User worked for hours on a mtimillion dollar contract and never once saved it Tech Support |
- User worked for hours on a mtimillion dollar contract and never once saved it
- Absolutely cannot type or even know what words are
- Some people should have retired before computers were invented
- Congratulations, you can read!
- Just when you think it can't get any.... something....
- Now see, if you want even better performance...
- Things just didn't click right away.
- Back in the dim depths of time, with a deeply dim user
- I do not accept the $4000 equipment
- PPPoE is for liars and thieves
| User worked for hours on a mtimillion dollar contract and never once saved it Posted: 27 Jan 2021 10:44 PM PST This was back in the mid-80s, when computers were just starting to be widespread in business. Autosave was a thing of the very near future, but not here yet. I was a secretary at a law firm and got transferred to the newly-created I.T. department. I did training, setups, and trouble-shooting, and I reported to a newly-hired but experienced I.T. manager. One attorney was having a melt-down because her computer froze and she had been working all morning on a contract for a multimillion dollar project. I said no problem, we can do a reset and restore it from the last time you saved it (I should add here that everything was saved on each person's hard drive). She said she hadn't had time to save it (?) and kept screaming at me to get it back. Hadn't saved it. Not once. A multimillion dollar deal. Worked on it for hours. Didn't. Have. Time. To. Save. It. When I broke the news that there wasn't a damned thing we could do, I thought she was quite literally going to have a stroke. She was screaming so loud that someone called my boss, who listened to her spit-flecked tantrum. When he heard her say that she hadn't once saved this oh-so-important document, he said, "You didn't save it. Its gone. What do you want me to do, Carol? Wave my magic wand to get it back? Get it back from where?" (I loved that man for that.) To this day, I'm still astounded that this woman, who had 4 years of college, and another 2-3 years of law school, didn't have the common sense to save her work periodically as it progressed, and then screamed at people who were only trying to help her. [link] [comments]  |
| Absolutely cannot type or even know what words are Posted: 27 Jan 2021 06:47 AM PST We have multiple W@H users that log in with a generic local account, then connect to our systems via Citrix. We have no software available for remote support, so everything I do is blind. Every PC has the same local account and I include a printed two-sentence login guide. Here's a call I had last week. The user was a native English speaker, so there was no language barrier. The user also didn't sound intoxicated or otherwise medicated (And yes, drugs and alcohol are a problem sometimes for our at home agents. Also, we are a call center so we literally have people who are drunk/drugged taking calls on behalf of our clients). user: This PC is broken. It's not letting me log in. I followed the instructions exactly and it won't let me log in. me: Okay. Let's step through this. Please enter .\localname. Once you have that, enter the password. user: It still won't let me in. I typed my email address. Me: You don't type your email address anywhere. In the user field, enter .\localname user: same result. Me: Do you have a cell phone so you can take a picture of what you typed? user: *sends me a picture* Me: I can see that for the username you typed your email address again. Please just type what it says on the guide and what I'm telling you. It's not your email address. It's .\localname. Where you have your email address entered, I need you to type .\localname instead. We go through several iterations of this. The call lasted for about 10 minutes. Sometimes she typed her email address. Sometimes she typed the password for the user name. Sometimes it was something random. No matter what I did, I couldn't get the user to type .\localname. The closest she got was ./\kindofthelocalname. Me: We're going to need to call you back to take care of this. At this point, I just referred it to the user's supervisor. Apparently they were able to get her to log in finally and she somehow remains employed. [link] [comments]  |
| Some people should have retired before computers were invented Posted: 27 Jan 2021 12:31 PM PST I don't post here often, but this one is just awful. I had to share it. The bulk of our users are working from home, which is a challenge to support as you all know. This particular user hadn't even tried to connect the computer she took home almost a year ago, until November. It had a problem, I arranged a trade. She took a replacement home in the middle of December. Instructions were provided, but we all know, the different ports on the back of a computer are pretty obvious, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the DisplayPort cable won't fit in the USB port, etc. I don't know when she got around to setting up this computer, but one of my colleagues got her ticket yesterday. He helped her over the phone correct the position of the monitors in the Windows Display Settings. Left / right were backwards; common but easy to fix normally. He said it took over an hour on the phone with her. She emailed this morning:
