Love It When They Lie (Long and Vent-y)

[rose-welch.livejournal.com]

As I've explained before, I am not *actually* tech support. I am a store branch manager, who just happens to not be an idiot, making me de facto company-wide tech support.

A few days ago, the owner is at my branch and he mentions to me that Windows keeps restarting his computer randomly. What could be happening to it? I blink. I just remoted in and updated everything on that machine and checked it for fail two weeks ago, as I do every month. (There is alot of computer fail at my company, especially with our POS software.) I ask him to explain further. He says that he's not 100% sure because he doesn't see it, but the branch manager at the other branch says that Windows asks them to restart every day, several times per day after updating. He asks me if Windows is supposed to be updating every single day.

*raised eyebrow* "No, it should be once or twice a month." I answer. "However, it sounds like maybe it's set to *check* for updates every day."

"Would that explain the mutiple reboot requests?" he asks. "No, but branch manager's exaggeration would." I reply. He nods and I type out instructions (WITH photos) of how to check what their Automaic Updates are set to and how to change it to notification only. Now, keep in mind that I set up these machines and I update each of them at least once a month, not to mention near-daily malware scans and once-weekly virus scans. The only way that the settings could have changed is if someone if fucking around where they shouldn't be and I know this and he knows this. I am a serious computer Nazi as they had better all be under my control if they expect me to fix things when they don't work.

Now it's yesterday. Owner is back again (he's at my store at least once a week). He tells me to check it out when I have time. I saw sure, next week when you are there again. (I want to wait for him because he knows just enough to know that he doesn't know anything and to just follow instructions EXACTLY as I tell him to. Saves me much headache, because, as I've said before, I am not really tech support, and was not given a magical USB of patience or a mute button.)

Today I come in and I have  TON of stuff to do. A serious shit-ton. It is the last week of the month and the end of the last quarter was three weeks ago and all of that comes with all of the paperwork that you can possibly imagine. As soon as I get started, I get a call from Branch Manager #2, who will hereafter be referred to as the BM2 because it's accurate and will make me feel better.

"OMFGZOOOMG!!!!!" she says. "My computer is doing it again with the shield thing and making me restart a whole bunch!'. I ask her what she's been doing with it, what she is seeing, etc. She claims to have doing nothing ontoward or touched anything she shouldn't have or ANYTHING! *big innocent eyes here* From the way she's talking, you'd think the keyboard had a layer of dust on it from her non-touching of it. *warning bells*

I sigh and attempt to walk her through checking the settings again. She can't do it and is being deliberately obtuse. (Although she obviously navigated there at least once to chance the fucking settings.) I clench my teeth and walk her through getting her IP address (theirs is dynamic) and giving it to me. She finally manages to do so. I attempt to remote in. No go. The username and password are incorrect. Wtf? I keep the master list and I *know* what the username and password are for that machine.

I call up again and ask her about the password. I immediatly get passed off to Owner #2, who does the bookkeeping at that branch. She sounds suprised and says that BM2 is too busy to speak with me. *more warning bells* I ask her if she's turned on that machine in the last few days. She says yes. I ask her what the password is. She tells me it's newpassword. I ask her if she or Owner #1 changed it. She says no, she thought that *I* did. New security changes and the whatnot. *warning klaxons*

I try again with the new password, check the settings, and voila! Set to update every day at 10 a.m., one hour after the store opens. I take screenshot, fix the settings, fix the password, do not have time to see what else is screwed up. Am now super-mega-hugely-can'-think-of-any-other-words-that-fit pissed off. Super-gigantium pissed.

Seriously pissed.

Why do people want to mess with things they don't understand? Why do they lie when they do? Do they think I am stupid and won't know what they did? This is worse than the AFF-member/store associate that logged in with thier username and password, told Firefox to save thier AFF password, and then tried to insist that they had never been on the Internet when they weren't supposed to be. (Well, honey, the rest of us here have boobs so that's got to be your flat chest in those photos, not to mention that the blurry face is *not* quite blurry enough... It's you!)

*headdesk*

Comments

[rfairney.livejournal.com]

Time to remove some priviledges ?
take away control panel :>

[cheezemeister-x.livejournal.com]

Why don't you lock these machines down so that they CAN'T mess with them? It's such a simple solution.

[rose-welch.livejournal.com]

Can I do that? How?

Wait... Don't explain how. I prefer not to die a fiery death from flamage. :D

Like I've said, I'm not *real* tech support so I don't know all of the cool stuff that y'all do but I will look into that.... Thanks!

[argonel.livejournal.com]

I hear stuff about deep freeze, you may want to check if it would work for you.

[bekscilla.livejournal.com]

That's the really tough part of it :( You're not properly tech support, but expected to do it all. Good luck!

[gholam.livejournal.com]

Simplest way is to have them run on limited user accounts. That way they'll need admin password to affect anything system-wide, and under no circumstances should they be allowed to know it.

[phrogg.livejournal.com]

Google is your friend. I'm not being sarcastic; sometimes as a reluctant IT geek, Google and forums are your greatest resource.