If you call your phone number from you phone.... Tech Support |
- If you call your phone number from you phone....
- There’s a ghost!!!
- Can you convert a PDF to a word document for me?
- Long Post: “Tech Support This is.....Hold on!”
- THE BUILDING IS ON FIRE - HELP
- Old Solutions Are the Best(?) Solutions
- "Doesn't that say more about you?"
- Scan-to-Email, or just Email?
- It Would've Been Easier Had You Just Listened
- The haunted laptop
| If you call your phone number from you phone.... Posted: 24 Feb 2021 04:54 PM PST I'm a junior sysadmin for a small hospital in the middle of nowhere. I spend at least half of my day showing people how to copy links and paste them into browsers and telling people "If you open 40 emails, 3 large excel sheets and 2 50-page word docs all at one time, you computer will crash." Today was a new low:User: "I want to test to see if my extension is working, but whenever I call my extension, it doesn't ring through. I keep getting my voicemail." Me: "Are you calling from your extension or an outside phone?" User: "My extension." It took me a moment to comprehend what he just said and figure out a way to tell him what was going on without telling him he was a freaking idiot. Me: "What happens if you call your house phone number from your house phone?" User: "I get my voicemail." It still didn't seem to connect for him. Me: "What happens if you call your cell phone number from your cell phone?" User: "I get my voicemail." I pause for a moment, waiting for that lightbulb moment. User: "Oh, God. I'm such an idiot. Sorry. I'll try calling my extension from my cell phone. Have a good day!" [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Feb 2021 08:36 PM PST TLDR at the bottom. I'm an "IT Professional" and work for a major university in the Southeastern United States, I am a one man show for two sites with about 90 employees and 100 students. If it's got a plug on the user side of the wall, I get called. I'm five hours away from the mothership. We do things a bit different because the university doesn't pay for every bell, whistle, or need out here. The faculty have to pay for things out of their own budget that's generated through grants and a smallish stipend for discretionary use. If it ain't in a grant, you have to find another way to pay for it. One of my senior faculty killed some keys on her very old, ergonomic, split keyboard. It was old, used up, and needed to be replaced. It's a non-inlaid 10-key keyboard that has an ergonomic mouse. Replacement for the keyboard with a new separate 10-key was $75. Add a new mouse, and it was $140. This of course meant they are going to save the $65 and just go with the keyboard and 10-key. Cool, I'm sure you're aware, this means using two dongles because the maker can't imagine allowing all of their devices to talk to one. I swapped out the keyboard, placed the new 10-key, added the new dongle, and went about my day. A week later, the professor comes to me that there's a ghost in her office. The keyboard just randomly types or deletes characters, cursor walks up the screen, just random shit, even happened when she was on a remote connection, but....,BUT...., can never be duplicated when I was in the room. Other people have seen it. At least three. But not me. This professor, jeebus love her, is high maintenance at times. I love dealing with her, because I tell her what we need to do, and she does it, even if she doesn't like it. So of course I overlook her frantic cries for help and go when she calls. I have the utmost respect for her. She's at the top level of her field, but trusts the least educated person in the room when he tells her something, "because that's your thing". Finally, she couldn't take it anymore. Random shit when I wasn't there (remember two sites). She recorded it with her phone, sent me the recording, and went to lunch. I happened to be coming onsite when she sent the recording. We met in the parking lot, and I could tell that she was upset by the look in her eyes. I promised I'd go find the issue, or I'd replace all the equipment on her desk. I went in, she's still logged on (locked offices, so it's ok), I get to work. Watch her video...holy shit, I can duplicate it!!! I stand up to check it, and the issue stops. I sit back down, as soon as I touch the keyboard, it starts again. I stand, it stops. I sit it starts. I stand, it keeps going. She's got an adjustable tabletop standing desk. She uses it religiously. EXCEPT when other people are in the room because she's taller than 100% of our staff, so she sits to be on eye level with them. I go to my office four doors away to grab my tool kit since I'm convinced it's stuck caps. Then I see it. Her old keyboard. It's on my desk with an inventory notebook laying on top of it. I moved the notebook, flipped the keyboard over, pulled the batteries, and left the carcass laying. Went back to her office and the ghost was gone. From wall to wall our offices are 48'. Her computer is on the southwestern wall, my desk is on the northeastern wall. Her old keyboard was two feet in. Two dongles. When she stood, her body blocked the signal from the old keyboard 40' away. When she sat, it let the signal in. When I'm in the room, she never sits because we're almost the same height, and she steps aside and lets me drive when there's an issue. There was a ghost!!! It was me, and my inventory notebook, laying on her old keyboard all along. TLDR: I replaced a keyboard without completely getting rid of the old one and caused a user problems. [link] [comments]  |
