Grah!

[ayelmar.livejournal.com]

A little background: One of the primary systems our lusers access to do 90% of their work has the annoying habit of leaving an orphaned job running on the server if a session is terminated abruptly, such as a loss of connectivity (to clustered servers at several regional data centers); these orphaned jobs continue to count against the total number of allowed signons until they are forcibly killed...one of my tasks is to hunt these down and terminate them with extreme prejudice.
This task has been made considerably easier in recent months by a patch which makes the error message the end-user recieves ("Logon not allowed," yada yada) include the exact server name and job number causing all the trouble, along with the terminal number the job had been called from.

So, on to the call just completed...
luser: "Can you kill a session that's locked?"
me: "Sure, can you give me the error message you're recieving?"
luser: "Logon not allowed."
me: "Okay, and could I get the rest of that message?"
luser: "$terminalnumber"
me: "And at the end, there should be a job number and machine name..."
luser: "Yeah, it's $jobnumber on $machinename."
me: "Thanks, let me clear that for you...that job number and machine name are actually the most important part." *start clearing job*
luser: "Oh, I know; I used to work in IT here at the facility."
me: "..." Then why the hell did you make me fish for that instead of telling me when I asked you for the bloody error message?

(My first actual post to the community, by the way...been lurking for a couple months...)

Well, I USED To...

[ptstech.livejournal.com]

ayelmar's post couldn't have come at a more timely, uh, time.

Offsite user has a broken laptop.  Standard protocol:

User overnights laptop.
Support repairs laptop, then returns to user.

Simple enough, right?  Of course, were THAT the case, you wouldn't be reading this...

ME: OK, we've identified the problem and ordered the part.  You need to overnight the laptop to us so that we can repair and return it to you tomorrow.

STARFISH: Can't you send me the part and let me replace it?

ME: No, actually that's my job.

SF: Well, I used to do IT.

ME:  I used to do sales.  Tell you what, I'll let you fix the laptop if you let me do your next sales call and get the commission if I make the sale.

SF: (grumbling)

Jimmy Durante said it best - "Everybody wants to get into the act!"

From a friend of mine whose work has just switched from phone to email support (lucky blighter).

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

The setup: At my current place of work another tech had sent a customer a zip file with a patch to fix an issue, customer has replied saying they can't open the file so the emails continue
---------------
Tech:
Hi,
You will need an application such as winzip to open the .zip file.
It is a free program you can download to view the .zip
www.winzip.com
Kind regards,
Customer Service
-----------------
Customer:
I am using my work computer is it possible if you can fax it to 02-XXXX-XXXX
I can not download any programs.
-----------------
Tech:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!

Lunchtime

[purple-mctacky.livejournal.com]

If you knock on my door and it's lunchtime, and I don't answer... It's because I don't want to talk to you. Please don't just open my office door and poke your grinning head in.

And now I feel bad because I said something bitchy and the person in question isn't really that bad. Just clueless.

WTF people????

[blossomingfire.livejournal.com]

I am trying to install a Smart UPS 3000 into a server rack to replace the one that went belly up.  I do not give a shit that you need a microphone ELEVENTY. 

(Note, sup was asked for a tv/vcr cart when he was carrying the 40lb battery module.  He is calm.  I would have thrown it at the requestor.)

im your tech asshole ripped from techsnap

[slayne-souls.livejournal.com]

* I am here, simply put, to fix your shit. My job is not complete until said shit is fixed. Please just help me fix this shit.

* With that out of the way, know that I hate you exactly as much as you hate me. No more, no less. If you are at least relatively pleasant, I’m happy to help you- even to make small talk as I attend to the issue at hand. Conversely, if you are a total and complete jackass, I will make this the worst 10 minutes of your week.

* Neither I, nor any of my coworkers, are out to fuck you. We are not idiots. We are college graduates in technical disciplines, the vast majority of whom are here to work their way up the IT ladder to more fulfilling positions. Sometimes we have off days, sure, but we know EXACTLY what we are doing. Note that this does not apply to anyone outside of our department. They are, in all reality, idiots who are out to fuck you.

* So you’ve already unplugged the “internet box” and plugged it back in? Brace yourself, you’re going to do it again. Most of the time I do this for a reason…unless you’re a dick. Then I do it to see how mad it makes you.

* Don’t lie to me- I can tell you have a router. It isn’t illegal.

* To those who think they are “computer illiterate”: The vast majority of the time, you are lovely customers: Patient, willing to learn, and most importantly, willing to listen. Thank you!

* To those who think they are CompSci PHD’s: The vast majority of the time, you are retarded: If you already cycled your equipment and it didn’t work, why did it work when I made you do it again? If you are so well educated, stay the hell out of the queue so that people who need help can get it.

* Supervisors don’t have a magic wand that they can wave to make everything better. They are governed by the same protocol and use the same utilities as I do. In fact, supervisors are more likely to tell you to fuck off- believe it or not, they have other pressing issues to attend to. If a node goes down, they WILL put those 200 subscribers before you in Priorityland.

* Threatening to cancel does not intimidate us. We have an entire department that is paid to care about that, which means that I don’t have to. Harsh? Sure, but I have more than enough work to do fixing shit, yelling at field techs, following up on cases, and explaining the concept of email to your grandmother that it won’t cause me to lose any sleep.

* It worked fine yesterday? Oh, then I must be wrong. Let me reconsider the 40 minutes I spent troubleshooting your Win98 box. Check it out: Shit breaks (see point 1); If shit did not break, I would be mowing your lawn instead of sitting in this office.

* Speakerphone? Turn it the fuck off.

* Don’t call back and have another rep troubleshoot the same problem. He will read the notes I left about how you spilled coke into your cable box. Even if he didn’t, he would come to the same conclusion, and more people with undiagnosed problems would be stuck listening to that god-awful hold music.

* I am not blowing smoke when I say that I understand how frustrating it is to wait on hold, get transferred, and deal with bad agents. I too have called Dell’s tech support line. The difference is that I actually DO care about your problem, so please just calm down before I kill your family.

* My company has over 20 million subscribers. I handle a region of about 2 million. To this day, none of them have ever called in to say “I just wanted you to know that my shit is working correctly.” Maybe someday?

Grrrr ..

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

I don't care how much you spent on the computer, nor do I particularly care that half a dozen clueless people you talked to before you got to me told you to buy $large_monetary_amount worth of software to do the one thing you're trying to do that the products I support don't do. Nobody at my employer is trained to help you with the one third party app you bought to do this job that actually shows some promise of getting it done, and getting pissed off at me and ranting about "f***ing bulls***" and screaming at me that the computer you bought "doesn't work" (which it does) isn't going to change the fact that WE DID NOT MAKE THAT PRODUCT AND YOU NEED TO CALL THE PEOPLE WHO DID, because THEY ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO HAVE A CLUE HOW TO FIX IT ..

The stupid it hurts

[katballou.livejournal.com]

Yesterday my phones were full of the crazy, today they're just full of stupid.

I just got off the phone with this one.

Me: And this is a problem with your Hewlett Packard Computer?
Stupid customer: My what?
Me: Is this on the Hewlett Packard?
SC: No it's an HP
*head desk*
Me: Ok your HP computer. What kind of problem are you having?
SC: It's giving me this screen with all sorts of words on it.
Me: Ok.... What kind of words?
SC: Oh I don't know
*head desk*
*head desk*
*head desk*

Thank god it turns out he wasn't under our warranty and I got to send him to Hewlett Packard.


I have so many more from the past few days but this is all I have time to type between calls.