Random Tale
User calls in stuck at a blue screen. She's one of those "everything is broken because I don't know how to work my computer" type of users. The kind that thinks everything doesnt work on their machine, when in reality they just dont know how to use the machine/OS.
Hearing this at first I assume its a BSOD. Reboot again. Same thing, stuck on a blue screen. At this point I have her reboot into sa
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#743 +2- Added on: Apr-16-2013 Added by: 4tehlulz -- Comments
Years ago (late 90s) a guy rang me on the helpdesk because he was trapped with his finger on the power button.
He'd pressed it in to turn the PC off and glanced up to see an error message.
He was too scared to let the button go until I reassured him that it was ok to do so.
The worst part was that the phone was too far away for him to reach so he'd spent 10 minutes with a ruler slowly moving the phone closer so he could ring me to find out what to do.
#740 +1- Added on: Apr-02-2013 Added by: Anonymous -- Comments
I work for an un named help desk that tends to different companies.
One night i received a call about some one wanting to connect their new laptop to their home wireless. with my instructions they wrote down the key on the back of their router and entered it into their computer. it stated that the key was incorrect. I asked the user if she has any devices connected to the wireless, she replies "No".
After a few attempts and some double checking we are still unable to connect. I again ask her if she any devices connected to the wireless, again she replies no. i tell her how we will have to reset the router back to default settings so we could connect to it bc the key may have been changed. I begin to walk her through the process of reseting her router, she pauses and asks me if her husband's computer will still be able to connect to the wireless. (Face to desk)
#735 +1- Added on: Mar-19-2013 Added by: Qibo -- Comments
A friend asks for help with her computer, she's getting these pop-ups and it's just being slow and laggy. I take a look, and this poor laptop has so much adware and viruses I couldn't believe it. Purge it, purge it in fire, I thought...
At any rate, I get to work looking at some basic things. Now mind you I'm not an expert, and I don't have a job in tech support, I'm just a huge nerd and all my friends know it, so they always ask me for help (and usually the conversations go something like, "Is it plugged in? ... Yeah, so just plug it-- yeah, there should be a port in back to plug it in, just plug it in and it should work")
So I look at installed programs and it is obvious that many of them are adware or viruses. I ask if she has any anti-virus installed. She does, an expired version of McAfee that was installed by default. So I download Avast and some other anti-adware programs in hopes that they'll remove all the junk, though it really seemed like a reformat would be necessary. There were at least 10 programs installed that were clearly viruses or malware, and that's only what was showing.
So, not surprisingly, all these programs are finding infected files which I'm deleting. Anyway, to my surprise it seemed to work. I restarted the computer, no pop-ups or anything, I checked running processes and services that start up with the computer, everything seemed good after a few hours.
I give her laptop back and she thanks me and is all happy that it's better. About a week later the screen dies. So I wasted an hour or two cleaning someone's computer, not a big deal right? Sure, until it's my fault the screen broke. I explained that everything I did was purely related to software, and didn't tinker with any hardware on the computer, but she was having none of it. Oh well.
#734 +1- Added on: Mar-17-2013 Added by: boredgeek -- Comments
About a month ago I received a call from my co-worker who was working at a help desk. I was working in a small computer lab that night where my main issues have to do with the two big printers in the room in which everyone in the lab prints from. My co-worker tells me of a lady on the 3rd floor whom is having trouble with her printer. I'm not told what is wrong with the printer but my co-worker tells me that he's tried to bomgar into her computer but it isn't working. He is across campus and so I throw up the "The Lab Attendant is Away" sign and head up to the room. The woman is angry and frustrated despite the fact that all her documents are printing perfectly. The problem: a separate document is also printing along with the document. It turns out she had accidentally selected the "print document properties" check box in options. I click the box and have the problem solved in 5 minutes. The reason Bomgar wasn't working? She was logged into her university email and gave my co-worker her home email account.
#591 +5- Added on: Nov-23-2012 Added by: hobobuster -- Comments
Background: I perform 1st/2nd level troubleshooting for a rather larger international retailer, with an IT department of about 6,000 employees. This call came from one of those employees, with a much higher pay grade than myself. She seems to be having an issue reaching a 3rd-party website used for tracking multiple sales-type data sources.
Instead of remoting in to see the issue, as this was a pretty common one (or so I thought), I proceeded to ask her the standard procedural questions.
Me: “Okay, ma’am, what is the URL you are typing in to access the website?”
Her: “Yahoo.”
Me: “You are going to Yahoo and typing the name of the site into the search bar?”
Her: “No, I am just using Yahoo.”
Me: “Okay, and the site you are having issues is what?”
Her: “I don’t know.”
Me: …”Okay, let’s try this, read me the exact URL you are going to.”
Her: “I told you, Yahoo.”
Me: “It says 'http://www.yahoo.com/' ?”
Her: “What? No!”
Me: “I apologize, let me clarify. The URL is the text in the address bar at the top of your window. Read that to me.”
Her: “Microsoft Internet Explorer provided by ****, Inc.”
…*head meet desk*
Eventually, it turned out that she was using google to search for the website (even though that would not take her to our company portal for the site), instead of using the many other shortcuts available to her, such as:
- An email with the direct link to the site and portal.
- The configuration of our internal server that allows anyone connected to type two letters in the URL bar, redirecting to the correct portal.
- A favorite shortcut in her favorites bar.
- A SHORTCUT on her desktop.
#584 +7- Added on: Sep-22-2012 Added by: sometech -- Comments
I work as a support technician at a local ISP. Just finished this call:
Me: Thanks for calling [insertISPhere], This is [AnAwesomeTech], How can I help you?
HerpnDerp: Ya, you keep telling me that this security code for my wifi thing is on the bottom of my modem, but it don't work.
Me: Alright, well what you will want to do is ensure that you are capitalizing any letter you see.
HerpnDerp: (mumbling) 7...2....B...O, wait... is this a Zero, or an o?
Me: That is a Zero, Ma'am.
HerpnDerp: The number zero, or the letter?
After a few moments of laughter behind the wonderful mute button, the call ended.
Customers hurt my head....'nuff said
#583 +5- Added on: Sep-22-2012 Added by: skagod69 -- Comments
Got a ticket about a printer not working. Its at another site so I call up to trouble shoot.
Me: Is the printer powered on?
User: Yes.
Me: What does the screen on the printer say?
User: Nothing, it's blank.
Me: You sure it's powered on?
User: Of course.
Me: Is there an amber light or any color light on the front?
User: No
Me: The printer is turned off
User: I told you it is not off
Me: look in back of of the printer, is the power plug in the printer?
User: no it fell behind the desk this morning and I can't reach it.
Me: :::pause for a few seconds::: Hold on I have another call. ::::Put her on hold and go on break:::
#582 +8- Added on: Sep-21-2012 Added by: IrritableGourmet -- Comments
"My online store stopped working since you upgraded yesterday! It's been down for hours! I demand a full refund and then some!"
"Uh, sir..."
"Don't interrupt me! I don't want to hear your excuses! You upgraded your system without my permission and now nothing works! I make $20,000 a day off this site and I'll be suing you for every penny! I know the DA here and he'll fight for me!"
"Sir, if I could just..."
"You're not listening! Everything is down and it's all your fault. I'm going to call the BBB, the FBI, and my lawyer if you don't fix it now!"
"Sir, the upgrade was pushed back until next week. We sent you an email this morning. Nothing has changed. I'm looking at the frontend now and I was able to log into the backend. Furthermore, I have your account information up and I only show about $25 in sales for the past six months. If you have been making $20,000 a day through your site, according to your merchant agreement you owe us several thousand dollars in commission fees. Would you like to talk to billing to sort that out?"
click
#581 +9- Added on: Sep-21-2012 Added by: bwat47 -- Comments
Yet another tale of epic stupidity.
The other day I received a call that started out looking easy enough:
Derp: Hi, I just got DSL with you guys and I am trying to login. It says I need a password, but I don't have one.
Me: Alright, what exactly are you trying to log into? Are you trying to login to your [ISPNAME] email account?
Derp: No, I just turned on my computer and it wants a password.
Me: Ok, can you describe the screen that's asking for the password?
Derp: It just says "Welcome, Click your user name to login" and then when I click it it says "Type your password", but I've never had a password.
Me: Ok, that is your windows login screen. The password its asking for is the password to your computer, not anything to do with your internet connection. Unfortunately there's no way for us to help you retrieve that password since its nothing on our end.
Derp: I don't think you understand, I never needed a password until you guys set up DSL here yesterday. Something you did set this password.
Me: That is the local password to your computer, it doesn't have anything to do with [ispname's] services, so there's no way getting dsl setup there would have set that password on your computer. That password is something that you or whoever administrates the computer setup.
Derp: NO, THIS ONLY HAPPENED AFTER I GOT DSL WITH YOU, I NEVER NEEDED ONE BEFORE.
Me: I'm sorry that has happened, but its definitely not related to our service. I wish I could help you retrieve that, but I can't.
Derp: FINE, SO YOU ARE SAYING I'M PAYING FOR INTERNET FOR A YEAR THAT WON'T WORK, IS THAT WHAT YOU ARE SAYING!?
Me: No, you are paying for a working internet connection, this issue is specifically with your computer. There is no way for us to know, change, or reset that password.
Derp: This only happened after your tech came and installed the dsl
Me: I wish I could help you with this issue, but I can assure you nothing the tech did set a password on your computer. Our technicians don't touch customer computers at all, they just set up the internet connection and test the connection with their own work laptops.
Derp: THIS ONLY HAPPENED AFTER THE TECH CAME. SOMETHING YOU DID CAUSED THIS!
Me: I'm very sorry you are having trouble accessing your computer, but I can assure you we did not set a password on your computer. I can only assist with DSL related issues, so unfortunately there's nothing I can do for this particular issue.
Derp: Click
#580 +8- Added on: Sep-21-2012 Added by: jordanzzz -- Comments
Heard this story from a trainer today, and it was glorious, this ladies and gentlemen is the potato fix.
Backstory: This is tech support for a satellite provider in the U.S. essentially on our end there was a button that would do a quick reset of everything and fix most problems.
Caller: Hey, my satellite went down and I don't really know why but I really need it up.
Tech support: Alright ma'am, I want to fix your satellite but first I need to know if you have a potato.
Caller: Yeah, I do.
TS: I need you to take that potato and cut it in half.
Caller: I don;t understand.
TS: Please, just do it. And it can't be length wise, it has to be across.
Caller: OK I cut it, now what?
TS: I need you to place one half on top of your receiver and then take the other half and rub it on your tv screen counter clockwise
Caller: I don't understand why I have to do this.
TS: Basically the receivers after a while build up static electricity and we need the starch from the potato in order to remove the build up and get it to work properly. Should only take thirty seconds.
Caller: Ok, -rubs for 30 seconds-
TS: -hits the button-
Caller: IT WORKED!
About 2 weeks later the person called back in freaking out
Caller: ITS NOT WORKING
Tech support 2: I'm sorry ma'am what seems to be the problem?
Caller: I've been rubbing the potato counter clockwise for the last 40 minutes and it ISN'T WORKING.
Tech support 2: I'm sorry ma'am but I'm not understanding what is going on.
Caller: I called in two weeks ago with problems with my reciever and was given instructions on how to fix it and it is no longer working!
Long story short, tech support 2 had to explain what had happened. The original tech support guy had told about 45 people the potato fix and was terminated once they discovered what they had done. It has now become a pretty great story at my work.
#579 +10- Added on: Sep-21-2012 Added by: packrat31306 -- Comments
One of the more memorable moments of my job came a couple years ago and lasted for weeks...
The customer: A major manufacturer of heavy farm and construction equipment.
Me: The lowly deployment technician who is just trying to get by.
I was working on upgrading a user's computer as the lifecycle of the machine he was currently using had expired. Like usual, I had asked him to run our data migration utility. He did, and I proceeded to deploy to him his brand new machine. So far, all is going according to plan.
As the user was looking through his data to make sure that everything transferred as it should have, he noticed something odd: A sub-folder inside one of his .pst files from within Outlook didn't transfer over. A bit odd, but no worries. I explained to him that we can easily copy the folder to the inbox and after it replicated on the exchange server and synced up with the local copy on his new machine, we could place it where it belonged on his new machine. While I'm explaining this to him, he takes his old machine and starts to look through it, all the while blocking my access to it, and makes several comments about my "obvious" incompetence. He then proceeds to move, not copy, the folder to his inbox and waits for it to replicate. Once it shows up on his new machine, he fails to do anything else with it while I'm sitting at his desk. We usually allow for about 30 to 45 minutes at the user's desk, but this particular user, unsure about the integrity of his data, takes about 1.5 hours.
As I leave his desk, the user insists that I leave his old computer on the network at my desk for a day or so and to send him a link to access his old hard drive, just in case he finds any more missing files. Although this is against the normal procedure, I agree to such a idea in hopes that it will pacify him and I can get on with my day, but not without first advising the user against such an action.
The next day, he calls me up.
User: "I've accidentally deleted that folder that we moved over yesterday. Get it back for me."
Me: "Ok, no worries."
I proceeded to show him how to recover deleted data from within Outlook, but much to our dismay, such folder is not present from the deleted items.
Me: "Sir, it would appear that this folder cannot be recovered. If I may ask, how did you delete it?"
User: "Shift + Del, like I always do. Get it back!"
Knowing that there was no way to recover his missing folder via Outlook, I look to our backup software (backs up hourly) for any of the last three available versions of the .pst in order to recover it. I restore the last one, but that folder is not present. I eventually attempt to recover all 6 of the available backups (3 per computer) and it's nowhere to be found.
Me: "Sir, when did you delete this folder?"
User: "Yesterday, about an hour after you left."
My heart sinks...
Me: "Sir, your data is unrecoverable..."
And I proceed to explain how he screwed up, while neglecting to tell him out-right that it was his fault. Needless to say, the user is growing angrier every second. He insists on talking to someone in the next level of support that sits with me.
3 out of 5 of them tell him that he's out of luck. He proceeds to call us all incompetent idiots and that he will find a way to make his request happen.
Over the next 3 weeks, he does everything he can to make his plight known. He calls the help desk, who in turn, sends the ticket up to my associates. He knocks on my door at random times, in hopes that he'll find someone new who can help him. He even files several formal complaints with the customer's management. We find ourselves going through a formal investigation and several audits regarding the missing folder, during which time I found out included 2 years worth of prototypes and test results for a few of the new machines that the customer was going to produce. At the end of each of the interviews we had to suffer through, the customer's management all shook their heads at the stupidity of the user and we were let off of the hook.
TL;DR: User lost 2 years worth of prototypes and test results because he didn't listen to his neighborhood-friendly support technician.
#578 +2- Added on: Sep-20-2012 Added by: Wyldnfryd -- Comments
We had this user having trouble with their new password...
...new policy pw has to be 8 characters
kept saying shes not meeting the requirements...
she swears shes using special characters, caps, letters numbers
finally my coworker asks "what's the special character?"
Her: Backspace
#577 +3- Added on: Sep-20-2012 Added by: srbsask -- Comments
I used to do contract service calls for a couple of internet providers in my city. Most stuff was pretty straight forward although there was some fairly challenging stuff. This call was a challenge but not in the way I expected.
I was called up to investigate a customer who had lost internet connection.
When he opened the door it was a very obese man with no shirt on (lovely). He brought me over to his PC and I sat down and run a couple quick tests. I deduced that it was mostly likely the NIC, mainly because it was a Dlink 528 which had a horrible manufacturing run and there was an ic on the card that died like clock work.
I swapped out the card with no problems although I noticed that the room seemed unusually hot because I was starting to perspire a bit.
After the install of the new drivers and making sure that it was serviceable by hitting a few websites and doing a test download I started really notice how much I was starting sweat.... and it was really unusual because really although it was warm it was not sweltering by any means.
I was almost done the paperwork when I basically stopped in the middle of writing a word.
I just had an epiphany....... There was no sweat on my face or brow... all the sweaty dampness was on my back and legs and was creeping around to my front.
I was not sweating at all rather I was marinating in the sweat of a fat man.
He had been sitting and sweating at that chair for so long that it had soaked through and now the moisture was wicking though the saturated foam and into my dry clothes.
I tried not to appear completely disgusted as I handed him his paperwork and I threw a jacket on my car seat and drove home as fast as I dare to shower and put on some clean clothes.
The sad thing is that this is not even the most disgusting thing I ran into, although that incident occurred just a few houses down from the fat mans.
#576 +9- Added on: Sep-20-2012 Added by: slacker420 -- Comments
I should start by saying, I work at a small ISP. We serve undeserved areas where DSL and Cable may not be provided, to a lot of farmers and small townships. When I'm not doing work in the field, I try my best at tech support. So a little after 10AM this morning this call comes in:
Angry: MY INTERNET DOESN'T WORK, WHY DOESN'T IT WORK!
