First and Last Day on the Job Tech Support |
- First and Last Day on the Job
- Power, or ;ack thereof, is important to offices
- It’s a Small World After All
- Supporting clients testing Beta releases
- If you follow instructions, things tend to go smoothly. But you didn't, so have fun!
- Cabbage Head
- What do you mean you lost our T1?
- Angry client blames us in the wrong - karma gets him later
- Two screens issue
- Nope, absolutely no reason it stopped working
- The Lab Screwdriver story
| Posted: 04 Feb 2021 04:55 PM PST This happened in the late 80s. I was working in computer sales while finishing my CS degree. I had applied and gotten a tech support position from a prestigious local business systems retailer. My first day on the job, my first assignment, was to wire and install a new computer at a local chapter of a national non-profit organization's office. I gathered the required materials and hopped in my car arriving at the customer's location at about 10am. I got out of my car and was gathering my first load of equipment to take in the building when the local chapter's CEO came out hotter than a wet hen. He immediately went off on me how their printers weren't working and how <retailer> had sold them a load of shit. He was yelling a near-constant stream of obscenities at me and how worthless I and <retailer> were. I never even had a chance to say a single word when he all of a sudden he grabbed me by my lapels and shook me while yelling that he wasn't going to let me go until it all worked flawlessly. Once he stopped, I informed him I'd be inside in just a moment and he stormed off into the building. I looked across the street at the neighboring service station and the employees gathered outside watching it all go down. I walked over to them and together we called the police. CEO was carted off wearing shiny new bracelets and I returned to the <retailer's> office where I had a short sit down with my boss and informed him I would not be working for him. I was fortunate in that my previous employer was all to happy to take me back and I stayed with them until I finished school. [link] [comments]  |
| Power, or ;ack thereof, is important to offices Posted: 04 Feb 2021 03:46 PM PST So, some years ago, I was working for the American headquarters of a European company. I was the IT guy for the country. When things went well, it was a quiet and dull job. When things went badly, it was me against the world. Our office/warehouse was in a smallish city in New England. We had problems that don't happen in big cities, such as suicidal squirrels who would decide to eat the innards of a pole-mounted transformer. The last microsecond of a squirrel's life is exciting. Like a small grenade, complete with shrapnel. So we were prepared. We had a whole-building UPS system that theoretically could have us running for eight hours at full capacity. (Narrator voice: It did not, in fact, have eight hours' capacity.) So, one fine afternoon, the lights went down. I heard the series of heavy clanks as the UPS' gargantuan relays tripped, and the computers stayed on. I picked up the phone to call the power company, and heard silence. No dial tone. Apparently some previous IT person who installed the phone system didn't think it needed UPS protection. I used my mobile to call the power company. It was a new company that had bought out the old one three months back, so I had to stumble through their voicemail maze for a while before I found the right department. Long story short, since I was not the CEO (who at that time was in Switzerland), they could not tell me anything. I called the CEO, and he conferenced in with me to call them. It wasn't a blackout. They had shut us off for nonpayment. My protest that we had paid them did not sway them at all. We had been customers of the old power company for a decade or more, but this company just knew that the account number we gave had no payments applied to it. (As an aside, having one's CEO swearing in German is a surreal experience. I did learn a few new words though.) Accounting started going through their files looking for canceled checks. Naturally the UPS dropped out right then. It had been designed and built years ago and had received neither maintenance nor upgrades ever since. Accounting then found the last three months' checks to the new power company. They were all cashed, according to the bank. The rep at the power company just about sniffed in disdain- of course we would say that! (Companies like this regularly pay several thousand per month, so as far as she could tell we were trying to skate on more than ten grand in bills). The accountant then asked her to check by account name, not number. Where she found a dormant account with more than ten thousand dollars in credit. The company had been misapplying the payments, and apparently couldn't be bothered to wonder at the magnitude of credit, nor to send us a warning. For reasons that have never made sense to me, it took them two more days before they could get the power back on. The CEO was sharpening up the company legal team when I left. