laptops and holidays

[anivair.livejournal.com]

At work we give our salesmen laptops. they are not supposed to be for personal use. Personally, I don't care what they do with them as long as they fess up to it so I know, but they would likely be in a good deal of trouble if the GM found out that they had been doing anyhting non work related on them.

So why is it that after every holiday I come in and they are all screwed up?

"Chris, did you use your laptop at home over the holiday?"

"Me? Oh, no. course not."

"Well, then, where did your ip address and DNS go? Or your gateway settings? or your subnet mask? They're all set to auto, chris. Are you sure you didn't set it up at home?"

"No, it's been doing that ever since that last thing you did to my computer."

The "last thing" I did to his computer was over a week ago and it was setting up a printer. Right. I'm sure he just forgot to mention it till now (I'm equally certain that the new printer somehow opted to erase his network settings).

What the hell is wrong with these people? I swear it's like they think that we won't get the cause and effect. This guy's settings were so screwed up . . . he had two dialups and a WAN that we don't even use here. they were just sitting there doing nothign at work and one of the dial ups was his default. And we don't have dial up access. Grrr.

later,
~joe

(no subject)

[jacobine.livejournal.com]

You know it's going to be a crap day when you come in at 7 am for work as usual and your computer, which has been off for the week you've been on vacation, won't come up all the way and you spend an hour futzing with it before the on-site tech finds another machine for you and swaps your hard drive out.

And then the phone starts ringing off the hook the minute it comes up, so you're going crazy with the calls. Meanwhile, the pc is still halfway in pieces because you haven't had time to shut it down and install the stuff you pulled from the old pc.

And your coworker who, lucky dog, got made a tech and therefore actually got pulled off the helpdesk (unlike me, who, when I was a tech never got to actually break free from the desk because they couldn't hire anyone else -- I was a terribly ineffective tech since I got maybe 1 day a week at my sites, if I was lucky) isn't in today, either, because his new boss told him to come on out to his new sites. Therefore, you're the only one answering the phone calls. We still don't have a new person hired yet, either. We won't discuss my annoyance at still being on the help desk after four years despite promises to get me off.

Oh and there was a manager and group switch for me today, too, so I still don't know who's actually covering lunch for me yet, either. Or, for that matter, after 4 pm when I get off, and I /can't/ stay late today as I have to run an errand after work and the place closes at 6... which is when our helpdesk closes.

More support-story related: Yes, folks, it really helps to call me three times in a half-hour. If you're put on hold, stay on hold, because I can keep track of who called when and most recent calls get priority. If you hang up and call back, you're back at the bottom of the queue. If you're getting the voice mail, it means we're very /very/ busy. Leave a message once. Two or three doesn't make it go any faster. It just means you're annoying me and I'm going to tell you to be patient.

Howdy.

[thatvoiceguy.livejournal.com]

I can't believe it took me this long to find this community. Well past helpdesk burnout at this point...


May as well revisit my maiden LJ post here. Enjoy.

I'd sat down at my cubicle (notice, if you will, that I don't use the pretense of giving myself a "desk"), same as every other morning after willing myself into the building. I'd started off the day, taking the dreaded First Call.

"Hello, Thank you for calling the *** HelpDesk; this is (me). May I have your name?"

Within a half-hour, I'd already taken a mix of calls both easy ("I forgot my password") and not-so-easy ("I'm getting a 'runtime32dllwindowswillnowexplode' error!" Actually, that is pretty easy. Reboot, fool...) I'd barely noticed my two colleagues, guys who had started their employment the same day as I, being politely given cardboard boxes. For a split-second, I guess I chalked it up to a cubicle move.

It dawned on me right as the phone rang again. ( Read more... )