Me: Let me take a look at it for you sir, can I have the last name on your account?
Angry: Blurts out last name so quick can't even attempt at typing it, insists on knowing why the internet doesn't work
Me: Could you please repeat your last name, just a bit slower this time?
Angry: Spells out his last name in annoyance.
Me: Alright Mr. Angry, Give me just a moment to take a look and see what I can come up with.
Angry: (didn't give me a moment) Theres a blue cord here, not plugged into anything, what does the blue cord do if its not plugged in? Why isn't it plugged in? What is it there for?
Me: Mr. Angry, Give me just a moment to look over my notes here and check out the unit at your home.
Angry: Is there a technician there? What is the blue cord for?
Me: Okay Sir, do me a favor and explain to me how things are setup there. Do you have a wireless router? Is your computer directly plugged into wireless router?
Angry: It is a whitebox. I have a white box, and It's suppose to just work.
Me: (Realizes that we rented the router to him, and am able to get into it for troubleshooting, NOW where getting somewhere!)
Me: Alright sir, the internet is working except to your laptop. So I'm gonna have you go ahead and open up your laptop and let it boot up and let me know when your at the desktop.
Angry: I'm there. What is the blue wire for?
Me: I am not sure, but I can see here I don't see anything connected to your router so we're gonna take a couple steps and see if we can fix it.
Angry: Groan
Me: In the bottom right hand of your computer screen do you have something that looks like signal bars, or maybe even stairs?
Angry: No I do not, are you going to fix my internet?
Me: We just need to go through a couple steps here to make sure everything is working as it should
Angry: I don't see no stupid bars.
Me: So on the bottom right hand corner of your screen there is nothing that looks like signal bars or stairs? Maybe with a X through it?
Angry: You should've said it was on the screen! (I facepalm) It is there but it says no connections available if you click on it.
Me: Okay sir, is there a button or something on your laptop that kind of looks like that maybe that you have to press to turn on or off the wireless?
Angry: No tell me where it is.
Me: Mr. Angry, Sadly I have no idea what computer you are using so I am not able to....
Angry: These stupid things are all the same! Tell me where it is!
Me: Sir, computers are not all the same and they vary the placement often on laptops.
Angry: (Yelling) Your lying to me! Is there a techinicain there that can fix my internet!!!!
Brief pause.
Angry: I found the stupid button and now its spinning in the bottom right corner
Me: Okay, wait a few moments and go ahead and try and browse the web.
Angry: It's working now.
Me: Alright Mr. Angry, this is a common problem and can sometimes happen on...
Angry: Oh I know what happened, that stupid cat was walking on my laptop!
Me: Alright Mr. Angry, is that all I can help you with today?
Angry: That'll be all. Thanks for your help. CLICK
I am very novice at tech support, so I really try my best. Some people are just impossible on the phone. Be nice to the guy that wants to help you, because that is all I want to do. Maybe I am naive in my thinking, but I enjoy someone being happy when there crack... erm, internet is working again.
#573 +6- Added on: Sep-07-2012 Added by: cerem86 -- Comments
A personal favorite of mine.
Bob is a horrible customer. Bob is that old man who tells you up front he doesn't know anything at all about "these blasted machines" but wants to tell you how to fix his. Bob is the man who screams "It's not rocket science! Fix it cheaper!" when the cost is not under $50. Bob is a jerk.
Bob brought his PC in because he couldn't get online. He states he called comcast the night before when it happened and, in his words, "Cussed those greedy bastards out" before they told him it was his PC and not the modem. We'd had a bad lightning storm the night before, and I've seen more than one case of an ethernet card going kaput during one of those but nothing else.
I dunno if it's lightning, a miniature surge coming through the modem or what, but it happens a lot down here during summer storm season.
So I take the pc in, check it out, determine it is in fact an ethernet port gone out, and call Bob. After telling him it would cost $80 for the part and labor, and telling him if he doesn't like the price to get it done elsewhere, I got permission to do it.
Installed card, tested connection, all is good. I put a piece of masking tape over the onboard ethernet port, and when he picked it up even explained to him he would not be plugging it in where he did before, and he would need to reset his modem.
Bob called back a half hour later screaming and cussing about how we ripped him off. I tried to walk him, over the phone, through making sure it was plugged in properly, making sure he reset his modem.... he would have none of it.
Finally, after telling him if I came out there and it was one of those things he would be paying for our on-site labor fee ($85/hr, one hour minimum) and he agreed, I went to Bob's house.
Two minutes of cussing after I get there, he's online. I asked him why he tore the tape off the old port like I specifically said not to. He claims he didn't know. I pointed out that I showed him the old port, the tape, and the new port, and explained to him in clear terms what to do. Then I handed him the printed invoice for my coming out.
Bob screamed, Bob cussed, and Bob told me to get out of his house. I left. I then called the two other small PC places around town to alert them to a customer they need to keep an eye out for. Illegal, maybe, but we tend to help each other out there instead of hoping the others get ripped off.
Three weeks later Bob comes back in with cash to pay up, because they both denied him service, and the only thing he could do would be drive fifty minutes out to the nearest Best Buy.
I took the money, then told Bob we no longer wanted him as a customer.
#572 +4- Added on: Sep-07-2012 Added by: cellskey -- Comments
I work in the IT service desk at a big recruitment company. Most of the users are fairly tech proficient and know how to find their IP address through l33t h4x0ring (aka run>cmd>ipconfig). Some of them think they can solve their IT problems by themselves.
One of them called me earlier today. She had to assign some person to a specific job, but the .xml file of that person was stuck somewhere. Upon asking her for the IP address so that I could take care of that, she says:
"Hold on, my colleague here is a tech expert and will solve the problem in a heartbeat".
Alright then, I sit on the phone with her, listening how they ponder about what is "properties" and where to "click" for Task Manager. Meanwhile, she goes on about how her colleague makes me redundant, but she still wants me on the phone and I could not "take a break". Perhaps she just wanted to humiliate me by the power of her colleague's skills. I decided to remain silent and wait for her, knowing that the outcome would be really sweet.
Many many many heartbeats later, they still haven't got even remotely close to the resolution. She attempts to crack a joke so that I could help her after all. I am waiting for the moment of uncomfortable silence and realization that both of them have no clue of what is going on.
After 35 minutes on the phone, this moment finally comes. She admits that she has lost the war and I am not redundant after all. I silently resolve the issue with a couple of clicks and listen through her apologies.
TL;DR: Tech Support is not redundant.
#571 +6- Added on: Sep-07-2012 Added by: kingofthedesert -- Comments
I work in tech support for an ISP and although we don't have to troubleshoot routers, if it's not too busy and the caller is nice or I feel sorry because they seem really helpless, I'll help them with wireless issues.
So yesterday a man who sounded like he was in his twenties or early thirties called exasperated because he's been trying to install his third router with no luck.
Dude is so over the edge that he rants for nearly five minutes before getting to the questions I need answers too. Each time he purchased a different brand, believing the previous brand to be junk.
"How do people deal with these punkass routers?" he asked me. I used the pause to ask which port on the back of the router is the Ethernet from the modem connected to.
"What?" he asked, with a mixture of bewilderment and annoyance. "Man, this here's a wireless router! Aint no cables nowhere!" I understand, I said, but you have a cable from the modem to the router, right?
"Nah. So you telling me I need to put cables all up in this shit?" I started to explain the setup and he cut me off and said he'd had it. Routers, he determined, we're not for him and he couldn't fathom why people would put themselves through "all that work" just to have wireless Internet connections. He said he was returning the router to the store and hung up.
I had a similar call with a snooty woman who informed me that her luxurious home was too beautifully furnished to ugly up with routers and cables. She had given her modem away and placed the router in a closet thinking that would work.
#569 +6- Added on: Aug-22-2012 Added by: jlamothe -- Comments
I work for a company that makes custom control systems, mostly for high-efficiency heating systems and home automation. Many of the systems we have allow us to connect remotely to diagnose problems from the office, which can be a lot more convenient than having to send someone out.
I had one customer call me. It was about a heating system in a multi-residential apartment complex. This was an older system that didn't have automatic alarming when there was a problem, but we could still remotely connect to see what was going on. (Note: It was the dead of winter in Toronto).
The conversation between me and the customer went something like this:
Customer: My building's cold. Why is my building cold?
Me: I'm not sure, but if you can give me a moment to connect to your system, I'll probably be able to figure out where the problem is. What's the address?
Customer: [gives building's address]
(a minute or so passes)
Me: Well, I seem to have found your problem.
Customer: And that is?
Me: Well, according to the system, your building is designed to be heated by three boilers, but two of them are reporting a burner lockout and can't fire. You should probably have someone from [local contractor] out to look at the burner on boilers 1 and 3.
Customer: Yeah. I know about that. We shut off the gas line to those boilers down because of a leak.
Me: Well, without those boilers you're basically running at one third heating capacity. That's why your building is cold. You might be able to get by with one inoperative in the warmer weather, but you can't run in the middle of January on just one boiler. It's not powerful enough.
Customer: Can't you do anything about it?
Me: Not from here. Like I said, you should probably call [local contractor] I can get you their emergency service number if you like.
Customer: Can't you tell the working boiler to just work harder?
Me: Sir, it autmatically did that when the system started cooling off. It's already running at 100% capacity.
Customer: What can we do about it?
Me: Get your gas line fixed and bring the other two boilers back on-line?
Customer: That's not an option. What else can we do?
Me: Chop some wood and build a fire?
TL;DR: Customer couldn't understand why his building started getting cold after he shut down 2 of his 3 boilers in mid-January in Toronto.
#568 +2- Added on: Aug-22-2012 Added by: txmoose -- Comments
So I work for a national wireless carrier, which we'll call "Carrier" and our stores do tech support, repair and replacement of customer devices. Generally, phone batteries are NOT covered by warranty, but we will help customers out of sheer kindness, a sense of humanity, and to earn that repeat business/Very Satisfied customer satisfaction phone survey.
A gentleman called the store number recently, and, unfortunately, I was the one lucky enough to answer the phone.
Me: Thank you for calling Carrier, my name is TxMoose, how can I help you?
Customer: Yea, y'all ordered me a battery, and I want to know why it hasn't come in yet.
Me: I'll be happy to look and see if it is in. When did we order the battery for you?
Customer: I don't know! Look it up.
Me: Alright, I'll be happy to do that. I need the phone number for the battery we ordered.
Customer: I don't know! It's not my phone! Why haven't you looked it up yet?! (At this point, he is very irritated and I have been nothing but polite. That is about to change.)
Me: OK, sir, what brand of phone is this? Samsung, Motorola, LG?
Customer: It's an ANDROID phone! Just go find an android battery for me! Damn!
Me: Sir, there are many, many types of android phones and they all have different batteries. There will be a manufacturer name...
Customer: Just go find a damn ANDROID battery! Or let me talk to your manager and tell him you're an idiot!
Me: Hold for just a moment, please
At this point, my manager has been standing next to me, listening to the whole interaction. He takes the phone, looks at the phone, looks at me, says, "oops" and hangs up. Am I suppose to be psychic!? Beyond that, the caller ID number he called from came up on our end as "unlisted" so NO caller ID number displayed.
In the end, thank god for a manager who realizes I really try to help everyone, however some people are beyond help.
TL;DR: Customer expected me to be psychic over the phone, never told me name/phone number/phone model because I didn't already know them. Apparently "Android" is a brand now, too.
#567 +2- Added on: Aug-22-2012 Added by: quintinza -- Comments
Had a client mail me once "My email is not working!!"
Out of spite I replied "Could you send me a screenshot?"
Replied with a screenshot of outlook busy with send/receive dialogue and "SEE IT'S NOT WORKING!!! PLEASE REVERT URGENTLY WHEN YOU FIX IT."
Due to the incorrect use of "revert" I ignored the client until they sent a "Thanks it's working now" email later that day.
#563 +5- Added on: Aug-14-2012 Added by: grdlock -- Comments
A guy in my office recently got a new iPad. Friday I connected it to our office wifi for him. Come Saturday, I get an email telling me he can't connect to the wireless. He references the correct SSID and I tell him the password, he says it won't connect. Here's our exact email conversation:
Him: Hi what is out password for our wifi?
Me:
Him: Hi when I entered. It does not work
Me: Make sure you enter a zero for the O and the letter at the end is capitalized
Him: What is our wifi number ? There are 2 in storage
Me: The first one is on your side of the building, but both should still work and use the same password.
Him: Because when I enter the password it did not accept it
Me: When you're typing it wrong. I assure you the password works. Just watch out for caps and numbers.
Him: Ok
I didn't hear back from him again, and stopped by his office today to figure out what the heck he was doing wrong.
He then proceeded to tell me that he was at HIS HOUSE trying to connect. He talked to his son, and his son said it's "probably" because he's out of range.
YA THINK?!
#562 +4- Added on: Aug-14-2012 Added by: AlmostBOFH -- Comments
In my previous job, I worked on a Helpdesk, issuing Level 1 and Level 2 support. It wasn't a bad gig, my colleagues were as jaded about the job as I was and we all hated Management. Par for the course, I suppose.
One day while working the phones, I got a call from a user who was charged a rather large phone bill. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of answering the phone (didn't check Caller ID, rookie mistake) and proceeded to get an earful from them asking why her bill is so expensive. I let her rant, purely because if I interrupted, I'd have to listen again. Before I get into it, I worked for a Government agency who had a relationship with a large telco and supplied devices through us. We then onsold those, meaning we had to deal with the occasional bill issue.
Once she finished, I asked her to send me a copy of the bill, while she was on the phone, so I could look at it. Once I received it, I checked her bill: $1850.
Once I picked my jaw up off the desk, I went through the bill to see where it went wrong. There was the standard $49 cap, $10 for the phone, $10 for the data plan and then the big one: $1781 worth of data. It was for approximately 118MB. International Data Usage was charged at $15/MB. So, I had to call her back.
Me: Hi, this is AlmostBOFH, I'm calling you back regarding your phone bill.
User: /screams I AM NOT PAYING $1850. I WAS NOT AWARE OF THE CHARGES - I SPOKE TO YOU AND YOU SAID YOU'D EMAIL THEM TO ME SO I KNEW AND I NEVER GOT THE EMAIL!!!
Me: You didn't speak to me, however you did speak to Herp and they did in fact email you the charges and how we explicitly told you to not use data while roaming internationally. We sent you the email. We even disabled 3G Data Roaming so you could not do it. You obviously turned it back on.
User: Are you accusing me of lying??
Me: Pretty much. I have the email, I have the information we sent you, I'm looking at the job. And oh look, your manager was CC'd on the email we sent you.
After this, the line went quiet. Had I tamed the beast???
User: HOW DARE YOU ACCUSE ME OF LYING!!!!
Me: Please hold while I conference in your manager.
So I conference called in her manager and explained the situation. The manager had the email and went into bat for IT before the user went on another tirade.
Manager: I have the email here, Derp. You were notified of the charges and you were told to not activate Data Roaming. You weren't told how to reactivate it, so you obviously went out of your way to enable it. You will be paying this bill. I will, however, see whether we can charge some of it to our cost centre as this was work related. AlmostBOFH, thankyou for your help on this.
And that was the last I ever heard from her. I checked a week later, her account was disabled, her mobile phone returned and as far as I know, the bill not paid. I don't know whether she was placed on photocopying duties, but suffice to say, IT 1, User 0.
TL;DR: User put her head in the guillotine not expecting to lose her head.
#561 +7- Added on: Aug-14-2012 Added by: nerm2k -- Comments
Background: I work tech support for a POS software company. Our software utilizes 3 programs. There is a point of sale program, a program for back office functions and a 3rd program whose sole function is just a screen that doesn't allow users to access the desktop without a password. Nobody other than tech support gets the password. Employees use Alt-Tab to switch between the first to screens and don't usually encounter the 3rd screen but sometimes they do.
Me: Thank you for calling Derp POS this is nerm2k how can I help you.
User: My registers frozen and wants a password to unlock it.
Me: Did you try alt tab?
User: Yeah, it takes me back to the office but I need pos.
Me: Well try hitting alt but then tab twice to get back to pos.
user: I know how to did it but the computers broken. It never asked for a password before. Just give me the password so I can do it.
Me: That screen is always there in the background. There are three total screens and you are only switching between two. We need to try and get to the third screen. Just try and hold Alt but press Tab twice.
User: I did it not working. I Told you I been working here 2 years I know how to did it but it's not working. Just give me the password so I can go to the pos.
Me: Just try this for me. Hold Alt down, Press Tab, Release Tab but leave alt held down and tell me what you see.
User: It's back on the password screen.
