Slashdot Mirror
Your Favorite Support Anecdote
Most of us have had the unfortunate opportunity to have worked tech support at some point, whether it was for a paycheck or for a relative. The Register has offered up a vote for several of their favorite support stories but I'm sure there are many more out there to be had. My favorite horror story was while working a tech support call for a governmental employee, when asked to take her mouse and click on the "start" button all I could hear over the phone is what I later found out was the user banging her mouse against the monitor. What other horror stories have people seen from the trenches?
A half a year ago, I went home for the holidays and fixed my parent's windows machine for them.
... blast ... worm ... 32.exe or something" but when she clicked on it, the machine started acting funny.
Not more than two weeks later my mom called me up saying it had a blue screen of death whenever it tried to boot up. I asked her what the error said and she started reading to me the hex from the screen.
She said my older sister had been using the computer last so I told her to put her on the line and asked her what had happened. She told me her friend in college had sent her an attachment in an e-mail named "ms
My work here is dung.
I am getting status 41s with my backup and need help.
Okay, will you please email me your bp.conf, bpsched, bpcd logs?
No, I can't.
Okay, why not.
Well, we are having problems with our network. Nothing seems to be working.
What part of NETBACKUP don't you understand?
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
You should check Computer Stupidities for even more funny stories: http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid
This might be the longest /. thread ever.
My step mom, after telling me that she didn't know what my father did to the computer, because he's 'not very good', proceeded to tell me that she was having problems 'downloading the program from the upload on the cd'. She simply couldn't copy her word file.
Suffice to say, aneurisms hurt.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
We had made a fat client app for a company with a metric buttload of regional offices all over Germany. Each office had their own database, and it was replicated daily against the central database. (Short story: each office only needed the data for their region, so it really didn't need the whole central database. And conversely the "mother" corporation didn't need their data immediately either.)
So this woman (afaik, a sorta boss for that particular office too) calls that the application stopped working on her machine. The tech-support guys can't solve it, so they forward the call to us programmers, namely to the guy next to me. Turns out that she had heard about evil hackers and whatnot, and someone recommended that she installs ZoneAlarm and forbid any programs to connect if she doesn't know what they are and what they do. So she installs it on her work computer too. And forbids our application from talking to the database.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
When I worked Telephone Techinical Support for Fifth Generation Systems in the late 80s/early 90s, I had a legal secretary that could not restore her Fastback backups from the 5 1/4" disks she used. As a service, we would have customers in this situation send them in and we would restore the data, reback them up and send them back. We would want copies of the disks to be made and those sent to us. Well she did make copies. I received via overnight FedEx ten 8/12x11" photocopies of her really nicely labeled diskettes. I had a really hard time calling her back and explaining the process of how to copy a floppy.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
What you forgot when you screamed at him was that you were probably the first caller in about 100 who knew what an IP address was. I worked support for a while, and the one thing I learned was to never assume that the caller did or knew anything. When I did, a simple problem took forever to troubleshoot - because I failed to ask the obvious question, and assumed the problem was elsewhere.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Customer had been angry from the start. Don't know why. Just was that way. We fixed her computer up nice and new and sent her home. About 30min later she calls. Screaming and yelling. "you broke the computer..".. lots of profanity and swearing. After awhile I got her to say that it wasn't even "booting". I asked if the power LEDs were on. Took another few minutes to get the answer "no" through all the yelling and screaming. They weren't. I asked if she could confirm that it was plugged into the powerstrip, she said "no".. more screaming and yelling at me. At this point every customer in the store is listening on my side of the conversation as they were all hushed and no longer really shopping. I asked why she couldn't check the powerstrip... more swearing.. finally she said something like.."okay whatever..".. and set the phone down. She came back and I asked "was it plugged in okay"... "I don't know I had to get a flashlight.." more yelling and swearing. "Why did you need a flashlight?" "The power is out and I can't see under the desk" She immediatly realized her mistake and hung up. The call lasted about 20minutes and was the most difficult customer I've ever had to help out over the phone. Now we had another guy who was 6 foot 5 and had real anger issues -- threatened to beat me up when I refused to let him return DOS without all the disks. However that was in person, so it isn't on topic..
User: AOL Stole my credit card.
Tech: If you are having a problem cancelling your AOL account, you may need to call them...
User: No! AOL stole my credit card, and I want it back!
Tech: Wait... Tell me exactly what you did...
User: Well, I was installing AOL, and it asked for my credit card number. So I put my card in the ATM slot and now it won't give me my card back.
Yes, the user had stuck her Credit Card in her floppy drive. She had to send the machine back to the manufacturer, who then had to disassemble the floppy to get it out.
This was about a decade ago.
I had given my sister my old 486 as she went off to college (she's older than me). Anyways... a few months or so later I get a phone call "Hey William, the computer won't start." After a bit of chatting on the phone, I get out of here that it gets through POST but won't go into windows. I put my coat on, start up my crappy car, and drive the hour to go see what the problem is.
This is december in northern Wisconsin. As I recall we were having a snowstorm and the drive was definately NOT fun.
I walk into her apartment, look at the machine (which she left on, or had just booted as I walked in the door).
I hit the Turbo button. It boots.
I go home.
Me: Thanks for calling tech support. Him: Hi, I just purchased a CD Writer, and it says I need to open up my computer to install it. Me: Yes, and? Him: I don't have a computer, can I still use it? Me: Can I place you on hold for one moment? Him: Sure Me: Bahahahahahaha!!
1. Talking to a customer who is unable to get her DSL connection to work because she had inserted the network cable in the cd-rom drive. 2. Talking to another customer having the same problem as the one above, but this one has not been able to locate anyplace on his computer where a network cable might fit. When I asked him if he had a network card installed I got the answer (in a very annoyed tone of voice) "Of course I have a network card, do you think I'm an idiot?!? The card is right here in the box from the store." 3. Realizing that this will be a long and very painful day.
However a day or two later the "stuck" modem was fixed and I was able to dial in. I guess they found some cooperative kid with a Packard-Bell who changed his personal modem settings....
Where were you when the voynix came?
This was a real support call I once did:
I work for a fairly large hosting company, and we deal with some fairly large customers...but on a daily basis I see them change their server ips to gateway ips, changing all their network interfaces to have an ip of 5 (ifconfig -a 5, if you ever want to), etc. Then they wonder why we are so hesitant to give them root access to these boxes again.
The best antecdote though, was working with a customer, who couldn't figure out why he couldn't reach his server, and was cursing a storm about it, wanting to talk to vps, etc. I can't hit the box either, and no response from the remote console, so I have the data center tech check the box, and it's powered down. I have him power the box back up, and lo and behold, connectivity restored. Customer is livid at the news that the box was down, and wants to know why. I start digging in, and notice that the user was on the box when it when down. I check his history, and sure enough, "shutdown -h now". I brought this information to him, and he hung up on me. I made sure that our trouble ticket was noted with the info, and by the next week, the customer had a new technical contact, who was much nicer.
How Jaded Are You?
You're using her as bait, Master!
I was working internal support for a bank about 10 years ago. One day I got a frantic call from one of the older Vice Prsidents.
"I can't login! I've tried and tried, but the ^%((* thing won't let me in."
No one else had reported a problem, so I went over to his office.
"OK, please restart your computer and login for me."
He dutifully restarted, typed in his login name, and proceeded to type in his all-numeric password on the phone next to his keyboard.
the no
My computer reboots. This is a true story that happened to a customer who lived in a rural area when I worked for a dialup ISP several years ago. Living in a rural area, the customer got their water from a well, and whenever the toilet would flush, their water reserve would suddenly drop low enough to kick on their water pump, and cause a temporary brown out.
I was serving at a forward deployed location with the US military. Many things were wrong with our technical position, including the fact that our office was NOT being provided the security updates for MS Exchange, due to a typical military SNAFU.
..
.." and have the because be something you recognized you couldn't argue against?
One of the many known and expected email attacks hit us, and crashed our server.
We couldn't get the server back up. Our "home office" back in the US couldn't figure out how to get our server back up. We got permission to pay for the service, and called the MS Service line. After a short discussion, the MS Techs knew exactly what our problem was, and told me to download a 4.2 Meg update. At this point I had to interrupt, and point out that my connection to the world wasn't that stable, and didn't have enough bandwidth to keep that download under 12 hours, if the connection didn't get lost.
The next thing I knew, I had two MS Engineers on the phone, talking to each other while I listened, trying to figure out how to deal with the problem without using the download. That phone call ran nearly 5 hours. It ended with me typing in hex edits to the MS Exchange software . .
EVERYTHING these men suggested short of that I had to refuse, for technical or mission reasons. The direct hex edit was something like the 7th or 8th solution the engineers came up with.
How would YOU like to hear "Yeah, that would probably work, but, I can't do that because . .
In the late 90's, Packard Bell disappeared. Most people assumed they were finally taken down by their own incompetence, but what really happened was this:
Packard Bell was able to manufacture their systems so cheaply because they had rent-free facilities on a disused airbase in Sacramento, CA. NEC, wishing to enter the end-user/retail sector and covetous of this manufacturing facility, bought 49% of Packard Bell, re-named them to NEC Consumer Systems Division, and put a clause in the contract that allowed them to gain ownership of the other 2% if certain milestones were not reached. Then, NEC seeded the CSD division with internal executives, who made sure those milestones would never be reached. Mission accomplished, NEC now had their manufacturing facilities rent-free, and they shut down the consumer systems division, no longer willing to compete with Dell & Gateway.
I was one of the end-user technical support nerds for NEC-CSD, and wow did we get some crazies. Among my favorites were the black supremacist who refused to speak to me because I sounded white, so I put him on hold and then picked up a few minutes later with a badly faked "black" accent ("Yo what up? This is NEC, I'm Johnson. How can I help you?"). His issue? He'd set all of his Windows desktop color settings to black - backgrounds, borders, buttons, and text - and was calling to complain that his monitor was broken, because all he could see what his mouse cursor (which he was angry at for being white).
Also good was the hung-over stoner who'd woken up to find that he'd thrown up IN his monitor. No, sorry, that's not covered under warranty, but could you tell me how you did it?