| Can you convert a PDF to a word document for me? Posted: 24 Feb 2021 04:58 AM PST After the basics of getting the customer name, the school, and the machine details, which she could not provide. Me: You can do this yourself by finding the pdf in downloads, highlighting the doc by clicking onto it and right-clicking, and use the open with word option, then you can save it as a word document. Customer: Oh can't you remote on and do that for me I am in the middle of something? Me: Our services are for technical issues like if you have no option to open with or it comes up with an error when you try to do this, this is a relatively easy task that takes only a couple of seconds. Getting remote setup on your machine would actually take longer as you said you didn't understand how to provide your machine name. Customer: Oh-oh, nevermind I'll log a ticket! Me: Feel free, I'll provide written instructions to you so you can convert pdf's to word. Customer: No no, so you convert it and send it back. Me: We have currently three schools down due to a power outage, it will take a while for one of us to respond to a low priority ticket, it'll be quicker if you follow my instructions. In addition, as I explained this is not a technology fault for us to fix, the standard protocol is to send you written instructions anybody that gets the ticket will do so. Customer: I thought you were here to assist us with our job? Nevermind. Bye bye- the administrator who can't do basic tasks. We are here to help you, if the technology refuses to co-operate and do a task for you, not to remote on and complete that task for you because you do not know how to do it. We can provide you instructions on how to do it, even training but we will charge. Considering you have worked at the school for over 15 years, you know how to convert a PDF. Don't play dumb on me. If I was having a less stressful day, and she provided the machine information I would have remoted on and showed her and got her to do it and let her know why it's the way it is. Not able to understand basic instruction = no remote session. [link] [comments]  |
| Long Post: “Tech Support This is.....Hold on!” Posted: 24 Feb 2021 03:39 PM PST Just a warning this is a bit of a lengthy post, want to give you a great idea of what this TFTS is about. And I have plenty more to share down the road. So I work for an IT Firm apart of the tech support help desk team at my company. To give you an idea we have a couple of layers of tech support where you have the help desk that takes calls all day and then you have our on site tech support. Any who. Our company services clients in the education, health care, and corporate fields mainly in the Midwest with a couple in VA, PA, and NY, making sure their stuff works, typical IT support. Around the time the end of the summer rolled around, we partnered with a new client due to them joining a healthcare branch that we already service. So we get typical support calls regarding assistance with setting things up, new hire tickets, so forth. However we had one lady who worked for the company in charge of putting in tech support tickets. I will refer to this lady as "C" for client and for privacy reasons. This lady would call in what seems to be every day at times multiple times about tickets she would put in. For my one co-workers sanity, I'll refer to my co-worker as HDT Helpdesk Tech. It seemed like he would always get her calls. Continuing with the story, me and HDT have this running gag of every time she would call in, we would send a message in Teams with either a gif (either involving alcohol or a white flag) will usually have a moment to press "F" to pay respects. When this lady calls, for any sane person, these calls typically take 5 minutes which would require us to reach out to the main tech for the client for updates, no biggie. This lady would call in demanding ticket updates and to be done ASAP and they would usually be for new laptops or new user accounts . 5 minutes after she would put the ticket in. So at first, we would post in our escalation channel to see if we get an update. No biggie and tell her what the update is. Not too bad. She calls again, demanding another update for the same damn ticket! We tell her again that we have no new updates. But that was just the tip of the iceberg with her. A couple of months go by, their pretty settled in by now. I get a call from the client. Here is my experience with C over a simple ticket that should of taken at least a 5 minute call: Me: Tech Support this is (insert name) how may I help.... C: Hold on! Me: All good take your time. C: Mhm *Five minutes later when she acknowledges me back Me: Hi (callers name) how may I help? C: Yes I have an issue with my MS Word and I need it fixed ASAP. Me: No problem, can I get your name as well as the name of your company to put a ticket in? (Protocol before we start a remote support connection) C: Hold on! (Types frantically) C: Sorry, my name is (insert name) and I work for (insert workplace) in (location) Me: Alright, thank you! I'll go ahead and get a remote session started for you. Can you head to (remote support site name).com and I will provide a pin code for you. C: Hold on!