Me: You let go of Alt
User: I know how to did it I been working here longer than you. You don't know what you're doing just give me the password so I can ring sales. I got a long line and I need this computer.
At this point I put the user on hold and beat my head on the desk for awhile. I get this call at least twice a day but not often is the user what I call "Belligerently Ignorant." I decide to take the 5 minutes to actually remote into the register and then continue with the employee.
Me: I'm dialed in and can see what you're doing. Please press alt and tab at the same time then release tab but leave alt held down.
I now watch her just alt-tab from one screen to another and let go of both buttons. If I try and alt-tab it will not work for the remote computer but I have learned if they hold alt I can tab for them and make it work.
Me: Hold alt
I proceed to press tab several times and explain how each little icon is a program and that this is how she switches between them.
User: ohhhhhhhhhh, Why didn't you just say that.
-click- She hangs up on me
#560 +7- Added on: Aug-14-2012 Added by: Ponkers -- Comments
Many years ago I worked as a techie on the phones for a games company and I've got too many stories about this type of thing, but this particular one will never leave me.
A little background; we had a load of educational games, I think this one was Math Blaster, I forget precisely, but you had to have the Windows desktop set to run in either 16 or 32bit colour for it to work. I forget which now.
~~I'll leave the pleasantries about the thing not working to your imagination~
Me: Okay, can you right click on the desktop for me?
Customer: Right click?
Me: Yes, with the mouse. You know.
Customer: Hmm, okay...
~scuffling noises~
Customer: Huff. It's not working.
Me: What do you mean?
Customer: Right click on the desktop?
Me: Yes please. Just right click and you should see a little menu pop up.
~more scuffling noises~
Customer: No, it's not working. Does it have to be in capitals?
Me: Huh? Wait a second... Are you writing "click" on your desktop?? With your mouse?!
My colleagues heads all turn to face me with looks of varying disbelief slowly spreading across them in unison and I nearly lose my shit, but manage to maintain a straight enough face.
Customer: I've tried about 10 times and it's not working.
Me: Does your mouse have two buttons?
Customer: No.
Me: Hmm. Is there an apple logo on it?
Customer: Yeah.
At which point I have to explain that Windows games don't work on macs.
#559 +3- Added on: Aug-04-2012 Added by: haibane_rakka -- Comments
Continuing my series on incidents from a previous job, a computer parts store, I have a tale of messing with a customer's head. Generally I try to be helpful to people, but that's not always the case and it doesn't usually make for a good story. Not quite as tech-support-y, but I hope it qualifies. So if you read [1] my previous post where the internal network was comprised of hubs and not switches, you will know that this store is old and there are a lot of strange problems we have. One of many issues, is the fire alarm. It usually doesn't cause problems, but every couple months or so it will spaz out and go off every 5 minutes for 3 or 4 days.
So this happens to us during the summer one year, after 2 days of it we pretty much just tune it out and ignore it. On the 3rd day that the fire alarm is freaking out for that particular week, we make it until about 1pm with no alarms. I'm thinking "Ok, it's been going off for 2 days nonstop, and today it's quiet, so maybe they got it fixed". I'm just about to take my lunch break when I get stopped by a man and his two screaming kids, he wants to look at GPS units. That's fine, I'm not that hungry. So we start looking at GPS units in the glass counter, and of course he wants the "cheapest best one", I explain to him that those two qualities don't usually go together. Well the GPS guy takes up about 20 minutes of my time before my nerves begin to twitch, he's indecisive, doesn't want to spend money, and he has no clue how any of them work and wants to see a demonstration of every single one, even the ones that use the same interface. No matter how simple the damn GPS is, he just does not understand the 3 things you need to press to enter an address. His car is more complicated than this device, I do not know how he gets anywhere. The entire time this is happening, his kids are destroying the shelf of RAM nearby, tearing stuff off and throwing it on the floor, and he doesn't give a shit.
When we hit the half hour mark I am a bit annoyed, explaining the exact same things over and over is getting to me, and I am going bonkers inside my head every time I see his little hellions wreck another aisle. That's when it hits, the most glorious sound I've ever heard: the fire alarm goes off. He looks up, confused, and without missing a beat I put on my best panic face and say "WUAAAAAUUUGHHH! OHMAIGAD we have to evacuate!!!!!" And I tore out of the fuckin store in a dead run, ran as fast as I could through the front doors, down the sidewalk, and around the corner. I took that opportunity to text my coworkers and manager to let them know I was heading to lunch, and drove off.
Later when I returned I was told by someone else that the guy stood there dumbfounded for a minute, grabbed his kids and rushed out the door. He supposedly stood there outside for a couple minutes wondering why no one else was evacuating, and then came back in thinking I was crazy. He wasted 40 more minutes of various peoples' time, and didn't buy anything.
Was I an ass for doing it? Yeah. But fuckit.
TL;DR: FIIIIIRRREEEE!!!
#558 +-1- Added on: Aug-03-2012 Added by: bwat47 -- Comments
I'm always amazed at how some people know so little about their own website hosting. I just experienced this wonderful conversation:
Its worth noting this guy had called in earlier and my coworker had to spend over 10 minutes explaining to him that his NIC drivers not being installed isn't our problem.
Derp: Hey! I'm trying to setup email with you guys and need the server info!
Me: No problem. For the incoming mail server its pop.isp.net, and for the outgoing its smtp.isp.net.
Derp: Ok, now its asking me for an account name and password, what are those?
Me: The account name is the part of your email address before the @isp.net
Derp: Ok, but I'm pretty sure I don't have a password, I never needed one before
Me: Every email account requires a password. If you don't remember it, I can change it to something you do know, what is your phone number so I can pull up your account, and what is the email address?
Derp: [phone number], [1] info@whatever.com
Me: You don't appear to have any email addresses setup on this account, and that domain is not hosted by us
Derp: but you are my isp
Me: Your website is hosted by someone else, and you will need to contact your hosting to set up outlook for that email address.
Derp: But you are my isp, why won't this work? Can I just try it and see if it works?
Me: It won't work, because you are trying to use @isp.net's email servers and its not an @isp.net email address. You need to contact your host to have them give you the correct server information to put into outlook.
Derp: But you are my isp, I'm pretty sure this should work, my email always just worked before. If I get an email address with you will it work?
Me:.... an @isp.net email address would certainly work with the @isp.net servers, but for the specific email address you are trying to setup it will make no difference, since that email address uses a completely different email service. you need to contact your host to get the correct info.
Derp: I don't know who hosts it!
Me: looks up host on WHOIS. You are hosted by DERPNET, you will need to contact them.
tl:dr square peg, round hole
#557 +2- Added on: Aug-03-2012 Added by: fenrisulvur -- Comments
I work at a college and a professor called up from her house asking if our network was infected. I asked her to clarify what the problem was and she said that she "just got off the phone with 'windows administrators' because they called to tell her that she has a virus on her home computer and she needs to download their software to fix it." She was calling to check if her school computer was ok. Having heard of this kind of scam before, I told her she was just scammed and to change her password but she insisted that they were real administrators and that they found "something wrong" in her computer. So again I clarified that this is a common scam, but she insisted I wasn't listening to her. "IT WAS WINDOWS ADMINISTRATORS. I just want to know if the network is ok at school." So I told her the network was ok and she hung up. She's been phished 4 times in the past 6 months already.
#556 +3- Added on: Aug-03-2012 Added by: turkycat -- Comments
I hold a summer job at a national retailer that does computer and electronic support on the side. We also have a couple service centers that we can ship stuff to in the event that something needs replaced we aren't capable of doing on site.
Yesterday I had a customer come into the store and approach me while I was working with another. As I finished up, I made eye contact with her and politely advised "I will be with you in just a moment, ma'am", her response was "You'd better." with a stern 'matter-of-fact' look in her eyes. I just smiled and nodded at her without missing a beat (I have nearly 10 years of experience in technical support with much more 'official' job titles before going back to school, and this is not the first time I have dealt with this kind of person, immediately knowing what would be required of me next).
When I was ready, I quickly changed face from my patented 'professional nerd' demeanor to my 'annoyingly nice' version, and approached her with the regular "How can I help you?"
"You need to fix this RIGHT." again, matter-of-factly
"Okay!" I said, "What seems to be the problem?"
"Um, You guys sent this to your SERVER-center MONTHS ago and it has NEVER worked right. You said you would fix it and it took over a week to get it back and it STILL doesn't work. This was back in May and I haven't been able to bring it in because I am SO busy, but this has been such a major inconvenience for me because I am very busy and I need my computer and I think you guys need to compensate me for my all my wasted time... etc, etc, etc" this went on for about 2 minutes or so.
"Okay! What seems to be the problem?" I repeated, exactly as before.
"THE WIRELESS DOESN'T WORK!" she exclaimed as if I was a fool for asking because this was clearly the only problem any computer could ever have. "You CLAIMED to have replaced something before and even told me you tested it here before you called me which you CLEARLY didn't because it doesn't work and I've been forced to use my external wireless thing for months now and this is extremely unacceptable! I spent a lot of money here at RETAILER NAME and I expect the things I buy to work!" as if the amount of dollars spent was the only variable that determines the rate of component failure.
On the outside, I continue to smile and nod as if everything she says is plated in gold; "Well, I'm sorry to hear that! It sounds as if you've had quite the unfortunate turn of events! If you don't mind, let's take a look at the computer and see what we'll need to do to make this right for you!"
I did each of the following things without looking at her face. I grab her HP laptop, open it, and bring it out of sleep mode. Immediately, I notice a big red light on the F12 key next to a wireless icon (its the radio tower with waves coming off of it, pretty damn obvious, but I digress) which, when pressed turned green and immediately popped up a message saying "connecting to XXXXX" (proving that we DID in fact test in in store before) I opened her browser and connected to google.com. I looked up, without breaking character or batting an eye I said "hmm, I seem to be connected to google, perhaps I wasn't listening... Did I misunderstand your problem?"
needless to say, the look on her face was priceless. She immediately changed her tone, but instead of apologizing said "well if it's working now, I guess I'll just take it..."
Time for my revenge (I can be a devious little fuck). Without changing my tone from this perfectly innocent retail employee that would never harm a fly, I start playing ignorant as well. I say "well, that can't be the problem, that was just the ON button for the wireless, I'm sure you tried that before didn't you?"
"no, no I didn't"
"...oh, really? Well that explains it then. It turns itself off to save battery life."
"I didn't know that"
"Well, I suppose we all learn something every day! So from now on I suppose I'd recommend checking to make sure that it is turned ON before using it!"
bitch.
#555 +-2- Added on: Jul-29-2012 Added by: kony_island_baby -- Comments
I work for a rather large ISP and our modems also serve as routers. Which is great for most people, as they don't have to buy routers along with their modems. This one guy, however, did NOT properly understand the concept of a wireless modem.
The modem was sent to him as an upgrade; his last modem was one of our older models that did not have wireless built into it. As a result, a tech did not install the modem. Literally all he had to do was plug it in to get it to work.
Anyway, Mr. Smith calls about how his internet doesn't work. Extremely rude and sarcastic, he exclaims how typical it is of our company to send defective equipment. Our exchange went as followed:
"None of the lights are even on!!!"
"Sir, is your modem plugged in right now"
"Well, is your name EIN-STEIN or something? I have what you guys call a WIRE-LESS MO-DEM."
"You....you still need to plug it in...Wireless means it connects to wireless devices without a third party router."
"Oh..."
He changed his tune pretty quickly and seemed embarrassed for being such a complete idiot. At the end of the call, I just had to stick it to him for being such a jerk at the beginning. He thanked me using my name and I said to him, "You can actually just call me Einstein."
#554 +8- Added on: Jul-29-2012 Added by: Last_Universalist -- Comments
Get a ticket, "System unable to restore after power outage." Call and speak with Ludicrously Stupid End User (LSEU).
Me: "This is Last_Universalist. I understand you have a problem with your system restarting after a power outage? Can you tell me more specifically what the problem is?"
LSEU: "The computer itself won't turn on."
Me: "You're not still having the power outage, are you?"
LSEU: "No, the electricity is back. I just can't turn on the computer."
Me: "Can you locate the power button on the machine?"
LSEU: "Yeah, my boss was in here 5 minutes ago and he tried that. It still didn't power up." [So your boss had to find the power button for you. Not a good sign.]
Me: "Did the computer physically come unplugged from the wall, by any chance?"
LSEU: [checking cords]: "No, i see that it's plugged in."
Me: "Are you certain the power outage has been resolved?"
LSEU: "Yeah, the lights are on in the other half of the building."
Me: "Wait. The other half of the building? So your half actually doesn't have power yet?"
LSEU: "Hold on, someone just walked into my cubicle." [He sets the phone down on his desk, but I can hear that a conversation is taking place between him and someone else. I can't quite make out the words. Finally the conversation stops.] "OK, I'm back. My half of the building will have power momentarily. That was the head electrician telling me he just has to reset the circuit breakers."
Me: "Great! Wait until after the breakers are reset and try again. If you're still having problems, we'll open a new ticket."
LSEU: "Ok, thanks. Bye."
Me: [hangs up, followed by a facepalm so hard my forehead still has an imprint of my hand in it]
#553 +7- Added on: Jul-29-2012 Added by: morto00x -- Comments
During my years in college, I did computer repairs and IT related stuff to get extra cash. To get the jobs posted ads in different boards (campus, coffee shops, etc) and through word of mouth.
Once I got a call from a previous customer letting me know that his 70-something year old father needed some help with his computer, which to me was pretty normal. A few days later I showed up at the old man's house. He greeted me and immediately gave a piece of paper and his credit card. My job was to sign him up for 7 or 8 XXX websites and teach him how to navigate through the sites (he was actually taking notes in a notebook). After 5 hours, I was finally able to leave the place. Funny thing is that he was totally serious and professional during the whole time.
TL;DR Got hired by a 70 year old man to sign him up to adult sites and teach him how to navigate through them.
#552 +4- Added on: Jul-29-2012 Added by: darkstarwork -- Comments
So this woman calls in, let's call her AnnoyingClient, and she is already pissed off.
I barely get through my opening before she's almost screaming at me "MY OLD NAME IS STILL SHOWING UP IN OUTLOOK!"
"Well ma'am, I'd be glad to take a look at that, but I'll need to get your first and last name, as well as your location, and a callback number."
"MY NAME IS ANNOYINGCUSTOMER BUT IT USED TO BE ANNOYINGTWAT, AND NOW PEOPLE ARE CALLING ME, SAYING THEY CANT FIND ME TO SEND AN EMAIL TO ME"
"Ok ma'am, I just looked you up in the system here, and your new name is showing. In fact, I just dealt with this issue earlier today, and can provide a quick solution. If you'll just go into the file menu in Outlook, click account settings, and then account settings once more in the dropdown box, and then click the button labeled 'change' you will see an option for 'Use Cached Exchange Mode'. Go ahead and uncheck that for me."
"WELL IT WORKED FOR ME, BUT OTHER PEOPLE WILL HAVE TO DO THIS AND THATS UNACCEPTABLE. I AM VERY IMPORTANT, I HAVE 90 PEOPLE THAT REPORT DIRECTLY TO ME AND THEY NEED TO BE ABLE TO EMAIL ME!"
"Well, you can let each user know of this solution, as we don't have anything in place to force users to not use cached exchange mode"
"THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! I WANT THIS TICKET ESCALATED NOW!"
"Ma'am, I'm not going to - "
"WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? WHAT LEVEL SUPPORT ARE YOU? I'M WAY ABOVE YOUR PAY GRADE, THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!"
"Ma'am, I'm level 1 support - "
"Are you a part of [Group name]?"
"No, I am not"
"Good, I'll take it up with them!"
Good luck twatwaffle, they're gonna give you the same answer. Lol.
#551 +1- Added on: Jul-29-2012 Added by: disturbd -- Comments
A few days ago a woman comes to me with laptop problems. She says that her left shift key stopped working and she noticed that her battery charge light was flashing instead of being solid amber.
I ask her to open it up and show me. She points out that the charge light isn't on anymore, which I tell her is probably because it isn't plugged in at the moment, so it isn't charging. She just stares at me for a second, until I ask about the shift key.
I ask her if any other keys are not working. She says she doesn't think so. I hit the windows key to open the start menu so I can test out the shift key. Nothing happens.
"Looks like your Windows key is broken too."
"The what key?" she asks.
"And your ctrl key...and your alt key..."
Turns out the entire bottom left corner of the keyboard doesn't work. I didn't really think much about it, so I told her I was going to take the machine in the back and check the ribbon connection to make sure it wasn't just loose before I order her a new keyboard.
After removing the 16 or so screws that HP deemed necessary to keep the keyboard from escaping, I pull the ribbon out and check the contacts. All clean.