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 04 Feb 2021 07:54 PM PST This tale takes place in the sultry summer of 1999, when all the world was learning the value of listening to the experts in their field regarding an impending global crisis and letting them get on with fixing it, no matter the cost, so well that afterwards everyone applauded them for their wisdom and foresight and decided that the next time the experts sounded the alarm about an impending global crisis, they'd definitely do what the experts said then, too. But let's not get into politics right now. Anyway ... at the time, yours truly was a PFY only about a year into his first big boy's job after graduating from university. I worked for a cellular telecommunications equipment supplier, and in this case we were overseeing our little corner of the world's portion of the global program to upgrade all our customer's SMSC (Short Message Service Centre) systems to the Y2K-compliant one. The plan was that we would build disk packs with all the software preinstalled and preconfigured to that customer's exact settings at a central site and ship them out to the customer's exchange. They would be installed in the rack with the existing gear, and on the night of cutover we would simply shut down the machine, switch the cables to the new disk pack, start it up, and Robert's your father's brother. But as with any other upgrade, the new software needed a little more grunt than the old version did. This particular network operator, who shall be 'O', wanted to run the new software on their old machine. We said it wasn't supported. But, says O, we want to run it on that. But it won't work, we say, citing the single 96MHz CPU and 512MB of RAM compared to the minimum requirements of 2x300MHz-ish CPU and 1GB RAM. But O insisted, and so eventually the bosses gave in, and a disk pack was shipped out to site. Approximately 5 minutes after rebooting the machine at 2am, it was perfectly clear it wasn't going to work. It was already swapping itself to death, and the signalling links - which have very strict timing requirements - were dropping and realigning because it couldn't keep up. We rolled it back. The next day me, the other support engineer, and the senior engineer were summoned to O's offices to explain ourselves. I've never been in another meeting like it. We were ushered into the board room where about 20 suits were already seated on the other side of the long table. We sat down, and they began taking turns putting the boot in. The senior engineer was a large Glaswegian gentleman with stereotypical Scottish temper and before very long he was leaning across the table with a fist in the air, only restrained from punching one O guy directly in the face by my other colleague, who was very gently resting her hand on his arm. After the ritual kicking was complete and we returned to the office, I felt free to let rip my opinion of the legendarily fucking uselessness of everyone I'd ever dealt with at O, and how if they paid peanuts to hire monkeys that would be a vast improvement in technical skill etc. He wagged his finger at me and said, "Listen son, there's a miserable bastard pecking order in this office and I'm first." He certainly made me the man I am today. Fast forward to 2003 and I've had enough daily international travel and moved countries to join the operator I spent most of my time at, figuring I liked them and if I was going to be there every day anyway I may as well live there. We were running an RFP to select a vendor to supply our brand new 3G network equipment. It was a joint selection with the sister operator back in my home country. And so it was that this day we were undertaking presentations from prospective vendors at sister operator's offices when in walks a man. A familiar man, who was once never punched, and whom it is now my turn to be introduced to. "Hi," he says. "I'm G from Vendor. How are you today?" "Good," I reply, and expose my teeth. "I remember you. You worked for O when I worked for Other Vendor on the Y2K SMSC upgrade." He went pale, mumbled something, and tried not to make further eye contact. It's a small country, and a small industry. Don't fuck over the hired help, folks. Edit: TL;DR customer who tried to end my career later tried to sell me something instead. [link] [comments]  |
| Supporting clients testing Beta releases Posted: 04 Feb 2021 05:03 PM PST Many years ago our company rotated programmers through client support to give us the "user experience". It also gave me the experience of what happens when you don't double check your beta release. I was the leader on a commercial package that included many new features as well as multi-language support. For our internal testing, we created a "user-abusive" language. Nothing obscene, more like "your entry is incorrect and you're a great disappointment to your parents". Both the developers and testers had a great time on the update. Unfortunately I messed up on the beta image build and left the default language as "user abusive". The beta went out to some of my companies most important clients. A week later the CIO from one of the top clients visits with the president of the company to discuss a few enhancements they wanted in the full release and to say how their users loved the "abusive" language. I nearly lost my job and I had to take every support call from all the beta clients until the full release was issued. On a side note, at the big client CIO's request I sent them the "abusive" language pack with instructions on how to enable/disable. [link] [comments]  |