But the best call didn't even happen to me, it happened to Chuck. One slow afternoon Chuck came around and motioned for everyone not currently on a call to follow him. We gathered around his cube and he muted the input on his phone, put on his headset, and then piped it to the speaker.
Chuck: "Hello sir, I have my supervisor here with us, could you please repeat for us what you told me?"
Cust: "Well, this laptop is junk, and I want a new one."
Chuck: "Okay, can you talk me through what's wrong?"
Cust: "My modem wouldn't connect, and I got really angry, so I pulled the card out and snapped it in half. Then I threw it across the room."
Chuck: "So your modem is no longer functional?"
Cust: "My computer's busted and I want a new one."
Chuck: "Okay, so how did we go from broken modem card to broken laptop?"
Cust: "So I calm down and I figure I can fix this modem. I got the pieces, and I figured out how they were supposed to go. Then I superglued them together and put them in a vice clamp overnight."
Chuck: "Okay. What happened next?"
Cust: "Well, I put it in my computer and tried to dial out to the internet again, but it still didn't work. Then I tried to pull out the card, but it got stuck. I had to use needle-nose pliers to pull the damn thing out, and I only got half of it. The other half's stuck in there, and now my computer's ruined! Your computer is junk, and I want a new laptop!"
At this point, the twenty or so people gathered around Chuck's cube were in hysterics. Chuck reached over, released the mute so that the man on the other end of the phone could hear us, left it open for a few seconds, and hung up on him.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
Maybe he just never encountered some pathetic loser who would actually call up his ISP and spend hours requesting a new IP address just to avoid an IP block due to being an asshat on slashdot. Perhaps he assumed that, if you're calling tech support, that something was actually *wrong* with your service. I'll forgive his ignorance in this case.
Anyway, I got my new IP address after escalating it to his manager. And here I am! Yay!
Yeah, we're all better for it.
An ISP, mind you, who caters mostly to customers in a rural area. One day, a guy calls up because there was a strange clicking noise coming from inside his computer when he turned it on. I wasn't too busy that day, so I figured I could take a minute to say it was probably his hard drive on the verge of death, and as the conversation proceeded, it just got worse and worse. Him: "Well, I squirted some WD-40 in there, but it didn't help none..." Me: (stunned pause) "You squirted... WD-40 in... where?" Him: "The, er, disk drive... that's what you said it was, right?" Me: (speechless) Him: "Uh-oh, smoke's coming out... better unplug this thing..." Yes, this guy sprayed WD-40 into his floppy drive and set his computer on fire.
An object at rest cannot be stopped.
Me: How may I help you?
Customer: Hi, my name is Customer.
Me: Hi, how may I help you today?
C: I just bought a Powerbook G4 and I can't get it connected to the internet. There are no ports at all, no USB, no Ethernet, no modem.
Me: What? Are you sure there are no ports on it?
C: Yes, this is the worst purchase I ever made! Can I bring it to you guys to have a look at it and get ports added?
Me: This is the first time I ever heard of this! You're sure you flipped down the panel in the back?
C: Panel in the back? I don't see a-- I am such an asshole! Thank you so much, I feel so stupid.
Me: It's okay, don't worry. I'm glad I could help.
C: I am sorry for cursing, thank you so much you just saved me so much money.
Me: You're welcome, have a good day.
C: You too!
I used to work for the local Telescom company here in Western Canada doing support for the ADSL help desk. We had just rolled out 2.5 high speed. A customer called into my queue and was complaining about slow speeds. One of the first question we have to ask is "Is the ADSL modem hooked up directly into the computer, or is there a router in between?" Of course, the customer said no, he did not have a router. I saw he was on the new 2.5 program and so we went through about 40 minutes of speed testing. Download rates, TRACRT, Pinging... all of those tests came back with speed equivilant to the 1.5 package. so I excalated to our network support team. Well after about an hours worth of testing, NS asked again if he had a router, he said no again. Finally we were about to dispatch a tech when he said these exact words :Well, let me try bypassing my router and see if that works...." Which of course it did.
So moral of the story? Even though tech support has to aks dumb questions, they would not be there if there was not a reason somewhere down the line.... :)
"Gentlemen, You cannot fight in here, this is the War Room...." - Dr Strangelove
I was working support for the local cable station, and a guy called in saying that he couldn't get a picture on his TV.
Normally this is due to getting the in/out cables wrong on the VCR, so I asked him to verify that they were correctly plugged in. He then said it was too dark to see, so I suggested moving a lamp over. At that point he mentioned that the lamps weren't working because *the power was out*. Blew my mind.
One a side note, why the heck do VCRs need to be manually switched between cable and antenna? Are the channel frequencies different or something? And why can't they put a 10-cent NVRAM chip in there to remember all the settings during a power outage?
I worked phone support for a software company for a while. We get all kinds of calls - anything from how do I login to the app to I don't believe the data your app is showing me to it's just broken. One day, my coworker gets a call from someone who obviously is facing some problem and wants it to be taken care of. After about a 2 minute session of standard Question and Answer, my coworker goes silent, puts the guy on hold for a short time, then continues. When he finally hangs up, I ask him what happened. Here's apparently how the conversation went:
Coworker: tell me what's happening.
Caller: It's broken, I need it fixed.
Coworker: ok, so what is the problem.
Caller: It doesn't matter, just open the ticket.
Coworker: I need to know what's wrong before I can open the ticket.
Caller (screaming now): Do you know what your purpose in life is????
Coworker: Ummmmmmm.....
Caller: Your purpose in life is to open this ticket for me!!
And they say there is no such thing as workplace abuse.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
A few years ago, I had a combined programmer/support job. One day, a colleague called and said that he had an application on his computer he could not close.
;-)
So I went over and indeed, one of our programs was in the middle of his screen and did not react to anything. On a hunch, I checked the dektop settings. Lo and behold:
Somehow the guy had made a screenshot while running the application and used that screenshot as Windows wallpaper. Changing the wallpaper got rid of the phantom application
C - the footgun of programming languages
Me: Seems like your computer is having problems, lets reboot the computer and see if that will fix the problem.
User: Am I allowed to do that?
Me: Sure.
User: Ok then.
Bang, Bang heard in the background on the phone
Me: STOP!!! STOP DOING THAT!!! (Me screaming into phone)
User: Whats wrong, I'm booting the computer. (User was kicking the computer tower that was under the desk.)
The sad part of this story is that it's true.
Back when I was assembling i386 PCs for a small reseller, one of our regular clients walked in the door carrying a machine we had recently sold to his company. He said that it had "just stopped working", and implied that it should be covered under warranty.
When I opened up the machine, I discovered that every screw and stand-off holding the motherboard had been sheared off, and the board was shorting against the case. There was no obvious damage to the case itself. I figured the guy must have dropped the machine and it landed flat on the bottom. Amazingly, after the board was re-mounted, everything seemed to work perfectly.
Of course, we were rather curious about what had happened, so my boss asked the client when he returned. The client sheepishly admitted that they had planned to use the machine for tracking wildlife, running off a generator in the middle of the forest. They flew it to the intended location, and dropped it from the aircraft with a parachute. I turned around and headed back into the shop stifling my laughter while my boss told the client he couldn't justify covering the incident under warranty.
Did you say "insightful" or "inciteful"?
Let me guess: You were IP-banned for language?
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
I discovered what I call the Rinkworks site a few years ago. It doesn't get updated very often, but because it's edited, the content is usually pretty good.
I love the comment at the top of the "Computer Stupidities" page:"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
-- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
I haven't lost my mind; it's backed up on a CD-R somewhere
My Hotmail account works like that: using Microsoft's settings, the spam goes into the inbox while the good stuff goes into the junk folder.
Where were you when the voynix came?
A Congressman from my government's House of Representatives was having issues with the Internet just last week. His problem? The "tubes" that made up the internet were "filled."
$ touch
That's odd, I've actually been recommending that people shove their mouse into various body openings (or use it to create new ones). I guess I learn something new every single day.
-
Inventor of the term 'pardon my French'.
I had a remote user sitting in front of an NT3.5 machine, needing to do some work in a FoxPro app. We were having some library problems, etc... but lacking remote desktop tools for that session, I was relying on the user to tell me what she was seeing as she clicked on what I told her to click on. After tracking down the right icon, I asked her to run the app. "Yep," she said, "it's running! Now, how long before I see the program?"
This went on for a long, long time. Finally I asked her how she knew it was running, when, well... it obviously wasn't running. She said, "Well, obviously I can see its legs moving."
Never heard that one before. Long pause.
Ah... remember the animated pointer sets that NT came with? You know, the one where the "busy" mouse pointer (hourglass) could be replaced with an animation of... a running horse? Gaaah!
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Would you work for 10$/hr? The problem here is the people who know what they are doing can make 2-3x as much - if not more - and not have to deal with the public all the time. The stupid ones are the ones that just wanna work with computers and know they can't pass themselves off as real techs.
While working in notebook support at an Large Computer Manufacturer a few years back, I took a call one night. We handled education accounts at the time and a call came in from one of the large unviversites concerning a notebook belonging to a professor. She opened the call with, "I'm going to need to send in my laptop for servicing." So I proceed to ask the standard opening question, "What seems to be the problem with it? Is it not starting up?" She replies, "I peed in it." My brain tells me that I did not just hear that and I say, "I'm sorry?" She says "I peed in it. If you look at the history on this thing, you'll see that I've had nothing but problems with it over the past several months. I got fed up. I opened it up, I put it in the floor and peed in it. So of course it doesn't work now and I know I'm going to have to send it in to get it fixed." "You do realize this is not going to be covered by your warranty, right?" "Oh I don't care, I feel a lot better. I'll just bill it to my credit card." So I go through all of the process to set it up for depot repair and get her off the line after telling her to seal it in plastic and put biohazard stickers on it. Then there was the process of letting the repair depot know what was coming in. In the end the computer she sent in was junked without ever being touched by the depot and she was charged for a new maachine which was roughly the same cost as the pissed one..
