So, You're Complaining About Being Called Out For Violating Cyber Security Protocols? Aight. Tech Support |
- So, You're Complaining About Being Called Out For Violating Cyber Security Protocols? Aight.
- Angry Lady-Dentist Regrets belittling our computers and Support Tech (me)
- "I'm not Tech Savvy" said the software Dev
- Just a quick elk backstrap for hughsnet modem setup .. good bbq
- Work mail never got shut down, and retired employee kept using it for years. He was not happy when it got shut down.
- "I did do that. Many times..." Liar!
- 'thank you ????'
- Just because you're called an expert, doesn't mean you are one.
- Never Got One of Those...
- Printer Problems ��
- Web Designers
- When adding more current protection backfired
- oh and you brought your little friends
| So, You're Complaining About Being Called Out For Violating Cyber Security Protocols? Aight. Posted: 28 Jan 2021 03:02 PM PST Greetings, y'all. It's time for another story from the cyber security realm. For those interested in cyber security, this may help change your mind. As a reminder, this happened on a military installation, so names, mission types, shoe sizes and interoffice romances will all be redacted. The cast in order of tree ring growth:
We had our problem child, $luser, today who was needing assistance with one of her machines. She'd contacted our cyber operations team, put in an incident request (surprisingly), and things started going downhill from here. Her description in the incident request was amazingly vague and completely useless for the $tech to try and resolve remotely, so he called to find out where her office was located, and where in said office she sat. After getting her location, $tech makes his way to her problematic computer, and upon his arrival, finds that she's not there. What he does find is much worse. Her office is a very sensitive office, dealing with information that is vital for our pilots. She'd left her desk while leaving her CAC (smart card) plugged into an unlocked machine, and she was nowhere to be found. It's not a very big office, and from $luser's desk, you can clearly see who's in this office as well as all the walls. $tech figured he'd give her a break and place her CAC underneath her keyboard. However, when he lifted the keyboard, he found a sticky note with a password written on it. $tech sighed to himself, gathered the CAC, left the office, and sought out his lead and supervisor who subsequently directed him to my office. $tech then spoke to my supervisor and lead, and after some back and forth discussion, decided that $luser needed to have a talking to. $newbievisor and $lead had initially decided to go handle this themselves, but then decided to send the bald, half-deaf, thick skinned, oddball from the back of the office: $me. $newbievisor gave me clear instructions to be the "professional bad guy" in dealing with her. I asked for clarification, because I can be professional or I can be the bad guy, but I don't know how to do both. I was again reminded to be the "professional bad guy." I still don't know what that means. With $tech leading the way, we made our way to her office and desk. $tech filled me in on what he encountered and was hoping that we could handle this. We get to her office (my first time there), and I noted that no one there has questioned who we are, or why we are there. Everybody there was working in those open air cubes, meaning that nobody had any walls to block their line of sight to their other coworkers. We make our way to $luser's desk and $tech shows me the password sticky that's affixed to the bottom of the keyboard. I take $luser's CAC, grab the sticky and $tech informs me that he found $luser in $lupervisor's office (with the door shut, mind you). $tech turns to me and asks if he has to be here; he's got an expression on his face that he'd rather be anywhere than here. Given her history of trying to Less than two minutes later, the door to $lupervisor's office opens and $luser steps out. Seeing me, she asked if I was waiting to speak to $lupervisor. I replied that I'm actually here to see her and her supervisor, and motioned for the two of us to step back in. I shut the door and proceed to explain that her CAC, unsecured workstation and password under the keyboard were brought to my attention. I reminded her of the Cyber Awareness training that we all have to take yearly (those who know, know what I'm talking about), and asked her if she remembered the parts that stressed not leaving our workstations unsecure, leaving our CAC unattended, and writing passwords down in an easy to access area. $luser attempted to pass off the sticky, saying that nobody would know what the password is for or that it's even a password! I reminded her that leaving passwords out in the open is not only wrong, it's dangerous for the line of work that we do. At this point, $lupervisor jumped to her defense, demanding to