Winning April Fools day Tech Support |
- Winning April Fools day
- just give us the servers for free!
- Customer expectations
- The Network Guy
- Why are calls holding?
- Redoing the entire user interface is quick and easy
- Boomerangs aren't the only things that always come back...
- Not the recommended way to replace a printer
- Difficult caller is difficult
- Effing machine won't give me my effing money!
| Posted: 01 Apr 2022 11:35 PM PDT Our most senior back end dev guy decided today was the day to become a legend. 8am, to the director he quietly sends a resignation letter. His response "No, but it is the best DAY for it." I'm sure they'll see how funny it was eventually. He should have waited an hour to see what kind of offer they came up with. [link] [comments] |
| just give us the servers for free! Posted: 01 Apr 2022 11:16 AM PDT Ok so english isnt my first language so apologies if some technical terms are wrong or unclear. Please feel free to correct me! I work as a software engineer and most of the time the projects I work on with my team are either the technical support for existing SCADA systems or integration of new ones. Recently we got a new client who aquired new buildings and is now hiring us to automate everything. We would be setting up servers and build a new system etc. for their employees to be able to view and control the lighting, heating, AC, etc. in whatever room they're in. The problem is that the existing system is running on 18 year old software, external servers and is incompatible with the security standards they decided on. So we gave them an outline on what we'd have to do, set up and change to meat all of their regulations and standards. This is a big client, one of the biggest companies in the automotive industry. So it's not like they're short on money for something as "insignificant" as building automation. Plus, they know their regulations are very high compared to smaller companies, so you'd assume they know to expect higher costs. Exept their associate who's overseeing the whole project - and who chose our company for the job - expects us to use the old, existing, infrastructure and just.. idk build on top of it. I called him today to discuss the specifics and it went something like this: Me=Me, A=him -Me: Hi, I'm calling to discuss the integration of the new system. -A: Right. Yes. See, I took a look at your proposal and I see you intend to install new touchpanels in every room? -Me: Yes that's right. You stated that all rooms should be controllable by the employees sitting in them. The best possibility for that is having control panels in each room that allows them to change the heating, lighting and check the AC and window contacts all in one. We feel like that's the easiest solution so that even employees who don't own company workphones have access to it. -A: Yes, I approve of that Idea. However, you said you would need to set up an entirely new system for it. Why is that? I know the buildings have perfectly a fine, working, system in place already. -Me: Yes, but what you requested is not possible to build on the current Windows 2003 servers you have. -A: Ok but why not? Windows is Windows isnt it? -Me: The project includes roughly 300 000 data points for the administration buildings alone. The production facilities have even more space required to automate. Also, not every room is currently connected to the system as you added new walls inside the building. Plus, as externally managed servers, they do not meet your requited security standard and would need to be changed either way. -A: Ok so you're implememting a new SCADA system for us to use, yes? -Me: That's correct. -A: But since you refuse to use the existing servery I expect the upgrate to the new ones to be of no additional costs to us. -Me: What do you mean? -A: Since there is already infrastructure for building automation in place, I expect you to add the new servers free of cost. Changing them was your idea after all. -Me: I'm.. sorry? That's not.. Did I explain it wrong or what exactly is unclear about the procedure? -A: Nothing is wrong, what you propose makes sense to me. But the costs for the switch can't be that significant so I expect them to be added for free as a bonus. This project is already very expensive so it shouldn't be a loss for you to add them on top. -Me: ... -A: So did we come to an understanding? -Me: No, no we do not. I'm sorry but that is something I need to talk about with my boss. The costs you imagine are a lot higher than you think and this is not a desicion I am authorized to do. -A: What? I googled servers and they are not that expensive! This is ridiculous. -Me: I will get back to you after discussing it with my boss. Let's schedule a meeting with the supervising team for this project and discuss the general outline and costs again. I I will send you our offer again with the cost allocation so that you can rediscuss it with your team until the meeting. The meeting is next week and I have honestly no idea what he thought the costs of servers and their continued maintenance are because thats like... one of the most expensive things about the whole project.... [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 02 Apr 2022 01:07 AM PDT I work for a software partner implementing CRM systems and we had a customer complaint about six weeks ago. They said there were three things that they were complaining about: 1) that we would sometimes come back to them after a couple of weeks and by then they would be doing something else, 2) that we didn't seem as happy to work with their other technologies as we used to and 3) we aren't as responsive to them as we used to be. I had a look into it and, as it turns out, he was quite right. Regarding point one, we would complete a piece of work, hand it over to their staff for testing and then move onto something else until they had tested it and told us to move it to their production system. Unfortunately they have no internal project management team, so their staff would forget. A couple of weeks later we would email them going, "how is it going