Are you sure you want to fire me? Tech Support |
- Are you sure you want to fire me?
- "This Mouse Doesn't Work."
- Haranguetangle
- "I think there's fraud on my SSN"
- Do what I mean, not what I say.
- What do I DOOOOOOOOO (screenshot)
| Are you sure you want to fire me? Posted: 25 Mar 2022 03:23 PM PDT English is not my native language so pls forgive any typos.. Couple of years ago I worked in a big energy infrastructure company. I worked there for over 4 years, starting out as a technician. But because I'm a very IT oriented person, I soon found myself doing server maintenance and also new server room builds. Because of the nature of the industry in my country I happened to be one of the few onsite IT support guys in the whole country. Later I found myself to be the only one since all the others moved to different positions. I also did regular energy production maintenance, because for some reason the company felt they didn't need a full time onsite IT support. About 3 and half years to my employment, I was diagnosed with an illness that affected my production maintenance part greatly. In fact, I couldn't do that anymore at all. I won't go into details with this. I could and was still doing the onsite IT support and installations since I was by far the most qualified and also the only one who was doing that at the moment. Our main IT crew was located in another country but I still made friends with most of them in my years of onsite IT support. At some point when the equipment was already aged many years we started having problems with it. I begun having jobs hundreds of kilometers away, and also in completely different maintenance areas as well (because all of the other support guys moved to a different positions). I had a colleague in maintenance, that I started to take along to some of the jobs, just because I really needed some help. Some of the tasks took several days, sometimes even a week of travelling to do them all. He wasn't really qualified for IT, but I thought he'll learn as I teach him. It turned out he actually learned some, but he was also very sloppy and got distracted very quickly. One time he even got himself electrocuted with the mains rail when doing server maintenance. But it is a completely different story. It turned out that the company was not happy because of the illness I had, and wanted me out. I could still do the IT stuff completely fine, but since that was not the position they hired me for, they started to give me some hard time. I contacted some of my colleagues abroad and they all said they really needed me for IT support and installations. After some time, the "big bosses" decided they didn't need me anymore since I was not able to do the work they originally hired me for. Let me remind you at this time I was the only onsite IT support guy in the whole country that was qualified to do that job. Some months go by and I was eventually fired. I tried to fight this termination with a union lawyer, with my boss and other colleagues in the maintenance, but with no luck. I had 6 months left and then I was out. I had no problem doing IT support because my illness didn't really affect that part of the job. Almost immediately after I was no longer working, I started getting phone calls from the colleague I previously tried to train for the same job I was doing. He had his hands full with all the stuff I used to do before, but I could clearly tell he had not listened the half of what I told him. He was calling me to ask for the most basic questions of how to do maintenance and troubleshooting. I was dumbfounded that they actually moved this guy to IT support, since he had absolutely no idea how to do it, and I also recall telling my boss that this guy is no fit for this job. After awhile I head that the local boss (who was a really nice guy and on my side) was in trouble because he had no qualified local IT support for server maintenance and the guys abroad were asking what happened to me and they needed stuff to be done. To this date they haven't got anyone qualified to do the job and the guys abroad regularly have to travel hundreds or even thousands of kilometers to do maintenance and installations that I previously completed in some hours. I can't see how the company saved money on this. It's crazy how detached most of the management is from the actual work and tasks. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 25 Mar 2022 09:36 AM PDT A short and fun one. I'm the head of IT at a medical facility, and I was doing my daily walkthrough today (because people tend to forget something's wrong until they see the one responsible for it) when I was stopped by one of our newly hired front desk staff ($FD1). "Mf9769," she says, "this computer's mouse doesn't work." So I turn around and look at the computer she's pointing too, and it's clearly got a brand new wireless mouse (y'all have probably guessed where this is going right about now). Those batteries last months, so it can't be a dead battery. So I walk up, and start moving the mouse around, at which point I hear, from about 5 feet away ($FD2), "MF9769! YOU'RE MOVING MY MOUSE!". Of course I am. I go over to $FD2 and ask "$FD2, did you take anything from the other desk" and she points at her keyboard, which I know comes as part of a set with the "non-working" mouse. Apparently, she was smart enough to unplug the dongle and take the keyboard, but not to take the mouse, nor unplug the dongle from her computer in order to actually switch keyboards. Naturally, I did what was needed and then asked the eternal question when something like this happens: "Why?" "I liked that keyboard more." -$FD2 [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 25 Mar 2022 11:13 PM PDT Signing FORM-29827281-12-2 I perused the document that Corporate Electromatic Drone #J33F had slid across the table.
