*headdesk*

[darkrose.livejournal.com]

..and my boss wonders why I hate end users...

----------------------------------------------



Date: 08/22/07 09:10 am
From: $LUSER
To: $MY_PERSONAL_EMAIL
Subject: Re: Your Registration Key for $PRODUCT
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

hi
i did not get a registration key in the following email you just sent

----- Original Message -----
From: "$COMPANY Product Registration" <$REG_HELP_EMAIL>
To: <$LUSER>
Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 1:35 PM
Subject: Your $COMPANY Registration Deactivation


> The following Registration Key has been deactivated:
>
> $REG_KEY_WAS_ACTUALLY_HERE_BUT_I_DELETED_IT
>
> Follow the registration instructions inside the software to re-register
> your application with this Registration Key.
>
> Regards,
>
> $COMPANY
> $COMPANY_WEBSITE
>
> P.S. Lost in the registration process? Visit:
> $COMPANY_REG_HELP

What are you DOING!!!

[ohmyhead.livejournal.com]

Jesus H. Christopher Walken in the trunk of my car eating Cheetos in the nude. The woman to my right is dumber than a cabbage patch. Today's exchange, wanna hear it? Here it go...

Her: My printer won't print.

Me: How many times must I show you this? See that flashing red light? Reeeead the display. It says "Change Cyan Toner".

Her: I did that yesterday!

Me: Then why is this black toner box here?

Her: It said to change Cyan so I did.

( It gets worse. Much, much worse. )

This guy signs my cheques?

[superbus.livejournal.com]

A little background for those that haven't seen me post here before: I work for a large company that does "Security in the Clouds"; we're the largest in the industry and getting larger. My LIVELIHOOD, and that of everyone around me except the billing and HR people, is reliant around advanced, don't-fuck-around security based around the needs of banks and medical companies. And I'm good at my job, if I say so myself; a year and a half into the industry and five months here, and I'm likely about to start tier 3 support soon.

My company's CEO needed help with his printers; apparently, he can't print to any network printer. OK, no problem, and it's funny to watch everyone shit their pants about it. "You can't screw this up! He's the CEO! Don't screw this up!", yeah, OK, whatever, I've pissed bigger problems than this. I get to his laptop, and notice that he's got jobs backed up on four different printers, some dating back to June. OK, he's a busy man, whatever. I clear out the queues, and decide to reboot the laptop (which took ten minutes just to close his programmes). No biggie. This, and a reconfiguration of the IPs that the printers possess, fixed his problem with no issues.

When the computer came back up, I needed to log in, and of course, I don't have his password. So I found him and asked him if he could please log in on his computer. He - in front of our entire financial team - blurts out "Oh, my password is $PASSWORD! That's *spells it out*, all lowercase! It was... well, let's just say it was a proper noun and leave it at that.

That's right: the CEO of our security company doesn't practise the #1 rule of computer security.

Ironically - and this just takes the cake - my supervisor pulls me off my work. Since I started with the company, I hadn't taken our mandatory end user security test, and the case had been escalated (I'd blown off all emails about it for lack of time), so I had to do it at that moment. Naturally, it took two minutes, no look at any course material, and I got 100%; any less would have been shameful. They gave me a certificate to print out... signed by this same CEO. My qualification as a non-retard when it comes to end-user security was signed by someone that would have miserably failed the course.

Then there's weak Google-fu ..

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

Printer USB port, connected to $device which has an Ethernet port on the other side, then to the LAN.

$user is trying to configure his machine to use $device, using IP printing, and can't seem to grasp the fact that his computer's IP is *not* the IP of $device.

$device is made by a vendor who is no longer in business and has no support available at all .. and so he thinks he's stuck .. but it happens to have a very easily Google-able name.

What would make someone not think of Googling the name and finding the wealth of hacker lore that's easily available, for *free*, on the web, for $device, and instead, call everyone *but* the people who have any kind of clue how to get to a config page for the thing and get the IP address he needs, if it even is a print server?

Shit fire, this would've taken me maybe a minute to work out if it were my printer and $device. (I was tempted to have him mail it to me so *I* could use it .. :D )

That was absolutely AWESOME

[digital2112.livejournal.com]

I just got off a 30 minute escalation. It was a standard rant from some guy claiming to be an attorney. He is requesting for a replacement computer but does not qualify in any way shape or form. We go over the same things over and over again with him telling me that the terms and conditions of the warranty are absolutely meaningless and he is entitled to a new computer. Finally he realizes that I am not budging an inch so he says "You know what? If I ever get a nightclub, I want you to be the guy at the rope!" I am almost positive that he meant it as an insult but I took it as the biggest compliment that he could give me. It means that I did my job exactly right. Screw him.