The IBM Mouse Balls story is one of my favorites. Snopes says it was an internal joke memo. Here is a version from 1989, scroll down for it.
I once read on another source, probably made up, that this WAS in fact a real memo and that the person sending it went to some lengths to bypass the normal internal checks that keep such humor from getting out into the field. Specifically, the person who allegedly wrote the memo declared it a safety emergency memo, which at the time allegedly went through virtually zero in-depth checks from management. I am unable to find this source and I don't give it much credibility.
As for photocopying disks for backup purposes, I do so for insurance purposes. If my house burns down, my "off-site backups" help me file an insurance claim. It works for hard drives too.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Years ago a friend told me his horror story of working tech support. A customer was having problems with their dial-up connection. A troubleshooting method for resetting their model of modem was known as the "jump start". When my friend informed the caller that they would attempt to walk through the procedure, the caller put down the phone and in his thick drawl shouted:
"Honey, bring me the jumper cables! This guys says we gotta give this sucker a jolt!"
DISCLAIMER: Shocking any part of your computer may permanently void your warranty.
First Story:
Many moons ago, back in the 80s, I worked for a company that sold and serviced mini and microcomputer systems. We had one company that was complaining and threatening to sue because the "crap" computers we had sold them kept crashing several times per day. So we sent a tech down to check them out. He walked into their brand new, ice cold computer room. Noticing that the room had, like most computer rooms, flourescent lighting, he pointed to a bank of dimmer switches on the wall.
"What are those for?" he asked.
"Oh, they control all the outlets in this room," was the reply.
The tech walked over and spun them all to "max". Problem solved.
Second Story:
Another customer who said our "crap" computers were crashing. I personally flew down to to visit them to see what was going on. As we were discussing the situation, the lights dimmed for a few seconds, came back up, then flashed bright, then went back to normal.
"What was that?" I asked.
"Oh, there's a auto crusher across the street. When the turn on the magnet we get a little brown out, and when they turn it off the lights go up for a moment."
"I here see you opted not to by the uninteruptable power supply, and have not even installed a surge suppressor," I noted. "Do you think that the fact your power is unreliable might have something to do with your problems?"
UPS == End of Story.
Third Story:
Which is not to say our computers weren't crap. Most weren't installed in computer rooms, they were installed in offices, which was kind of a new thing at the time.
We certainly did have a number of strange reset problems, especially in the winter. Then one day we get a technical bulletin entitled, "Static discharge from pantyhose implicated in unexplained system resets." The recommendation: secretaries doing word processing and data entry should stop wearing pantyhose. Now, most of our customers were New England CPAs, and standards for business attire in New England at the time were formal. The secretaries were NOT going to where slacks or skirts without pantyhose.
So one of the techs comes up with a solution. "Hey, isn't fabric softener supposed to stop static cling?" So, the recommendation goes out: avoid pantyhose, but if you must where them, spray Downy brand fabric softener on them several times a day. Naturally, they all opt to go into the ladies room every couple of hours and spray their legs with Downy.
Another problem solved.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Me: Ok, can you right-click on the My Computer icon, please. Clot: OK.... Clot: C... L... I... C... K Me: Er, what's happening? A menu should have popped up. Clot: I've written 'click' on the icon, what next? Me: THWACK (as my head hits the desk) In a travel agency somewhere in the UK, there is still a PC where the My Computer icon actually reads 'click'.
Years ago, back a few jobs, I handled internal user support plus the occational escallation from external clients. Such an escallation comes in but not from a client but from our vendor support people. That's strange, I think, I never get calls from them. Anyway, I'm told that the vendor is having problems logging into our web site and checking his payment status. No big deal, really, since most vendors prefered to get that information by phone from the very person who was transfering the call to me. I just assume that he hasn't been set up for on-line access to his account.
... shit. Stop fucking with my stuff." Then he hung up.
I pick up the line while at the same time checking the database for his information. At the very second I find out that he has been set up for on-line access I get an earfull about how "you guys" are fucking everything up and nothing works. "Total fuckups who can't do anything right. This worked before but then you changed something and now nothing fucking works you ass-hole."
Yep, he is swearing. A lot. This goes on with every sentence and he accuses me personally of screwing it up with some mysterious changes to the web site. Never mind that the site had never been updated since the vendor logon was implimented, I was not the one to make those changes.
I sigh, take the abuse, and lead him through the logon "process". "Yes, I have the fucking right page." "I know my fucking ID number." The ID number was four digits long and I checked that he was using the right one. "My fucking password is my last name, goddamnit!" I look that up in the database (nice security, huh?) and that is true. On my machine I log in just fine and he is still complaining that it isn't "fucking working".
I check the web logs. Bad password. He is connecting fine but typing in the wrong password. I try to find some way polite way to ask if he knows his own last name. He does. It was Johnson. OK. I keep having him try the user ID and password. I lead him through the numbers one at a time, although I could see from the web logs that he was getting that right. I finally lead him, letter by letter, through the spelling of his own last name (not case-sensitve). That worked.
"What the fuck did you change! Well
His heartfelt thanks fills me with warming joy to this very day.
Case 1: Man calls up, angry that his CD burner isn't working (it's an external drive USB). After going through the normal troubleshooting steps (including asking him if it was connected to the computer), we're finally about to throw in the towel and chalk it up to bad hardware. We try one last thing; have him disconnect everything, turn off the drive, turn it back on and reconnect everything. We then here a box opening, plastic crinkling, etc...turns out the guy hadn't take the drive out of the box yet. How he thought that the drive was connected, when the box was still sealed, I don't know.
Case 2: Woman calls up, with a external CD burner (it's a firewire drive). I hear the words "doesn't show up", "cable didn't fit" and "pliers" and I cringed. Of course, she didn't have any firewire ports on her computer, but she did have USB ports...well, at least she used to have USB ports, before Mr. Pliers got involved. The cable "fit", but I wonder why the drive didn't work?
Case 3: Man calls up, irate that his computer reboots everytime he goes to burn some files. After calming him down a bit, we attempt to troubleshoot it. Sure enough, every time we instruct him to click on the "Record" button (in the software, there's a button that says "Record", his computer immediately reboots. We try everything. We even turn off the auto-reboot feature in XP (so that it would, hopefully, blue screen), but that doesn't change a thing. Lucky for us, the man's brother was nearby, as my colleague heard him in the background. What was heard was, "[customer's name], what are you doing, you stupid [some expletive]? Why are you pressing the reset button on the computer?" Why he thought that was the "record" button, I'll never know...maybe I don't want to.
I remember working in tech support and I got this call from someone who wanted a new IP address issued. We don't assign new addresses on a whim, sometimes people use this trick to get around blocks for bad behaviour (e.g., see Wikipedia), and experience has shown that half the time the user calls back with the same problem a day later anyway (e.g., it's not software, it is a hardware problem, or USER ERROR), so we have a bunch of standard questions that are asked before making any kind of switch.
You should have heard this guy! Impatient. Demanding. They went ballistic and started calling me a retard for asking. So sorry, sir. By your command, sir. They pay me $5/hr to serve your every whim, sir. The best part is the reason for wanting the switch: their IP apparently got banned from some on-line forum. Yeah, right. The phrase "Not our problem" comes to mind. It would be like calling the phone company expecting to get a new number because yours got blocked by some other customer for harassing phone calls.
But, they are a paying customer, and the customer is always right, so, I told them that kind of abuse wasn't necessary, and once they calmed down, I guess they called my manager and got what they wanted in the end. Good for them. I just wish they weren't so rude about it. It's not the end of the world if they can't post to an on-line forum for a couple of days.
Sheesh, they do not pay enough for the kind of verbal abuse people sometimes have to put up with in tech support.
I was working at IBM in their Thinkpad support group when Win95 was rolled out. We had a special group created to handle Win95 support calls of techs who had taken training on Win95 on the IBM machines. I remember my first call after getting put on the Win95 support que. At this point in time, IBM had approximately 30 minute wait times to get to a Win95 support rep. After I pick up the phone, a guy tells me hae is having problems with Win95 on his new laptop that he bought. After confirming his serial number I asked him what the problem was. His exact answer:
"Solitaire is dealing me the wrong cards."
The mute button was my friend that day.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
A few months ago, I received a panicked call from an administrative assistant that one of our attending physicians was having technical issues with some of the hardware in our clinic. I informed her that I had just pulled up to the hospital and would be there momentarily to correct the issue. Upon getting into the parking lot (a mere two minutes later), I received another phone call from an equally panicked medical assistant claiming that Dr. ******** said, "One of the head-desks isn't functioning."
My reply, of course, was, "what is a head-desk? Does he mean one of the desktop PCs or the TabletPCs?"
"I don't know; all he said is to get up here because the head-desk isn't working."
Rushing from the parking lot to the clinic, I blow through the door and head straight back to the Triage area of the clinic. Standing in front of the aptly named head-desk (a computer monitor), I see a medical assistant working without any problems. I ask the attending physician (who initiated the calls) which computer had the problem. He points to the functioning devices and I look at him and say, "It's working just fine."
"Well it wasn't."
Apparently, he was just too impatient to check the monitor's power button and move the mouse to bring the desktop PC out of suspend mode.
"In that case, next time--before you make panicked calls to everyone--make sure to check the power button and move the mouse."
"I'm not stupid, I know how to do that!"
I bite my lip, turn for the door, and say to myself, "I think the jury's still out on that one."
Yeah, she scrolled to the right, and couldn't figure out how to go left. 30-year old woman, reporter, uses computers daily. Mmmkay.
One week ago, I send her a /. story that relates to a piece she's producing. She tells me that she can't read it because the text goes off the bottom of the screen and ends in the middle of a sentence.
sigh.
What are you, 12?
"There's something wrong with the network."
"Okay, what's going on?"
"Well, the machine was all like, bam! bam bam! and that surprised me. Then I tried making it go again. That didn't work, 'cos it just sat there going ghh-ghh-ghh-ghh!"
"What?"
"It's a machine gun sound. Now it's just sitting there, all like, what the fuck?"
"Okay, what does that mean?"
"I said, first the machine was all--"
"Never mind. What were you doing when this happened?"