Then I notice a brown stain on the underside of the keyboard. Yep, right under the faulty keys. I grab the keyboard and take it out to show her.
"Did you spill something on the laptop?"
"Oh, oh yeah, coffee. You think that has something to do with it?" she replies. "Maybe that is why the light was flashing too."
Are you fucking serious? How is that not the first thing you would mention? It's like people think that I'm going to yell at them for breaking their own shit, so they try to act like it stopped working all by itself. Just be honest, it'll save us both time.
#548 +-1- Added on: Jul-17-2012 Added by: siwdys -- Comments
Got a call from an irate cu. 6 calls today. Most if not all marked as irate. Oh boy. So I try to do my intro, get cut off by a screaming dude. Okay. Time for the ol' rope-a-dope. Just tire him out. Takes about 15 minutes. In the meantime, I look up his account, determine it's in service, check his port, he's got sync. Find the modem serial number, remote in. Dude is screaming about WiFi. Head over to his modem's wireless settings, take a look around. He has already changed a bunch of settings. Stupidly. Broadcast power is down, wireless channel is on 6, SSID broadcast is disabled. What? So My cu is currently screaming at me because he can't see his wireless network and he's the one who turned off SSID broadcast? I check the previous case notes (dude is still screaming) and lo and behold, this is the same issue they've been having, no one figured it out, and I had that feeling the moment I heard this guy screaming about his Verizon 3g hotspot working but not this. So, he's still screaming, I crank the power up, channel to 10, SSID broadcast on, and I try to cut him off. "Sir, could you check now, I enabled SSID broadcast..." "RABBLERABBLERABBLE.... uh... well... It appears to be working." "It seems SSID broadcast was disabled. 'SMITH' also isn't a standard wireless name, I noticed that also when I checked." "Oh yeah, we changed the name so it was easier to remember." "Oh, okay, well that's fine. Seems like somehow that SSID broadcast option got flipped over, no big deal though I got that sorted out." "Oh yeah that's weird. Maybe one of the last techs did it."
#547 +4- Added on: Jul-17-2012 Added by: Zero_FX -- Comments
My dad works as a programmer in a company run by him and his partner. I one time asked him about the weirdest site he ever was asked to build. This is what happened:
Dad: "Well these two ladies had asked us to make an astrology site. Basically, you would enter your date of birth and it would give you a horoscope. You know, crazy shit like that."
Me: "So how did that work out?"
Dad: "Oh it was pretty fucking stupid. The clients had us delay the date of the launch."
Me: "Really? Why?"
Dad: "I shit you not, they literally said 'The stars weren't aligned' for that date."
The funny part is that the site went under a couple months after my dad was done with it.
#546 +7- Added on: Jul-17-2012 Added by: Jakob101st -- Comments
i new employee (of higher rank and pay than me) brought me a paper document and asked me if I could make an electronic version of it so she could email it to someone. after looking at it, it was obviously recently printed on crisp paper. when i asked her where she got the printout she said she printed it from her computer. i had no idea how to respond. (we both worked in IT)
#545 +5- Added on: Jul-17-2012 Added by: blinkerfluid13 -- Comments
I do inside sales for an IT consulting company.
I had a client that ordered a docking station and keyboard through us. He called me and asked why he couldn't get anything to come up on the screen.
Probably because he didn't order a fucking computer.
#544 +3- Added on: Jul-17-2012 Added by: morgueanna -- Comments
Not me: my former mother in law is the head of a department of education's IT department. She handles the budget and allocation of devices for an entire school district. She also fields the major malfunction calls herself.
She had to go out to a school to replace a teacher's computer because the issue had escalated beyond her normal repair staff. The teacher, a tenured individual with 25 years' experience, had gotten a virus somehow on her computer. So she 'exorcised' it by pouring holy water into the machine and praying over it.
I weep for our children's future.
#543 +8- Added on: Jul-17-2012 Added by: Damn8ti0n -- Comments
As a graphic designer I have to deal with alot of people basically destroying all the hard work me and my coworkers put into a project. At first, I couldn't handle it, now I just find it funny to see where a project goes.
But today, I had a client yell at me for telling me that the images we used were too low res for their word document.
Me: Sorry but we can not boost the quality of the images, we receive from you. If you have a higher res photo we will have no problems placing it into the document for you.
Client: But I gave you a vector photograph.
Me: Photographs do not come in vector files
Client: But it was a screen grab, the resolution should be larger than the image. What if I scan my monitor, would that produce a higher quality screen grab?
Me: How did you send us the last screen grab?
Client: I took a picture of my computer screen with my iPhone.
#539 +5- Added on: Jul-16-2012 Added by: zalemam -- Comments
Its a short story, but I faceplamed.
I work at a retail pharmacy in the photo department. A lady came in to print photos at the kiosks. She spends 5 minutes looking a blank screen, then asks me why her card isn't being read by the computer. I take a quick look. She was trying to stick her cameras battery into the compact flash card reader. She nearly destroyed the pins on the reader and her battery.
#538 +6- Added on: Jul-16-2012 Added by: Sunshine_Bag -- Comments
Supervising a Tier 1 help desk this weekend. We have about 1000 clients we're servicing who are spread out over about 200 square miles, and every single one of them thinks they're the most important person on our network.
This one guy however takes the cake. In the grand scheme of things he's about as important to the overall operation of this company as Korben Dallas' mother is to the plot of The Fifth Element. As I'm coming onto shift tonight I was briefed by the outgoing about this guy and how he's already submitted about ten trouble tickets in the past six hours. All for basic things.
About an hour ago I get a trouble ticket from him that said the following:
"Need port activated."
That was it. Location, MAC address, which type of network, EVERYTHING THAT WE REQUEST FOR PORT ACTIVATION is left off. I send him back a request for this and he proceeds to personally call up the help desk stating that he "doesn't have time to deal with this nonsense!" My tech tries to tell him that this information is needed but he proceeds to get abusive.
Now I can understand impatience from time to time, but you DO NOT get abusive with my techs. He's going to find his trouble ticket dropped to the bottom of the pile and all further ones ignored for at least the next week if I have my way.
#537 +2- Added on: Jul-16-2012 Added by: oxmancometh -- Comments
I work at a community college. The current student email system uses first initial, last initial and mmdd of the user's birthday. It never fails, the beginning of every semester there are students lined up at the door because 1) they forgot their password between semester or 2) the new students don't read the first time login instructions that are written in huge red letters at the email login screen. that's another story for another time
One day a student walks into the IT office stating she can't log into her email account. I told her that I'd be glad to help her and asked if she forgot her password or is it another issue.
"I don't know" she said. I paused and waited for some other words to be said but there were none.
"Ok. Well, why don't you walk with me to the kiosk and let's see if we can narrow down the problem" I said and she was in agreement.
At the kiosk, she typed in her username and attempted a password. Of course, "Incorrect Password" appeared after the failed login.
"I can fix that for ya. Just follow me back to the office and I'll give you a temp password and you should be good to go" I told her.
I looked up her username and reset her password to 123456. I informed her of the password and told her if she had any more problems to feel free to come back.
About 3 minutes later she comes back to the door and says "Sir, it's still not letting me in. The password you gave me is wrong." I apologized and and just assumed I mistyped the password. So this time I was careful in my typing and again assigned 123456 and sent her on her way. It wasn't 2 minutes and she came back saying the password was incorrect. I though that maybe my keyboard was acting up so I opened notepad and typed 123456 and it worked fine. So I asked her what was she typing in for her password and she said 123456. Out of curiosity I asked what she was using for the username. She said "nothing".
"So you're leaving the username blank?" I asked She nodded yes. So I informed her that she needed to type in a username every time she logs in or else the system wouldn't know who she is.
"You mean your system is so dumb that I have to tell it every time that I'm me?! If that's the case, every time I call my family, I should tell them who I am because the sound of my voice isn't enough"
Between the curse words that floated around in my head was the long lecture about identification and authentication methods used in technology but yet somehow I was able to say "Yes ma'am. This system was all we could get on state funding"
That seemed to be a satisfactory answer because she nodded as if it all made sense to her and walked out the door.
#527 +1- Added on: Jul-14-2012 Added by: oxmancometh -- Comments
I've noticed in my workplace, I am expected to answer statements. I've implemented a personal policy that says I will not answer anything that is not in the form of a question. With that said, let's begin...
Today, a faculty member (instructor) came in the IT office. I could tell she was a bit flustered as she was huffing and puffing as she walked in the office. She looks at me and says "It's prompting me to change my password" as she motions towards the laptop she sat on my desk. I look at the laptop and then at her and respond with "ok". It looked as if this caught her off guard. She again states "It's prompting me to change my password" and again I respond with "ok". So after about 3 or 4 rounds of this, her frustration gets the best of her and she says "Well, are you going to help me change my password?!" So in the most sarcastic tone ever I said "ALAS! A question!!!" Then in a serious mono tone I said "Nope! You can do it yourself. Is there anything else I can help you with?" Before I knew anything she had picked up the laptop and huffed and puffed her way out the door.
You would think English instructors would understand my policy...
#519 +6- Added on: Jul-13-2012 Added by: Rayezilla -- Comments
I lost some customer data today: I don't know why it didn't copy over but it didn't. I suspect some virus crawled into the folder and one of the 4 anti-virus I ran on it deleted it.
Of course, customer goes berserk about 'their entire school career' and 'years of tax data' going missing, and I'm sitting there wondering what happened to the flash drive we gave them for free at the start of the class.
Then she says it: "I'd have backed up my files if I'd have known I was going to lose them."
#518 +3- Added on: Jul-13-2012 Added by: kossgui -- Comments
i was working at a computer store and a client went to the customer service and started screaming that we told lies to her when we sold the laptop to her. she was so frustrated all other customers was looking at her. so i decide to defuse that situation and i went to her.
she was complaining that her laptop wasn't able to burn dvds. she bought a tower of 100 dvd and she tried to burn something. she told us the her laptop wasn't able to detect the dvd.
until that point, something was strange because ALL of our laptop had a dvd burner. ALL of them. so i ask her if she have with her the dvd that she tried to burn, because some dvd might be defective. so i ask her if it is possible to test it with her. she was still screaming all the answers she was giving me. my boss was looking at us with an angry look. so she had the "defective dvd" in her drive. i opened it and i found the transparent protective dvd on the top of a brand new dvd tower. i showed to her what a dvd was supposed to look like. i told her the dvd was trying to burn wasn't one. the look she gave me, priceless.
#517 +4- Added on: Jul-13-2012 Added by: SeeScottRock -- Comments
I'll try to keep this to a minimum of wordiness.
I began working at
There is a person at work who I'll call Evil Hag (EH for short). EH always had "computer problems" and was a constant pain in the department's backside. She had constant issues with Outlook, and would always call us about it "being broken" (asking to compact files when she closed it, warning about mailbox size, etc.). Naturally, I would suggest she delete some of the backlog, and allow it to compact the files, so her mailbox would not become corrupted. She never listened.
Eventually, the worst happened, and the mailbox became corrupt. This was an issue, because EH handled all of our contracts with manufacturers, and instead of downloading and backing up copies of the files, would leave them as email attachments. Cue untrained, self taught me, trying to fix the situation. First, i exported the corrupt pst, converted to dbx files, and used a .dbx -> .eml conversion utility to salvage what I could. Then I attempted to recover the pst using trial software (stingey budget) to get the rest of the emails. In the end, I recovered about 90% of what was lost, and received pats on the back from both my supervisor and peers.
EH decided that was not good enough, and made an appointment with the CEO to inform him I had "maliciously deleted her important emails". My super went to bat for me, and defended me, but no one trusted me again. To this day (6 years later), my reputation is sullied, people ask for a different tech to fix their computers, and Eh and her coven of friends still talk about how I wronged her. I still work there, because I have gotten steady pay raises, but I am done In September.
I cannot wait.
#516 +-1- Added on: Jul-13-2012 Added by: rawrsauceS -- Comments
Client: Hello, I'm new here and I'd like to have a printer added to my computer.
Me: Sure, no problem. I can tell you how to do it yourself.
Client: Great!
Me: Ok, just click the start button and select run. Now type \ \ server name
(from here we go back and forth with the spelling of the server name one letter at a time. It's the typical V vs. B stuff so I give her the phonetics and she finally gets it)
Client: It says backflash not found.
Me: ...... ok, i'll be right over.
When I arrive she has the run command open and the following is entered into it.
backflash backflash servername
#515 +2- Added on: Jul-13-2012 Added by: MXfreak -- Comments
I have one guy that is a bit slow that comes to me all the time with his computer problems. One day I sent him a picture through Gmail of what he needed to buy for his computer.
The next day I arrived at work sit down in the break room and he comes in and says I have a bone to pick with you.. I said what for? He says why did you send me all that porn? I said I didn’t send you any porn why would I do that? So I told him after work I will stop by and check your system out, I didn’t send you any porn maybe you picked up a virus.
He said OK.So I get to his house and I said pull up the e-mail I sent you and show me the porn. He pulled up the e-mail which is Gmail and he opens the picture attachment that opened up with windows picture and fax viewer. I said OK where is the porn? So he clicks on next in picture and fax viewer and sure enough Porn lol.
The porn pictures are from his internet browsing cache so it was what he was looking at on the internet. I said this stuff is in your internet cache this is what you have been looking at on the internet not what I sent you. He stuttered and said I don't go to those sites. I said yeah ok I will see you tomorrow at work.
LOL I did do a virus scan on his computer to make sure all was ok. It was fine.
#514 +1- Added on: Jul-13-2012 Added by: robotshoelaces -- Comments
I used to do desktop support for a hospital system. Because we needed to make sure our machines being used in clinical areas didn't suck we occasionally had to get pretty firm with users who were installing unapproved software. Many times these users would get very frustrated with us because we were refusing to install software that would run just fine on the machine but wasn't on the approved list.
I had a conversation with a user that went something like this:
User: Hey, I need you to install this program for me. [I don't remember what it was, but it was some sort of email smiley face app or something]
Me: Sorry, I can't install that on your hospital machine.
User: But it'll only take a second.
Me: Sorry, but it's not on our list of approved software. We have to make sure your computer stays in good shape and we don't introduce any security risks.
User: I really need this program. [LOL]
Me: Sorry, IT&S policy says I can't do it.
User: [Visibly frustrated at this point] I just need this one thing! It won't take you long and I neeeeeeeed it.
Me: [At my wit's end] I can't install it because your computer doesn't have enough [1] megachips to run it.
User: Oh. Why didn't you say that in the first place?
The lesson here: When all else fails, make something up and lie about it.
#513 +4- Added on: Jul-13-2012 Added by: hameater -- Comments
Many, many moons ago, I worked at a highway service center, in the fuel bar section. At the end of each shift, we would tally up the sales and count the cash, and enter all the data into an Excel spreadsheet. One of the glories of being a 'shift boss' was that it was your responsibility to balance the shift.
I had been a grunt for awhile pumping fuel; then a shift boss. I then worked my way up to managing the place. It was a 24-hour business, so there was always work to do. I would spend a fair bit of time in the office, preparing bank deposits, etc at the end of my shift.
One evening, I finished at 4, and wandered over to the office. I was deep into my deposit balancing, when I got a call on my cell phone. No one ever calls me on my cell phone unless its a work emergency. So I answer the phone, and the guy who was working in the fuel bar starts rattling in my ear. "The computer's broken ohmygodidon'tknowwhattodocan you heeeellp!"
I turned to the CCTV, and watched the poor chap as he begged for help.
"What's the problem?" I ask. I can hear a steady beeping sound in the background.
"I don't know what happened, but the shift end computer is beeping I think it's going to explode or something. Can you come back and help? I know you're probably at home relaxing and everything, but IDONTKNOWWHATTODOOOO!"
It dawns on me that he doesn't realise I'm still on site, tucked away in the office. I can also see, in the CCTV, exactly what's causing the issue.
"You're seriously going to make me come back to work? Is it really that big a deal?"
He was practically in tears. "Pleeeeeeease, come in!"
"I've already had a few beers, I would be drinking and driving, you know," I lied.
"Oh shit, whatamigunna dooooooo!"
"Relax, buddy," I say. "I'll be there as quick as I can." I add as much exasperation in to my voice as I can.
"Thanks buddy, I owe you one!" he sighed with obvious relief.
I decided I would let him sweat for a few minutes. I finished off my deposit homework, and closed the safe, and left the office, being careful to lock the door behind me.
I then strolled over to the fuel bar, until I got close, then I started sprinting - running as fast as I could into the fuel bar, panting heavily.
My colleague looked at me in shock - we had spoken only about three minutes ago, and I lived a half hour drive away.
"I broke the speed limit getting here. This better be good," I growled, as I ran up to the computer.
The computer was still howling away, in what did sound rather distressing.