Very important. BluecoatWife has medical priors.
All contestants on the "Corp is Wrong" go home with a fancy 128GB USB3 flash disk full of any "personal data" that they may wish to preserve from their corporate laptops. In retrospect, I regret not taking my email archives; they were full of entertaining exchanges that I could have spun into Reddit karma. The drone nodded.
The drone gave me a confused look. I returned an eyeroll, signed his documents with my fancier-than-his pen, and pushed them back across the table.
There was a rumble of thunder in the distance as the lights flickered.
Another blank look.
I gestured in a circle around the tabletop.
His eyes widened as he finally picked up on what I was laying down. He stood up from the table, instinctively reaching for his phone in the same movement.
I gestured at my former laptop and earned another look like he'd lost the plot. I sighed.
Why do I still have access to everything, you fucking clowns?
Ooo, he's got me there.
Vacation All I Ever Wanted Four hundred and eight days. That's how long of a vacation I wrapped up before rejoining the workforce. The powers-that-be at Corporate Electromatic did their devil's math and so did send The Lesser Humungus around to make the most honorable compromise a crowd of malaised engineers ever could hope for; "Just Walk Away." Separation. A free pass to skip the two weeks of awkward wrap-up and knowledge transfer that decorum requires you proffer before fucking off into the night. I get to avoid that nonsense and walk out with a metaphorical dollar-sign loot bag with insurance vouchers? I don't have to stress one more nanosecond that our project has gone so far down the bad timeline that I can no longer see the faded path back to the loosest definition of success? Yoink! Skedaddle! Confused HR guy in a small room watching a grown-ass man pantomime onomatopoeia. The freshly opened box of tissues were a nice touch, but unnecessary. I felt bad for him, though; he clearly was having to do this all day. He said I was fourth and I'd only made it into the office for what was unexpectedly my last day an hour ago. I heard tell later through a hell-of-unreliable source that he was the one guy exit interviewing for the whole campus. Took him ten hour days for a week. For the first time in my professional career, I was free. Intuit Mint began sending very confusing advertisements on "just turning yourself in" when it saw the sudden jump in my checking account from my separation package. This, naturally, was confiscated by BluecoatWife and squirreled away into something called a "savings account," to be apportioned out every fortnight by some damnable subroutine she found deep up into the bowels of our banking co-op's web presence. It kept us on a budget that we were able to sustain for a surprisingly long time. With our near-term future stable, I got to take a much needed vacation with only occasional moments of existential dread. I spent the next year spending time with BluecoatWife, studying new and interesting technologies, and working through my backlog of "need to check-out" devkits and libraries. While fun, there was a more practical purpose. I'd neglected to keep my portfolio fresh in recent years; all of my interesting work belonged to my former employer. Once I actually felt enthused enough about my craft again to be able to crank out personal projects, I started cranking out a diverse sampling of work to show prospective employers what I do. There was also time spent undoing the unfortunate technological speech impediment that years of exposure to Corporate acronyms and internal names had given me. Most of all, though, I was working on convincing myself that I even wanted to go back to the same field. And Then What Happened There's only so much time off you can take. While a dwindling bank account will do its best to draw a pallor across your well-earned sabbatical, the driving factor is more that it's just boring. Luckily, I live in the Silicon Forest and you can't shake a tree without a tech startup predicated over a hilariously flawed premise falling out. Most of these don't pay in sensible gatherings of money, but rather a promise that if you all wish hard enough, your combined dream will override market realities to bestow glittering prizes. I let myself get caught on the sparkle of a weird novelty technology I'd somehow never heard of. The last thing I remember before agreeing to join was hearing "we're thirty days out from being fully funded!" and believing it. Fade in on some Monkey Business The startup's development methodology was an interesting application of the Infinite Monkey Theorem. They were now down to a single large and bipolar primate, whom the rest of us did our best to avoid. There was also an assortment of high tech toys, including a top-of-the-line VR rig. That's "Virtual Reality," to you squares. I'd been looking for an excuse to go try it out, but there was other more critical work what needed some cycles thrown at it. Like... shoring up our IT infrastructure, which had literally been configured by the first person convicted of a novel Internet-related crime in our state. Or getting the company IP out of the "Copy of CompanyIP.