C: Ok what's the code? Me: (Provides code and instructions) C: Hold on! Me: Yep! (Already PO'd by this lady)
Me: Alright can you show me what is going... (C interrupts me again.)
C: Yes this is what is going on. (Shows me that her font is different from the rest of the document) Me: (In my head thinking are you bleeping kidding me), see's that her font was italicized and could of been done her self instead of calling and wasting almost an hour at that point.) Me: Did you know your font is set italics? C: crickets Me: Un-click the italics font and her issue is resolved Call ends, I put my time in the ticket as well as my troubleshooting steps. I immediately mention this to HDT about my struggles. Turn out he was on the phone with her the day before trying to get updates and he kept getting interrupted. Mind you it's been an ongoing issue with this lady holding up one of the help desk techs and causing our phone queue to pile up. He mentioned this to the head tech for the client. A couple weeks go by, and all is too quiet... I finally return to the office after working from home for almost a year and talked with the head tech my self and told him my experience with C and he told me that she shouldn't be a problem any more. All I had to say is "Thank you Baby Jesus!" Turns out this lady lost her role to put in tech support tickets for her company and the only time I heard from her since was from our email queue and for a quick question that surprisingly didn't take too long. After hearing about her losing her role, I wished I could of popped some champagne and celebrated lol! That is one of my experiences working in the IT industry. [link] [comments]  |
| THE BUILDING IS ON FIRE - HELP Posted: 24 Feb 2021 07:33 AM PST I work for a company that takes care of LED walls and displays in hotels/public spaces/stores etc. I received a call from a customer complaining about their display out front of their store: - it's black (off) - it's my fault - they're losing a lot of money because they can't play ads I Start going through the usual troubleshooting steps, but all I can really hear are alarms in the background, but we press on: Me: "Ok, go to the control machine - the only monitor in the rack" Customer: "Ok, that screen is black too, this is unacceptable" Me: "Alright, can you tell me if the computer is on - it's labelled 'CONTROL' on the front." Customer: "FINE, let me get a flashlight..." Me: "You're in your server room, why do you need a flashlight?" Customer: "There's a fire in the electrical room genius - the power is out to the whole building so it's dark in here. Can't you hear the alarms??" Me: *chuckling* "Ok sir, there's literally nothing I can do without power, but at least we've found the source of your problem." The UPS had died because he had cheaped out and decided, against our advice, to buy one that'd last all of 3 minutes - again, my fault. He kept going on about this - "the computer should stay on!" He wouldn't accept my reasoning that the big LED wall also needed power... just the computer being on via UPS wouldn't fix it. I ended up needing to cut him off and told him to call back when the power was back on - and wouldn't you know it, the system turned back on by itself exactly as designed. [link] [comments]  |
| Old Solutions Are the Best(?) Solutions Posted: 24 Feb 2021 10:49 AM PST At a certain University, Dr. T was one of Those professors. The reason we still stocked our loaner pool with a USB JAZ drive. The only professor with a working carousel slide projector and accompanying boxes of tiny photos. Someone who would call in, say "the classroom computer isn't working", and hang up without waiting for a reply, which meant I had to go door to door looking for which classroom she was in today. She was very nice, but had nearly every classic computer problem in the book. In all my years in IT, she was the only one I resolved a login issue with "visited office and pushed CAPS LOCK for user". Sometime around 2017, she called and said her computer wouldn't start. I assumed it had to be power related, especially since her office was in our Power Problem building. I asked if she was sure she had hit the ON button for both the computer and the monitor - were the lights glowing? She was pretty sure, yes. Great. Three mile round trip for me to make sure. But when I arrived at her desk, I found she was right. Her computer wouldn't start, and in a way no tech who wants to close tickets quickly wants see. It stuck at the BIOS, with a stark black and white,