know who I am. In their defense, I did fail to announce who I am, and what office I work in. $lupervisor thought he could get the upper hand on this conversation by declaring that they had no way of knowing who I was right off the bat and that I could have been a spy. I quickly put him in his place by telling him that nobody out in that office did anything to challenge my presence, or what I was doing at her desk. $luser tried to steer the complaint away from her and accuse me of not talking to her professionally and being aggressive, and that (in her words), I was treating her "like a killer and a criminal." I told her that I've dealt with killers and criminals and that I'm being nowhere close aggressive to her. I also stressed to both of them that my office takes spillage seriously, and that this is what we have been tasked with handling by our director. I told $luser that if she has any comments, concerns or questions that she could take it up with $newbievisor and $lead. Upon hearing $lead's name, her face took on a bit of a smirk and said that she will talk to him. I returned her CAC, but kept the sticky to properly dispose of the password in our office shred bin. $newbievisor had bounced out for a meeting, so I filled $lead in on what I found and what was said. And wouldn't you know it, less than 10 minutes after I'd returned to my office, she's ringing the doorbell. $lead gets the door and allows her to vent about her perceived treatment from me, going so far as to say that she didn't like the way I talked to her. $lead paused for a moment, and said that in the end it all comes down to her not following the outlined procedures. He went on to say that despite how I allegedly talked to her, everybody in our building is responsible for security and that it's concerning that her office is taking a rather lax approach to it. $lead then told her that he would talk with $newbievisor about their office to determine if an audit is warranted. $luser had the balls to ask $lead if he was going to talk to me about how I handled the situation. $lead had the best response: "No, I sent him up there for a reason and it got the results I was looking for." $luser thanked $lead for his time and left in a huff. A while later, $lead and I got $newbievisor up to speed on everything and it was determined that no audit will take place, but he will bring up the issue to $lupervisor and possibly the director. Some days, this boring job gets to be a bit of fun! Still makes me wish I had disabled her account and forced her to retake the Cyber Awareness training. TL;DR: You're probably wondering how the can of glue fits into all this. I knew you'd get stuck on that. [link] [comments]  |
| Angry Lady-Dentist Regrets belittling our computers and Support Tech (me) Posted: 28 Jan 2021 03:05 PM PST I worked a dental technology company in a small english-speaking European country. Note: This also meant she declined our hardware support contract, opting only for the software support contract - this becomes relevant later. Note also, she was aggressive/confrontational all the time. A short while later, her Dell computers were installed, so I arrived at her practice to install our software and train her and her staff how to use it. First training session, with more to follow once they learned the basics. The dentist opted out completely from sitting in on the training and assigned only one dental nurse to sit in on the training, ordering me 'train her and she will train the others!' - I suggested that might not be a good idea but she insisted she knew better than me. Ok!?! While I was training her dental nurse (who, incidentally looked like she might be regretting taking the job here), the dentist came in and noticed I was training the nurse how to do the basics, like create a new patient file, enter some basic dental charting, etc. She interrupted by telling me to stop wasting time on that and teach her how to take payments, and do some of more technical accounts stuff. I explained that she needed to learn the basics first because all the advanced stuff requires the basics be entered correctly first... But she got really angry and said "This is MY practice, and I call the shots. you WILL teach her what I tell you to. ARE WE CLEAR?" - I again tried to explain but she shouted over me "I said ARE WE CLEAR?" - I said "Ok. I'll do that" - So I spend the next few hours trying to explain to this confused dental nurse how to finish tasks in the system, she didn't even know how to start. When I left she was both apologetic and still confused. Of course I filled my boss in on the day's happenings...which he wasn't surprised by. Fast forward a month and the dentist had called our software support team multiple times complaining that her patient files and patient accounts were a complete mess. And of course it was our software to blame. It was explained to her that she wouldn't let me train her