"I was running a test."
"And then what happened?"
"I started getting NFS errors."
"Aha. What kind of NFS errors?"
"You know, like, the file wasn't there."
"Okay. Then what happened?"
"The machine gun sound. Weren't you listening?"
----------------
"I'm heading out of town next week, and I'm going to need the notebook."
"Okay, when do you need it?"
"Oh, some time next week."
"I can do that. What do you need on it?"
"Foobleymatic 2.5, BarfTastic XP, and Crunchometer 2."
"Okay, that sounds good. How's Tuesday sound for you?"
"Today's Friday, right?"
"Yep. Why?"
"Well, I'm actually heading out of town on Monday."
"Aha. When on Monday?"
"Early."
"Early as in, you won't have time to come in here and pick up the laptop, right?"
"Right."
"I see. So really, then, you need it today, don't you?"
"Yeah, I guess I do."
"I see. Well, thanks for telling me."
"Hey, no problem!"
----------------
"Have we thought about wireless access here?"
"I'm agin it. It's too easy to sniff traffic and there are lots of data ports here."
"Well, has anyone ever sniffed traffic?"
"Absolutely. A guy got convicted in the US for sniffing credit card numbers from a Home Depot. They were using encryption. The FBI recently demonstrated how to crack encryption in about four minutes using off-the-shelf software. It's not hard."
"Well, I don't think we have that many secrets."
"...Email? Our source code? Budgets?"
"Well, I'm only thinking of this as a way of getting the printer closer to my office."
"What, you don't print any secrets?"
"No."
"You've just picked up your printing, right? Look at what you have in your hand: email, budget requests. Programmers print out code all the time. Should we open the window and throw it all into the streets?"
"Well..."
"We have shredders for a reason."
"Well, maybe I should just get a printer and put it by my desk."
----------------
Yesterday:
A: Ever since I moved to Linux, I can't print these PDFs any more. I think it's a font problem, just like B had. Have you fixed that yet?
Me: No, but I don't know that you're having a font problem. There are, like, four programs involved in printing that, and each one of them is different now.
A: No, I think it's a font problem. I hate OpenOffice.
B: Fonts are screwed up in Debian. This never happens to me on my Fedora Core machine at home.
Today:
Me: Well, I printed out seventeen pages from two different machines in eight different ways using the printer on the floor above me, and as you can see the crucial difference is the version of Acrobat Reader used to print them. It's not a font problem. Those big black bars? It's a bug in the latest version of Acrobat Reader.
A: Oh.
Me: Yep, the PDFs generated by OpenOffice were fine. Now, I'm reluctant to install an older version of Acrobat because of security pr--
B (sitting right next to A all this time): Oh, you don't have that problem if you use this PDF reader over here.
A: What?
Me: What?
B: Yep, just use the Gnome PDF reader and it prints just fine.
A: Why didn't you tell me yesterday?
B: You said it was a problem with OpenOffice, not PDFs.
A:
Carousel is a lie!
Girl from HR with large chest walks in to department and says "I'm sorry to bother you guys but I really need to get these out!" Talking about her newest pamphlet.
Look you immature arseholes, this is why women hate dealing with IT departments. Why the fuck do you have to compare a perfectly reasonable request to complete and utter idiocy just because the woman happens to have <GASP> boobies!
Yes, I get the double entendre. How fucking hilarious. Obviously the woman needs to be ridiculed for her stupidity. It's not as if "get these out" is an extremely common phrase heard through offices every day, is it?
I'm a bloke and articles like this make me embarrassed to work in the IT field because, quite frankly, the reputation it has as being full of fuckwits with no social skills and a fear of women is well-deserved. Grow the fuck up and stop making the rest of us look like dickheads.
Rinkworks has a great collection of stories. I question the veracity of some of them, but they're still funny. When I first discovered it, I had to stop after a couple pages because I was losing my faith in mankind's ability to not be completely hopeless.
The Register's list has a couple good ones (The hungry floppy drive is my favorite), but some of them seem rather lame given the number of stories out there, and they're written like they were copied and pasted from a chatroom. Example: "Someone telling me their 'broadbean' connection is down." I would even say that my 9 year old can write better than that, except I don't have a 9 year old son.
Also, I'm sorry because I know how important this topic is to Slashdot, but "Girl from HR with large chest walks in to department..." (more spectacular writing) doesn't exactly strike me as a bewildering IT anecdote. It's more like someone got excited about directly interacting with the HR girl and felt a need to share their excitement with the Register.
When I first started working at a local computer store in the "lab" we got one irate lady whose son had really destroyed Windows 95. She had something against my boss, and kept making a big stink about the computer being defective and demanding that we build her a brand new machine, and claiming that I didn't know what I was talking about. She eventually cornered the sales manager and yelled at him for an hour or so, and as soon as she left the store I got called into his office.
The sales manager was upset of course, and started chewing me out, but after about 5 mins he asked me what I had to say about it all.
"There's a difference between bending over backwards for the customer and bending over forwards."
He turned beet red, pointed at the door and I left. I never heard another word about the incident.
talked to a very nice older lady... she was having no luck getting her new phone programmed...
she had talked to someone else before and got fustrated and called back
so i tried to walk her thru programming the phone.... which wasn't working at all again.
she kept saying she wasn't hearing any of the system announcements.... etc on the phone.
finally about to give up and figure she had a DOA phone, I asked her to locate the model number... when she said it was an RCA...... it struck me... she was trying to program the remote control for her TV instead of the Phone which was sitting on the table next to her.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
"I'd like to move my telephone to the other side of the room. Would you please feed more cable through the wall for me?"
Life is such a sweet insanity. The more you learn, the less you know.
I used to work for a large IT firm doing internal support. On the morning of 9/11/2001 I received a phone call from a manager in the manufacturing division. I was based in NY and he was based in MN. He demanded to know why he had not been able to access his e-mail for the last hour and a half. I explained to him that our mail servers were located in building #2 of the World Trade Center, which no longer existed. He demanded to speak to my supervisor because he could not believe our response time to correct the problem and reboot the mail server was so slow. I pointed out that three targets on American soil had just been attacked, two of them civilian and completely destroyed. He still didn't get it. I pointed out that 3000 people died. He again demanded to speak to my supervisor, screaming about our Service Level Agreements and such. I hung up and walked out.
Funny, I almost never assume that the help desk person on the other line has a clue. I once called to tell my ISP that their DNS servers weren't responding. I said, "I can't resolve anything through DNS. I tried to query your servers with nslookup and got nothing. I tried pinging them and got no response. I tracerouted to them, got responses from your network, but couldn't reach them." The person then asked, "Sir, what browser are you using to ping them?" I said, "Umm...I'm not using my browser to do that." This was followed by me asking, "Do you know a cool trick that I don't?" That's why I never assume tha tthe person answering the phone has a clue.
"It's too bad stupidity isn't painful." - A. S. LaVey
I was out to dinner with a new girlfriend and she was wearing a rather sexy, backless plunging top, which of course meant she wasn't wearing a bra. About midway through dinner she dropped her knife on the floor and when she bent over to pick it up... well...
Let's just say she could have used better support.
paintball
So i'm working tech support for a company in Massachusetts, 1st job out of college in 96 - it's a small company, and I'm supporting their product...but, that's getting old, so I tell them I'd rather be in IT and if they want to keep me, they should move me sooner rather than later. They agree to move me to IT, but couldn't do it right away. No problem, eventually is better than never.
(on a side note, I'm glad I was there in the days when a college grad with little real world experience could make a play like that and win)
3 months later I'm still not down there - there's a new mgr there who no one likes, so I'm not complaining. One day, one of the guys there, Muz, gives me a call asking me to come down to his new bosses office.
Apparently she came storming into the IT area, grumps her way into her office and, 3 minutes later, comes flying out saying "My f'n laptop doesn't work AGAIN - you told me last time you fixed it that you FIXED IT, and you clearly didn't. I'm going to talk to HR - if you want to save your job, get in there and FIX the laptop, today the mouse doesn't work." Muz pops his head in to her office after she leaves, and immediately calls me. He tells me the story, and pop down aand peek into her office...and duck my head back out, now laughing.
Boss chooses this point to come back, CIO and HR rep in tow. Now in her defense, she wasn't an IT type person - IT needed a manager, and they threw her under the bus....but there are limits.
So, back to her office, she asks what I'm doing there (all irritated) and I let her know I was helping Muz troubleshoot her problem. I asked her to put her laptop back into her bag as if she had just arrived and show me what she did. So she pulls the power out, slams the lid closed, puts it in her laptop bag, walks out. She comes BACK in 2 minutes later (method actor, I guess). Opens laptop bag. Puts laptop on desk. Opens, turns on. Grabs mouse on her desk and moves it...."See! See! This stupid thing just doesn't work, i want that guy (the actualy IT Person) fired immediately!"
I reach over and grab the dangling end of the mouse and show it to her. That's all, didn't say a word, just twisted it back & forth between my fingers while looking at her.
I don't think I've seen that colour of red in a long time. She was totally embarassed and actually apologized to Muz. CEO, HR head ask Muz and I to walk out. 20 minutes later, the mgr walks out. 2 days later, new mgr in IT - sadly, they just shuffled her to another location within the company...
What is popular is not always right; what is right is not always popular.
I got asked "I downloaded a virus writing kit so I could send somebody a virus, but my antivirus says it's infected with a virus, what do I do?". Thankfully, I've never worked in helldesk, this was just a random person that knew I'm "good with computers"
I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
"OK, so does the mouse still move?"
"Yes."
"OK, so it can't be completely frozen. Let's go over to the lab and I'll take a look."
footstep footstep footstep Well, it looks to be completely locked. I thought you said the mouse still moved?"
She grabs the mouse and swings it all over the desk, looking at me like, "SEE?"
"Look, if the computer ever locks up so hard that you can't move the mouse on the desk, RUN."
The joke in on tech support in the end in this one, from my first job. George received the call, which went something like this:
Customer: Hello, I'm calling because your CD-ROM makes a buzzing noise during installation.
George: Pardon me, sir—a buzzing noize?