| If you follow instructions, things tend to go smoothly. But you didn't, so have fun! Posted: 04 Feb 2021 12:16 PM PST I provide support for 70ish dispatch locations that collectively have over 1300 Android tablets managed through AirWatch. They're pretty locked down, and use a company enforced launcher to restrict app access. An update was pushed out the other day to update the license key for said launcher, but these tablets can sometimes go days or weeks without being used, depending on the dispatch center, so updates never really go smoothly. So I've been dealing with an influx of launcher error tickets. Fix is simple, get the serial number, look up in AirWatch, repush the update. Takes about 15 minutes. But this lady... I will say that the managers of these dispatch centers aren't the most tech savvy, but I assumed could follow basic instructions. I get a ticket from her about two tablets suffering from this issue. Reply back requesting serials, and asking her to plug them in. I also made sure to mention the solution would only take 15 minutes, and then she'd be good. I hear back an HOUR later, with her stating she's resolved the issue. How you ask? By wiping the tablet and re-enrolling it from scratch (theyre not locked out of wiping because there are legitimate times where they need to, unfortunately). When I asked why she'd done so, she explained she wanted to make sure it was ready before it was needed, as she wasn't sure how long the solution would take... Well, congrats. You turned a 15 minute fix into a god knows how long one, since these tablets take forever to sync back up after an enrollment. As of now, app installation still hasn't finished... [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Feb 2021 01:19 AM PST Many moons ago I worked at the IT help desk for a bank. There was about 20-25 of us on the first line, taking calls. It was mostly Office related, some exotic applications, remote reimages and also password resets. We were well equipped and processes and procedures were incredibly well setup, as one would expect from a bank. The story below is a fond memory of a user who was very nice on the phone, and I thought it was quite funny. So one morning I got a call from a guy requesting a password reset. No big deal, I requested to see a copy ID so he faxed over his passport. I verified the name and then shredded the copy as we always did. Reset his password, checked the box for him to be forced to pick a new password at the next logon, and he seemed happy and was on his way again. Now remember there were a few dozen of us on call with an incoming call queue that dispatched incoming calls based on wait time for each agent (whoever hadn't had a call the longest was up next). So I take a few other calls and then I pick up and hear a familiar voice. It's the password guy again. Forgot the password he changed right after our previous call. No big deal, password policy was set up so that using old passwords was impossible so it can be a little tricky making up a new one. We go through the motions again and he's happily on his was yet again. A few hours pass, and then I got the same guy on the line. Forgot his password again. No big deal, three is the magic number and it's going to be alright. The guy is apologetic and calls himself an idiot for wasting my time. I laugh it away, all in a day's work. But then he says he has an idea. "Change my password to Cabbage Head, because that's what I am." If I could please not have him change the password at next login. I figure it couldn't hurt that much and it might let him do his job without the lockouts so I comply. He thanks me and wishes me good luck. And I never heard from him again. [link] [comments]  |
| What do you mean you lost our T1? Posted: 04 Feb 2021 02:54 PM PST I mentioned this in a comment and decided that I'd write up what happened as best I can remember it. Many moons ago I worked for a North American copy/print company. This takes place sometime in 1998, back when home internet was rare, smartphones didn't exist and I was a young college student "managing" the computer section of the copy/print store I was at. The company had recently replaced our ISDN lines with two bands of T1 for data. That was a rather fun project since I got to help rack the SSR 2000 and other network equipment I had never seen before. One day the internet just stops working, people are paying to use our computers to write papers, print things out and go onto the new and scary World Wide Web. I looked into our network closet and das blinken lights are blinking so I call our help desk. They can't do much at Level 1 but they get all of the info and escalate it. A day later I get a call from either someone who's L2 or NOC, I can't remember. We do some simple ping and trace tests. The internal network is fine as I can print to our network printers and can ping them, I just can't get out of the building. More info is collected and I hang up. The lack of