#203" method of revision control and into something… sensible. After many weeks at under market rate, I finally hit a good stopping point and declared that I was going to see what all this Lawnmower Man nonsense was about. Sadly, Kidd Video, my only sensible coworker, informed me that there was a problem with the VR rig that no one yet had been able to solve. Namely, it shut down roughly thirty seconds after you jumped into a game. Nothing was to be done about it, but it was a hell of impressive experience until then! Crossing the room, I picked the Vive up off the polished oak of the once-beautiful extended conference table. A 1:64 scale model of the Supertrain occupied the center, around which years of misclassified "Independent Contractor" employees dropping rack-mountable equipment on it without a coaster had taken their toll. Following the cable back to its source revealed the "VR Rig." This proved to be not so much a computer as a weird "Tapeless Workflow Transfer and DDR System" data appliance, intended to be used for previewing daily footage on movie productions. Normally, it'd have an HD-SDI video card installed. Someone had replaced it with a GTX 1080 Ti. The whole thing was powered by a 200W-rated DC power supply. So let's talk about symptoms; the computer worked fine for general use and the desktop benchmarks showed nothing amiss. However, if you started an application for the VR headset, you were rewarded with an almost immediate hard shutdown. The Windows event log, as is tradition, had nothing useful to add. By the way, this is the kind of troubleshooting scenario that makes for a good screening question when interviewing technicians. There's also a good chance that many of you reading have run into your own version of this, especially if you do your gaming on a PC like an adult. You might, however, want to be mindful before you speak your diagnoses aloud as I did.
A loud bellow issued from the darkness of the vaulted ceiling with exposed cross-beams. With a flurry of movement, the enraged Haranguetan dropped from above. Now, a large primate is not exactly capable of expressing himself verbally, at least not beyond the standard set of grunts and howls. This one, however, signs pretty well. And today he had a not insignificant amount of hostility ready to rock in my direction. Kidd Video quietly slunk out the door to lunch, happy to not be today's target of simian ire.
I stared. This was an unexpected response.
Wugh oh. I'm reasonably certain that I'm a goddamn champ at both. I also love technical arguing and it had been awhile since someone wanted to throw down. I wasn't sure where he was planning on going with this, though, since it wasn't as if he'd managed to fix the problem.
I patiently watched him as he beat his chest, staring expectantly for his explanation of what ailed this particular PC.
He pointed at the edge connector of another card laying on the table.
Pro tip: there's no reason not to keep every specification for everything in your phone. Got a couple minutes in a bathroom stall, pooping on company time? Flip through it and learn how the technology works. It's a lot better for your mental state than obsessively refreshing the news, hoping to see a megathread confirming that we're vectoring out of the bad timeline. Harangutan smacked the odd DC power supply brick feeding this particular computer that he'd picked up off the floor.
We stared at each other for a moment. Finally he realized his mistake and spun the sign round the other way.
My eye twitched, the flare that I'd finally had enough. I spoke very slowly and even toned, occasionally dropping into a hiss.
I wheeled around dramatically to point at the 200 Watt power brick laying on the floor.
I cocked my head forcefully towards the door with what I hoped was a menacing face.
The shaved ape took the advice and left in a cloud of stank. Which was great, I absolutely didn't have a plan B; our local animal control had us on their No Bueno list. I took a moment to break the fourth wall upwards, waving to the security camera that overlooked the atrium; Kidd Video had shared his suspicions that the startup owner spent most of the time we didn't see him watching us through it.
Epilogue I moved the video card and VR cables over to a more standard desktop machine with a 500W supply. And a faster processor. And more memory- really I can't fathom how anyone could think that adding the GTX to a purpose-built appliance was the right call, but then again the company seemed to be built on wishful thinking. Irregardless, a couple minutes of headset orientation and boundary drawing later, I had disappeared into a virtual world of shooting arrows and fixing robots. Neat! Kidd Video showed up a couple of minutes later, just in time for his turn. We had a fun couple of rounds before a foul odor heralded the return of Harangutan. The walk and fresh air had done his demeanor some good; he was calm and no longer bellowing from the vast pit of his technological discompetencies. He looked at the screen showing the fish-eyed view that Kidd Video was enjoying and mumbled something contrite enough that I felt bad for yelling at him. He shuffled sadly to his desk as Kidd Video finished having his ass handed to him by two-dimensional brigiands. I took the headset from him and held it out.