with the testing?" To which the normal reply would be, "we've forgotten how it works, please remind us." The cycle would then continue. Regarding point two, the CRM system we implement has a whole host of 3rd party products that slot nicely into it. Additionally we regularly make new partnerships with new 3rd party vendors if their product is up to scratch. The customer had signed up and installed (with no consultation with us) a random 3rd party system that was really bad. Like... really bad. Similar systems we recommend and work with have monthly updates to them, so when I said "this hasn't been updated in over 18 months" I was shocked to discover that the product had had no updates released in the last 18 months...! Regarding point three, we offer both support and project work, support has an SLA, project goes into the backlog. As a result, support is actually much more expensive than project and has caps on how much you can use for "project" work. Want to add a new field? Fine, 15 minutes of support. Want to build an entire new module? That goes into the project backlog. We had recently been getting project requests that he expected to be done the next day. So, we had the meeting and agreed the following. 1) They are a nightmare to work with (customer said this, not us, we just heartily agreed) and they will improve internal PM. 2) They will properly communicate with us when it comes to new product add-ons and integrations, bringing us into conversations early so we can guide them. 3) They have a big project coming up that they need us to make changes to their CRM to help implement. We jokingly said, "of course, however if you're asking us to do 20 days of work in the next 30 days we may struggle because we don't have resource just sitting around hahahaha" This meeting happened at the end of Feb. On March 18th we had two emails. "Hi, this is customer, let me introduce you to our accountants. They are putting in a new accountancy package and want to integrate it with the CRM. Also, let me introduce VENDOR. This is a new software package we've bought to deal with project management, and again we want it integrated." And then 5 minutes later, "Great news, we've won the big contract we were telling you about. Here's a list of changes we need you to make [I estimate 25 days of work] and we have to have it running by the end of the first week of April" My boss and I just looked at each other and went... "Fancy a pint?" and went and drowned our sorrows... [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 02 Apr 2022 06:46 AM PDT I work for an optometry supply company doing electronic repair and installation of everything you might find in an optometrist or opthamologist practice. The other day we were doing a relocation of a major optom chain store from one shop to another in a shopping centre. I was busy doing my install of the new equipment, but also had to deal with their older gear. One of the pieces was a phoropter and auto refractor setup linked to an eye chart. These all use serial connectors to communicate with each other, so I was a little thrown when they told me this one was connected via the network. After a quick squiz I realised that they had wired the serial DIN plugs into RJ45 connectors and were using the network points on the walls to connect them across the different rooms and patching the ports directly into each other at the patch panel. Ok, no probs! The shop was a buzz with people moving, installing and building stuff. I found the IT dude that was responsible for connecting the network to tell him what we needed. Me: "Hey mate, this machine over here is actually connecting through the network ports with a serial connector so I'll need to bridge ports 14 and 38 to give them a direct connection. Can you set that up and make sure it's labeled so no-one tries to plug it into the switch because I don;t know what that would do!" Network guy: *Crickets... *Blank stare... Ok. So you you need to connect the ports? Me: Ah yeah, but they have to connect to each other and not through the switch or router. It's a serial connection. NG: ... Me: ... NG: ... Ok, I think I'll circle back to this guy later. I go on with my installs and eventually get to connecting up the phoropter. I set everything up and then go find the network guy sitting in front of the patch panel staring into the abyss. Me: Hey, so I need to patch those ports? NG: Ok, So plug in here? He pointed to the patch panel which currently had only 3 cables going to it and nowhere else. The switch had no lights and no cables. NG: They didn't give me any instructions on how to do this. Me: Well the cables from the panel need to go either into the switch or into the phone system depending on what they are... or if you have a seperate phone system. I really can't tell you. NG: So plug these into here? He pointed at the 3 dangling wires and then pulled out the switch. It wasn't plugged in and no cables were going into the front or back. NG: so where does this plug into? Me: Uhm, I really can't tell you. Aren't you the networking guy? NG: Yeah, but they didn't give me any instructions. He looked totally lost. I found a patch cable and bridged my ports. I went to the store manager and told her that the network guy seriously didn't have a clue about what he was doing. On the bright side my machine worked first go! I just hope the network guy doesn't unplug it. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 01 Apr 2022 11:27 AM PDT This was a first for me for sure. Got a ticket about calls not transferring to available agents and just sitting in the queue. Lots of screenshots show that there are around 9 agents currently set as available. Yet calls have been in the queue for 5+ minutes. Did not make any sense. I am fairly new at this job, So I had a coworker jump into the call with me to investigate. Did not make much sense to him either. The abandonment rate for this queue is around 70% or so. Starting looking into the call flow and routing profiles. Then I discovered that the main routing profile has a delay of 600 seconds (10 minutes) on it. Which effectively holds the call for 10 minutes before it will transfer the call to an available agent. After discovering this, let my coworker know and they also thought it was strange. We were not fully sure if this was indeed causing the issue. So test it, I removed the delay for one queue and saved it. Right after saving, all those calls went to agents. Put it back to 600 seconds and let the user know what we had found. He advised me not to change it and he will reach out to me the next day with confirmation if it needs to be removed or not. He messaged me back and did not want the delay removed. They have also have a Front-End Message enabled that states this upon calling in:
