(no subject)

[zercool.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry. Finding the hardware that was tested and installed three months ago, then removed and lost by your staff is not within your support contract.

Bugger off.

(no subject)

[random-c.livejournal.com]

I haven't done phone support in a while.
Had a developer phone up, asking for the main user password for an XPe system I'd built a while ago. I know what this password should be. We went through typing it in. No go. No caps lock, no character misunderstandings. Tried the admin user - straight in, and that's a far nastier password. There's a problem with the admin user however: someone's set the shell to nothing. Standard practice for the user setup but not for admin. OK. Up comes task manager, regedit, fix it. Reboot. Yay, we have a start bar. Maybe I didn't set the user password to not expire... nope, that's set. Aha! It's automatically logging on as the user, so the password will be in the registry in plain text.... and here we find the problem. Whoever had the box before this guy, and did this final setup not only borked the Administrator user setup, but they'd changed the box's password to Password, and updated the registry to match. And then didn't tell the dev they'd given it to. Nice. I wish I knew who to kill for this.

Programmers come in twos

[naggy.livejournal.com]

My boss won't admit to it, but I think the help desk once sent a programmer back to our application team in pieces or something. It's the only explanation as to why they rarely come up alone to ask questions...they always bring at least one other for backup.

Maximum call times - the way it SHOULD be.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Ever wonder why half of us are forced to kowtow to average or maximum call times when it's the illiterate, functionally lobotomized waste of skin on the other end of the line that's blowing out the stats?

If call times are so bloody important, why aren't they imposed on the frickin' callers?

"Welcome to IT Support. You have sixty seconds to provide your userID and a clear, concise reason for calling. If you are unable to manage this, your account will be bumped to a higher monthly charge rate or terminated at our discretion."