Delays. ToolsYou need specialized tools (or at least things that are not lying around in a normal development environment). For example, we needed to confirm that the Live executables are actually the same as the supposed Live Source (you'd be surprised how often they don't match). And, in cases were source had been lost decades ago (be surprised again) tools to help decompile / patch machine code. The bean counters wanted to ensure they got the best value out of expensive stuff they only needed for a few weeks. So delays. Dead reportsOne of their C-levels read that *best practice involved first an audit of all the reports produced by a system – after all, many reports are probably just dead paper (or unread PDFs or never-imported-to-excel CSVs). Obviously, the project would be faster if those programs could be retired rather than converted. What the C failed to understand was that such an audit takes place several months before you start converting stuff – because no one replies immediately to a "do you use this report" memo; and most of the first level replies are things like:
And so, we wasted a couple of weeks an analysis time to conclude that we could not safely junk hardly any existing reports. Move officeTwo months in, we were told we were being relocated to another office building. Process: leave old office Friday lunchtime after packing everything in boxes. Unable to work at weekend. Arrive new office Monday morning. Security badges not working. Get in finally, unpack boxes. Call that three working days lost per worker. The new temporary office space was never intended for actual human occupation. Consider it an extra wide corridor. We had desks against the walls, so we were sitting back-to-back with maybe 2 meters between us. Other workers traditionally used it as a cut-through to get to the canteen, so 12 to 13:30 saw a lot of chatty passers by. More of a team moral issue at this point. The print memoA bean counter sent us a memo saying our cost code was using an inordinate amount of paper – please desist immediately. Of course we were – we were using their cost code for "emergency fixes" – usually barely used once a month, let alone 10 people full time for several months. Cue another moral drop. FreezeIn the real world, systems being Y2K remediated would be frozen – no other changes until the remediation was complete. Unless an absolute emergency. Fair to say the client never read the best-practice memo on that, and we were expected to be endlessly "flexible". Roaming directorTheir IT director considered themselves very hands-on and liked to think he could manage by walking about. He'd drop by and ask a team member what they were doing, pretend to understand the answer, offer advice. That sort of thing. We kinda tolerated that until one day we caught him berating Mr Opocito. Mr Opocito was one of our hired contractors, doing system testing. I'll call him that as he happened to be the Only Person Of Color In The Office. He had shown the Director how he was testing an online data entry form, checking that dates with 2-digit years 25, 26, 27 where correctly pivoted to be 2025, 1926, 1927. And the director went mental. "Why the frack was Opocito wasting everyone's time and money testing stuff 25 years off!?" We quietly but publicly explained to the Director that no matter what the pivot date is, we have to test it. Otherwise we could have accidentally set it to 2002. And we privately told him that if he ever spoke to a member of our team like that again, there would be serious consequences. World class athleteThe company sponsored a world-class athlete – someone with a good chance of medalling at any Olympics. And the athlete was touring the company one day!! Hurray!! We were all meant to be very excited!!! Fair to say of our entire team, only one cared even in the slightest. We suggested they go hang in a corridor to wave as the athlete breezes by. And we'll lock our doors and get on with stuff. We were told No. The athlete was going to be walked through every office and warehouse space. And every office was going to be a mini Potemkin village with tidy desks, clean windows, flowers and ethnic dancing (well, maybe not the last. But we spent a couple of hours pointlessly sprucing the place up). Then we spent all day with messages on the public-address system (usually only used for fire alarms) telling us "athlete is is sales, running 30 mins late. Athlete is in warehouse. 90 minutes late". Eventually, they and an entourage breezed through our widened corridor. The stopped briefly behind me to politely answer a question from my colleague about why last last week they'd lost to a keen rival....And then they were gone. And most of a day disrupted and wasted. In retrospectIt was fortunate we'd more than doubled our estimates. This is one time it was really needed. Maybe doubling estimates is the real lesson we learn on the way. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Jan 2021 08:20 AM PST Two stories from 1998ish about the same guy: Back then, we didn't have the luxury of limited user accounts -vs- administrator accounts. Most software required that whoever was running it was a full administrator. There was no way to stop people from installing garbage software when they are all admins. I got a call from a guy in our QA department claiming that his PC was running really slow. This was a guy who was dumb at everything, including computers. I ran some standard apps and on it and everything seemed fine. So I asked him what was wrong exactly. QA Guy: I installed a resource meter and it always showing my PC is almost out of resources. See how when you started Word the meter stayed pegged? That means my computer is slow. Me: Why did you install a "resource meter"? QA Guy: I want to know if my computer is running slow. Me: Why don't you just use slowness as a guide for when your PC is running slow? Your PC is running fine. QA Guy: The meter says it's slow. Me: I know what to do. I uninstalled the "resource meter" it and reported him to his boss for wasting QA and IT time. ********************** I promise you, this is true. Same guy calls and says one of their test PCs won't turn on. When I arrived it was in pieces and the MB had obviously been on fire. Me: What happened? QA Guy: It was crashing a lot, so I took the motherboard out and connected it to a car battery to re-solder everything. Of course, I reported him. Of course, nothing happened to him because "he was just trying to help." At this point I should tell you what he was QA for: The company made aircraft instruments and sensors. We had military and civil customers. This genius was one of the guys testing products we made. Yes. Let that sink in. You could very well have flown in a plane with a sensor tested by that guy. [link] [comments]  |
| There has never been anything conected.... Posted: 30 Jan 2021 05:19 AM PST First time posting, it might be some spelling or grammar errors, sorry in advance well first let throw some background, i'm working as first line support in an ISP, as u may know some ISP also provides landline phone, so here goes the tale from another of the costumers who never has touched anything Characters in history: Me: well the poor first line support who wipes out the day out from the mind C: A customer who has phone issues CD: Really mad daughter whos ask for a 3-day resolution when they can solve by themselves so the story begins, make mind that this happened 2 weeks ago and i'm shortening parts of a 30 minute call Me: Technical support form [redacted], what can i help you with? C: Yes, the other day got some problems with 2 mobile phones and the landline phone, the mobile ones are already solved but the landline persist Me: okay, lets chek for some basic thruobelshoting, lets check the router and if the phone is connected to the router C: theres never been a phone connected to the router, i've got some [brand] wireless phones and I just plugin in the power and that's it Me: looks like u got some main base wireless phone with chargers lets chek the cables on the router, so it might be there 3 cables, the power one, the fibre one and the phone one C: there's the power one, on that looks like the phone one but bigger and one that goes to the wall Me: okay, looks like u got the fibre the one that goes to the wall, power one and the one that is phone but bigger is an ethernet cable its for cable connection on the computer, it must be on that connect to the phone port or it will not work C: No there's never been anything connected, at this point we were doing loops of nothing ever connected like 3 times and I'm getting bored of the client lying to me, make mind that they said that it worked before and its a must to connect to the router to have the landline ME: okay, it worked before by magic, let's check to connect a direct phone to the router may u have any that u can connect. C: lets chek for the older phone that we got over ther, (asking the daughter) you know where is the old phone that was in this room? (So nothing connected ehh?) CD from the background very mad: I don't know why we have to do that, they must send a field tech to do that...(some more babbling ragging about service) C: so I found the old one connected in the room, look it even got the phone cable but it's just the base I can't find the phone. ME: okay let's check if the other phones on the house works C: okay let's check, (take another wireless from somewhere else), nothing........oh it works, (very ashamed voice) thanks and sorry for your time. Me: Don't worry we are her for helping have a great day... Well, that's it for today. I'll try to pull out some more but I'm trying to forget the everyday memories from clients for my own sanity. [link] [comments]  |
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