What she's seeing is our default wallpaper, our logo on a black background. When I asked, she said she saw the taskbar on the second monitor and her mouse cursor was visible if she moved it over there. Two monitors have been a standard across our enterprise for almost 7 years now. And somehow, in all that time, she never knew that you have to drag a window over to the second monitor for it to appear there. 🤦♂️ [link] [comments]  |
| Congratulations, you can read! Posted: 27 Jan 2021 01:58 PM PST Short and sweet today. Just chilling at my desk, dealing with the cleanup from our third system outage this week, and I grab a call in my queue. "Thanks for calling $HELPDESK, this is Oafchunk, may I have your name please?" "Its $random_VP, I need unlocked." Ugh, great. I've dealt with this guy before, and he's always....less than pleasant. Still, its just an unlock, can't be too bad. Me: "Alright, I just need to verify a few things real quick." proceeds to verify info as required by our corporate overlords VP: "Congratulations, you can read, now stop wasting my time and unlock me." Unlocked, noted the thinly veiled insult in the ticket, and sent him on his way, idly wondering how he treats the people who work directly under him. My guess, not good. Send help, please. Or whiskey. Yeah, whiskey, that sounds better. [link] [comments]  |
| Just when you think it can't get any.... something.... Posted: 27 Jan 2021 05:03 PM PST I work software support for a product designed for a niche market. The people in this market are supposedly some of the smartest people in the world, definitely the highest paid. As such, I can justifiably say that our team generally doesn't get some of the really really dumb calls that, say, you MSP or ISP techs do. Our callers can still be pretty dumb, though. This one, though.......... I just.................. just..... I mean, I've definitely had my fair share of calls that I felt sure it couldn't get any dumber, but this one, man....... just... here: $caller: Yeah, so we accidentally opened up an image in the full screen mode or whatever, and now we can't get it to close. We're trying to get back to the other screen so we can continue working. $me: I can't recall ever hearing about it with the version they're on (the latest) but our software has been known to do weird things with windows. Ok, can I get remoted in? that in itself was an ordeal, but it always is, so onward... get in, and.... well I closed the window. The same way you close any window -- with the 'X' in the top-right corner. $caller (and friends watching on): OH MY GOD!...... $me: ...no way.... I'm sorry, what was-- wait, was that the issue??? $caller: Nope-- yep, we're all good, thank you! $me: oh, I uh... is there anything else I -- click [link] [comments]  |
| Now see, if you want even better performance... Posted: 28 Jan 2021 12:59 AM PST I work as programmer, not so much IT department, but my colleagues know I'm the "computer guy" and sometimes would ask me for part recommendations One day one my colleague asked for my opinion on "something". Not sure what that's about, since I'm a programmer and he's business analyst, our work don't exactly align, but sure. We book a meeting room that basically doubles as as lounge and he laid his question "What do you think of this" It's a minimum system requirements specs sheet. That sort of thing has been useful ever since pigs can fly, so I rolled my eyes and took a look: My forehead wrinkled. What in the actual? 2 hours of what? What does drive size have to do with speed? Why in the flying fuck would you recommend 5400rpm drive for database processing? And to proclaim it faster than 7200rpm to boot! Where is the SSD? I asked what the hell was that about. Apparently the Second team was told to develop a program to process databases, it was slow AF and they blamed the machine processing it as being too slow, thus they asked for better machine. They're youngsters with bright ideas, the oldest member of the team was 24, and you'd think that whippersnappers would know all that jazz with SSDs. The 2 hours thing was the "expected amount of time needed to finish processing the data", but at no point did the specs indicate how much data they're talking about After briefing my colleague about the fact that no 5400rpm is definitely not faster than 7200rpm, and tell them to put in an SSD there, he thanked me and went out. About an hour later I heard some muffled yelling from another meeting room [link] [comments]  |
| Things just didn't click right away. Posted: 27 Jan 2021 11:52 AM PST Let me start off by saying that the $user is a great guy who is always very respectful of my time and always conveys sincerity in his thanks of all the times I have helped him. I would do anything to help him out any time. So I get a call last night from $user that his laptop is having issues and is very slow and unresponsive. This is a fairly new laptop that he has only had for 2 months or so. $user indicates that it was working fine until earlier in the day when it started to get worse. I walk him through some things and from his description is that when he logs in everything is completely unresponsive. I guess that it is a corrupt profile and have him log into the local admin account which exhibits the same behavior. I ask him if he is going to be in the office the following morning and it turns out he is quarantined due to his entire family having covid... I let him know that since it is completely unresponsive that there isn't much I can do at that time. I let him know that I will get a new one set up for him and run it out to his house first thing in the AM (i don't mind getting paid for a nice quiet drive to break up a Wednesday). I get into the office and set up his new laptop, sync his onedrive and test it out real quick. Everything is fine so I drive it out to his house and leave it out for him to grab. I wasn't about to take the old one due to covid risk and told him to call me if he has any issues. 