staff the way they should have been trained. She got angry and hung up. But that's not the best bit.. One day about 6-months later, I'm on the road driving to a client site, as usual, and my boss phones me telling me this dentist called to say her main computer has crashed and we need to get there NOW to fix it! - He thought this was the case, until I reminded him that she didn't have our computers because she got the cheap Dell computers instead. Suddenly her remembered that fact, and also that she had refused our hardware contract also. He told me it was my decision if I wanted to do her a 'favor' or not? I told him to call her back and tell her to call Dell. LOL Dell, of course, only offer to send a replacement drive, so she had to hire an expensive IT firm to reinstall Windows and the network connection, etc. Not to mention, she lost data too. I never heard from her again after that...I think she blamed us for her problems and stopped using our software. But we were glad to be rid of her, because she had an outstanding bill with us, and was refusing to pay because of all this stuff that wasn't our fault [link] [comments]  |
| "I'm not Tech Savvy" said the software Dev Posted: 28 Jan 2021 08:33 AM PST Preface with I'm not IT, I'm QA but my team managed equipment as the primary users so I kept tabs on everything and ran IT point as I was a senior manager in a 70 person tech startup. A developer complained that his mouse wouldn't work and complained about how his time was being lost. I went over, checked that the (wireless) receiver was plugged in, it was. Moved the mouse, didn't work. So, I turned the mouse over to see if the button was turned off/on. And there was no optical light. He had no batteries in it. I told him he just needed batteries in the mouse and, incredulously said "Why didnt you ask for batteries for the mouse" and he replied "I don't know technology". 5 Years later that that has stuck with me above all else. [link] [comments]  |
| Just a quick elk backstrap for hughsnet modem setup .. good bbq Posted: 29 Jan 2021 01:24 AM PST This friend of my moms called my mom and eventually found my number . Hughsnet had sent her a new satellite modem for her dish and she had zero luck setting it up (she couldn't even figure out to plug in the power cable kind of thing). So I drive up into the mountains.. serious boonies. I get it set up after some small issues.. (gave her a new ethernet cable) and fixed her sound problems on her pc .. she was a friend so I'm like i'll only charge an hour but be glad to trade for some elk/deer/lamb etc. She gave me 3 packages of elk backstrap.. 2 big packages of stew meat and 2 roasts .. I cooked up one of those backstraps on my grill... so good .. must have been a young elk so worth the freaking mountain drive and she was happy not to pay $$ life is good sometimes [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Jan 2021 03:35 AM PST TLDR; Former employee have been using a workmail as a private mail since he quit 2,5 years ago. I close it and he wants his data out. I'm a comp sci student, and I'm employed part time as the sole IT-department for a small union. I've been working here for 4 months and the work is mostly just basic system administration, with some support every once in a while. So a short while ago I felt like I had pretty much gotten to the bottom of my assigned work, so I started looking at some of the things I wanted to do. Specifically go through our users, and see if there are any who don't work here anymore. So I start doing that. I find some disturbing things, 2 former superadministrators still active, lots of people with access to our fileserver. Clearly my predecessors never removed people when they quit... So I work up a list, send it to my boss for approval to delete them, he says "Yes, go for it", and I delete away and do a happy dance. Fast forward 3 days. It's saturday evening and I get a mail from the lawyer at work. Apparently his former colleague, now retired, (let's call him Bob) can no longer access his work email, and can I help with that? I look at it, and figure if the retired employee can no longer access his work mail that's good, and any response can wait till monday. So monday comes around. I write my boss, that Bob would like to access his email to get some data out, because apparently he used it as a personal mail when he found out it didn't get shut down after he retired. My boss is appalled and answer "WHAT! Why is Bob still using that email? I was told his access was removed when he quit in 2018. Tell him it's absurd and not okay that he is still using that mail, and give him 24 hours to transfer his contacts" So I restore Bob's mail and get his new email from our lawyer, and I write him, in a slightly nicer tone, what my boss said. Bob answers: "I don't know how to do that. Can you help me? And can I also keep my emails?" Sigh! Sure I can help Bob. I just don't