Customer: Yes, it vibrates, making a kind of loud buzzing noise.
George: Are there any errors?
Customer: No, the installation works just fine.
George: And the software works correctly?
Customer: Yes, no problem. But the CD makes a buzzing noise.
George (becoming creative): Hmm... well, sir, there's a lot of information on that CD, and it could be that there's more information on one side of the disc than the other. If it's weighted unevenly, this could make it wobble as it spins, causing it to buzz.
Customer: Oh, that makes sense. Well, no big deal, I guess. Thank you.
It turns out that many other customers called with the same complaint; there was indeed a manufacturing defect with a batch of CDs.
Not really related, except that your mention of IP address reminded me of this one - it's kind of a cute story:
I had a cable modem, probably close to 10 years ago when they were very new, and phoned to ask about how I could get a static IP address (I think Rogers cable in Canada may have been offering them for a few $ a month extra or something like that).
Anyway, after a confusing conversation I was told that I was probably best to just go the the nearest Radio Shack and see if I could pick up a static IP address there.
Back in the early Mac days, there was a naive Mac user whose computer crashed and put up a dialog with the bomb icon, saying "Sorry, a system error has occurred." So of course they jumped up from their seat and ran out of the room in terror, because they thought it meant the computer was about to explode!
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Here's another e-mail related incident that I experienced a few years ago.
... er ... "repeat customers", screaming that his e-mail wasn't working and that the Commissioner had sent him very important e-mails that he absolutely needed. So, she - me manager - came over, rolling her eyes, and said, "Will you see what he's doing wrong?"
Back in the days of Windows 3.1, I installed a small Microsoft Mail post office for our department, a state government agency. My manager got a call one morning from one of our
I went over to his office where he was with some other employee. As soon as he saw me, he started up. "This e-mail sucks! The Commissioner sent me several important e-mails yesterday and I never got them! This is ridiculous! What the hell is wrong with tis thing?!" I calmly wlaked over and stated, "Let me look at it."
After about two seconds of looking at the screen, I calmly stated, "You're not in your Inbox." { click on Inbox }
{ dramatic pause as his stupidity sinks in while the wind howls and a tumbleweed blows by }
"I am so sorry. I can't believe I didn't see it."
"Not a problem. Let me know if you have any other issue with it." as I walked out with no indication of the "You moron!" attitude on my face.
I even had the gratification of hearing, "I feel so stupid" as I walked out the door. Well, who am I to argue with management?
My favorite has to be:
- Me: thank you for calling $CO_HEADING_TO_C11 how can I help you today.
- Her: I need you to help me get back online.
- Me: OK, what seems the be the matter.
- Her: The computer keeps saying that it can't find a dialtone.
- Me: OK, have you checked that the phone line is plugged into the back of the computer and the wall.
- Her: [angry]Of course it's plugged in. I caught my son viewing pornography last weekend so I superglued the end of the plug into the back of the computer, and cut off the cord so he can't connect by himself. So I know the jack is plugged in.
- Me: OK, just to verify I understand the problem: You superglued the phone cord jack into the back of your computer and then cut off the cord. Now you want to connect to the internet and the phone cord jack is preventing you from putting in another cord.
- Her: [even angrier]I don't have another cord. I just want to get on the internet, that's what I pay you for, so get me connected.
- Me: Ma'am, I am confused. You have physically modified your computer in order to prevent your son from connecting to the internet, is that correct?
- Her: [furious]I didn't change anything, I just glued the plug in and cut the cord. Now get me connected to the internet or I'm going to cancel my service.
- Me: Ma'am, I cannot get you connected to the internet because you have damaged your computer. In order to get you connected to the internet, you will need to have someone replace the modem in the computer.
- Her: [screaming]I didn't break anything, why won't you help me?!!
It went downhill from there.Some years ago a colleague told me about the strangest support problem he had ever run into: one of their developers could only log in sitting down.
He had recently noticed that if he tried to log in in any other position (eg, still standing and just quickly checking his mail while walking past his desk), his password was always rejected. But as soon as he sat down, he had no problems getting in.
My colleague at first laughed it off, but it was demonstrated to be the case. He spent a long time looking into cabling problems with the keyboard or network, thinking that perhaps there was a loose connection that only worked reliably with the guy's foot on it or similar longshots. Nothing panned out, and they eventually gave up on it as not important enough to dig into further.
Finally, months later, the developer came back to him, doubled over in laughter, having figured out what the problem was. At some point in the process of cleaning his keyboard, he had reassembled it with a couple of keys juxtaposed. Which never cause him problems, because he touch-typed... when he was sitting in a normal position. When he was standing awkwardly, he looked at the keycaps, and typed his password wrong every time.
1. I asked the user to restart their PC. 5-10 secs passed and she said, "OK". I said "it restarted already?". "Yeah." Turns out she had turned off her monitor and then turned it back on. Oddly, the problem persisted. 2. I was roped into fixing a PC for someone. I'll often tell people just to bring me the "tower". That wasn't enough instruction for this person so I told her to bring me the part of the computer she used to turn on the computer. My mistake: it became clear shortly thereafter that she intended to bring me the powerstrip!
Their name was "Customer"? That *is* weird!
As repeated to me by a colleague of mine:
Caller:I called in my computer problem over TWO HOURS AGO and tech support still hasn't called me back. What am I, black?
Colleague:I don't think that's it. I'm black and I get phone calls from them all the time.
Cue uncomfortable silence and the sound of the caller hanging up in disgrace.
Was almost fired for this:
User deadlocked herself and got into a deadly embrace situation that Sybase did not automaticly resolve, so we killed her.
In God we trust, all others require data.
Ok I have been a programmer for over 20 years, normally there is a help desk in front of me to shield me from the truly stupid but sometime the helpdesk just sends them to me.
Like today this is an actual trouble ticket I recieved:
User is clicking on a bookmark in their browser and is receiving an error from the intranet the error is (PAGE NOT FOUND The Page you requested has either been moved or does not exist on the intranet. Please click here to return to the home page.) Can you restore the link so the user can access it?
However my all time favorite takes a little set up. It was a cold winter morning, about 7:30 am the entire leadership team and myself are sitting in the front conference room that overlooks the parking lot. I am not a morning person mind you as very few programmers are and was just sitting down with my first cup of coffee. We all see probably the second dumbest person I have ever known in my life drive in, late for the morning meeting as usual(remember this it is important).
This lady walks in and someone asks her how her training was, as this lady was sent off site for training in our companies ERP system. She is really enthusiastic and saying training was excellent they gave them admin rights and could see all the screens and they could see how different things worked together and so on. Me I am sitting there just sipping on coffee, minding my own business. Then she looks at me and says out loud in front of the whole leadership team. You know I think we should all have administrative access that would speed up our jobs as we can get more things done. Without skipping a beat I say, you want me to give you full administrative access to the application that runs our entire companies financials, quotes, ordering, scheduling, and maintenance systems? You can't even remember to turn the light off in your car and you think I am going to give you admin access? All eyes look to the parking lot to see the car she drove up in still with the headlights on. She never asked for admin access again.
Back in the old days I had to pay my dues running the tech support centre of a local computer store.
A guy came in with an ink-jet printer that was six months out of warranty, and purchased from one of our competitors.
He argued that it should be fixed by us for free. I said that unfortunately it was going to cost $x and we could not assist him with a free repair.
He paused for a couple of seconds, then he picked up the printer and threw it at me. I dodged and it hit the wall and more or less exploded. He then walked calmly out of the store and we never saw him again.
Sounds like an easy call. Just open a ticket: "Customer wants a ticket opened." Resolution: "I opened this ticket". Close the ticket.
Sometimes you get an IP block just for having a contrary opinion to the majority of Slashdot viewers. I had the temerity to suggest that freedom of speech might not be a universally desirable thing, and was modded so far down - as "troll" no less - that nobody from my company could post for over a month.
The irony was overwhelming.
Thank god I got out of phone support, but it did get me some laughs from time to time...
User: Hi, I'm a new employee and I'm trying to log in, but I'm not able to type in the password that I need to use.
Me: OK, so you think there's something wrong with your keyboard?
User: No, I don't see the key for this symbol I need to type.
Me: Oh, what symbol do are you looking for?
User: Well, it looks like an upside down, lower-case 'i'.
Me: (Long pause, as I visualize what she is talking about) That symbol wouldn't happen to be an exclamation point would it?
User: Excla- Oh! Yeah that could be. Let me try it. Yup, that worked, thanks!
Similarly, a co-worker had reset a woman's password to a simple word followed by the number 4, and told her that it was all lower case. The phone was silent for 20 seconds before she asked him how to type a lower-case 4. Ah, those were good times.
OK. I'm the manager of a computer repair shop at a university near Boston. The computer-IQ of students has been on the rise lately but it's still pretty low. I'm a Dell and Apple-certified tech, but I'm capable of fixing most anything. The reason I got this job, however, is because of my customer-relations skills: I never condescend or judge, regardless of the ridiculousness of the situation. But when I get in conversations with other support people, this is the trump card I use for "stupid user stories":
It's the end of the year, and students are either gearing up to go home or panicking about finals. As you can imagine, this is a busy time for me. A diminutive Asian girl with a sunny disposition comes to my door (it's a half-door, so I can only see her head and shoulders) and the following exchange takes place:
User: "Is this the hardware repair shop?"
Me: "Yes, it is. What can I do for you?"
User: "My computer's broken. Can you fix it?" (typical specific user complaint)
Me: "Probably. What's wrong with it?" (Given enough money, I can probably fix anything)
User: (hauls out machine and puts it on the bench) "I'm not really sure."
At this point, a lesser tech would have broken into hysterics. The machine is a Dell D600 laptop that looks like it was dropped out of a 6th-story dorm window, then run over with a truck. It was physically folded in half. Not a single part of the machine was not broken completely beyond repair.
Me: "...."
User: "Can you fix it?"