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| "I think there's fraud on my SSN" Posted: 26 Mar 2022 05:47 AM PDT I work in tech support for a payroll company and recently had a ticket where an employee of a client of ours called in because she was getting emails for clients she didn't recognize saying her checks were ready to be viewed. Since our system links employees to clients using their Social Security Number, she was concerned that there was fraud on her SSN. So I log into our system that houses that information and search by her SSN. And get 130 - that's ONE HUNDRED THIRTY- different users tied to that one SSN. Had to tell the rep for the client that he needed to contact the reps on the other clients to find out what was going on. Someone is either passing out fake SSN cards with that number or people are, for whatever reason, entering that number as a placeholder until they get the real one. Note: there are valid reasons, and it's common, that the same employee can be setup on multiple clients, so we do not have a warning that the SSN is already in use when an employee is added to a client (either by our reps or the clients themselves). [link] [comments] |
| Do what I mean, not what I say. Posted: 24 Mar 2022 04:02 PM PDT Background: I worked in IT support for a major bank somewhere in the UK. This tale is from long before Covid and Working From Home. We'd always taken Disaster Recovery seriously, as long as we had a week's notice of the impending disaster, but that's another tragedy. But after 9/11, we started planning for Business Continuity too - what to do if your workplace is compromised. So we acquired a building on the opposite side of the country, kitted it out and wired it up, and we were all set. The first test was a bit ropey, but we improved with practice and made sure to rotate staff and keep everything written down at the recovery site. Skip forward a couple of years and I got the alert - it's that time and I have to join the other designated survivors across the country. We all make our way to Numbercauld, gain entry to the building and find our desks. Power up our desktops, boot up and connect to the - nothing. That's odd, none of us can connect to the network. One of the network guys has a laptop and dials in, checks that all the network switches have switched. Yup, it's all good, we just can't see it. So he starts following the network cable from his desktop PC, along the floor to the 2ft x 2ft floor tile where all of the cables are concentrated before going underfloor to the switch, lifts the tile... And on the underside saw about 2 inches of each cable protruding into empty space. It was as if someone had taken a pair if shears and just chopped through the lot of them. Which is what had happened. Some months previously, it had been decreed that that floor tile must be moved, I think it was to allow for more desks or something. The guy moving it saw all the wires when he lifted it it and asked what to do about them. "Oh, just remove them," said his boss, meaning "unplug each cable from its socket on the underside of the tile, so that they can be replugged later." But the workman's psychic interface was on the fritz that day and he only heard the words that actually came out of his boss's mouth. Snip-snip! So yeah, we didn't pass the Business Continuity test that day. [link] [comments] |
| What do I DOOOOOOOOO (screenshot) Posted: 24 Mar 2022 05:44 PM PDT With the stories on here about having users put in tickets for errors without the actual error message... thought you all might enjoy this. Again I have taken my time getting to the "Actual Story" but if you want to be boring and miss the fluff - it's the last few paragraphs. I have now graduated from "unofficially IT but the person people go to" to "IT-ish is kind of part of my official job" Anyway, that's only tangentially related to this story, I'm just excited to be semi-officially IT, or officially semi-IT. When I told my dad, who is old school computer geek - punch cards for solving grad school math problems and writing programs in Fortran old school - he told me that next time I come over he'll show me the powershell programs he's been working on to convert some lawyer's 20 yr old files from Wordperfect. (He is semi-retired from the computer store he'd owned since the counter- sized business computer days.) I told him that sounds like a blast and he burst out laughing, I don't think he quite realized the level of nerd I am before that LOL... I know you guys will understand! So, onto the Actual Story: We are pretty informal on my team, and usually if someone is having issues they just shoot me an email or IM. So one of my good friends just changed her Windows password and was having access trouble all day. (We have a lot of programs on single sign on and sometimes it goes a little sideways...) Restarted, called the "real" IT folks, all that. Was figured out, or so I thought... And then about an hour later I got an email from her with the subject line "What do I DOOOOOOOOO (screenshot) " All that was in the email was an image of a blank login/ password entry screen that I did not recognize and an error message saying "The proxy xxxx requires a name and password." Well at least I got the error message! Right? So I messaged her... "Hey you.... What are you trying to do, anyway?" Turns out to be Adobe pro... Somehow when she reset her password it didn't change that one... So I did what I could and verified she still had access in the Active Directory ... and to try the "password tool" that's supposed to reset all passwords. A bit anticlimactic as then we were slammed and I'm not sure if it's working for her now. But her email made me chuckle and hopefully it will do the same for you! [link] [comments] |
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