internet access was starting to become a problem. Part of our business was document creation. People would pay us to make flyers and the like, except we didn't do it locally. We'd fax or email the order info to our in-house team to do all the work and they'd drop it on an FTP for us to retrieve. I being the techy kind of person had a computer at home and very slow DSL. So in a giant violation of privacy I would log into the FTP at home, burn everything to a CD and bring it to the store when I started at 2pm. A week or so goes by and we don't have internet and I haven't heard anything new. Then I get a call from someone in IT at the corporate office. The company had a national account with the big yellow provider. Then the usual last mile copper arrangements for each site. The entire week was big yellow arguing with the Death Star on where the problem was. Until big yellow figured out what happened. Somewhere, someone lost or misplaced or failed entirely to properly list our circuit. Someone up the street from us had put in an order for a circuit and big yellow finding an active but unlisted circuit, terminated it. So the circuit was cut off from us and re-leased to a local net cafe up the street. A ETA of two weeks was given to get a new circuit activated for us. We ended up not having internet at the store for close to a month. I imagine a head somewhere rolled, copy/print had I think 500+ locations across the US at the time and almost every location had been upgraded to the T1. My manager at the time got to be on a conference call with our corporate and big yellow's corporate and we were credited 3 months of service to make up for the lost sales after he raised a stink. A week after the circuit went live again I got a call from the account manager at big yellow apologizing for the problem. [link] [comments]  |
| Angry client blames us in the wrong - karma gets him later Posted: 04 Feb 2021 05:07 PM PST Working for an IT Company in the late 1990's we service clients all over Ireland. One client was a concrete company. The owner (Len) was quite wealthy but had a reputation for having an explosive temper...and would blow up for no reason. We were always walking on eggshells while there just because of his reputation, and one day we experienced his temper. I didn't smoke but the girl with me (Helga) was a smoker. We had been there at this concrete company all day and when our Boss (Derek) arrived to pick us up, he was met in the corridor by Len. Derek was speechless as Len screamed about how these 'kids' (meaning Helga and I...both in our early 20's) had been out in front of his business smoking, and how terrible it made his business look, and how he wasn't running a creche. Keep in mind, this business was out the country and only the employees usually went past the main entrance. Helga and I both looked at one another as Len screamed a tirade at Derek. He was shouting so loud everyone in the office could hear, and his voice would actually break in places, he was so out of control. When the tirade ended, Len told Derek NEVER to send 'those kids' to his business again, and stormed off. Derek sheepishly walked into the room we were in, and he was white from shock. He asked why we were smoking out front. We both said we were not. He believed us but just said 'let's go' Well it turns out Derek got a call next day from one of the ladies in Len's concrete company explaining that THEY had a young girl in for summer work experience and it was HER that had smoked out front. Len had saw her from a distance and assumed she was with us! He never apologized to Derek or us, but we were told we could still do work at his business. (what a privilege!) Anyway, some time later Karma kicked in. I heard this story from a neighbour of Len's a while later (a guy I worked with from the same town as Len). Len owned several large haulage trucks and trailers for delivering expensive concrete beams & tanks his company manufactured. He would scream at his truck drivers if the trucks were not perfectly parked side by side close to each other at the end of the day, and did just that one evening at a new driver..so the guy moved the truck nice and close to the next one. That night/evening one of them went on fire (not sure how) and the fire spread to another 1 or two...because they were parked so close to each other LOL - Imagine how angry that made Len...but there's more.. Pretty soon after he replaced them (likely covered by insurance) one of them was at the docks to load heavy concrete beams onto a ferry and the captain of the ferry insisted that he drive the truck on, to unload. The truck driver had wanted to unload from the dock, but the captain insisted he drive the truck on - While driving on, the ferry tipped and the truck, trailer, and beams all dumped into the water. Apparently, insurance refused to cover it, for some reason (some technicality about it happening off Irish soil?..at sea?) - Anyway, Len blew his top again LOL Note: I got the second (karma) story second-hand so I'm not sure if all the details are 100% correct but the guy who told me was confident it was true because he's from the same town and everyone delighted in telling that story, because Len was notorious