want to... So I ask my boss if he is ok with me doing work for someone not working for the organisation, assuming he'll say no, but unfortunately he says yes. After all, Bob was a valued employee at one time. But he only gets to keep the emails he received since he quit working here. But I had a exam coming up, so I told Bob that he could do it himself, or wait for me to help him after the exam, with his mail closed in the meantime. Bob chooses to wait. So skip forward 4 days. I log into Bobs mail to download his data, and HOLY SHIT. Bob has 27 GB of mail. 27! and 1800 contacts. No wonder he wanted to get the data out. Looking at his folders, apparently he used to own a building and used this account the manage the leases, he used it as a photo album/travel diary, he used it to pay taxes, he used it for everything! He clearly didn't understand that is was a WORK mail! As in you use it for work. So I moved everything he received since he quit into a folder, downloaded it and put in on a USB he could pick up at the front desk. I emailed him and told him he got the data he produced since he quit, where he could pick it up and found a guide online I linked to as well on how to import the data, with my boss as cc. In my opinion I was being rather nice, and Bob was lucky to get any mails out at all. Now Boss is happy, no more unauthorized access and posing as a employee, I'm just glad it's over, but Bob is less happy. He emails me: "What about my personal mails from when I worked at Organisation? And can I call you if I have any problems?". Now I'm happy as I answered: "Your work email contains work mails Bob. They're Organisations property and you can't get them. And no you can't call me Bob. I don't have a work phone, so you will have to submit a ticket. Seeing as you don't work for Organisation you can't submit a ticket. Have a nice weekend" I don't know about Bob, but I did have a nice weekend afterwards. [link] [comments]  |
| "I did do that. Many times..." Liar! Posted: 28 Jan 2021 12:21 PM PST I create business applications for my company, and people often come to me for help, even when there is a proper support channel. The tool we use allows for single-selection fields in either "drop-down" mode or "searchable" mode. Additionally, we can set dependencies between fields, so choosing a value in field 1 filters the possible values of field 2. One minor "gotcha" with the dependencies is that if field 2 is in searchable mode, you still have to trigger the search. Situation: $User has selected a value in field 1, and cannot find any results in field 2. At this time, I am in a meeting, which my status clearly states. I see an email come through, subject line "HELP!!!". Literally 10 seconds later, $User also pings me on Teams with "HELP !". I quickly respond that I'm in a meeting. A few minutes later the meeting is winding down, so I have a chance to read the email and see the obvious problem. So I respond:
The response:
So, I ping them on Teams and invite them to call and screen-share. $User shows their screen, navigates to field 2, and starts typing a word.
Three possible results then showed up - none of which were the word they had been trying to search in the first place, for data that they should know. I really wanted to call them out on the fact that they said "I did do that" when they explicitly disregarded my instructions, but I just let it go. Their manager was informed of the situation, and they now must use the proper support channel instead of just spamming "HELP" to me. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Jan 2021 04:05 AM PST Here's a super short one, seeing as my last two clocked in at 1.4k and 3.8k words. I'd just started working for a new company and they had just adopted ServiceNow, a tool I already had four years experience in. The team was also providing internal IT support, rather than being an MSP, which my previous two employers had been. I found that this resulted in users being much more friendly, and conversations, emails, and ticket updates being a lot more casual than I'd previously experienced, which was nice. For example, I could drop the odd F-bomb on the phone with more familiar users and no one would bat an eye. Shortly after joining, I was working on a ticket that had taken a little more work than usual, requiring a couple of escalations to third line to make higher level changes. When I finally got around to resolving it, I was apologetic about the time taken to resolve the issue in the resolution email and hoped the user would understand. I had kept her updated daily on its progress, so it's not like she was left in the dark for a few days. She quickly shot back a reply.
Well screw you, then, I thought. Maybe a week later, I had a similar reply from another user.
Seriously?!? After a third occurrence of these seemingly sarcastic and somewhat passive aggressive replies, I had a moan about it with a colleague.