Trying to boot into Safe Mode resulted in the same error. That was not good. She was waiting beside me, fretting. While I usually could reassure her that her problem would be quickly fixed and her files were safe, I was drawing a big blank here. If the computer was so corrupted it couldn't even find its OS, the files might be toast. At the very least, I would need to reimage the machine, and risk losing what hadn't been backed up. But the words were nagging at me. ABORT, REBOOT, RETRY. I knew that mantra from somewhere, but where? Old recesses of my brain, untouched for years, started to stir and shake off cobwebs. Suddenly, it hit me! I leaned over and ejected the floppy from the A:/ drive. Ticket closed! [link] [comments]  |
| "Doesn't that say more about you?" Posted: 24 Feb 2021 05:30 AM PST Every day two people at my office are selected to monitor and fix tickets in our priority queue. Yesterday I saw a ticket that I just found bizarre. It was mostly handled by other people, I just saw the user's last message. The user contacted us because she needed help to factory reset her phone. My colleague sent out our standard email asking for the phone's serial number. The email also asks for a contact number and the address of her office, in case we need a to send a technician, which we often do with phones since we can't remote them. We need to serial number to make sure it's one of our phones and not her private phone, since her phone wouldn't be covered by the support. And because if she can't manage to reset it, we can use the serial number to verify that it is her phone, and then reset it remotely. Anyway, she responded with her adress and phone number. No serial number. So another colleague sent out another email informing her that we do in fact need the serial number. The email (and the one we sent last time) included a full guide with pictures telling her how to find the serial number. All you need to do is go to settings, hit "general" and then "about". Then scroll down to "Serial number". Pictures showed her every step of the way. And I have never heard a single complaint that the guide was too complicated or hard to follow. Her response: "I don't understand what you are asking for? I thought I sent you all the information you needed." Yet again, one of my colleagues explained what the serial number is, what it is used for, and how to find it (with pictures). She simply responds that she can't find it. We tell her to go and see her local telephone manager (or whatever the title is in English) and check with them, since they have all the serial numbers available. The user then comes back and gives us her IMEI number. We can't track phones using those, so we clarified that we need a serial number, not an IMEI number. This time she cues the phone manager in to the mail conversation, and the phone manager tells us she only has the IMEI numbers, and that she has never heard that phones have serial numbers besides the IMEI. Keeping track of all the serial numbers is literally her job, but oh well. So we now try to inform both of them how the serial number works. And then we get to the last message, the one I was there for. It was from the user, simply saying: "You know what? You can just forget about this ticket. I've tried repeatedly to get you to help me and you've gotten nowhere and have been no help at all. Yesterday I caved in and asked my husband for help. It took him all of three minutes to fix what you couldn't do in over a week. I really question your competence if this was that hard for you to fix." I just sat there for a bit staring at the message. Lady, doesn't that say more about you? How are we the incompetent ones when you're the one who asked for help for something that you could have solved in three minutes? Something we could have solved even faster if you had just provided us the information we asked for. The one you couldn't find no matter how many times we showed you where to find it. I feel like she's the type of person who would struggle to pour water out of a boot even with the instructions written on the heel. I just closed the ticket without a comment and went on with my day. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Feb 2021 02:07 PM PST So I've been a reader on here for a long time now, but this is my first post. Not a very long one, but hopefully it will be enjoyable to everyone! Cast: So $Cousin calls me one day for help sending scans via email (I had set up an HP OfficeJet with a UWP HP app and configured it with his email a while ago, and it wasn't working quite right). I log on remotely and take a look and adjust a few settings, and then tell him to give it another try. At this point, I assume he has something ready to scan in his HP OfficeJet, but he proceeds to take over the computer to print out a document. I first thought that perhaps he was mistaking scanning for printing (or vice versa) so I ask him what he's doing. He tells me...get ready for this...that he prints out what he wants to email, then