from his temper tantrums...and not liked very much [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 04 Feb 2021 07:43 AM PST So set the scene a little, I work in tech support and generally we give every user 2 monitors if they want as they are about £80 each and we are a 50 million pound business so small expense for the productivity gains. So someone requested to have two screens as she was doing more spreadsheet work and had been ok'd by her line manager. I set her up with two monitors no problems. She's had these monitors for a month or so now. Today she rings up and says I keep getting a bounce back from an email so I go ok I'll remote in and have a look. While we are on the phone she says "since I've had these two screens lots of stuff has gone wrong like this", I politely reply "I don't think this will be caused by having two screens" Get onto her computer and she shows me her sending an email and then bounce back that comes through. Then this times she's says "since I've had this new screen I've not been able to book meeting rooms as well" I less politely reply "(female name beginning with K) there is no way that having two screens is causing that bounce back and you also not been able to book meetings" She says "ok but it's still not working and show the bounce back email" I look into the bounce back and turns out she has just spelt her email wrong multiple times which then meant it was popping up in her recent address in outlook and missed the 'r' of manufacturing. So anytime she was sending emails to herself or adding herself to a meeting she was using the wrong email. Never had someone so convinced a 2nd monitor was causing an email issue like surely apply some logic but nope obviously not haha [link] [comments]  |
| Nope, absolutely no reason it stopped working Posted: 04 Feb 2021 02:11 PM PST Posting here feels.....nostalgic. Thought of one from my days as desktop support. Standard fare $M -me $User is well the user. As I'm sure many of us do, I had my favorite users. You know the ones, those who always seem to have something going wrong but you enjoy their company so you don't mind. Well, this particular $user would come to me at least once a month with something. This time she brought me her company-issued cell phone. This was long enough ago that we could open them up and replace parts if necessary. Conversation went something like this: $User: HEY [redacted]! I'm having trouble with my phone. It doesn't want to work. I take the phone and do a quick visual inspection for cracks or other signs of obvious damage but don't see any. I do SMELL something weird though. yes, occasionally we need to smell test our technology for those reading this who are just starting. Anywhoo, I open the case up and the smell is rancid. The phone innards are sticky and, of course, the moisture sensors are all nice and pink. $Me: Hey $user, why does it smell like this and what did you drop it in? Now, had she not been one of my favorites, I would have had to get approval due to the damage. As we all know though, there are ways around that. That phone went very far away from me and I had to wash my hands several times. TLDR: Chai Tea and phones don't mix, especially after significant time has passed. Be nice to you IT folks, it might pay off. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 04 Feb 2021 01:04 PM PST (Sorry mods! Reposting with the appropriate amount of stories this time. Also I mentioned this story in a previous comment, but wanted to give it its own post.) Professors, in my experience, do not know anything about electricity. I don't expect anyone I meet to know anything about computers. Computers, to many, are mysterious and scary beasts, and the University pays IT staff small amounts of money so professors don't need to worry about them. But I, young and naive as I was, did expect faculty and staff to have a basic understanding of what a surge protector was, why you shouldn't get it wet, and what happens when you plug something into it. Nope. --- A call came in from one of our flightier professors, reporting a serious problem: all of the computers in the department computer lab had turned off at the same time.
We agreed that this seemed to be a power problem. Almost.
Sigh. Yes, of course. I went to the lab in question. On the way I passed a man in the hallway, in his thirties and normal clothes, looking at a screwdriver. That's weird, even for this building, I thought. Going into the lab, I gave my professional observation that, yep, the lights and computers were indeed off, and while there were very few tests I could perform on the off computers aside from pushing the ON button and determining nothing happened, I was 99.9% certain that the computers had not caused the problem and this was a matter for facilities.
What. I leaned back out into the hallway and saw screwdriver man just disappearing out of sight. What I remember most is, he didn't seem to be malicious or pulling a prank. Just a dude having a bored time with a screwdriver, I guess. I gave my professional opinion that the guy with the screwdriver indeed could be the culprit. Ticket closed. [link] [comments]  |
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