Oops. [link] [comments]  |
| Just because you're called an expert, doesn't mean you are one. Posted: 28 Jan 2021 05:04 AM PST I'll keep it brief, I know you're all busy people with other bits of the internet to surf. I had to produce a report in one of our specialist tools to give to another department for one of their specialists to review the data in. As it was too much data to easily review in Excel, I gave it in the original format along with the tool's 'Reader' program so the specialist could review it. The Reader is very user friendly, but the specialist had a problem on the very first day - the program didn't do anything, and then ten minutes later opened 35 copies of the same report. I told the specialist he must have told it to open that many times, which is why it took some time. He's adamant he only double clicked it 'a couple of times'. After a PC reboot, a single double click and me staying on the phone to make sure he didn't click it again, it opened just the once after about 30 seconds. Next day, I've got another call from him. The date format is not how he wants it (it's month/day/year, he wants day/month/year). I explain how to change the view in the Reader. He tells me this doesn't work. Eventually, he admits he's not using the Reader, he's exporting sections to Excel and playing around in that as he's an expert in Excel and it's what he's familiar with. He sends me a screenshot showing the report with the 'incorrect' date format in Excel. I check the Reader and, sure enough, there's no option to change how the date is exported. To make it worse, it's exported as a TEXT cell in Excel as "month/day/year hour:minute:second AM/PM", and Excel won't recognise it as a date and time - just text. I try telling Excel to treat it as a time and date, but no luck. It takes a couple of minutes, but I come up with a formula to convert it to a date and time by finding the colons and spaces (if a figure is a single digit, it shows as "1" rather than "01" so I can't rely on the day being the third and fourth digits, etc). I email him the formula along with instructions for creating a new column, and copying and pasting the formula in. After another call (the formula "doesn't work"), I establish that he's creating the new column as TEXT, not General. Also, the cell references don't work as he's not working on the same spreadsheet as the one he screenshotted to me! I ask why he's not working on the sheet he showed me, and it turns out he's produced an Excel export from the Reader, then copied and pasted the data from the structured tables into a new sheet as he wanted them arranged a different way! No problem - I amended the formula so it looks at cell C2, rather than (Table2[@Time]). I email this to him with instructions to copy and paste this into cell D2, then copy and paste this cell down to the rest of the entries. I get an email - it worked! Then another - it doesn't work! He's copied and pasted the formula I gave him into the other cells, and it always only reads the first cell. Yes, he's putting the exact same formula into each cell - so they're all looking at C2! I just had to spent five minutes on the phone to the other department's 'Excel Expert' to explain to them how to copy and paste a cell down so Excel changes the target. As I've been typing this, I've just had another email saying "your time conversion thingy has ****ed up - call me!". I am seriously beginning to doubt his credentials as the team's "Excel expert", and my own sanity. I'll drag him over the finish line somehow to get him what he wants - my mother didn't raise a quitter! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Jan 2021 10:05 AM PST Short and sweet, but still enough to give you an anyur...anyour...anye...make your head hurt! I never experienced this (thankfully) but my wife ran into this again and again over the course of five years in a new office. She worked front counter for Mediacom. Occasionally customers would come into the office to cancel or change services. Part of that process is the return or exchange of equipment. $Customer: *Hands cable box / modem across the counter* $Wife: Ok! Great, and...do you have the power cord? $Customer: *blank stare* Power cord? $Wife: Yea, the black cable that goes from the box to the wall for the electricity? $Customer: I never got one of those... At this point there were varying levels of stupidity ensuing. Anything from playing dumb, arguing they've had service for five years with no power cable, name calling, threats... People never cease to amaze... [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Jan 2021 01:20 PM PST Gentlemen asks about setting up a printer with their PC, ok. Simple, bring it in and we will do it. They want everything explained but for me to do the work while they watch ughhh. I explain that 1st you should update your OS bc drivers. They say they can do it at home..they just want to use the computer with the printer..okay fine Ken. Cartridges and drivers done. Software set up.. Test page confirmed. 