ARGH

[lothie.livejournal.com]

My customer, who is first line support for HIS customer, had a problem upgrading our product. The problem was with a MS SQL database. After our team wrangled with it for a while, it was escalated to me as the senior member of the team. I asked my customer to send me the database in question.

I played with it for a couple of days and then escalated to development. Our DBA took a look at the database and ascertained that the end user had been manually dyking out bits of tables. When our upgrade scripts ran, they horked on orphan data in other tables. He dyked out the orphan data, we upgraded the database, and I told the user I was sending it back to him. Less than a week had passed since I got my hands on the database.

He then reveals to me that the database he sent me was more than a month old. He wanted to know how he was going to inform the user that they were going to lose all their more recent data...or could we just let them know what fields in what tables to dyke out so that they could perform the upgrade themselves?

Uh, no. If you screw it up, then you'll really be a mess. You mismanaged this situation; you could have asked your customer for their most recent database. Now, here's your upgraded database, you figure out what to tell your user.

GRRR.

(no subject)

[starblazr.livejournal.com]

ARGH!!!!!!!!

I cant fix what you dont tell me!

$Owner:"Umm.. yeah.. we're going to hire another tech to work $OTHER_STORE because you never fix anything"
Me: "Did you e-mail me?"

(mind you, everyone here knows how to use email, but he's too freaking lazy to check his e-mail, so I check it to make sure that he's not ignoring something important.)

$Owner: "That doesn't matter, you just do what you want"
Me: *twitch* "I cant fix what you tell me"
$Owner: "We told you to fix $ISSUE and you never did it, and we've been reminding you"
(also mind you I have a ticket program)
Me: "Last time anyone told me anything regarding $ISSUE was $TIMEDATE(more than a week ago), and I replied with the following message to $OTHEROWNER..."
$Owner: "blah blah blah your lazy blah blah stupidity"

people like this need to be force-fed into cross cut paper shredders.

Telekinetic powers... failing...

[morningside.livejournal.com]

One of the things that I always got working as a phone technician was people ringing up - often on the 0898 line that cost 50p - £1 a minute (!) - expecting us to troubleshoot their PC even though they weren't near it. They were either at the phone downstairs - not having twigged they could plug the phone into their modem line, these being the days of dial-up - or even better, at work. Yes, I actually got people wanting me to tell them how to fix their PC, without so much as an error message, only a vague description, and no way of trying what I suggested till they get home. And returning a PC was right out, as the company required us, naturally, to run some troubleshooting, and then run the gauntlet of the 2nd line return guys. So how exactly did they expect us to fix their PC? Psychically?

Thankfully, things are a little better at my current job. But we still do get people who, instead of sitting at their desks and ringing us, actually walk over to the desk, thinking they can somehow jump the queue - which pisses me off enormously, but that's material for another rant. And like the home users in my previous job, they can only offer the vaguest description of what's wrong, often not having tried even the most basic things - checking they've not kicked the cables out etc. How they ever got jobs working in a company that sells computers, I have no idea.

Oh yes we send you new motherboard right away

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

I work for (insert namebrand computer company here), and they've recently shifted a lot of tech support back in the states away from India.

Here's a good example of why.

Customer calls in, obviously not computer-literate. He's trying to explain his problem to me, and I'm checking his case history.

Tech 1 from India tried to solve the problem by replacing his CDROM drive.
Tech 2 from India tried to solve the problem by formatting & reinstalling windows.
Tech 3 from India tried to solve the problem by replacing his hard drive.

Turns out, the customer was having problems installing America Online, and couldn't get his Cable Modem to connect.

(no subject)

[rwmidl.livejournal.com]

Does anyone find it funny that when you are selling older equipment to the office that they except you to include all software (OS, Office, etc), and when you tell them that the equipment is to be sold completely stripped ie no OS, no nothing, they get pissed at you? I guess the fact that it's company policy that equipment is to be sold/donated with no image/os on it and I could loose my job for not following the guidelines don't matter to people. But hey I was offered oral sex for an OS...now that's an IT first! lol