It's not my fault you're stupid

[geekgrrl-ca.livejournal.com]

If you are having a technichal issue and you don't call us for 6 monthes I have no sympathy for you being 1 month out of warranty.

Why do people buy the cheapest hardware and expect it to have the features of a unit that costs 4 times as much as their cheap piece of shit.

And then there are the peons that insist on arguing with you every step of the way. "The last tech didn't do that". Well they didn't get you working either. You called me, remember? I'm the expert, shut up and let me talk.

don't think so

[ebtb.livejournal.com]

Here's a call I got my dad while I was home last night trying to watch Monday Night Football...

Me: Hey, dad... what's up?
Dad:   Just on my way home - got a question for you...
Me:  Um. Okay...
Dad: If you delete a file, is it gone forever?
Me:  Nope. If it's not in your recycle bin you can use a program like File Rescue Plus or...
Dad: Do I have a recycle bin?
Me: Uh, yeah. It's on your desktop. (I know he's bad, but not THAT bad.)
Dad: Are you sure? What if I deleted the recycle bin?
Me: You can't delete the recycle bin. I was over there yesterday and it's on your desktop. Why, what's up?
Dad: Well, I think I accidentally deleted my My Documents folder and my resume was in there.
Me: Oh, that's cool. (Knowing that he's not happy where he is.) What are you applying for?
Dad: There was a tech support job posted for a local company up here. I'm gonna go for it, you know since I used to do that for Eckerd's.
Me: Uh...Right. Well, good luck. Let me know how it goes. I'm gonna go back to watching the game.

By doing tech support for Eckerds he meant he had the "Choose Your Own Adventure" version of everything being scripted for him since he was supporting old POS hardware.

I swear...

[phaedra-13.livejournal.com]

...I am going to charge my mother $19.95/minute for tech support.

I was JUST over there on Sunday, and she had no known issues with her PC. Last night, I get a phone call:

HER: My computer is stuck.
ME: [sigh] What do you mean, "stuck"?
HER: It won't start up. It stops on that black screen with the grey bar going across the bottom. The grey goes about half way and then stops.
ME: [sigh] Do you still have a disc in there?
HER: Um...[the sounds of futzing}...oh, yeah. [sheepish laugh]
ME: [sigh] Take the disc out, do a hard shut down and wait 10 minutes. How many times, exactly, do I have to remind you NOT to leave discs in the computer when you shut it down for the day?
HER: I'll remember. I swear.
ME: Uh-huh.
[ten minutes of craptastic chatter]
ME: So...did it work?
HER: Yeah, it's working now.
ME: Amazing. Gotta go, I have another call coming in.

Seriously, I have gone over this with her a hundred times since we got our first PC back in 1996. Ten years of the same, exact reminders/instructions. I shoulda started charging her in 1998 - she'd call me at my JOB on Saturdays and ask me how to fix her issues. I'd be rich by now had I started charging her.

x-posted

users that really p.... annoy me

[goose-entity.livejournal.com]

1. ZOMGYOUMUSTCOMENOWTHESKYISFALLING!!!!oneone!!!eleventy
They needed a USB key installed. Or a floppy formatted. Or their monitor powered on...

2. ZOMGIT'SSOOOOOURGENTCOMENOW!!!!!
And they disappear for the rest of the day. Then complain to your boss that you didn't fix the problem.

3. "I am too stupid to log my issue myself so I will go through my line manager"
.. who has all the technical ability of a kumquat.

4. The ones who complain that you never sorted the problem they never told you about.
Right, my telepathic powers are misfiring.

5. "Jump and dump"
You're walking to the toilet and they bounce you with 1800 hojillion issues. Meanwhile you are jumping up and down on one leg...

6. "Can I just ask you something..."
3 hours later they ask the question... which is usually "should I buy this Dell computer?"