Me: "Well, let's see if anything's still intact here." (extracts HD, holds it up, shakes it. It sounds like a maraca) "Your data's definitely gone, sorry about that." (Opens lid. Shattered hinges break off. Several keys fall out. Flips over, opens RAM door.) "Miraculously, the memory seems to be unharmed, but that alone won't help. Let's see whether you're still under warranty." (Checks warranty at Dell. It's under warranty, but not CompleteCare, so she's out of luck.) "Sorry, I think it's time for a new computer. What do you want me to do with this one?"
User: "Oh, I think I'll keep it. Maybe someone else can get it working."
Me: "...." (hands it back to user) "In the future, if you buy another Dell, I'd highly recommend adding the CompleteCare warranty."
User: "OK, thanks! Have a good summer!"
I really wish she'd let me keep it. It would have been a great illustration for something, I'm sure.
I worked for a major 3rd party DSL provider a few years ago and I heard this one from a VP in the smoking area (in the parking garage next to peachtree...)
,install, we sent out the kit and he was running at good DSL speeds. No problems.
They have this strange situation with a DSL customer.
It was your basic off the web order
He calls in about 4 weeks later and reports his DSL has stopped working. We have him check the NID and he doesn't have any sync which means he's not even getting a signal from the Central Office. So we roll out a telco truck and they find that his cable was pulled from the DSLAM box and they just pop it back into his copper line.
A week later he calls in the same problem. We have him check his DSL at the NID again and no sync. We call the teclo company again and they send a truck out to the central office box and check the DSLAM, find it was disconnected again, and pop the cable back in again for the DSL.
Then it happens a again... They send out another truck... Fix it... A few days latter... It happens again... And they keep sending the trucks to fix it...
Finally after several weeks of this... The VP gets a call from the teclo... Who has the FBI on the phone asking us to stop fixing the DSL because its disconnecting their wiretap!
So the VP has a CS rep call the guy and politley explain that DSL isn't possible at his location and refunds his money.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Living in a rural area,
;)
Speaking of rural... (Bellsouth country) We had an interesting DSL tech story.
One of customers bought our DSL package, but for some strange reason it would stop working as soon it got dark out. We troubleshooted to see if anything happened at that time such as him turning on 900mhz phones, tvs, halogen lamps, lived near AM radio station etc, but none appeared to be the case.
So one day my supervisor was helping him out since the guy wanted to keep the service because it worked fine during the day and had blazing speeds. So my supervisor is sitting there and asks him to kind of watch what is going on around sundown and not just in the house... The guy looks out his window and sees one of those street lamps turning on near his road and says he noticed lights going on and it turns out his phone line ran directly under that line.
My sup advised him to call the powercompany if they could do something about it
The guy sad... "Hold on...." And about 5 minutes of silence my supervisor hears a loud bang and the guy comes back and says his DSL is working fine now.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I did tech. support for an ISP back in '97-98... once we had a lady call in who couldn't connect. She was pretty sure what was wrong... before I could start troubleshooting, she wanted to know if the internet was closed for Memorial Day...
Java is more difficult on Windows?
If all you know is Windows 98, how can you judge the difficulty involved in doing tasks with Windows XP/2003?
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
Me: Hello, this is Scott, can I have your membership ID # please?
Customer: *beep boop bop boop* (touchtone sounds)
Me: Hello, this is Scott, can you tell me your ID #?
Customer: *beep boop bop boop*
Me: Hello? I'm not a machine, I'm a person. You can read your ID# out to me.
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
Of course, it did have problems with the database corrupting, on occasion, as using Access in a multi-user application is not something you should do. What can I say, I inherited a nightmare (by the time I left, we had migrated it to Access 2003, which behaved better, and I had also went a long way towards getting it communicating and working well with PostgreSQL). At any rate, under Access 97, one of the more heavily accessed tables would - every once in a while - get a corrupted row. This wasn't much of an issue, unless you tried to access such a row, say by doing a search or other table scan function. At that point, the application would crash. I added layers of error checking, which worked OK - at least the app wouldn't crash. Still, it annoyed the users, they would complain via an email to me, and I would have to go in, locate, and remove the offending row in Access.
After doing this a few times, I got tired of it, and realizing that I had a process which worked every time to correct the issue, I proceeded to come up with a solution to automate the task. What I did was create a simple bit of code which would perform the "correction", and randomly pick a user when the started the application to call the routine. When the routine ran, I would write to a config table that it was being performed, so that way other users wouldn't be running the same fix at the same time (to avoid any possible collision issue - though it probably wouldn't have mattered). The users wouldn't even know this was happenning, outside of their session running a little slower, as I did it in such a way (ie, calling DoEvents) so that they could continue using the application as normal.
So, one day after this was put into place, I come in to work and see an email (sent about an hour before I got in) "The database is corrupted again...", immediately followed by another email from the same user (about 5 minutes later - realize, I am still not at work) "Thank you! You fixed it! It is working great now!". The user had no clue that I was never even in the office (most likely, I was in the shower at home, or sleeping, or something). I had successfully automated myself!
I showed the emails to my supervisor, and explained what I had done - he was cool with it, liked that I had taken the initiative to put such a thing in place. We immediately began to think how to correct the issue for good, as well as how to educate the users that the system would automagically fix the problems in the meantime. This led to a redesign of the database communication layer (one of the big things was dropping as much use of VB/Access DB update commands, and using SQL heavily, while switching to Access 2003, both of which dovetailed neatly into using PostgreSQL, ultimately)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Working for a small ISP back in '96 or '97... User calls in, has the typical "I can't connect" problem. Go through the paces with him to make sure the software's installed (Windows 3.1 I think), etc. etc. Nothing working. Finally ask the guy, "Is your modem plugged into the phone jack?"
User: "Modem? What the hell is a modem? I don't need one of those. The Internet is supposed to be on these two floppy disks you mailed me."
Good times.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We had this customer who was irate that his new computer was acting up and it was new I built it myself. No reason for it to be acting so strange. He brought it in we checked it out seemed fine.
He comes back complaining again. We replace the entire PC. He leaves happy for 2 days. Then he comes back demanding a refund.
We tell him if there is something wrong with the PC we will make it right. Leave it with us and we'll throw everything we got at it. He does. His wife comes in an hr later. "Can I see my husbands computer for a minute, I just need to check one thing.?" Sure come on back. She presses Shift Ctrl ScrollLock or something similar & up pops this EVIL unnoticable Screengrabber. She quickly scans through the last 3 days worth of pics. Instant message from her teen daughter, Web surfing of her hubby 3 pics a second. Gobbling up space & cycles. If she doesn't check it daily & dump it fills the harddrive with 1280x1024x32 Pics. I explain to her it is unnecessary to grab so many, 1 every couple of minutes is more than sufficient. She asks me to promise I won't tell her husband. I promise she tips me 50 bucks and promises to bring me a bottle of wine (her Idea).
Later that same day.
The owner (who has dealt with the husband only on more than one occassion since the sale.) checks in with me to see if I found the problem. I calmly explain the situation, and the promise. He asked me "Did she make you promise not to tell me?"
Obviously I can not and did not make that promise.
"Well then, I never promised her shit. But I did promise her husband I would find out what was up & fix it." Cue him Dialing.
Later that same day, Hubby comes in pays us for all our service (3 hrs on site. 3 trips to the shop) and tips me 50 bucks.
Still Later
She comes in like a rocket right passed the counter into the bench area Slams down a shiny bottle of wine & says thanks a fuckin lot.
My boss says thank you come again.
The husband still shops there service & purchase.
Moral of the story: If you are gonna spy on your kids do it with your loved one.
Opened the wine on my wedding day. Wife loved it.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Woman calls in and say the computer is not working. I ask the normal questions. She says the screen is blank. So I ask if the computer make any disk access noises, beeps or anyhting at all when the power is turned on. She says "yes". Sound is normal but the machine is no-responvive. ... We go out and look to find the power switch on the CRT monitor is "off". I did ask about power in a non-insulting way. I asked "can you here the fan running?". After that I learned to ask if there is any heat comming out the top of the CRT
It took all of us around the office a while to piece together the full story, but it turned out, it went something like this... The customer called up one day copmlaining their computer had stoped working. In fact, they noted a sizzling sound had eminated from it at the moment of failure and the smell of something burnt was in the air. The phone tech did just what they should have done and told the customer to box the unit up and send it in for repairs. I worked a few cubicles down from the room where the techs opened these boxes. It was a fairly booring day until I heard the bloodcurdling scream. Half the office jumps up and runs over to see what's the matter, and I'll never forget the sight. Coachroaches. The tech, once he'd removed the side of the unit, had exposed them to the light and they were trying to find a new place to hide. There must have been a hundred in there. Craziest thing I ever saw.
I worked for an ISP in '95, and answered calls that would make your teeth set on edge. From the guy who couldn't download his email at work (because it was full of porn, something that made me change my policy of testing a customer's email via opening their account in netscape) to the guy who wanted me to read him the contents of artbell.com because he didn't have a computer, they were all... memorable. This is the story of the straw that broke the camel's back.
It was 7:30 PM, and already dark out. I had a half-hour before I left work for the night, and was hoping for it to be quiet for the last few minutes of my shift. This guy called in, let's call him Joe.
Me: Internet of [yourcity], this is [myname], how can I help you?
Joe: I can't get my webpage to upload. Your server's broken.
Me: Ok, what program are you using to upload your web page?
Joe: [ftp program]
Me: Ok, read me the site you're trying to upload to.
Joe: ftp.[yourcity].net
Me: And your username?
Joe: joeblow
Me: And you're sure you have the right password?
Joe: I know my own password!
We go on like this, around and around. Everything looks good on his end, everything works on our end. I reset his password to test it out. I have him email me the web page he built. I upload it using his username and password. I try to have him put the ip into his ftp client instead of the domain name. It works. But he won't leave it that way "because we might change it any day now". So he puts the domain name back in, it stops working.
He gets insanely upset, I offer to send a tech out (I'd send my coworker instead, in the daylight hours), he refuses. He cusses me out. I tell him I'm not going to stand for his abuse, and he needs to calm down. He says I'm only fit for a job where I wear a hair net and ask "do you want fries with that?".
I hang up on him.
He calls back, I let it ring.