Without breaking eye contact, I went to the computer, and gently lifted the book he had accidentally placed on the keyboard, which was holding down some buttons, which was making the computer beep because it didn't like the constant input from the keyboard.
The beeping stopped.
"Oh, shit" he said, in a very small voice.
"It's alright, dude. I was in the office when you rang and I could see the book in the camera."
He didn't think it was funny that I made him wait three minutes with the beeping, in utter panic.
#449 +8- Added on: Jul-06-2012 Added by: Lleu -- Comments
Me: Thank you for calling herpderpy this is lleu.
User: Yeah my website is down, what's going on?
validate into the account
M: I'm not seeing any hosting here sir, let me see what happened. When was the last time you were able to access your website?
U: Hell, I don't know. It's just down. Fix it.
looks through the notes on the account
M: Sir the only hosting that I'm seeing failed billing over a year ago. Are you sure you're hosting it here? Maybe you moved the site to another company?
U: No it's been here forever!
M: Okay, do you have a backup on the site? We can get you a new hosting account and you can upload it.
U: You guys don't have my files?!
M: We have a thirty day backup, but as I said the hosting expired over a year ago. Those backups have been deleted.
U: Give. Me. My. FILES!
M: We don't have them.
U: I want them back now!
M: We don't have them.
U: Give me your supervisor, he'll get them for me! This is bullshit!
M: We don't have them. He can't get them for you.
user proceeds to ask several different ways for his files. I respond "We don't have them" every time.
U: So are you just going to sit there like a robot and tell me the same thing over and over or are you going to get me my files?!
M: I'm saying the same thing because it's the truth sir. I'm not going to change my answer to fit your reality.
click
TL;DR User wanted to reject reality and replace with his own.
#384 +6- Added on: Jun-26-2012 Added by: MunkeyMann -- Comments
I once had a customer bring back a laptop she bought the day before claiming it was broken. She said it wouldn't open, I asked her if it was windows not loading up or a program not opening, she said the laptop itself wouldn't physically open. I took it out of the box, opened it up and just looked at her. Her mouth fell open, she looked at me and said "Oh, it opens that side! Me and my sister tried for an hour to open it up last night and couldn't" She had been trying to open it from the hinge side...
#365 +5- Added on: Jun-16-2012 Added by: thesirblondie -- Comments
This happened a few weeks ago. The Service Desk is open between 8AM and 4:27PM, which is standard office hours for the entire company. During this day, my boss (Head of IT) is away at a seminar for a possible new desktop solution that we're investigating.
At 1PM, a woman emails the Service Desk with a message that she can't access her files on her network drives (that's not actually what she said, but it's what I deciphered from her email). Since we've had many problems over the last two days with permissions, making people unable to see their files and directories, I forward it immediately to get that checked out and start working on something else.
The next day at 9:30AM (5 office hours after the original email was sent in), we get an email saying that it's still a problem and she needs help NOW!!!! (but in an even more rude tone). I look through the inbox and notice that the guy that handles permissions had answered me, but I hadn't notice because of the large number of emails (we take all issuereports via email). It's not a problem with permissions, so I email her back with a possible fix, ask her to do that and then get back to me if it works or not.
I hear nothing until an hour later when a senior coworker comes to me and says that the user has contacted the HEAD OF IT claiming that she doesn't get any help with her problems. On top of that, I am informed that this user clocked out early the day before, but put it as a full day with a note saying that we refuse to help her. I get really angry at this point and exclaim that I have sent the solution, but the dragon hasn't even bothered answering. "Oh yeah, she says it doesnt work", my coworker says.
She doesn't even wait 3 hours and claim that we wont help her. She refuses to answer when we try to help her. She contacts the head of IT to get help because Service Desk "wont help her".
Oh, and the solution to her problem? A reboot of her computer and everything was fine. SHE DIDN'T EVEN TURN HER COMPUTER OFF WHEN SHE WENT HOME AND EXPECTS THINGS TO JUST MAGICALLY START WORKING.
#364 +2- Added on: Jun-16-2012 Added by: Feather_Weight -- Comments
The phone rings, and I, being the new guy, am instructed to pick it up. This is allegedly for the purpose of getting me comfortable on the phone, but in my not very objective opinion, evidence points more towards the "let's screw with the fresh meat" mentality. Case in point:
"Hi, I returned a computer a few days ago. I was just calling to make sure that you had deleted all the information on it for me."
"Yes sir, we delete ev-"
"See, I had some sensitive information on that hard drive that I would hate to fall into the wrong hands. I was writing a book about the security holes in windows and the CIA, and a hacker got into the brand new computer just as I plugged it in and uploaded a load of nasty viruses and I was afraid that they would steal stuff so I unplugged it and returned it and I just wanted to make sure that you hadn't let anybody else see the computer before you wiped the information."
"Of course not sir, we --"
"See, the CIA and the FBI are tracking me and I know that there are terrorist hackers out there trying to get the very sensitive information in my book before its released so they can exploit loopholes and..."
This went on for twenty minutes before I could get him off the phone. I nearly had to assure him that we had dipped his hard drive in acid and burned the store down.
His computer, of course, was sitting in the back room, untouched from a few minutes after he brought it in. We had put it in a plastic bag, since it was filled to the brim with really weird porn. And it was slightly sticky.
TL;DR: "The CIA, FBI and random hackers are out to get you for your knowledge of security loopholes? Are you sure it's not because of your desire to see midgets dressed as sexy iguanas wrestling in a kiddie pool full of maple syrup?"
#363 +3- Added on: Jun-16-2012 Added by: snowexcuse -- Comments
I work IT and customer service for a medical software firm. Since I started we've seen a lot of client sites stabilize, as a result we get mostly PEBKAC calls.
So, Derpette calls up saying, "I cant search my remote from the server." Having dealt with Derpette everyday for the past week I know that this means she cant pull patient exams down from their archiving server to the reading workstation. I tell Derpette I'm logging in.
Lo and behold, the software is working flawlessly. I tell Derpette, "I don't see any issue, the viewer seems to be fully functional what's the problem?" Could you show me what you did?"
She responds, "I just get the error. It's not working."
To which i reply, "Look at the screen, I'm going to run through the workflow and you tell me where the problem occurs. Do you see my mouse?"
"No, i don't see anything."
"Are you looking at your computer?"
"No, I'm in another room."
Me = Palm + Face
#362 +6- Added on: Jun-16-2012 Added by: SkippyJDZ -- Comments
Blast from the past during my days as tier 1 phone support for major ISP:
Me: Thanks for calling LameBroadbandISP. This is SkippyJDZ. How can I help you?
User: I can't connect to the internet!
Me: (Perform some diagnostic tests) Well, sir, I see that your cable modem is online and receiving a signal. Let's try some troubleshooting.
User: I'm a sysadmin. I've done all the basic troubleshooting already. I have several computers here, and none of them can connect. There's a problem with your service.
Me: Sir, I need you to connect your computer directly to the modem. We need to eliminate your router as a variable since we don't support it.
User: I'm not doing that. There's nothing wrong with my router. Just send out a tech.
Me: I can't send out a tech without properly diagnosing the issue. Can you please just directly connect to the modem?
User: Fine. (Fiddles around for a few minutes) There.
Me: Okay, go to ipconfig and do a release/renew. What's your IP address?
User: 192.168....
Rule #1: USERS LIE
TL;DR: Sysadmin couldn't connect to the internet, and I stopped caring.
#361 +4- Added on: Jun-16-2012 Added by: DallasITGuy -- Comments
I'm an IT consultant, and have a rep of being really competent with Microsoft Exchange Server. A couple of years ago I bid on but did not get a project to upgrade an Exchange 2003 environment to Exchange 2010. Multiple servers, multiple sites and right up my alley. The firm that won the bid did so by pricing it extremely low, about 40% below my price which was on the low end to begin with. Totally unrealistic pricing but they thought they could pull it off with their people. Their people were good generalists but did not have a handle on Exchange 2010.
I told the customer - who I'd done work for before and who I'd had a good relationship with - that it was not going to end well for them. They took it as sour grapes on my part. Fair enough. I had plenty of other things to do anyway so I just moved on.
Two weeks after they started the implementation phase of the job the other consulting firm augured in. The entire email system stopped working. No mail coming in or out, no mail flowing between any of the Exchange servers, everything just dead in the water. I find this out when I get a call late one evening at my home from the other consulting company begging me to pull them out of the fire. I told them no thanks. An hour later the owner of the other firm is at my front door trying to convince me to help them "for the sake of the customer". This is well after dark and the conversation does not go well. He ends up screaming at me and I slam the door then call the cops because I'm tired and afraid that I'll do something stupid if I continue to interact with the guy.
Cops come, he loses it, they arrest him for disorderly conduct and I have his damn car blocking mine in my driveway. I have it towed off (I had to pay for the privilege too). He spends the next 24 hours in jail, about average for getting through the Dallas County jail I'm told.
The customer called me the following day and I again declined to fix the mess. By this time I'd decided I didn't want any of that shit on me, period.
The customer ends up getting Microsoft Services in to fix everything (cost them about 5 times what I was going to charge by the way). The customer sues the other consulting firm, which promptly files for bankruptcy / closes its doors rather than deal with the lawsuit.
Don't know if this was instant karma or not but it's the first time I've had the opportunity to tell this story on Reddit.
#360 +5- Added on: Jun-15-2012 Added by: Thutman -- Comments
I work in my college's help desk, and was lucky enough to be hired for the summer. When they hired me back in Sept. They warned me that the college faculty tend to be...unappreciative of help desk kids. Hadn't been a problem, till today. A teacher called us wanting his password reset (passwords expire after 90 days and we have to reset the staff ones for them). Not a problem, do a hundred of those in a day. So I set him up with a temp password and politely explain how to create his own. This is when it went sour. He didn't want a temp password, he wanted to use his old password. I explained that policy is that passwords cannot be reused. He called me an idiot and demanded to speak to my supervisor or he'd call the dean because he "donates A LOT OF MONEY TO THE SCHOOL" (exact words). I transferred him to my supervisor, who said the exact thing I did. Caller starts screaming, hang up phone, eat pizza
#359 +7- Added on: Jun-14-2012 Added by: modestlycocky -- Comments
I work at a helpdesk for a large, nation-wide organization.
Me: Alright ma'am, what does the error message say?
Her: It says I can't log in. I need my password reset.
Me: Ok, I need to know exactly what that message says.
Her: It says, exactly, that I can't log in.
Me: Ma'am, the exact wording of the error message is extremely important as my next course of action is drastically different depending on the wording of that message.
Her: Well, I don't see how that matters. Anyways, I already told you what it said. Can you just reset my password?
Me: Ma'am, I'm intimately familiar with the system you're using and no action you can take will make it display an error message worded the way you described it. I need you to read, word for word, the message that is on your screen right now.
Her: (very loud and slow) THIS COMPUTER IS IN USE AND HAS BEEN LOCKED. ONLY (her username) OR AN ADMINISTRATOR CAN UNLOCK THIS COMPUTER. THERE. NOW WILL YOU JUST RESET MY PASSWORD!?
Me: No ma'am. Press ctrl, alt, delete, and type in your password.
** angry, rushed, loud keyboard strikes **
** windows login sound **
** click **
#358 +6- Added on: Jun-14-2012 Added by: tito13kfm -- Comments
Open up your web browser... Internet explorer. The internet. Open it. Double click on the icon which takes you to the internet. The blue e on your desktop. No, on your screen, not on your desk. Yes, double click it. LEFT mouse button... Double click. Faster.
#357 +5- Added on: Jun-14-2012 Added by: Codeleaf -- Comments
I should start this post by saying that I don't work in tech support, other than the occasional family member tech support.
My Dad's Aunt had just bought a low-end computer (Intel Celeron, 256 MB RAM). Slow as heck on a fresh Windows XP install...
She knew nothing about computers and wanted me to come over and "help for a few minutes". I went through the most basic info and asked what she wanted to learn, and after several minutes of unclear answers I just started by showing her how to use the mouse (clicking, double clicking, and drag-and-drop) by opening the Windows XP version of Solitaire. I explained the general principle of the computer version of the game and she seemed to take to the idea (as she was very familiar with the card game).
So we get started, and she lifts the mouse up about a foot into the air and tries to move it in all directions. Needless to say the cursor on the screen doesn't move. I don't know how many times the words, "Keep the mouse on the mouse-pad..." came out of my mouth. She just didn't seem to get it.
After I gave up on the idea of teaching her the mouse, she asked what else "this fancy thing" could do. "Well there's a calculator...". She spent another 40 minutes making sure the program was "accurate".
She had the computer for 4 years and never used it.
#356 +7- Added on: Jun-14-2012 Added by: wonderweirdo -- Comments
This didn't happen to me, thankfully, but I got a little involved in it. Started a week ago, we got a new lady working in our department, I'll call her Maria. Maria had this look on her face when she came in, the kind you see on a dog when it's taken from an abusive home.
After a day she was smiling like she'd won the lottery, which I thought wasn't possible in my company. So a day or two after she starts, I get a call from another lady asking to speak to Maria. Maria was no where in sight, so I just asked if I could help her out. She very bluntly told me to have her call Jane ASAP, then hung up. Being use to rude user, I didn't think much of it, so I just emailed Maria and didn't think of it after that. A short time later, Maria came back and asked me questions about Jane, she had that abused dog look again. I told her about the call I took, and didn't have any information beyond that. She thanked me, and went back to her desk. I found out yesterday that all of this came to a head.
Turns out Jane was calling into our office demanding to speak to Maria, and on one occasion got through, where Maria told her she was going to call the police. Maria explained that Jane was her former supervisor in her previous job, who had made their environment so hostile that people were quitting left and right. Seems the last company Maria worked at was family owned, and Jane was part of the Family. Jane apparently needed a job and they put her in charge of the help desk, where she was going to "Motivate" the techs into shape.
She imposed crazy rules, like no talking in the break room, and a demerit system for accumulated infractions. People decided they would be better off and just started quitting. Those professional enough to turn in a two week notice were worked like dogs with all kinds of projects. Maria was one of their more senior people, and found that her work load multiplied every time someone quit. When Jane started to demand she put in long days to resolve issues, but denied all raises in their department, Maria had enough and just quit. Then Maria came to work for us, and the less hostile environment was like a breath of fresh air.
Apparently the loss was affecting Janes department, and she kept calling into our office trying to get Maria to take on some projects even though she'd quit. One of my co-workers took a call from Jane, and he told me that Jane was pretty nasty, to the point of threatening to come down and find Maria herself. She said that Marias resignation wasn't acceptable, and that our company wasn't going to be allowed to steel her employees without catching hell.
I was told that the matter was taken up by the police, and some lawyers who apparently know about Janes "Family" and were happy to take care of the problem. I've had some bad employers before, but I can't even imagine what Jane put Maria through. I find that Maria knows her stuff, and is capable of running her own team if she wanted to, she can handle most any issue without any expense in energy. I've seen her handle network issues like they were nothing and juggle tickets like a circus clown juggles balls. She's confident and skilled better than most people I know. So I wonder what Jane put her through to make her so scared every time she called.
TL;DR Boss from Hell drives off employees with abuse, calls new jobs telling them they're not allowed to quit.
#355 +8- Added on: Jun-14-2012 Added by: techparadox -- Comments
Backstory: The company I work for is, among other things, a reseller of an Asigra-based online backup service that we've had our partner re-brand for us. That leads to calls like this gem I just heard one of my support specialists handle.
Customer: I need to back up my data on my server right now.
Specialist: Ok, we can help with that.
Customer: Because the building next door is on fire.
Specialist: Excuse me?
Customer: The building next door is on fire. I need to make sure I have a good backup of my data before the fire spreads to our building.
Specialist: Oooookay... You're going to need to open up your $backup_software...
Customer: I can't. They evacuated us.
Specialist: Excuse me?
Customer: They already evacuated our building. I'm outside.
Specialist: I'm sorry, sir, but in order for you to do a backup that is unscheduled you have to have access to the computer.
Customer: What do you mean?!?!? You can't just remote connect to it like you always do?!?!?
Specialist: Our WebEx software only grants us access if there's someone at the computer to join the support session.
Customer: That's just great! I'm probably going to lose my server and you can't do anything for me! CLICK
Specialist: facepalm
TL;DR: Online backup doesn't always mean on-demand backup
#354 +6- Added on: Jun-13-2012 Added by: onewatt -- Comments
Well it's been a month and a half back at Tech Support, and today it finally happened.
User calls up with email issues. After the initial "what type of computer do you use" type questions I figure out she's using Mac Mail.
"But it won't let me check my email!"
So I go through, step-by-step with her. As an ISP we don't actually support email programs, but, as a nice group of guys, we'll bend over backwards to help our clients. So I make sure she's typing in her user name instead of her full email. Yup. That's ok. Now type the password in slowly, letter by letter.