7. "Oh, here comes IT to fsck it up!"
Yeah. My reply was "do you want to have this conversation in front of your line manager?" (The user backed off)


I am sure there are more, but I am losing the will to live having just dealt with 1 and 3 ...


EDITED TO ADD
The users who call you 5 minutes before end of the day to ask you a question / present a problem which will take at least 45 minutes to resolve. Doubly so if they do that on Friday / your last day of shift.

Dear god, she's back

[snarl817.livejournal.com]

A few years ago, I talked to a VERY stupid customer. I mean STOOPID. Now, you should understand, I don't do Windows support or any kind of desktop support...I support enterprise UNIX servers. This customer needed some documentation. I couldn't get her to find the document on our webpage, so I emailed her the link to the pdf file.

She calls back. She can't get the link to work. Not because the website was inaccessable (I should know, I sshed into my server at home and was able to wget the file), but because she was too stupid to figure out how to copy the link from the email and paste it into her browser window. I got tired of trying to explain it, so I download the file and email it to her.

It takes her 2 days to figure out how to open the file.

A few days later, she calls back. She wants me to convert the PDF document to Microsoft Word format because she can't figure out how to get Acrobat to print. Her comment abou it was, "Nobody uses Acrobat, they ALL use Word. [You] should have your documentation in Word format instead." When I told her that she needed to refer PC desktop support questions to whomever provides PC desktop support for her company, she argued with me.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot query.

One of my coworkers eventually talked to her, and he wound up transferring her to a manager because he was unable to work with her. I'm not sure HOW she got her job, but I really want to believe that it somehow involved her being on either her back or her knees, because NO manager can possibly be so bad as to knowingly hire someone that incompetant, and keep them employed. My coworker checked the database, and discovered that in a 3 year period, she's called in on accounts from 5 different companies.

Well, she's back. Her call is sitting in the queue and I flat out REFUSE to talk to her. She's seeing errors from 5 days ago and wants to know why, but doesn't understandwon't accept the answer the previous techs have given her.

Stupidity spreads rapidly

[xrockravenx.livejournal.com]

So last night my shift was from 5pm-1:30am. I didn't get to leave till 2am.. yea, no big deal.

However, the reason why I left a half an hour later was because I was on the phone with a sales supervisor from a spencer's store in Hawaii for an hour. Their receipt printer was off line. There are 3 cords/cables connected in the back of the receipt printer. One's a phone cord connecting to the back of the cash drawer and IBM..somehow inbetween. The other is obviously the power cord and third was the USB connecting to the back of the PC. I figured maybe one of cords got unplugged..like the usb or phone line. So I have this person look to see if that was the case. Supposedly the phone line came unplugged. I instructed this person to find this cord and strangely... she can not find it. Twenty minutes later, she realizes that she was looking at the back of the wrong receipt printer....Ugh....She finally looks at the back of the right printer...and everything in the back is plugged in...So I have her look at the other end of the connecting cables to see if maybe something got unplugged from the back of the PC...Another 20 or so minutes go by while her and another supervisor try to find the other connecting ends...Because it's so damn hard to find these cables...

My annoyance is that it took forever to find the other end of the cables... the receipt printer sits RIGHT ON TOP of the cash drawer which sits RIGHT ON TOP of the IBM... so the cables aren't THAT long... why was it sooo hard to find the other end? Why did it take more than one person(two supervisors) to figure out where they were connecting to? It's beyond me...

I've dealt with this store twice as they called about a half an hour before they called again. The cash drawer wouldn't open and she needed to give change to a customer. I ask her if the key is turned side ways from left to right because if it is, then it's locked. She says that they don't have the key in the lock of the drawer. Okay, makes sense. So I tell her that it's probably in the safe. She goes and opens the safe....and here comes stupidity! She asks me... "Would you know where it is?" Would I know where it is in the safe?????


HOW WOULD I KNOW???


That is also beyond me..

This wasn't really a technical post...but stupidity is quite common in all situations..