5 minutes later I get a call that it is doing the same thing... I walk him through a bunch of stuff over the phone while driving back to the office but it sounds like its doing the same thing. I'm racking my brain trying to figure out what is in common so I had him remove the docking station from the equation which has no effect. I let $user know that ill be in the office in ~10 minutes and we can try to do a remote session. I walk him through trying to get connected to wifi which took ~10 more minutes. Once he was connected I remoted into the computer and everything seemed completely normal which he even commented that it seemed normal for me. I have him give it another try and he cant click on anything very well so I ask him to use the track pad buttons and low and behold it works fine. What he was perceiving as delay was just the mouse not registering click due to what I assume was a faulty left mouse button switch (right button worked fine). He was so embarrassed, but happy to be up and running on his normal machine. We just chalked it up to covid making things 1000x more difficult because had I been able to see the machine it would have been resolved in 3 seconds. [link] [comments]  |
| Back in the dim depths of time, with a deeply dim user Posted: 27 Jan 2021 08:45 AM PST Way, waaaaay back in time, I was the whole development and support team for some software used to run a niche hire operation within a larger more general stores. As a result, I was on call pretty much 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. At the time, the software ran on the new and shiny PCDOS2.1. Remote control software was a distant fantasy, so whenever something went wrong, I either had to talk the users through their problem, or get on a train and visit the store ASAP. The stores were all situation in various shitty locations, mostly trading estates in crime-hotspots around London. On this particular occasion, the dramatis personae are the store assistant manager, who I will refer to only as "Mel" (for that was his name), and me (a poor, overworked dev/support guy, who I will refer to as "Tech", as me and Mel are uncomfortably close to each other). This all happened around 7:30pm, with the store due to shut at 8. Phone rings.Mel: There's something wrong with the hire system Tech: OK, describe the problem... Mel: well, [vague and not terribly helpful description, but basically system had crashed and wouldn't restart ] Tech: OK, right have you got a DOS prompt that looks like "A:" (this system was running the business on twin 360K floppies - oh, the 80s!) Mel: Yes Tech: Right, type "dir" and press return. Tell me what you see Mel: [lists files and directories] Tech: OK, good, right now type "CD \hireshop" and press enter. Mel: Where's backslash? [ a note at this point. Mel had been through calls like this for months - this was not our first rodeo ] Tech: describes location. Press that, what do you get? Mel: that's a dash Tech: [wtf? OK, must be a character set issue] Tech: OK, if it's not there, try (wherever the other place backslash could be) Mel: no that's a squiggle Tech: [tilde?] OK, then try this... Me: no, that's an a-in-a-cirle [aka, an @ sign!]. Tech: OK, let's reset the character set. Type (stuff to reset character set, which I can't remember any more). Mel: OK. Tech: Right now type "CD \hireshop" and press enter. Mel: It's still a dash. Tech: OK, pull out the disks, switch the machine off, put the disk back in and switch on Mel: .... OK, it's done that. Tech: Right now type "CD \hireshop" and press enter. Mel: It's still a dash. ... much time passes, going through various iterations of this, me pulling out my hair. It's now 8:15pm, the store should be shut, I should be in the pub, and 45minutes of Mel has me ready to kill something. Mel: (for the 20th or 30th time) It's still a dash. Tech: Hang on... what kind of dash? Mel: A diagonal dash Tech: You @#@**@*$$!!!! I could have understood if this was new to him - his expertise was in power tools not PCDOS; but we'd been through this rigmarole the previous week and suddently now "it's a dash". FML. Shortly after this, all the shops got equipped with 1200 baud modems and pcAnywhere, which was definitely an improvement to my modern lifestyle (and my blood pressure). [link] [comments]  |