"Agh! It's still not working!"
"Okay," I say, "let me double check the server. Is it giving you any error messages?"
"No, it just won't take my password!"
"... wait... what do you mean?"
"It won't take my password. I try to type it in and it wont let me?"
"Describe what it does. Does it get all grey so you can't click on it?"
"No." typetty typetty. "It keeps typing dots instead of my password!"
...
#353 +3- Added on: Jun-13-2012 Added by: zogworth -- Comments
Background, I am mobile phone support grunt. Our dept normally only deals with corporate clients, who are on the whole pretty switched on intelligent people who don't swear and generally trust you. So far so good.
However as the only customer facing team open after 8pm we get all sorts through including the following.
Me>Hi You're through to (mobile phone company out of hours support) and you're speaking to zogworth. Can I take your number please?
Him>What? Aren't you (telephone company) you should be able to tell!
Me> I'm afraid not sir, could you let me know the number please?
Him>No, you could be anyone, why can't you tell me number?
Intermission
I should explain now that we can see the number someones calling from. Sometimes. if the system works and its the third Tuesday of the month. But the number they're calling from might not be the one their calling about, it might be an internal transfer number, a false skype number or indeed anything! We always take the number to make sure its the correct one and for an extra level of security.
End Intermission
Me> I'm sorry sir, but if you've called *** from your phone its a free call that routes directly through to (company customer service)
Him>You should be able to see my number, don't you have a computer there with all my details on?
Me>No, I have my computer and my phone and my headset. But before we're allowed to access any accounts we have to pass security checks, which include taking the phone number.
Him>I don't trust you, you should know my number! I'm going to call back!
Me> If you could that would be brilliant, if you call *** from your phone it will route you back to this team, to me or one of the three other people here, Thank you for calling (phone company)!
#352 +5- Added on: Jun-13-2012 Added by: cfksite -- Comments
So I am a web developer that deals with my clients hosting company directly. One particular client I had insisted on using Godaddy for their hosting even after our strong objections as "they have never had a issue with them in the past 6 years" .
Jump forward to his new site launch. Now being a ecommerce site, his site replies heavily on his MySQL server. From Day 1, issues start happening with the server. From the MySQL server crashing to random error 500 messages on the site.
After about the 50th call to GoDaddy support I finally find out why there is so many issues. My clients site is hosted on a 10 year old server that has never been updated!
The tech support rep tells me of course I am having issues with the site as the server is 10 years old. When I asked him why they had paying clients on a 10 year old broken server he informed be because it was working fine.
Well apparently not....
#351 +-1- Added on: Jun-12-2012 Added by: TomasHezan -- Comments
I had a user whose laptop stopped working while on the docking station. After about 15 minutes of trouble shooting, we narrowed it down to a faulty motherboard. So I swapped the hard drive into another shell and went along my merry way. Apparently though, the unit was running louder than she liked. So I go out there and it is running louder than what most would consider to be normal. So I took her laptop again and changed the hard drive once again into a different shell.
Next day I get an email from said user about how her colors seemed weird. So once again I made the trip upstairs and she wasn't at her desk so I took at glance at her screen. Everything appeared to be looking correctly and nothing jumped out at me as wrong with the LCD. About this time, the user came back and asked me if I could see what she was talking about. When I told her no, she looked completely confused and explained it to me. Apparently, the white on LYNC communicator wasn't as "white" as IE. Everything else related to the colors and display was fine, but LYNC wasn't white enough and looked more gray and wanted it changed. When I told her there wasn't really a way to change that besides fiddling with the color options, she asked me if I could get the LCD off the original laptop and switch it to the current unit.
At this point I decided I was going to be drinking heavily.
#350 +4- Added on: Jun-12-2012 Added by: karadan100 -- Comments
We often have to support governors, i.e, people with the self-importance of a senator but the logical abilities of a whelk. They've been given corporate laptops to use from home (I'd love to find whose idea this was so that I can thank them with a fist squarely to the face). Obviously this has turned into a quagmire of tech-spazzery over the intervening year. Half the people in my office are now grey because of it, i swear. Old people with narcissistic and delusional "don't you know who I am" complexes should NOT be given technology to play with. They certainly shouldn't be given our number.
So a few weeks back I had a call which lasted over an hour, to some old fart who lacked every essential trait needed to understand the most basic tenets of computing. Getting any workable information out of him was nigh-on impossible, but after talking to him like a fucking child (press the blue E with the left button on the hand-mover thingy) it turned out the website he was trying to get to was nothing to do with our remote access software, but was in fact his online bank.
Apparently the fact he couldn't get to his online banking was my fault. It had been a long day up till that point so I kind of gave up trying to explain to him why such support was impossible for me to do and simply gave him this analogy:
Would you walk into your bank and ask for a cheeseburger and fries? No? Then hopefully that goes someway to explaining how I'm unable to help you here, seeing as my job has nothing to do with your online banking website.
"But you're IT, not a chef!"
Why do I work in this industry again?
#349 +1- Added on: Jun-12-2012 Added by: -jackschitt- -- Comments
I just got this one today.
I'm on my way into the office, about 15 minutes before my shift is due to begin. I get a phone call from a staff member saying that two sites had lost power some time Sunday evening and had not yet been restored.
I asked them why they were telling me this. She said "Well I need you to get the computers up and running. We need them up by 7:30."
"Ma'am....I just want to be clear. Is your issue that you have no power, or is your issue that you cannot get online?", I said. And yes, there are staff members here that confuse the two.
"No power. Whole building is down. I'm sitting here in the dark."
"So let me get this right. There's no power in the building on either site, and you want me to get the computers up and running?"
ಠ_ŕ˛
She didn't like my answer of "Um.....wait until they get power back in the building. Nothing else I can tell ya."
Not exactly sure what she expected me to be able to do.....
#345 +6- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: Wahrheit -- Comments
In case where you guys work doesn't have live chat, I try to keep the chats I do to under 10 minutes, 5 or fewer is preferable. The people who come in mostly have generic problems of their own faults with quick fixes or redirects to articles we've written. 15 minutes to find out that a user isn't even hosted by us... it's a shame we don't have technology that would let me punch them through the computer.
So, 15 minutes later:
09:22:15 [User]: No, I aint actually hosted by this company, I used to, but my hosting isnt answering Live Chat.
I just... no.
#344 +3- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: tfts_1 -- Comments
User had, in their unmistakable wisdom, created a USB drive full of shortcuts to multi-gigabyte files, and then deleted every copy of the source data. She stubbornly told me that they worked (she'd tested before deleting the originals), and that I was just trying to scam them into buying more HDDs.
Guess who needed to use their now non-existent backups the following week.
#343 +4- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: aveilleux -- Comments
While I was working for IBM, I got lots of asinine support tickets. "Monitor says 'no connection to PC', what does this mean?" "My mouse is covered in Cheetos detritus, why isn't it working?"
But this one developer. Oh boy. I wish I could defer her, but unfortunately I was the only lab intern who had the clearance to get into her office. I got tickets nearly every other day from her, but this one takes the cake.
Subject: New keyboard does not work
Content: You recently ordered a new keyboard to replace my old one and it doesn't function correctly. Please come to
I sigh and head over, figuring she'd forgotten to plug it in. I arrive, and her system looks normal. The keyboard is plugged in (it's a fancy new USB keyboard, *ghost noises*) and it can control the BIOS fine. I boot into Windows, and suddenly the keyboard stops functioning. It's a Logitech, so it should have no issue with Windows... hmm...
I go fetch my laptop (Thinkpad T30), plug it in there, and it works fine in my copy of Windows. I sigh, picturing the worst, and ask her if she'd done anything to "prepare" for the new keyboard.
"Why yes," she tells me, "I heard somewhere you need to delete the old drivers to prepare for the new hardware, so I just deleted the old keyboard drivers. I figured the new keyboard would come with a disc."
Let's recap: this is a developer who knew enough to find the generic HID drivers, but not enough not to delete them.
Her old keyboard became a headdesk mat that day.
Epilogue: Threw her drive into a functioning test machine and transferred the HID drivers into system32\ before returning the system to her. She's never been happier.
I closed the ticket with: "The usual issue."
#342 +7- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: therealpenguin -- Comments
A guy came in with his laptop giving us a brief rundown, it was running slow, lots of popups etc. He leaves it with us, gives us the password and off he goes. Being the "rookie" it was immediately handed to me as it was a rather simple job, I fire it up key in the password and do all of the normal things you would do straight away like checking msconfig for irregular start up files and so on.
2 wanting to smash my head on the desk hours later everything is cleared up and its back to normal, literally all the viruses were from what I can tell limewire and more specific; porn. I call him up telling him he can come pick up the computer whenever he is free.
He comes in a couple of hours later with his wife..... I get one of the normal workers to come and deal with the payment as I wasn't allowed, he asks me what was wrong with it. Not wanting to get detailed due to his wife being there I just tell him it had some viruses and I had cleaned it up and it was ready to go, he then laughed and said something along the lines of "I don't think so, I have avast anti virus" I told him he was indeed infected and avast is not exactly known for being a good AV, he then calls me a brat, asks for proof so on so forth.. I am thinking "dude, I am trying to help you out here.. whatever" So I tell him it was from files he downloaded which have all been removed as well as a free version of an anti malware installed.
Still insisting I be more specific with something like "what files you little brat, avast said my laptop was clean". So I decided, fuck it. I start reading out the source of the infected files from the log, it has been a few years so I don't remember them exactly, but they were all along the lines of "petite white girl xxx virgin anal slut 18 deflower" and so forth. His face goes white, he pays for it and leaves without saying much else and his wife glaring at him the entire time. Then as soon as they were in the car she is waving her arms around and from what I can tell, screaming as well.
tl;dr Trying to defend a guy in front of his wife, he wont take it so I humiliate him. Justice served.
#341 +0- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: therealpenguin -- Comments
Not working there anymore, was just a work experience thing at school at a computer repair shop. Cranky old guy comes by and tells them his computer smells like smoke sometimes and is super loud, only 6 years old etc etc Got the "back in my day when we bought something it lasted forever".
Ask him if he has ever cleaned it out, he says no. Tell him to vacuum all the dust he can by unscrewing the case, if not we could do it for him. He comes in 2 days later and drops the computer on the desk, it is still wet... he decided that hosing it out would take less time and get more dust.
He expected a full replacement because we "told him to clean it out", obviously not mentioning we told him to vacuum it out.
#340 +8- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: Toastlove -- Comments
I work in a small independant repair shop in the UK. We do some sales, callouts and repairs on pretty much anything. Since we deal with people just walking in off the street, I have some stories you might find amusing
The elderly couple: They phoned us saying their computer wasn't working, so we we tell them to bring it down and let us have a look. They carry in this huge CRT monitor, cue 10 minutes of me explaining the difference between a screen and computer. The screen turned out to be faulty anyway so they left it with us to dispose of and went away. Ten minutes later they call up again asking about their pictures, and I have to spent another ten minutes going over the exact same points. They then come back to collect their "computer" and once again, I explain the difference. They then ask for the screen back since they need it to use the computer, and again I explain its faulty, they can have it back if they like but its no more than a paper weight. I am still not sure they understood.
We offer a fast track service to people who are desparate to get their machines back, it costs extra but it gets priority. We will often have people phoning us constantly asking when its going to be ready, because they need it right NOW for very important reasons. Then when we call them to let them know its ready, "Oh I can't make it right now, I will pick it up when I am free". Then they come in days later after making life hell for me to get it done ASAP. Business customers are by far the worst for this.
One chap bought his computer in multiple times, apprently it would just cut out but we could never find a problem. Eventually we swapped out the PSU to eliminate that as an issue. He came back in raving that we had given him an inferior PSU that couldn't cope with all the USB devices that were plugged into the machine. We enquired as to what devices they were and it came down to a keyboard and mouse, printer (that has its own PSU) and exteral hard drives (which also had their own PSU's). He refused to listen to us and demanded a refund.
Sold a brand new Lenovo laptop, it was back 3 weeks later with an angry buyer claiming we had sold him a defective product. There was half a screen of toolbars in IE, 2 different fake AV programs and gig's of other crap. He expected a free repair but one was not coming.
I was re-assembling a mac book pro after a sucessful reflow on the GPU, when I dropped a screw onto the motherboard and clipped the power button trying to get it out. Sparks everywhere and a dead laptop, but luckily it turned out Apple had extended the warrenty, so they sorted it out for the him on our recommendation. We stayed quiet on fact we had fixed and broke it again :0
All the stories about laptops charging wirelessly, or the CD drive being used as a cup holder? All true and experianced first hand. Also every slightly technical term being used to describe a desktop. "I have a problem where my modem/processor/box wont fire up"
Replaced a screen for a woman, she brings it back a month later saying its broken again and wants it replacing for free. We take a look at the big crack in the middle of the screen and tell her that that damage is not covered by the warrenty. She insists it cracked itself. The same happens with chargers, people bend and tear the plugs apart and expect a free replacment.
Countless cases of "I had a computer repaired months ago but I only just got round to using it, its broken again and you were the last people to touch it"
Guy's son was having problems with his uni laptop, and the root of the problem was Norton 360 fucking everything up. We remove Norton and put AVG free on there, since we have none of the customers Norton product details. Get an irate call from his father days later slating AVG and us for installing it since he son has now managed to catch a fake AV and has gone back to uni in another part of the country. No explanation is good enough for him, and he demands we pay for the laptop to be mailed back to us, fix it and mail it back. We refuse since its not our fault his son managed to catch a virus, Norton was the original problem anyway and they provided us with nothing to re-install it, he has none of it.
This woman had issues with her laptop not starting up, we fixed it and she was all smiles, even putting a few quid in our tips box. Get a call later from her in blind rage, "It's no longer working, I even tipped you! Rant rave blah!". I apoligise but since another tech worked on it I had no idea what might have gone wrong and the notes he had left were of no help. I calm her down enough (barely) to get her to bring it back in. Next morning she comes in looking very sheepish, apoligised for losing it on the phone and put more money in our tip box since it had started working as soon as yesterdays phonecall had finished.
So many call about people not knowing their wireless password and asking us if we knew what it was.
"You set up our wireless password x years ago, do you remember it?"
"Well is its 'herpderp123' or 'derpherp321'" (standard passwords unless they request somthing different"
"No, you set this up, you have to fix this!"
This also happens even if we had nothing to do with their wireless network setup.
I have tons more stories but they escape me for the moment.
#339 +1- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: jssaldana -- Comments
Today's genius brought their recently purchased Iphone over to tell me it wouldn't accept their new password. The network password reset a few days ago and she's been "suffering" not being able to type her password into it. She showed it to me and sure enough, it kept prompting for her password after she typed it in and wouldn't do anything else b/c of the pop-up. I asked her to just shut it off and try again.
"No, I shouldn't have to do that, it's not a computer". (snottily)
Me: "Well, you can try that or just sit and watch it prompt you for the password over and over. And by the way, it is a computer. This thing runs an operating system that needs to be updated once in a while to fix problems like that".
"Well it's been turning off for no reason, so they told me at the apple store that I needed to run updates and turn it off once in a while. But I haven't done it."
Me: "Ah, then maybe you should give it a whirl".
It worked. I wonder if her car changes it's own oil because she shouldn't have to.
#338 +2- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: cobysev -- Comments
I'm in the US Air Force, working IT (we call it Comm, or Communications). One day, we get an e-mail from a Colonel. All it says is, "When I shake my computer, I get the blue screen of death." My co-workers and I all look at each other. We're all Enlisted folk; no one wants to go and explain to a high-ranking Officer that you're not supposed to shake your computer.
I finally cave and decide to approach this Colonel myself. Someone had to find out what's going on. I track her down and ask her what happened. She tells me that her monitor started flickering a few weeks prior and she discovered that when she banged on the side of her computer, it would fix itself. So for the next few weeks, whenever the monitor would start flickering again, she would just shake or hit the side of her computer. Eventually, she got a BSOD.
A quick investigation found that her problem was a loose monitor cable on the back of her PC. It just needed to be tightened down a little. Instead, she crashed her hard drive by constantly banging on it. She was furious when I told her the hard drive was toast and her data was gone. We can't recover data from a head crash.
This is just one of the many interesting customers I've had to deal with in the military.
#337 +8- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: modestlycocky -- Comments
I work at a helpdesk for a rather large nationwide organization.
Him: "So I decided to update my iPhone through iTunes on my computer and about halfway through the update, it stopped responding altogether."
Me: "Alright Sir, what do you see on your screen right now?"
Him: "Which screen?"
Me: "Whichever one is unresponsive."
Him: "Which one is that?"
Me: ......