He calls back again, 15 minutes later. "I figured it out, I had [yourcity] spelled wrong. Would you check that you can get to my web page?" Ok. I hang up, and click over to "his" site.
"I am a Christian man looking for other like minded..."
[string of expletives]
[forward the phones]
This is, of course, the incident which almost got me fired, but I didn't know until 3 months later when I *demanded* a review. The owner said I needed to work on my "customer service" skills. I told him I'm a human being who deserves at least a modicum of respect, and I don't tolerate being belittled. Especially after I gave fair warning that I wasn't going to take this guy's crap.
I gave my notice the day after the review, after sleeping on it.
It's a little wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable. It's a lot wrong to say it's a suspension bridge.
My favorite call I took as a support tech went something like this.
... Excuse me?
Me: ADC Support Center, how can I help you.
Caller: Um... we have feathers falling from the ceiling.
Me:
Caller: Bloody feathers.
Me: There are feathers?
Caller: Ew, and now blood dripped on my desk.
Me: Where are they coming from?
Caller: I think it's coming from the vent.
Me: Ah, well, there's not much I can do for you, but I'll let building maintenance know.
Turns out a pigeon got caught in the air vent fan of the building, and spewed blood and feathers throughout the building.
-AlPhAbEt
OK, this one comes from Georgia Tech. It's an oldie, but a goodie.
A tech gets a call from Professor Anders in the statistics department. Anders says that the members of his department are only able to send email 500 miles. The tech gets a strange look on his face, then starts asking questions about the situation. After a lengthy phone discussion, he decides that the fellow who has called him is truly not making this up. After all, this is the statistics department, and they're not prone to pulling figures out of the air.
So, the tech goes over to the statistics department and checks out their server. It's a simple old SPARC running Solaris. He sends out some email to a friend in California. Sure enough, it bounces. He sends an email to a friend in Florida, and it goes through fine. The tech scratches his head.
He asks Anders is anything has changed on this SPARC server recently. Turns out that, yes, the server was recently updated to a newer version of Solaris (Version numbers lost to the fog of history). So the tech takes a look at the server and finds that, despite the newer OS, the older version of SendMail is still on the machine. Anders nods and says that, after the update, they downgraded SendMail to an older, more stable version. Ahah! The tech opened the config file, and sure enough, he found the problem.
The new version of SendMail had created a new Config file. This file had some new format for the "Timeout" entry. When the old version was placed onto the system, it tried to read the new config file, but couldn't interpret it correctly. Thus, it set the "Timeout" to "0." How far can electronic information travel away from the server before the CPU can count to 0? 500 miles.
Don't Crease the Weasel!
The funniest thing that ever happened to me in call center support was when I was working at Onstar. I got a call from a Escalade full of high school boys who thought it would be fun to play with dad's Onstar. Of course, I got the typical comments like "I bet you're hot!" or "You sound cute, do you have a boyfriend?" And then, when they realized I was unflappable, they asked if I could see them. I replied kindly "no" but one of the young gentlemen announced he was mooning me and if I could see his ass.
eveversion4 -- "Eating Ramen that tastes really bad can be kind of fun too." Haruko, FLCL
This is my favourite even though I didn't actually handle the call. My old boss, Mr. E, calls and my eleven year old daughter answers.
E "Is your dad there?"
D "No, he'a at work."
E "Well I needed his help with a computer problem. Maybe you can help."
Mr E. goes on to describe the problem to my little girl who he knows is eleven.
D "Did you try rebooting?"
E "No. I'll try that. Hey, it works. Thanks sweety."
The following is the God's honest truth, I am not exaggerating in any way:
OK, so I do work for this auto garage, and the owner is a pretty cool guy, but his 13 year old fat son is strange. He looks exactly like the kid from King of the Hill. He's always watching exactly what I do on the computer, and asking all these really odd questions (Do you know how to hack computers? Because I dropped mine down the stairs once...) (wtf).
Anyway, one day I'm working at the garage, and the owner mentions that something's wrong with his home PC. I've got a slow day, so I offer to ride over there and check it out. "Oh, I'll send my son with you to show you where everything is". SH*T So the kid and I get in the car, and drive over to the house. So we get there, and the computer is full of spyware. But the internet temp files are all full of porn, porn bookmarks, etc. So I think this is because of the spyware, but the kid is standing over my shoulder, and starts going on about how he loves these blowup dolls that are in his bookmarks. So I'm like ok, whatever, I'm deleting these, don't go to them again.
So the kid leaves, and I'm going about cleaning off the PC. I hear a noise behind me, the kid is back, but this time, HE'S WEARING HIS MOM'S LINGERIE. A lacy bra and panties and nothing else! He's got toilet paper stuffed in the bra, and he starts dancing around making noises and talking about blowup dolls. At this point I tell him to put some clothes on, and that I'm leaving now. I start to get up and leave as soon as humanly possible, and he's like "wait, I'll leave". So he runs out of the room.
Against my better judgement I stay to finish the computer (it's almost clean). 3 minutes later I hear the door open again...and it's gotten worse. The kid is NAKED! And he starts singing/screaming and gyrating around, his fat flapping against himself. At this point I leap out of my chair and sprint from the house, as he chases me naked and singing.
Needless to say, I never went back to that house, and I stopped doing the work for the garage.
I had a co-worker tell me this story about ten years ago. They built a nice top of the line system for the secretary of one their best customers. They wanted to make sure they made this customer happy so they burned the system in for 48 hours and ran every conceivable test. Sent the system to the user and hoped for the best. Sadly they received a tech support call from the customer saying the system was behaving very eratically and running very slowly. They tried their best over the phone but it was determined that they should send the system back. They got it back and tested it but could not find any problems with the system. Again, they sent it back and again the same problems were reported. This time they took it to the client's business and set it up and then watched in horror as the secretary placed several large fridge magnets on the side of the case.
Read my short stories - You won't regret it.
Never. Ever. Remote into a users machine when they are trying to configure a webcam. Especially if you work a night shift.
This happened just a couple of years ago, when one of those email viruses was plaguing the Windows world.
.doc.exe something, ... do .. you .. think .. I ..
He: Good afternoon, I seem to have a problem with my home computer. I think I've got a virus.
Me: Well, we don't support home computers, but I guess you've heard about the new virus on the news.
He: Yes I have, but I don't think I have that one. I'm very careful about this. I always read my mail by ssh'ing to work and read the mail using pine.
Me: OK, that seems good to me. Why do you think you have a virus ?
He: Well, today I got mail from a colleague of mine, whom I'm sure would never send me anything nasty, so I had pine
to save his attachment on the disk at work. Then I fetched it to my home computer using F-secure SSH, and double-clicked
on the icon.
Me: Ah-ha! You didn't by any chance notice the name of the attachment?
He: I don't know exactly, but I remember it had a peculiar extension,
Me: Ahem, as I said, we don't support home computers. I guess you'll have a nice evening reinstalling your machine...
I was IT manager of a department of four at a manufacturer. A user three cubicles away called me and said "My computer is frozen". I stood up, and Jan was also standing up, looking at me. I said "Can you move your mouse?" She replied "Yes," and picked up the mouse, waving it in the air so I could see that its mobility was unimpaired.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Same has happened here - but we've got some pretty decent management. Most of our market is B2B. We've gotten the occasional "fine customer" who through helpful heaps of abuse, have actually brought members of our support team to tears. Unbelievable abuse, laced with filth and personal attacks on gender, intelligence, ethnicity, and sexual orientation (including their mothers, sisters, fathers, etc.).
However, we also have VPs who call other VPs at the offending companies, and explain to them exactly the content of the conversation that occurred (a good audio replay usually gets people's attention). That is usually about all it takes to clean up abusers. Too bad that's not usually something that can happen in the enduser support arena....
sloth_jr
Did they have any in stock?
Sounds like they might not be on site. Well if there's one thing I know about users it's that they often lie about what they have or have not done with their computer. Ok, maybe lie is too strong a word as that implies intent, but they at least misremember. So the techs may have questioned her aobut something like a firewall and she said no.
.cshrc receantly? .cshrc has been modified today and is busted* .cshrc, today in fact, and that's broken it, we've replaced it with the default so it works. ...etc
We get crap like this all the time:
They: The C compiler doesn't work.
We: Which one, what system?
They: The C compiler, the system I'm on.
*Repeat for a bit*
We: Ok so GCC doesn't work on shell. Got it. What's the error?
They: It says it can't find it.
We: Have you edited your
They: No.
*We have a look, sure enough the
We: Yes, you did modify the
They: Oh yes I changed that to make program X work, but that's not related to the compiler.
We: Yes it is and why did you say you didn't?
That's probably our biggest problem troubleshooting systems that we don't have hands on around here, and why we like making people send e-mail. When they have to think out the whole problem in one go we tend to get better information. I find that over 90% of problems that just don't seem to make sense (like somthing suddenly breaking) do make perfect sense, when the user stops giving us bad information they either:
1) Outright lie, because they've done something they know they aren't supposed to and think we won't figure it out (despite being asked to help).
2) Forget they did something and so claim they didn't.
3) Tell us what they think we want to hear so we will get around to telling them the magic secret to fix their problem.
4) Answer "ya" when they don't understand what we are saying.
#4 is a real big problem here. Lots of foriegners, The Chinese students, espically, tend to have very poor English skills. Their system for teaching English isn't real effective so the poor students have a lot of trouble. However they've been conditoned to just agree or say "ya" when they don't understand something. Maybe that's good in conversation, but it's real bad when you are being asked a technical question. If I ask you "Have you done X?" I want ot know the real answer so I can proceed correctly, I don't want to just hear "yes" if that's not the truth.
I was swapping stupid user tricks with a TRW printer tech while we waited for parts to show up from his shop. This was back in the mid 80s, I think. He told me one that had me laughing so hard I was crying.
:)
It seems that way back when, TRW had gotten into providing support contracts for people in small towns all over the Midwest. We were in the Twin Cities, and this guy's territory covered Minnesota, Iowa, and most of North and South Dakota. Anyhow, he gets this call from a lawyer's secretary somewhere in North Dakota.
