Tales from Field Support III Tech Support |
- Tales from Field Support III
- All hail the GUI
- Handover of work - total disaster
- Right click your desktop
- Computer that won't power one, gone wild.
| Posted: 22 Jan 2021 07:07 PM PST The Wifi is Frozen! : talesfromtechsupport (reddit.com) As a field technician, I'd work for many companies as a subcontractor. One sold office supplies, and all of their in-house IT was outsourced to India. Now I've had the pleasure of working with some highly qualified individuals on indian helpdesks, in which case- the cost savings come from a lower cost of living. This particular indian helpdesk double-dipped the savings by hiring anyone who spoke enough english to seem intelligible, rather than people with actual IT knowledge. Since I needed their approval to leave site (Everything from remote access looks correct, or they're satisfied with my explanations) this leads to some fun communications breakdowns. This particular store was having a bad day. All phone lines- dead. T1 internet uplink- dead. First stop- the demarkation point. Dmark is where the phone company has to deliver the phone lines, everything after that is 'inside wiring', aka- me. I can't fix a problem outside the building. However, correctly identifying the demarkation point can be difficult. There's no big sign or label, and the manager usually has no idea what the hell you're talking about. Regardless, I THINK I've found it. At the very least it's the backboard for the store, and I have absolutely no dial tones, no voltage on the T1, smartjack is throwing errors, we are in SHTF mode because at this point I'm suspecting major outage. Or I'm at the wrong backboard. Happens. Curiously enough, the backboard connection goes straight up towards the roof instead of down underground. This is an outlet mall, all the stores share walls, and usually- that means there's a second DMARK. Essentially, the phone company delivers dial tone to one closet strapped to the back of the entire mall, and big cables carry those to each individual building. Those big cables are owned by the property management company, who the stores lease the spaces from. Find the closet, pop the door, have a look- I find the dial tones I'm looking for, check where they're wired to. I estimate the cable is about 1000 feet to go up to the roof, across to the store, and down to the backboard. I run my tester- I'm reading about 400 feet. From inside the store- I read 600 feet. I walk outside again, take a few steps back... the neighbors are having roofing work done, and I realize they've cut the big cable. 50 pair feeder (100 individual copper wires individually insulated and color-coded bundled into one massive cable, about the width of your wrist.). I phone in to the network operations center. They eventually pick up. I spend about 40 minutes on hold- and then struggle to communicate exactly what's occurred. It's not within their normal script. When they finally comprehend a big important cable has been cut, they ask what to them is a logical question. "Do you have enough to run another?" Do I have 1000 feet of a cable as thick as my wrist. No, No I don't. I drive a hatchback, not a flatbed. Nor am I the incredible hulk to run that cable alone. Not only that- the store doesn't even own the cable. Takes awhile to communicate they need to talk to the property management company, and presumably it was eventually resolved. Outsourcing your helpdesk to the cheapest foreign option sounds like a great cost saving tip until you realize anyone who calls that helpdesk is on your payroll and will be spending an awful lot of billable hours sitting on the phone doing nothing. Cutting costs is pretty expensive as it turns out. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 22 Jan 2021 04:51 PM PST Hello everyone, first time mobile poster here. This one happened today, so... I am a L1/L2 tech on site for a major corpo client near the end of the working day. It's Friday so my mind is already in the weekend. Be the good guy as I am, I decide to do one last call to a user to fix a trivial issue. I contact the user and notice the problem, nothing that a good old gpupdate /force cannot resolve, so I launch the prompt and fire the command. The command is taking some time to complete, pretty normal considering the never ending GPOs in the domain. Now the user began to stress that she need to finish some important and urgent work and cannot wait. So I agree to close the call and let me know next Monday if the problem is resolved. This conversation follow: $me: "You will see a '(Y/N)' prompt, you need to PRESS the letter N, PRESS the enter key and then you can close the black window, OK?" $she: "Yes, all clear, you can go" $me: "SURE?" $she: "YES, BY!" click, call closed As I am preparing to leave she call me back again: $she: "It's not working, I cannot close it" $me: "What thing you can't close?" $she: "The black window" $me: "Have you pressed the N key and the enter key?" $she: "Yes, it is not working" Then I proceed to instruct the user to share the screen and as I connect I see the problem: she is clicking the N key WITH THE MOUSE CURSOR. In the end I take control, close the "black window", goodbye the user and go home. And here I am, floored for the fist time in a year and sharing this with you. TL;DR: User thinks GUI = CLI and proceed to interact with it. [link] [comments]  |