#336 +3- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: Melanie1001 -- Comments
No matter what, no matter how far along technology goes, the one thing the average user seems to struggle with is understanding what a real backup is and the importance of it. As you might expect, this is the story of a user who learned two lessons the hard way - how not to back up, and how not to treat a tech if you want them to go the extra mile to assist in rectifying your stupidity.
This story takes place a few years ago. I receive a trouble ticket, and when I see the name attached to it a reflexive sigh and eye roll occurred - it was from one of our whiniest, neediest, thinks she knows tech but really doesn't people. She has a burned CD that won't read, and wants someone to check her CD drive. Ah well - you suck it up and do it, after all whiny users are part of the job.
So I head up to her office, bringing a few CDs with me - burned and commercial, music, etc. Just to be on the safe side that it's working properly. Overkill, yes, but I knew she'd be difficult, so more is better. At that time we didn't have several CD drives just laying around for replacement, so if it was the drive it would have to be ordered. If need be I was just going to take the drive out of my own, so I wouldn't have to hear it from her. So I get there and she shows me the error received - the good old cyclic redundancy check. Definitely something wrong somewhere when you see that error.
First step, I put in one of my own burned CDs. Works fine. So does the commercial one, the music one...everything I throw at it.
Have you tried this CD of yours in another computer? I ask her. No is the response, so we head out to do that. Sure enough, another CRC error on another computer with her CD, in a drive that reads everything else. Diagnosis: CD either didn't burn properly or is bad.
Here is our conversation:
Me: Well, it appears this CD is bad. Either the burn didn't work correctly or the disc itself had issues out of the box I hold up the CD to the light there are no obvious flaws, but unfortunately this sort of thing can happen. It's usually best to test your burned CD directly after burning it, just to be on the safe side. (Back in these days, burning was fairly new and not 100% reliable, so this was a common problem)
Her: The CD is my backup of a very important file.
Me: Oh well that's good then! That means you still have a copy somewhere else. Let's try burning again - perhaps your drive isn't burning properly or maybe something is up with the soft....
cuts me off
Her: I go to those computer classes all the time, and you people are always talking about making a backup. (We give basic computing classes for staff) Now look what happens when I try. You people are always saying this, and now it's all screwed up.
Me: little miffed but whatever But this is just a backup, let's go try burning the original file again!
Her: You people are always talking about burning data to CDs. That's all you people ever talk about. This is my only copy. You tell me to make backups but...
Me: cuts her off - at this point I'm just plain mad, plus she had caught me on a not so good day You did not make a backup. If you go to the classes we give, the definition of a backup is the same file on 2 different physical pieces of media. What you've done is moved your only copy over to this disc. This is the definition of what a backup isn't, and why we tell people to have 2 copies of the same file.
At this point, she continued ranting. I just glared at her. Before she began her tirade, I had actually thought about attempting to assist using undelete and recovery software, or perhaps even attempting some CD recovery tools for the disc itself. It would have been a long shot I figured but what the heck. Instead, with each bit of rant, my desire to assist went down. By the end, my give a crap meter was empty. We probably had a good shot at undeleting from her computer. Instead, I simply said - "sorry, but that's why we tell you to make a real backup." And I walked away.
I don't know if she understood how her rant killed any chances of me going the extra mile to help. And trust me when I left, I was not caring, at all. If nothing else she learned the definition of a real backup. But this is a lesson to any users reading this - don't be mean or spiteful towards the person who is just there trying to help. A good tech has a lot of tricks up their sleeve to fix/repair/recover things. But they are time consuming. Make us want to help you, not glad to get away from you.
#335 +-3- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: Turbojelly -- Comments
User: "I'm having problems in the room next to room 65."
Me: "You mean room 66?"
User: "I think so."
/facepalm
(I walked in and pressed the power button to fix it)
#334 +4- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: kony_island_baby -- Comments
So I work for a Canadian ISP doing tech support. There are many call centres across the world for this company, but there is still Canadian tech support though (quite a bit actually). Calling in is a sort of Russian roulette for most people as they're constantly trying to get a "real Canadian".
Basically every time I pick up the phone, customers remark on the fact that I'm "really Canadian". I totally know what they mean to a point; of course you want to talk to somebody you're going to understand. However, there are times when people are just flat out racist. As in, "I'm not racist but, I'm glad I'm not talking to one of those AWFUL Indians." I find it really hard to not get angry at the blatantly ignorant remarks. I just swallow my anger and continue troubleshooting, while occasionally putting them on mute to mock them.
One day, I get this one particular caller who immediately after greeting me asked where I was from. I replied and told him where I was located and he goes, "FINALLY, a white person! I'm so sick of talking to non-whites. I mean it's really just ridiculous we're all losing jobs to foreigners! So glad I'm talking to you!"
At this point I am fuming. Not only was he being super offensive, but I am actually NOT WHITE. I'm as non white looking as you can get. Although English was my first language and I was born in Canada, I'm not exactly what somebody would picture when they think of a young Canadian girl. I didn't really know what to say seeing as I'd definitely get fired for talking back. I just flatly said, "Oh, well I can definitely solve your issue. I don't know if you want to continue though because I'm not white, I'm brown." After what felt like 30 seconds of dead air (it was only about 5), he goes, "Um. Ok...." and he hung up.
I was monitoring his account and he called back only to get one of those awful brown people. :)
#333 +6- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: AlmostBOFH -- Comments
I worked on a Helpdesk for a large Government Department for a while and it amazed me how people generally ignore what IT are telling them. Makes me weep for humanity.
Here is one of my favorites from when I worked there; The department had two email systems running. One was for corporate use (those employed directly to the Department) and the other educational use (by those who worked for the educational off-shoot). One day, the Corporate email servers pack it in. All twelve. Dead. Unfortunately, these were hosted by a third party vendor (who wouldn't be able to find their backside with both hands, a 1:1 map and a compass) and we had no control over getting them back online in a timely fashion. I took solace in this, as my work for the afternoon was (tragically) still in my Inbox. I was taking the obligatory calls from those who were stupid enough to ignore the message on the phone system stating that said email server is down.
What ensued next was a great source of amusement to myself. One of our more difficult clients called up, ignored the phone message and then proceeded to yell at me about it. Here's how it went down: Me: Welcome to IT, how can I help you?
Derpette: The email is down. I need to get onto it and I can't.
Me: As the phone message stated, the servers are currently down. No one, including us on the helpdesk are currently able to access it. It is not just your team. (This user has a reputation for being a stubborn bitch at the best of times and would not accept that I couldn't help you)
Derpette: I don't care for your sarcasm. I need my email. Fix it.
She then proceeds to rabble about what she does, who she works for, then on about something to do with an urgent submission. To which I said (after I came out of the client-induced coma I was in)
Me: Well I know for a fact that this submission isn't required for over a month. I know. I spoke to your director today in the elevator. So please stop telling me about it. We are following our SOP in relation to third party vendors experiencing issues and we are genuinely powerless to help.
Derpette finally relents (after abusing me some more about my sarcastic nature) and then comes up with this gem: "Well, why haven't you send out your standard email for outages so we know. That is part of your SOP and I know that for a fact".
By this stage, it's like shooting fish in a barrel.
Me: "Yes, you are correct, it is part of our SOP. But even if we on the helpdesk could send it out, how would you be able to read it?"
Derpette: "Oh. I hadn't thought of that..."
She then hangs up, just after I hear her yelling about IT's incompetence in dealing with issues.
To make the day even better, her boss rings me on my personal extension and apologies for her behavior and said she would make her send me a hand written apology letter for her actions.
#332 +4- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: f33r3x -- Comments
A gem from our front office today. Not too bad, but funny.
Receptionist: “Do we run Windows XP or Word 2010?”
Me: “Yes.”
R: “I mean at home on my computer. Is it XP or 2010?”
Me: “You’re asking me what you use at home?”
R: “Yeah.”
Me: “And you’re asking if you run either XP or Office 2010?”
R: “Yeah.”
Me: “That’s like asking if you play basketball or drink milk when you’re alone. I have absolutely no idea how to answer that. But you can send me a screenshot if you’d like.”
R: “Yeah, I’ll just do that.”
#331 +1- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: cobysev -- Comments
A little background: I work IT for the US Air Force. This happened about a decade ago, when I was young, low-ranking, and ambitious. IT customers had yet to whittle away at my motivation back then.
At the time, I worked in a network security position at a base in the Pacific. Managing firewalls, anti-virus, etc. One day, while manually pushing anti-virus updates to stubborn PC's on the network, I noticed a potential flaw in our security. Instead of downloading the latest anti-virus updates directly from the company's website as soon as they were released, a higher level of the Air Force would download them and test them before releasing them for the individual bases to download. It was the military's little bit of added security - make sure the anti-virus company hadn't been hacked and were releasing viruses instead of updates.
The problem with this process was that the Air Force testers were slow. Really slow. It would be anywhere from 2 days to 3 weeks before the latest updates were ready for us to implement. I trusted our AV company, so I figured I'd help speed up the process. I wrote a little batch script that would check the AV website daily and compare their update with our servers. If it matched, the script ended. If there was an update, it would download and automatically push to all servers and PC's. This also saved me the trouble of burning the Air Force's copy to a disc and moving it to our servers (this was before flash drives were popular). This saved me about 30 minutes of my morning and ensured our network was always updated and secured.
Fast-forward a few months. There's a huge malicious outbreak in the world (a trojan, if memory serves) and people without top-end protection are finding themselves quickly falling prey to it. All our bases in the Pacific seemed to catch some form of the virus and are losing network capabilities. All bases, that is, except mine. Other bases are working long hours, days on end, trying to purge the virus from the entire network. My base network never so much as hiccuped. Because I alone had downloaded the latest updates.
Naturally, when the dust settles, the higher-level Air Force sends in a team of techies to investigate. They want to know what we did to stay operationable. Suffice to say, they found my batch file and they weren't pleased.
According to them, I had violated a direct order and circumvented an official process, running my own personal unauthorized scripts on their network. I was threatened with a court martial with guaranteed jail time for "using hacking tools" on a gov't network. (Seriously?) They even suggested that the virus outbreak might've been my fault.
Eventually, someone with some technical knowledge actually looked at the script and realized what it was doing. Cooler heads prevailed and the Air Force got a chance to really evaluate their system. They realized that I wasn't a criminal, but a hero. I had single-handedly kept a base operational while all the others were losing valuable time, money, and manpower trying to get back up and running.
In the end, I was given a slap on the wrist, told not to implement my own personal scripts on gov't networks anymore, and sent back to work. No court martial paperwork ever came down for me.
A few months later, I find out that I was hand-picked out of all my peers across the entire base for an early promotion in rank. When I asked my supervisor about it, she said she submitted a recommendation that basically stated that I had "single-handedly saved the base from complete and utter destruction". For once, an IT guy was given greater recognition than the pilots who are actually flying missions all day long.
#330 +1- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: modestlycocky -- Comments
I work at a helpdesk for a rather large nationwide organization.
Me: What can I do for you ma'am?
Her: Yes, I just got an email telling me that they're upgrading my computer next Thursday. That date doesn't work for me. What are my options here and how can I go about getting that date changed?
Me: Well ma'am, in that same email, there is a list of instructions on how to change that date.
Her: Yeah, that's what I figured but I don't have time to read through it so I just decided to call you guys. So what are my options?
Me: Well, I don't have that list ma'am. That information isn't included in our documentation. You're left with two options: you can either read through that email and follow the instructions that were sent to you, or I can send a ticket down and have a desk-side technician explain your options. That will happen sometime in the next 48 hours.
Her: Ok, go ahead and send the ticket, I can wait.
Me: ಠ_ŕ˛
#329 +2- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: modestlycocky -- Comments
I work at a helpdesk for a rather large nationwide organization.
Her: My speakers aren't working.
Me: Alright ma'am, lets trace the cord from the back of those speakers. One should plug in to the wall, the other should plug in to your computer. Is that right?
Her: Yes, they're both plugged in.
Me: Ok, on your laptop there should be two very plainly labeled places that match that plug. One should have a speaker symbol, the other should have a microphone symbol.
Her: Yes, I see them.
Me: Which one is your speakers plugged into?
Her: The microphone.
Me: Ah, well there's your problem. Is there anything else I can do for you today?
Her: What do you mean "There's my problem"? And yes, you didn't fix my speakers!
Me: Well, by "there's your problem" I mean that your speakers are plugged into the microphone jack, that's why they don't work.
Her: No, you're wrong, they're supposed to work if they're plugged in to either one. They've always worked like that!
Me: Ummm, thats not quite how it works ma'am. Go ahead and swap the plug to the speaker jack.
Her: I'll do it, but I'm telling you it's not going to work, I've been running it like this for years and I've never had any...
(click followed by loud music playing on cheap computer speakers) (phone hangs up)
#328 +1- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: modestlycocky -- Comments
I work at a helpdesk for a rather large nationwide organization.
Me: Alright sir, I need you to log off your machine. Do not shut down or restart. Go down and click "Start" and then click "Log off".
Him: Do you want me to shut down?
Me: No sir, you want to click "Log off".
Him: Alright, restart or shut down?
Me: Neither, sir. Click start, then click "Log off".
Him: Oh, ok.
several seconds pass
Him: Ok, it's shut down. Do you want me to turn it back on?
Me: ..... long sigh Sure, why not.
#327 +2- Added on: May-30-2012 Added by: phlogiston -- Comments
I asked an old coworker if he remembered any good stories from our time as small network admins so I could share with Reddit. He said "Remember that time you came back to the shop bleeding and muddy and said you didn't want to talk about it? It's time to talk about it."
It began innocently enough. I received a call from one of the sales team about a new client who needed an initial assessment of their network and PCs. This was a new(ish) Japanese restaurant in a declining part of town. This restaurant was the only business still afloat in a much larger building that once held a movie theater and some sort of shipping warehouse. I walked in, introduced myself to the nice Korean couple who owned the place, and got to it.
As I got down to business I was informed all the previous tech work was done by the next door neighbor's son. I took this to mean "We're used to paying $10 and a plate of chicken and rice for tech support." I was not surprised to find a lot of work to do, but nothing out of the ordinary. The first complaint was the point of sale machine. It was unusually slow even considering the lackluster hardware. I could not bring it down as they were still checking out the last of the lunch "rush". So I brought up msconfig and decided to see what I could disable and turn off. I remember going to the startup tab and thinking "wow, what a bunch of crap!" Scrolling down... "Holy Cow!!!" Scrolling down... OK, we're turning everything off and instead looking for what needs to be turned back on. After this it was working better but still needed some deep cleaning or a reformat. For some reason the internet was still dodgy.
I pulled up a command prompt and did a continuous ping to Google.com and let that run for a few minutes. When I came back I found high latency and lost of lost packets. No big deal, we'll try to reboot the router and modem and see if that helps. So I asked what I considered a simple question "Where is your router and modem?" to which I received in answer a puzzled smile. They were not sure what I was talking about as they had only recently moved from dial up. OK, time to switch gears. "Who is your ISP?" No idea. "Who do you pay for internet access?" Nobody. Apparently they used to pay for internet access, but the teenager set them up with free internet. Big Red Flag was raised. This just got slightly interesting.
I tried following the network cable but it disappeared into a hole in the floor. Similar story in the back office with the accounting machine. So I tried to log into the router and at least get an idea of what I was looking for. I encountered the DD-WRT password prompt. That's cool. I prefer Tomato myself, but we've got a tinkerer. A tinkerer who thinks it's a good idea to change the default password for LAN access (why???). I point out the network cable to the owner and ask him if he knows where it goes. As he looked at me the room grew dark and foreboding. It got noticeably colder. "The crawlspace. I'm not sure what that cable goes, but he took a whole box of cable into the crawlspace and then we had internet." "OK, can I call him?" I asked. "No, he's gone off to college. That's why we hired you."
A second later I'm standing in front of an open trap door in the floor behind the stock room, shining my flashlight into a dark void. There is a dirt floor and it smells. An old stepladder is there, but I don't trust it and just jump in with tools and laptop case in hand. My first thought was surprise at how big it was. My flashlight didn't reach the far two walls. It was a forest of concrete footings and steel supports. There was a lot of power conduit and water pipes to duck under, but for the most part you had about 6 feet to stand up. It stunk like death and decay. I found the two network cables and an extension cord and start off on my trek.
Do you remember the Aliens movie (I forget which one) where the guy is following candles in the dark hallways and there are monsters stalking him. This is what it felt like. I tell myself that it can't be that far because extension cords are only so long. At the end of the cord is another plugged into it, then another plugged into that one. OK, well at least they can't run Cat5 cable longer than 300 feet. It's quiet and stinks worse all the time. I keep thinking I hear something or multiple somethings moving around. Eventually I see green LEDs ahead of me and find a small network switch. The two network cables from the PCs plug into the switch which is powered by the extension cord, and another cable continues onwards. My only hope of a 300 feet max was dashed.