It seems that no matter what she tried, she just couldn't seem to save her files to her 5 1/4" floppies. This was back in the days when many PCs were sold without any hard drive, so the loss of those floppies meant that she had no soft copies of her boss's correspondence. She didn't mind so much, as she was required to print out everything anyway. Still, she knew that if she could use those old letters as templates, she wouldn't have near as much work.
Well, the tech goes back and forth with her. No magnets nearby. No, she wasn't using magnets to stick them to the desk. (Don't laugh! I actually had a user do that to me!) No paper clips. None of the more usual or even unlikely problems that we all saw back then.
He even walked her through saving a file from Word Perfect, then verified that she could actually pull it back up. Everything seemed to check out fine.
Now, he doesn't want to drive to the far side of North Dakota unless he has to. It's a looong haul. So he has her send him one of the bad floppies so he can run it through some diagnostic software.
It shows up in a 3" mailer tube.
Think about that for a second. He had to explain it to me twice before I got what he was telling me.
He pulls the floppy out and unrolls it, but naturally by this time it's unreadable. He calls her up and asked her how it got that way. It seems that after she was done filling up a floppy, she would slap a blank label on it, slide over to the old IBM Selectric typewriter, roll the floppy in like a piece of paper, and fill in the label!
Twenty minutes of patient over the phone tutoring later, problem solved.
I used to work on a helpdesk for BT (UK phone provider). One of my favourite incidents was when we were called out to fix someone's PC that was overheating. According to the fault report, it was "Overheating due to having too many files in the root directory".
What had actually happened was a hardware engineer had been called out to look at the PC overheating, and as part of his routine checks had looked at the hard drive. There were quite a few data files in C:\, and the engineer had mentioned that they might want to fix that (this was in FAT12/DOS 3.x days when you could only have 128 - I think? - files in the root folder). A fair point - if the user hit the limit they'd probably get confused - but for some reason the user interpreted this as being the cause of overheating. And that's a software problem, so they called us.
Another good one was a fault reported on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum that was being used for some critical purpose in a telephone exchange, and could we take a look at it? Be very afraid.
On a related note, we also dealt with ordering new kit. We used to get a few requests for a Zenith laptop from phone engineers for testing lines, etc - because it was good for playing this 3D golf game that was doing the rounds. Requests for this were usually denied by management, because they see that the guy just wanted a laptop to play with. In response to the denial (and more often, as a first line of attack as people got wise to this), they would opt to order a 'Tester 4A' instead, which also allowed them to test phone lines/systems. Orders for a Tester 4A were always approved by management - with, I like to imagine, a harrumphing grunt of approval that here was an engineer that was actually interested in doing their job for a change, dammit.
Now, I'm sure you can guess what a 'Tester 4A' actually was :-)
Support: Sir, you need to disconnect all of the cables from your computer, put back in the box, and take it back to the store where you bought it from.
Caller: Oh, is my computer defective?
Support: No. You, sir, are to stupid to own a computer.
We got a call once from a customer who was trying to figure out why their Linux server kept rebooting. We looked at the logs, and sure enough, a few times a week, usually around 9 a.m. or 1 p.m., the system would gracefully shut down, as if someone had typed "reboot" or "shutdown -r now", and start back up again without fsck or any error. They weren't running any clustering or management software that should be auto-rebooting, or anything in cron, and there was nothing in root's bash history. At the time of these reboots, there were no users logged in to the system. There was no data corruption or substantial negative impact other than the intranet web server being down for a couple of minutes, but they were worried that this was a symptom of a more serious problem.
After a bit of pondering, I figured it out.
Does the server boot into X, or stop at a text login?
Text login
And is it plugged into a KVM, or does it have its own keyboard, mouse, and monitor?
It's on a KVM
What else is plugged into that KVM?
A mysql server and our domain controller.
What time does your Windows administrator come in to work?
He's here right now, should I get him on the line?
No, that's okay, but am I right that he gets in to work around 9:00 and gets back from lunch around 1:00?
I guess so, usually.
What does he do to log into the domain controller?
He switched displays, saw the "press ctrl-alt-del to log in", and burst out laughing.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
My favourite support calls:
:)
... well... it's the letter A, and the colon symbol. ....
1. A friend of mine had a computer with similar specs to mine, a 486 DX2-66 with 16 MB of RAM (I had 12 MB). Thing was, on my computer Duke Nukem 3D ran great, but on his it was slow as a dog. He drives his computer out to my place, 25 miles, and we set it up in my basement. Sure enough, it's freaking slow. I check his conventional memory, seems fine, in fact everything seems normal. But it's slow. So I hit the turbo button, and what do you know? The damn thing works now
2. Same friend, new computer. He's got a shiny new Athlon (original Athlon) and everyone's envious. But for some reason his "explorer is messed up"; when he opens "My Computer" the button appears on the task bar but the window is nowhere to be seen. But if he clicks on the button he can see a maximize/minimize animation, but no window appears. I right click on the button, hit "resize", tap the arrow keys, and the My Computer window expands out of nowhere in the middle of the screen. He says "Great, now why don't you just hit the turbo button?"
3. Customer where I used to work: The computer shop I worked at had lots of corporate customers who had their own IT depts and only called us in when things got bad. Well, some non-IT user calls us up and says he's trying to install Sympatico software on his Win 95 box. (Windows 95 OEM version A, or Win95 upgrade, doesn't have TCP/IP by default). So Windows says "Please insert Windows 95 Disk 2". The user is confused, he doesn't know what to do.
Me: Are you at the computer?
User: No
Me: Did your helpdesk give you any disks?
User: Yes, there are two stacks, the Windows 95 disks 1-13 and the Sympatico disks 1-4
Me: And the computer is asking for Windows Disk 2?
User: Yes
Me: What's the problem?
User: Which disk do I put in? There are two disk twos, one in each pile.
Me (trying not to sound condescending): Well, usually when the computer wants a particular disk, it'usually pretty specific. So if it's asking for Windows 95 disk 2, I'd use the Disk 2 from the Windows 95 pile.
User: So that's it? What do I do next?
Me: Well, you can press enter to acknowledge that the disk is there. But if Windows asks you WHERE the disk is, type A: and press ENTER.
User: (long pause)... how do you spell that?
Me:
User:
Me: It's next to the 'L'
User: which side?
Me: The right side.
User: Do I have to press SHIFT?
Me: Yes.
And we're not talking about people who don't speak English, or who speak it as a second or third lanugage or anything. This is someone who was born and raised speaking English, but doesn't know what a colon is. One of my coworkers told me I should have said "You type the letter A, then your name..."
I developed the online help files for a webmail client a little while back. In one of the help files, I provide my (spam-proofed) email address so that users can email me if they have suggestions for the help files or if they can point out something that may have been overlooked. It even says that I have nothing to do with the actual webmail client -- only the help files, that's it -- and am only to be emailed for suggestions on the help files.
Despite these very clear instructions, I have received countless emails of people asking for technical support for the installation of the webmail client they use that could hosted on a server in Bulgaria for all I know. Most of the time, I reply with a stock message, but one in particular called for more...
Arrrgg!!!
I can't get into my mail account. I have tried [www.website.com/webmailclient] with the password of ********* ( I think that is the right combo) to no avail.... Any chance you can help me?
[Signature]
[Alternate email]
[Phone Number]
Please email me as I can give you any security info you may need including SS# and/or bank account number I am using to pay for your services.
I need to get access to my account as soon as possible as I think I am loosing business as I write this. Thanks for your help.
[Signature]
Maybe she thought I was Nigerian.
O.K. I will top you all except "MY" Tech Support were guys on IRC back in 97 ( I think.) Someone else had delivered, set up, done the install and taught me enough to use Usenet, mIRC, play musical C.D.'s while we chatted and DCC'd back and forth to one another. I had in a dot matrix printer, speakers and even could fax. I could send jpegs and gifs and thought I was HOT STUFF! I was also slipping up on 60 and perhaps a smidgen of senility as quietly as possible.
The setup was on a special desk I had built out of the dinette ( which I had found useless except for eating and vastly more useful for a tiny home office in my 35' fifth wheel which I used for a mobile snowbird business.
After a prolonged stay in Washington State, it was time to hit the road and after notifying the phone Co to disconnect my wiring to the rig and unplugging the phone jack inside the trailer, I took one look at the snake pit wires running out of cpu, apc, printer, speakers etc, I went directly into a panic attack! Besides all those CONNECTORS.. x pins xxx pins, long skinny one short fat ones OMG!!!!!!
Soooooo...I hooked up my 35' fifth wheel to my F350 Ford pickup, got out my girlie pink tool kit and a brand new roll of Duct Tape! Miles of duct tape, over the top of the monitor in all four directions and under the table top. Same with the CPU, the APC, the keyboard, the track ball and the fax/ speakers/modem and etc. ALL DUCK TAPED in their exact position.
Several hours later upon arrival after unhooking the rig, hooking up the power, finding the exterior phone connection I had ordered in advance and peeling off foot after foot of Duct tape, I plugged in my phone, dialed in to warped.net via my favorite MIT server and with great expectation of being praised for my ingenuity described in my usual graphic fashion my brilliant solution.
They had a wonderful time telling one another for days and days earning me the Duct Tape Queen title for many a many dull evening on IRC.
I DID NOT however ruin a weary techs day. But I am sure the story still gives one or more a chuckle.
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It simply wastes your time and truely annoys the pig"
I was working at a big broadcasting corporation a few years ago. A senior director, known for his fabulously short fuse, burst into the support office shouting "It doesn't work! Why does nothing bloody work round here?"
I said "What doesn't work?"
"My bloody computer - I have important work to do and it doesn't bloody work. Come and fix it. And I don't want this to happen again."
I looked around at my colleagues, my eyes saying farewell to them, and walked down the hall behind this tall, raving man.
When I got into his office, he pointed at his laptop docking station and said "There. Fix it."
There was no laptop in the docking station. He'd left it at home, and had merely been jabbing the power button on the monitor and swearing.
I pointed out the obvious to him and left, quickly. Six months later, he was gone.