| Handover of work - total disaster Posted: 22 Jan 2021 07:16 AM PST So I'm working at the moment in this big corpo and they decided some time ago to switch to outsource support model. My contract ends end of February and for last 12 months noone contacted me about anything. Literally no contact, no questions, nothing - I was only receiving requests for setting up access for those people. In theory from 4th of January they took over all support, I'm still at the company only because of few unfinished projects that got delayed by global teams. And since Monday the shit is hitting fan almost constantly. People in the company are not fully aware of me being phased out, so they contact me with any problems specific to their applications. I refer them to the outsource people. And EVERY SINGLE time within 5 to 10 minutes after I refer people to them, they contact me asking for help because THEY HAVE NO CLUE. One of the managers decided to create a meeting to transfer knowledge. That meeting just finished - it was supposed to be 30 minutes call, it lasted for over 90 minutes. And I'm shocked by the lack of knowledge of those guys. I don't want to go into too much detail, but one part of my job is (or rather was, officially it's their job now) to setup backups on the workstations. It's one of the simpler tasks. Some of the questions I got during that call - why do we need to do backups? - why do we need to monitor backups? - why do we need to install agent on the computers and configure it? - what happens when we restore the files? - what happens with the PC that we restore image to? does the data that was on it stays there? I explained why the automatic restore option doesn't work and why we need to use a specific port and specific method to restore images and 10 minutes after the call was finished I got questions from different people asking why do we have to do it? The problem is that in next few weeks there will be plenty of new workstations installed throughout the office and labs. Since I'm no longer officially part of the support team, I won't be getting any access to them. Backup is only a fraction of what needs to be done. I know for a fact that those guys have no clue how to even launch a command prompt as local administrator on a machine (domain accounts are prohibited from being local admins by global policy) so... Yeah, I expect a total disaster. Wondering what I shoud do in that situation, because I know they will be bothering me all day long - would you guys do anything to help them? My days in that company are soon to be over, I have a very good relations with my managers on site, I know they're pissed by the decision from corporate about ooutsource support, so in theory I should just tell everyone to fuck off and finish my projects and say good bye. Example from just a minute ago, one guy was asking again why the automated process for restoring images wouldn't work, so I explained it was because of NAC implemented on the network and he replied with this: "Network Access Control (NAC) is an approach to computer security that attempts to unify endpoint security technology" - like what da fuck? Why are you copy-paste wikipedia to me? Is that a question or what? I'm really sorry for all the people working here, as I know that the disaster is coming, and at the same time I'm wondering what the corporate was thinking when they decided to switch from local support model to outsource (well, I know what they were thinking - money). The problem is the outsource people live literally 6k miles away and have no fucking clue about ANYTHING. And I think they only start to realize that this is serious contract, not sitting on the ass and digging up the nose. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 22 Jan 2021 05:04 PM PST Many moons ago, I was tech support for a university. Some details are blurry, so I'll keep it brief. A professor calls in. Me: "Help desk, (me) speaking" Professor: "My mouse is jumping between my screens" Me: "Alright, I can help with that. First, you will need to right click on your desktop. (Reads off option menu)" Professor: "Uhh. It says (option menu if you right click a jpeg)" (Continues to spend 20 minutes trying 15 different ways to explain how to get to & what the desktop is) Looks at clock. 10 minutes until my class across campus Professor: "I have class soon can we try again later" Me: "actually, I have class to get to as well, but I can drop by your office afterwards" After class T (other tech) : "(me) where are you rushing off to?" Me: "just finishing up a ticket from earlier. I'll be by the desk in 5 or less. I swear this issue should not have taken this much if it is what I think it is" I go to his office, have him login, minimize the programs, fix his monitor settings, and leave after some pleasantries. (2 minutes tops) I drop by the desk and ask T to close the ticket. (I already did all the documentation beforehand). [link] [comments]  |
| Computer that won't power one, gone wild. Posted: 21 Jan 2021 07:35 AM PST This is my first post (mobile, non native). I hope you enjoy it. I work in techsupport for an authority and we have multiple locations to support. Normally the tickets I am responsible for do not require me to drive to the other locations, but since multiple colleagues called in sick I helped out with the on site support. There I am, doing on site support, when I get a call from one of my colleagues (C). C: Hey, I have heard you are near location 1. Can you check out location 2 on your way back? Me: Sure thing. What's the matter? C: Location 2 seems to have a PC that won't power on. Me: I'll see what I can do. When I reach location 2 they show me said PC. I press the power button and indeed, nothing happens. So I do the usual, like checking all the cables, plugging the power coard in a different power outlet and borrowing the power cord from a working printer next to the PC, nothing. I think to myself, seems like a PSU problem maybe. I unplug every cable, open the case and only plug in the power cord. One last try maybe it works. I press the power button. PAFF high pitched uhh I am greeted with smoke coming out of the chipset, which shot half of it's mass across the room. Well, guess I have to come back with a new one. I tell the staff from location 2 that I will be coming back with a new PC. 1 hour later I am back with the new PC and a new power cord. I Plug everything in and it boots just fine. Edit: Picture of the incident [link] [comments]  |
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