I had always thought I was the type to keep a cool head in an emergency. I didn't think I was the type to panic. Well, I learned something new about myself a few score feet beyond that switch. As I continued to recall every scary movie I had ever seen I shone my light ahead and saw two glowing yellow eyes looking back perhaps 30 feet away. A chill ran up my spine and the hairs on my arms stood up. Something in my head snapped and an ancient, primal part of me took over. For reasons I still don't understand I hunched over and screamed into the silent darkness "AN ALLIGATOR!!!" And just like that it became real in my mind. A 20 foot alligator with long teeth faced me. Like a pudgy uncoordinated ninja I grabbed my screwdrivers, punch tool, and wire crimp and threw them at the eyes. And then I ran, screaming like a little girl. I must have hit my head in my disgraceful retreat because I ended up with a small cut and blood in my hair.
I got back to the stepladder and found THEY HAD CLOSED THE DOOR! What kind of monster would close somebody into a pit of alligators like that? I threw it open and jumped out in a single leap. I found myself face to face with the waitress who screamed. I screamed back at her. The owner rushed in and looked me over with great concern. I managed to compose myself and said "She startled me. I think I bumped my head, may I use your restroom?" I splashed cold water in my face and was ashamed of myself. An alligator? Really? Here where we have more snow days than warm ones? It was likely a stray cat and I might have just killed it.
So I am back in the hole retracing my steps. I keep telling myself I'm not afraid, but I still wish I had my 22 target pistol in hand. I get to the switch and then beyond it my tools scattered over a large area. The slot head screwdriver had blood on it, which frankly amazed me that I actually hit the poor creature in my panic. So with the bloody screwdriver in one hand and a flashlight in the other I continued my search for that modem.
At the far wall I found the router. Standard Linksys blue box zip tied to something holding it up. And nothing else, no modem. How in the heck were they getting internet? I plugged in and tried again to guess the password without luck. Then, remembering some of the features of DD-WRT, I checked for open wireless signals of which there were two from establishments on the other side of the road. So my best guess is the teenager had bridged the router to one of those open wireless connections and thus provided free internet for the restaurant. I power cycled the device (which didn't help at all) and went back.
I must have been a sight. The owner quickly agreed with my suggestions and promised to call the local cable company come install their own internet tomorrow. I was ushered out the back door without even a glass of water. We kept that contract, but the restaurant owner requested a different tech be assigned as he was not sure about me. I did not complain. Imagining he must have heard me screaming and crying under his restaurant and then screaming at his cute waitress, I really didn't want to face him again.
#326 +6- Added on: May-26-2012 Added by: CleanBill -- Comments
Back in the 3.5" floppy disk days, I had a small office customer who had 3-4 computers there for their accountants. I used to do maintenance on their PC's. The secretary there mentioned that accounts and turnover were completely on the computers and if that was lost, all the books would be gone. I offered them to setup daily backup copies to keep all data safe in tapes.
Their CEO refused on the grounds that it was ridiculous to pay someone for something he could do himself.
Fair enough, so as time went and as you can imagine shit hit the fan and all their data was lost due to a new virus (back in those days, a common occurence). So I asked for the backup copies to restore all the accounts info and the CEO went :"sure here they are...."
SURPRISE!!! he handed me pages and pages of photocopied disks that he religiously performed everyday (you know , an ACTUAL PHOTO ON PAPER of the disk). You should have seen how angry the guy got when I told him that's not how you make backup copies of data....
It wouldn't matter to him:
How many times I explained to him that data on disks was stored in a magnetic support and photocopy machines work on refracted light.
How many times I explained to him that it didn't matter he photocopied religiously all data everyday and that all pages were ordered (really? like it made a difference and I would go "oh sir! My apologies, since it's all so neat and tidy everything is going to work").
He insisted I HAD TO try to recover the data somehow using the photocopies (!!!). No matter how many times I went through point 1 and 2 , he would still insist "JUST TRY DAMN IT!". Needless to say unerase tools proved unefective...
He threatened me to give bad feedback to their associates about me. I told him fair enough, as long as you explain everybody the whole story, specially the part were he foolishly thought he was making COPIES by PHOTOCOPYING THE MEDIA where the data was stored on.
Oh and I forgot the best bit. One of the things that he suggested was "maybe I should have made color copies instead?" .... I wanted so badly to tell him "reaaaaally? reaaally dude? are you reaaaally that dumb?"...
#325 +-1- Added on: May-26-2012 Added by: iAmSiklee -- Comments
Let's make this a quick one.. Just happened few minutes ago..
Me: Sir, What version of Windows are you using?
Client: Sorry, what's your question again?
Me: What version of Windows are you using? Is it XP, Vista or Windows 7?
Client: Ahh no, not those. I am using Windows Excel. (Actual Words)
Me: Sorry, Windows What? Client: Windows Excel. You know, that good looking Windows (Actual Words yet again)
Me: (Trying to hold my laughter) Ok, ahhhhh Sir, I think its best to restart your computer. That should fix the issue.
Client: Ok! .... Then Client Hangs up...
#324 +2- Added on: May-26-2012 Added by: SATAN_IS_MY_PAL -- Comments
One day I came to the library and was just trying to find a book where I see an old-ish guy who smelled like cigar smoke and wasn't dressed very well mumbling pretty audibly and filling out one of those things that say "GET A FREE DELL LAPTOP!"
Me: "Sir, this is a scam, it's not real."
Old Man: "What if it isn't? I really need it! I filled out three of these and I really need one."
Me: "Sir, this is a common internet scam that take your credit card info and/or mailing address. You shouldn't try to fill this out, you can get hurt easily."
Old Man: "It's real! See look, there's the DELL badge and a little medal and everything! It's no scam! Look!"
I try to convince him further but he doesn't care. He's not giving up. He wants that laptop and nothing will stand in the way of him giving his personal info for it. I wasn't the only one who tried to help him.
I come back and ooooh shit he put a virus on the library computer. Everyone's standing back and the library technician person is trying to find out what happened while he insisted it was nothing and he's going to get a new Dell laptop.
Next time I came back, the operating systems have been changed to Windows 7 on the library computers and the restrictions are stronger.
#323 +-2- Added on: May-26-2012 Added by: Lleu -- Comments
A few years back I worked as level 2 support. Part of my just was to LanDesk to employee computers and install software that they needed. One day a level one called me.
L1: Hey Lleu, got a software install for ya! gives ticket number Check out his job title.
Me: Huh... so why is he calling me?
L1: I don't know man. Good luck though!
transfers call
Me: Hi Derp, so I understand you need a few programs installed.
Derp: Yes, I need lists three programs please.
Me: Sure I can take care of that for you, let me fire up LanDesk, could you get your computer name for me please?
I connect and start locating the software needed on the network
Me: So your title says you're a software developer?
Derp: Yep, I help design lists a few internal applications
Me: Oh cool, I'm surprised you don't have access to do these installs yourself, seeing as how you build like half the programs I use everyday.
Derp: Oh, I have access to do this.
Me: Then why the call today?
Derp: I don't really like to install stuff.
Me: .... check.
I finished the rest of the call in silence because my brain stopped functioning.
#322 +0- Added on: May-26-2012 Added by: TH3C1SC0K1D -- Comments
I have been in the IT field for about 13 years and I have had my fair share of experiences extra needs individuals as we all have but this one CEO takes the cake.
I go into work on day and my new CEO (they just replaced their previous IT person with me) tells me that his Apple MacBook Air isn't running fast enough for him. So I take look since it looks like an original model and tell him that their a new model available through custom ordering and we can get him it in a few days. I told him it would have the fastest specs available (11 Inch Apple MacBook Air, Intel i7 Dual Core Processor, 8 Giabytes of RAM and a 256 Gigabyte Solid State Hard Drive). He is thrilled and I place the order, receive the laptop a few days later and transfer all his files over. A few days go by and he calls me over and still tells me that his laptop is performing poorly. I ask him to show Mr what poorly means. He says look I press the power button and it takes 15 seconds before I can start working. My jaw hits the floor. He then proceeds to tell me that I should do my job correctly and learn what fast means. Dude they don't sell anything faster! Needless to say I don't work there any more.
#321 +4- Added on: May-26-2012 Added by: blink_again_bitch -- Comments
This isn't actually my story, but a friend of mine who works in a uk computer shop.
So a guy emailed in and started off the RMA process on a motherboard that was dead.
A month later this guy rings up the store and starts yelling and cursing saying his motherboard has not arrived and that Nor Eply (the guy who he had apparently been corresponding with) was ignoring all his emails. As you can imagine, he was pissed.
So my friend looks into the logs to see who was designated to to reply to him and why he had't been.
It turns out when the guy had submitted his RMA ticket, the shops mail bot sent out an auto reply stating you will hear from them when they have news etc etc. The address was the usual no-reply@*******.com
Yes, the man had been having a one way conversation with the the mail bot 'Nor Eply' for a month.
Needless to say many giggles were had in the store.
#320 +-1- Added on: May-23-2012 Added by: Igbert23 -- Comments
Here is a little story that happened to a colleague of mine two years back as we were working tech support for one of the bigger German cell phone providers.
What astonishes me the most is, those people work in a very technological environment, i mean they sell cell phones and keep a company working that provides cell phone coverage, yet they seem to know very little about anything that is out of their usual work routine.
So my colleague got a call from a customer complaining that his computer took his cd but it doesn´t seem to read it at all. Because the costumer is one of the higher ups of the company my colleague walks over to his office.
The first thing he does is open the cd-drive only to see there´s no cd in there. So he asks the customer where he put the cd and he turns red and says: "Oh, that´s the cd-drive?"
Turns out he put the cd in the slot over the cd-drive. Meaning he crammed it in the computer!
My colleague opened the pc, took the cd out, put it in the cd-drive and went without saying another word.
#319 +0- Added on: May-23-2012 Added by: -jackschitt- -- Comments
I work in several different districts, and I cannot get a signal in several of the schools I go into. I once left a school, checked my messages, and found this gem:
"Hey, Jack. This is Joe. My antivirus software kept popping up a bunch of warnings. But I solved it myself....I just uninstalled the antivirus software and the warnings stopped. No need to rush. Just wanted to let you know. Bye."
#318 +3- Added on: May-23-2012 Added by: supderpbro -- Comments
So I work in the world of paid for and free lance tech support. I work for one of those geek companies and my role is to take inbound calls, book appointments, and have on site engineers resolve the issue. I will do remote support though and prefer to do most issues remotely if I can. After a year or so in my position, I have booked countless onsite jobs (have done a few dozen of them myself) and complete a little over 500 remote support jobs ranging from optimization to virus removal to business level networking. With that said, I am good at what I do because I can answer a call, ask qualifying questions, and come to a conclusion over the phone of what a few options for repair might be or whether or not we can even handle it.
So enough background. A few weeks ago this women calls in saying she is a business but she works from home and is having an issue with her computer. She has desktop that is working fine but in order to get into her business software she has to boot the computer from a boot disc. Every time she does the process she says an error comes up on the screen, goes by, and then it loads to her normal desktop and not her business desktop. Thinking this an odd setup to have, and most likely not possible to do, I decided to ask her so qualifying questions.
Me: What is the error message you have when starting up. (I expect something along the line of press any key to to boot from CD to enter start up repair)
Her: I don't know what it is. It goes by too quickly. I'm too busy to keep restarting it.
Me: Ok. Do you have a hard drive that is partitioned or do you have two hard drives and are trying to boot to a separate operating system from your normal one?
Her: I already told you the I need to load into the boot cd.
Me: Ok. Are you trying to install the OS from the boot CD? We can certainly make a parallel partition of windows so you can have two OS's and be able to easily switch between the two.
Her: No. I am supposed to boot to my work side from the CD. The whole system is on the CD. You clearly don't know what you're talking about and are being very rude.
She then hangs up saying to some colleague how rude I was being. 5 minutes later she enters into our chat support and leaves this:
How do I make a complaint? I am having a problem booting up a boot disk with my job. We boot up the disk and it brings up a desktop for us to work in it's secured. I am not able to boot up the disk. I get a error message.
It's my work from home boot disk which I have to boot up in order to work from home.
I was wondering how can I have someone look at the DVD drive? I received a new disk today and it just booted up for me, however I want to elevate the problem with my DVD/CD drive.
Since I also answer the chat que, I start asking her qualifying questions and again she gets mad, logs off, and finally leaves this wonderful message in our submit an issue field:
I spoke with a representative. He was very rude, when I was looking for a technician. I will never use your service again because of that. I think that is ridiculous that someone will treat a prospective company that way. I am reporting that to the BBB.
This conversation made my day. I've never dealt with anyone so easily frustrated and clearly deranged.
TL;DR - Customer asks nonsense questions, gets angry when asked to clarify, threatens to report us the BBB when we never even worked with her to begin with.
#317 +7- Added on: May-23-2012 Added by: eloquentgit -- Comments
About 4 years back, I was working as after school tech support, hanging around for a few hours and fixing up the computers as much as I could.
I'd been doing this for two and a half years at this point (I was in my senior year), and had the whole school running pretty well most of the time. So I was a little surprised when we got a phone call to our closet sized office right as the school day finished and work started. For starters, we used a ticket system for support requests, so this phone never rung. Nevertheless, I answered and it was from the English department.
"Can you please come down now? We have a situation."
Okay... that sounds foreboding. Still, the other tech and I wander down to see what the problem is. Now, the English department was never the most tech savvy of departments, so we figured someone will be unable to find some student's essay or something.
As we reached the front doors to the English block, the head of department(HoD) was there to meet us. She was rather red in the face, but simply asked us to follow her.
We follow her down the corridor towards the computer lab and we see the entire English staff, as well as half the school's cleaners outside it, all red in the face, and stifling laughter. We reach the door and look inside and there is a kid, elbow deep in a computer.
Stuck.
At this point, both of us just lose our shit and collapse into chairs, laughing at the kid, which sets off all the staff again. After a good few minutes laughing, we wander over and ask how it happened.
"I got mad."
"What?"
"I got mad so I punched it and the thing went in and then I punched again and my arm went in."
Yeah... On the school computers were those little panels on the front that you can take out, to slot in a CD drive, or something else. He'd punched in one of those panels, then managed to punch his other arm through the gap, but he couldn't build enough momentum to get out again.
Needless to say, we took our time dismantling this computer around this poor child, all while we mocked him and his mother waited in the car outside.
#316 +-1- Added on: May-23-2012 Added by: rscarson -- Comments
I work at a small company as a programmer, and am often called upon as impromptu tech support. Now, as a little background, the CEO of the company, is an older gentleman who used to be a programmer (punch card era). He is rather tech savvy, and often 'experiments' with his machine, leading to... interesting results.
A few years ago, I set his machine up with voice recognition, because it was faster for him than typing, taught him how to use it and all that. He never used it, to my knowledge. Fast forward a few years and I get called in to his office. Him, the president and the head of IT are there, all looking a tad worried. The CEO informs me that his machine is typing by itself, and that this means someone must have taken over his computer.
I look over, and to my surprise, an excel spreadsheet is open, and various fields are being filled, emails being opened, etc. The president asks if perhaps the CEO's daughter might have logged in remotely somehow to do some work, and as if to confirm the suspicion, I notice her name being filled out in one of the field on the spreadsheet.
I call the daughter in question, and she informs me she is in fact NOT logged in. This is when I notice some of the words being typed. More specifically the fact that they match what I was saying. Turns out voice recognition got turned on somehow, and the computer was happily listening to the whole meeting, writing down what was being said, and interpreting things as commands.
Needless to say, I disabled the feature, and rolled back the changes to the spreadsheet. Strangest issue I have ever had.
#315 +3- Added on: May-22-2012 Added by: -jackschitt- -- Comments
I had a woman call me up. She was concerned that her daughter was posting pictures of herself naked on the internet. And she knew -- knew! -- that there must be a secret folder containing all her dirty pictures on that computer, somewhere! And she wanted me to find it.
Blindfolded.
Yes, you read that right. She had no idea how to look for these supposed pictures that may or may not even exist, and she wanted me to search for her. But she wanted me to do it blindfolded this way here if there were any pictures, I wouldn't see them.
Yes, that makes about as much sense as it sounds.
I told her that it just didn't work that way -- there's no way I'd be able to work if I can't see what the hell I'm doing. I also tried to assure her that she could look directly over my shoulder the entire time and make sure that I didn't leer at or download any of the pictures on the off chance that I did find something. Nope. I had to work blindfolded because she didn't want some strange man looking at her daughter's boobies (and yes, those were her words).
I told her that I would not be able to do that. Her response was "Well OK. I'll just take it to Best Buy, then. At least they'll be professionals about it".
I always did wonder how that turned out.