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| Redoing the entire user interface is quick and easy Posted: 01 Apr 2022 12:18 PM PDT Another one from this week. I'm currently helping out another team with their handling of a chemical plant. We manage their SCADA server and provide support in case of emergengies as well as adding small changes to their user interface in case of physical changes to their pipe system. I got an email from one of their techs with new PID diagrams and got told to update the screen for the water intake system. After going through the pages and checking that I have all the i fo I need I log into their developer interface to add the changes. Only to realize that NOTHING fits. Literally all controllers, sensors and alarms have been renamed, new tanks have been added and a completely new variable system has been introduced. That means I have to change all symbols to the new variable names, add a new faceplate, add about 35 new pipe connections and switch out sensors, controllets etc. All in all my temporary contract is set for 16h of support. that means I would have had about two full workdays to implement the changes. Just rebuilding and generating new, usable, variable names (about 1200) is already 4h of work. Then changing out all of the old ones would've taken me another 6 hours. The remaining 6h I could've tried and halfass it and get the new stuff added but the quality would have been subpar and in the end noone would be happy. So I called them and explained myself and all they answered was "It's just a few words and lines and pictures. Quick and easy, just do it" So that's what I did. Now I get messages all the time asking why this and that looks so poorly done or why they can't find a variable or symbol anymore. Thankfully my coworker gave them a long talk and most of em are quiet about it now. I'll never u derstand how people expect great quality, in fast time for low costs [link] [comments] |
| Boomerangs aren't the only things that always come back... Posted: 01 Apr 2022 11:44 AM PDT This is yet another one of the tales from yesteryear and the exploits of yours truly, The Repair Guy, at this time operating in my alter ego as Television Repair Man. In my never ending search for Truth, Justice, and A Really Good Picture, I've run into some of the oddest problems one can imagine. The one in this story is best described as "what to do - and what NOT to do - when the customer declines to repair his TV". One of our biggest ongoing problems were what we called "boomerang sets". My shop offered a free estimate >IF< you brought the TV to the shop. If you didn't want to bring it in, or if it was just so big that you couldn't, we would come to you. We charged a $25 fee for a basic service call, but we would waive that if you had your set repaired. Still, the idea of getting something for free was a strong inducement, and it was the rare week that we didn't have a couple dozen sets brought in. We would troubleshoot each one, figure out what would be involved in a repair, and call the customer with the estimate. It was not uncommon for a customer, upon hearing that the repair was going to be more than he wanted to spend, to ask us to "just throw it out" or something of that nature. People didn't mind dropping the set off for free, but they were far more reticent about coming back to get a set that wasn't going to be repaired. Even if they said they would come back to get it, they often didn't. Initially we had a dumpster to take care of the dead sets, but the waste company balked at all the glass and metal being thrown away, so we had to find another means of disposal. The local landfill, it would have to be. We would accumulate 15-20 sets, and make a run to the dump to get rid of them. An hour's worth of labor to load them all up, run to the dump, pay the dump fee, empty the van, and get back to the shop - but, hey - we had clear shelves! We also had a problem, looming in the waters like a shark... the free estimate. For the next couple of weeks we would be plagued by those same dead television sets coming through our door, brought in by people who had gone to the dump, saw these sets on the pile and said to themselves "Hey, that set doesn't look too bad! It might not cost much to get that TV working. I know where I can get a free estimate..." . And we would find ourselves working on the same television sets again. Usually we would recognize them when they came in the door, but not always. Sometimes we had to get them on the bench and open to be able to recognize past deceased patients. It was even worse if the set had been at the dump very long: we got them back still warm from the sun beating on them, or dripping water from a recent rainstorm. We got them back reeking of cat urine, or with even more damage than they had when we dropped them off. Still folks wanted their free estimate.To discourage this we started writing DEAD or other things on the glass in Sharpie. The sets would come back with the screen cleaned off. We started to spray paint the screens: a razor blade will take that off. We might even paint the cabinet itself, but that still didn't stop the hoard of returning zombies. On one occasion, we stopped to pick up coffee on the way back to the office - and one of our sets was already back at the shop waiting for us. We started leaving the backs off, doing more damage to the sets - whatever we could