👋 They bring it home and can't connect it to their own wifi 😒 My phone rings, oh shucks their printer isn't connecting to their wifi. They are upset that they wasted my time with their idiocy and ignorance. Lol sir, you won't update OS and don't know how to type in your wifi info into the printer after I spent an hour training you for that very moment AND they refuse to pay for tech support. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Jan 2021 01:08 PM PST Ok, figured I may as well contribute one of mine. For a little context, I'm a developer that worked as a Linux and windows support tech 3 days a week to get myself through uni. $ME gets back from a client one day, to see level 3 tech $T3 and level 2 tech $T2 huddled around a screen muttering to themselves. $TECH2 waves me over and tells me what's going on $T2: $CLIENT has got a web designer to redo their website, we've been told to install PHP on their IIS server $ME: Yeah, should be plenty of docs $T3: I found this tutorial online, but it's not working I'd been playing with PHP on windows recently, so without skipping a beat $ME: Yeah, this is wrong. Use the ISAPI option, it'll just work without any extra stuffing about $T2: well this is the official site and it says to do convoluted steps, so we'll just try to get that working I just kind of nodded and went back to what I was meant to be doing, they spent another hour stuffing about before listening to me. In fairness I would probably have trouble taking advice from a 19 year old as well. Cut forward about a week and I get forwarded a call from $WEB designers. Might be worth mentioning that up until now the website was a sort of rudimentary vbscript CMS that they could change the content on themselves $WEB: Hi, I just finished the site for $CLIENT. You're going to love it $ME: ok, sure. Are there any database or general install instructions I need to be aware of? $WEB: no, but I've redone all the visuals and made it PHP. I'll send the zip now while I've got you $ME: excellent, I'll see what I can do with it Pull it down onto my opensuse setup and drop it into my Apache path. Pull it up in my browser and take a squiz. It's a competent enough site, looks better than what they had. $ME: ok, looks like it's working, no dead links I can see $WEB: yep, and you'll notice it's all PHP $ME: I helped $T2 and $T3 get PHP set up and running last week, should be able to put this in place in an hour or so. Thanks for sending me that Call ends, but I'm a little perplexed as to why she was banging on about PHP if there was no dynamic content. I started digging through the files, and to my extreme discomfort found the telltale signs of DreamWeaver output with no PHP tags in sight. Turns out they'd just changed the file extension on everything and thought that's what made things PHP. I chuckled to myself, changed everything back to .html and went to talk to $T2 about removing PHP from the IIS server. This was my first of four major interactions with web designers at this job, and it was where I started to learn that they weren't techy types. [link] [comments]  |
| When adding more current protection backfired Posted: 28 Jan 2021 07:48 AM PST I volunteered at a thrift store one time when we got a stereo from a brand I unfortunately do not recall, but it was one of those knockoffs. It had an auxiliary input jack, 2 tape decks, a CD changer and a graphic equalizer. The front panel was built to look like multiple separate boxes stacked on top of one another, even as far as having fake "feet" molded in. Anyway, I plug it in and try to turn it on. Nada. Well, hoping to find something easy and simple, I open up the chassis and see that a transistor on the power supply board has obviously burned up. It failed open from the heat before the main fuse ever blew. Hmm. Better check the power supply bus before I change the transistor. 6 ohms? Even with the power supply disconnected, the 5v bus reads 6 ohms to ground. That can't be right. I notice something else on the main board: a bulging capacitor. Remove it and measure it. A-ha! It's shorted. (Both the transistor and capacitor were relatively easy to get at or I wouldn't have bothered. Removing the main board would not have been fun, or worth the the trouble, but the capacitor was on the outer edge where I could work in place by laying the stereo on its face) Okay, I've got a new capacitor and transistor for the power supply. It's a linear, not switching, power supply, so it's not very complex. Only the digital circuits (the logic for the CD changer, tuner and the mode selection buttons / display) have a regulated supply. The actual speakers, amplifiers and analog circuits just have a bunch of big capacitors to keep the voltage stable enough. There is usually a tell-tale 60hz hum in the audio if a capacitor is bad in this type of equipment. They didn't use an IC regulator, but