| I do not accept the $4000 equipment Posted: 27 Jan 2021 02:23 AM PST Hi to everyone! This is a story that happened to me about 2-3 weeks earlier. I work at [redacted] company in their IT department. I was preparing 4 computers and iPhones for users (I know why pay so much for crap like that?) when it starts. Cast: Me: (well duh). DH: D***head/Douche/Mr-r/NiceGuy (and whatever negative naming you can think of). YL: Young lady and nice user. Here is the story. The first user comes in and is polite - says "hello" and waits patiently while giving small talk while we finish setting up her laptop with her account. Her appointment was supposed to take 1 hour but with the current world conditions and protocols needing to change every week, it took 2.5 hours. When the clock hits 10:45 am, DH comes in (45 minutes late i should say) - and asks for his appointment to start - no hello or nothing - I being with the other user, I ask him with my best customer-service face if he minds waiting for me to finish with YL and then we can start. He nods and starts chatting with her. I don't mind and continue doing my job. As Apple systems are not the best on the market, an update needed to be installed that day on the iPhones and took longer than what was planned. In the mean time they take a coffee and I prepare his iPhone since it would be better to start with the longest to configure. After her computer is finished and her phone is done I ask her to come in and hand over the devices ad she gives me a look of "thank god you finished and help me escape the asshole". Then I leave him in the office for 1 minute to accompany YL to the door (company policy) When I get back I get on the brand new iPhones out of the safe and, before i even start removing the protecting plastic, I hear: " I don't want it" _ I am sorry, what?" _ I don't want it. If it were a iPhone 11 or 12 at least I would say yes but no, not that crap." I understand the point of view where iPhones are not favoured among certain circles but this iPhone was in no way "crap", granted, this model (iPhone SE 2020) is not the best on the market nor the latest but ost companies user the same for one simple reason: Users are like kids, They break everything. So like the french say: "you do not give pearls to pigs". User have a right to refuse hardware handed over to them by the company but this puts them in a risky situation. If they refuse everything the company lends they are not allowed to do their work on a personal device since this is a security breach and in doing so they are submitting themselves to termination for breach of contract and safety protocols. Then I take out the 2018 edition of MacBook Pro 15" (around $3000 in itself) and start it to prepared his account on the computer. "I don't want it." _ You don't want it? the computer? _ No. I refuse to receive this computer. I want that one (pointing to my company computer in testing phase 2019 edition of the same computer). _ I can't give you that one. _ I want this one. _ I can't give you this model as I do not have any in stock. Added to this The only difference on the computer is the keyboard (slightly more travel distance on the 2019 edition, more comfortable to the touch) and the screen (1" bigger) _ I refuse the one you have in hand" _ OK then. Could you please confirm in front of my colleagues acting a witnesses, that you refuse to receive service as the hardware you should receive is not according to you wishes? _ Yes, I refuse to receive the hardware. Then he leaves fuming with anger coming out of nowhere. YL, myself and my colleagues are speechless as to what just happened. Who (TF) does that? Who? When you start in a company you use whatever hardware they give you! The funniest though came later. He left he company! He apparently left a resigning letter on the bosses desk with the following reason for his "resigning": "I received a bad service in IT, a lack of respect and abuse" The actual reason of his resignation was actually the boss asking for the resignation or him being fired. Either have his "honour" intact or lose it properly and duely. Worst and funniest intervention and user i ever had. When i look back on it, I have a nice story to tell my children! :) [link] [comments]  |
| PPPoE is for liars and thieves Posted: 27 Jan 2021 08:09 AM PST Working Helpdesk for Local ISP, got this call about 2 months into the job there... $ME: Me $DC: Dumbass customer $SV: Supervisor So we have a lot of DSL customers in the region as that is the only infrastructure available to a lot of people out in the country. We use PPPoE on our DSL connections and we use a RADIUS server to keep track of their connection and disconnection history. So one day, this customer calls in after having purchased a new router and was needing some help getting it set up. As a DSL customer using a PPPoE connection, we were going to have to configure her router with the proper credentials...or so we thought.
Alrighty, I can see on her file that she is on DSL and hence using PPPoE...can see in our RADIUS logs that she hasn't had a connection for about 16 hours, presumably prompting her to get a new router.
Note: I despise D'Link's. 3/4 of all customer router issues seem to be D'Link I pull up a D'Link emulator so I can try to follow along the setup the best I can
It should be noted that customers choose their own PPPoE credentials when they initially sign up for our service, we don't just randomly assign stuff to people. I was not aware of this at the time though as I had started only recently and this was/is my first tech job...
Oh jeez, here we go.
Bell is without a doubt the most despised ISP in Canada, they're like Comcast but even worse. Other stories for another time...
Sigh. Well OK then, better send $SV an email. Proceed to write up an explanation of the call and send it to $SV, who gives her a call the following day (busy guy with lots to do). He proceeds to straighten her out regarding what PPPoE is, but lo and behold, her ticket remains open for weeks and has 5 pages of notes on it due to the numerous callbacks that she keeps doing... Deep breaths Boba, deep breaths... [link] [comments]  |
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