to try to make it obvious that each one was a write-off. Finally my boss had a brainstorm and started experimenting with ways to break the picture tubes. Helpful Hint - This is not terribly easy, and is NOT a safe thing to do. DON'T try this - you can be hurt. None of it made any difference. The sets kept rising out of the mist like Brigadoon to continue to plague us. My boss was beyond exasperated. Between the time it took to intentionally mar or destroy the sets, carry them to the dump, and greet the survivors when they returned to the shop, we were losing a lot of work time for a small shop. He finally started taking them home and using his backhoe to bury them in the backyard. He only did that for a while and in later years when his daughter and her family were living in the house, they had to do a very expensive "dig up and clean out" of the land, because 40 year old zombie TVs were clawing their way out of the eroding ground and making things dangerous for their kids. Long after I left, I understand they bought an industrial wood chipper, and fitted it with a hood so they could toss a set and close the hood, and have it chewed to ribbons and shards without pieces flying out all over the parking lot. Apparently even the most diehard dumpster diver won't bring a back of metal and plastic shards in for a free estimate... [link] [comments] |
| Not the recommended way to replace a printer Posted: 31 Mar 2022 04:02 PM PDT Long ago I worked in a network operations center attached to a colocation datacentre. It wasn't all that large; about 5 people during the day, 2 at night. Due to reasons that were above my paygrade, we had to maintain a physical copy of hands-on work that was requested by customers that resided in the data centre. This involved getting the request by email, putting it into a ticket, then copying that same request, pasting it into a word document with the ticket number, printing it out and stuffing it into a folder in a large filing cabinet. After a year, we were allowed to destroy the physical copy, but no one ever had time to sort em, so some folders swelled for the 3 years I was there. Anyways, the bottleneck of this whole convoluted process was the printer. It was barely above home-grade in the late 90s; single tray feed, single side printing, black and white. Its pages per minute was single digits. Not a huge problem overall, but one that was frustrating nonetheless. I recall us begging for our manager to authorize a replacement, and he tried his best. He was in our court because he had to use the damned thing too. Ther response was "It is working, and therefore we will not replace it." After going a couple rounds with the buyers, our manager came in just as we were switching to night shift and said something along the lines of "I'm not allowed to buy as new printer for us until that thing breaks. I'm going home now." With a smile and a nod, he turned his back so he couldn't see our sadistic grins forming as his words sunk in. That printer "accidentally" fell down 4 flights of concrete steps that night. In the morning, our manager arrived, saw that the printer was now being held together by duct tape, and asked us, straight-faced, what happened. Our response: "Violent paper jam" This was met with a shrug, and a new printer arrived by the end of the week. I miss those people. I do not miss that printer. tl;dr: Manager-encouraged office space reference. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 31 Mar 2022 09:50 PM PDT I received a call from a long-standing difficult user yesterday, which prompted an exchange in our team Teams chat. The chat is a little window on my and my colleagues experiences of this particular caller that we have dealt with over many years working in I.T. support for a university. It should be a pretty quick read, and I hope at least some of you get some amusement from it! DISCLAIMER: Names have been redacted and chat trimmed to eliminate extraneous fluff. CAST:
THE CHAT:
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| Effing machine won't give me my effing money! Posted: 31 Mar 2022 12:51 PM PDT This one happened when I was employed in technical support for a large UK bank, so I think it belongs here in TFTS although it's a bit different. I was prompted to share it by a Twitter post about being contactable while on holiday (vacation). So back in 2007 Mrs OP was invited to come visit her Canadian cousin just outside Vancouver, so we ‐ OP, Mrs OP, her sister and brother-in-law all flew over, 7000km and 12 hours to stay with her for a few weeks. While we were there, we made a side trip for the weekend across the border to Washington state in the US of A. This entailed getting hold of some USD spending money, so we queued up at an ATM. I got mine, then brother-in-law stepped up with his card literally right after me. Cue much wailing and gnashing of teeth. "I know I've got money in my account, hand it over ya effing machine!" But no joy, so he borrowed some of ours and the holiday continued. He paid us back a few days later when his card was working again. So, we get home and back to work I go, just in time for the cleanup after a pretty major disaster. A whole string of dasd (hard disks) had been taken out by a controller failure and they'd had to rebuild the data from a set of backups and transaction files. OP: Wouldn't it have been faster to failover to our Disaster Recovery site? All the dasd are mirrored in real time after all. Co-Worker: Ordinarily yes, but this controller failed in such a way that it corrupted the mirror dasd too. #0000FF are not popular today. Also, Big Boss had all of us on site fixing it and even wanted us to call you on holiday, but we told him you were in Canada with no contact number. OP: I think I know, pretty much to the second, when that controller failed and where I was at the time. After comparing notes, CW agreed. God only knows what Big Boss would have done even with a contact number - flown me and my family back to the UK and paid for another holiday? [link] [comments] |
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