a discrete circuit. In any case, I didn't see a current sense resistor anywhere. Just a main line fuse on the high voltage input from the wall socket, probably just there to prevent a fire from starting, but it clearly wasn't enough by itself to prevent a domino failure when something on the 5v bus plays short circuit. Usually, protecting actual components would require either a fuse/breaker on every power output, or electronic over current protection on every power output. In low voltage circuits, it is usually the latter. Well, I don't see any current protection on the 5 volt bus, but I've got an idea. I guess about a half amp for the 5 volt bus and cut the 5v+ wire and solder in a fuse holder in line with that. I put my half amp, fast blow fuse in, and plug it in. The screen lights up and flashes 12:00. Yeah! I press power. Click click go the relays, boom boom go the capacitors in the power supply. Well crap. Lost the transistor again, too. But wait! My half amp fuse blew, too. How did the transistor die? Why did the capacitors blow up this time? It turns out, the power supply needed a load to regulate the 5v bus. Unfortunately, the engineers decided that 6.3v capacitors were close enough to 5v. So, my fuse blew, maybe due to in rush current that I didn't expect, or the logic drew more current than I was expecting. But, with no load, the power supply voltage skyrocketed and blew up most of the capacitors on the power supply board, one of which failed shorted and burned up the transistor. This time, the transistor failed shorted, not only to collector and emitter, but also to the base. This fed the whole power bus back to the parts that controlled the transistor, frying several other parts. This created more smoke than just the one transistor and capacitor could have possibly created. I'm amazed the fire alarm didn't go on in the store. The owner actually had the alarm company test the alarm system within the next week to make sure it was working okay, and also added an additional fire extinguisher near the area where we test and repair things. A month later an additional fire alarm switch was added as well, close to the "testing and repair" area. As time wore on and almost nothing was serviceable anymore, parts for actually repairable equipment stopped being made by anybody, and nothing was compatible with serviceable equipment anymore, we stopped doing repairs. These days, you're lucky if you can even get a user manual for a still-in-production device, let alone an actual part. That's not an exaggeration: One time this toy robot had so little info that I could find about it, even with the actual brand on the toy itself, that I thought the company had exited the toy business (i.e. closed that branch) Without instructions, I couldn't determine if the robot was broken or if I just wasn't pressing the right buttons. I ended up dumping it as a result. I later found that not only was the company still doing toys, they still made that same robot! Of course, it was probably just as well that it went in the skip, given nobody's going to want to play "guess what this button is for" when they can't even Google it! Believe me, I tried my hardest to find info on the robot with Google and Yahoo. God help anyone who loses the manual for that thing. [link] [comments]  |
| oh and you brought your little friends Posted: 28 Jan 2021 08:33 PM PST many years ago I was hired to do tech support on portable terminals for a multiple listing service supporting realtors (who always seem to have more money than brains) one of the projects i was brought onboard was to provide accountability to their members. this being the only database in the area that was kept current. In my company's listings we had 7-800 reaitors listed as active but only 200 or so "active " accounts. we found out that some of our clients were forgetful in updating their clients licenses and enabled an answerback into their acoustically connected 300 baud modem thermal paper spewing terminals (prelaptops) needless to say there were ..issues with the realtors because some of their forgetful ways..one day one of our larger customers showed up to express his frustrations about his people not being able to logon and brought along 2 hefty sales associates to help with the motivation. my boss at the time was a brawny 5ft 2ish leader who I called master sendo stepped in front of them and aske him how many associates his offices had? to which he replied 60 agents..My boss then apologized for the mistake because our records only showed 6 registered users and obviously whoever was collecting the associates dues may have been forgetful about passing them on to my company's accounting office. at which time both of the sales associates looked at their boss then at Master Sendo and turned and left next day we had a fedex from angry realitor and didnt have anymore of his nonsense.. [link] [comments]  |
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