scans it using the HP OfficeJet, and then emails it via the UWP app. I'm speechless for a few seconds, and then start laughing a bit (he's a cool guy so he didn't take any offense). I then explain to him that he could simply just attach whatever he wants to email right from his computer without having to first print it, scan it back in, and then email it (and no, he didn't care about the file format). We both have a good chuckle, and I still make sure that the UWP app is working for when he needs to scan in something that isn't already on his computer. TL;DR - my cousin thinks the only way to email documents on his computer is to first print them, then scan them back in, and then email them from the scan program [link] [comments]  |
| It Would've Been Easier Had You Just Listened Posted: 24 Feb 2021 09:07 AM PST Hello all, The story I have for you all today is one that happened yesterday, and I wouldn't have posted it at all if not for being able to witness the after effects of the call. The cast is fairly simple for this one;
Our story begins late into the afternoon, as I'm ready to take my final break of the day after my next call. Then the call comes in;
A few moments go by and the user locates the device, I get the serial number from her and learn that the device is out of warranty. So I get the approval and order a replacement device for the user as we don't just replace the batteries.
So I confirm the address of the site and have the user restart the modem and meraki. As she's doing this I attempt to pull up the site name and I can't seem to find it.
She proceeded to provide the old address, and I checked with a tier 2 as to how to proceed. I was informed to send the ticket to our in house network team so they could make the correction then it would be sent to the proper team for resolution. I relay the information to the user, and she relays it to her boss the executive director or Karen. She then hands the phone to Karen, at her request I assume, and then the bad decisions began.
I informed her that I can't guarantee a timeframe that she can expect to hear from the network team, as they are a separate team from us. She didn't like this very much and informed me of that fact.
She then disconnected the call. I checked with my level 2 on what to do for this, and he recommended that I resolve the networking ticket and explain what happened. Now this is where the story would normally end my dear redditors, but ohhhh no it goes on. An hour or so after the call ended I see an email response to the purchasing request I put in for the battery backup. Karen, who was CC'd to the original email, responded to the email not only canceling the request, but also requesting that someone come out to install the spare battery that they already had at the site. Something that, as mentioned to her before, we do not do. And once again you think that would be the end, but it keeps getting better. An hour or so after I clock out I see a message in our teams chat. Who called back in? Karen, and she wanted the replacement battery backup sent after all. So the person she's talking to re-opened the ticket and sent an email to our purchasing department that the order was canceled in error. She then called back in today, and went ahead to get the aforementioned networking issue addressed, I can only guess that her boss told her to go through the proper channels. Needless to say that I got a very good laugh at both of these callbacks, since had she just listened she wouldn't need to look like an idiot. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Feb 2021 12:55 PM PST During the past weeks I received a couple of calls from a user working from home with a not that bad laptop (i5, 8Gb, ssd) with issues ranging from windows opening/closing without user intervention to popup menus popping up unrequested and some other weird behaviour I've not been able to explain. After the usual troubleshooting (did you turn it off and on again?), questions about past experiences (does any child used the laptop as a shield during a battle?), wild guesses (maybe anything dripped onto the laptop?) and an half joke about some kind of 'possession' or haunting, we agreed on a meeting at the office to find a solution. The user arrived with a video of the haunted machine performing solo, with full view of mouse & keyboard untouched as a proof of this strange, unusual, weird behaviour. And obviously, no clue about what's going on. As soon as I open the lid I notice a greasy patch on the touchpad, conveniently located in a corner on the little gap between touchpad and chassis. My bad, because asking if anything is dripping ONto, does not include something slowly sliding INto... [link] [comments]  |
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