Meant to post this when hit happened, and it slipped my mind

[citizenbleys.livejournal.com]

I work for my local cable company, doing both internet and cable TV support. Up until this point, I thought I'd heard it all, including a story about technicians spraying $60,000 worth of delicate electronic equipment with water-based pesticides to get rid of bees and customers mounting modems on the wall by driving a spike through the middle of it. Then I heard this gem. Note that this story is unconfirmed, as it happened to a co-worker and not to me directly. However, dealing with the sorts of...individuals I'm subjected to on a daily basis, I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the tale.

Old woman calls in, complaining about a yellow box in the middle of her screen that she can't get rid of; cable rep troubleshoots the issue for about 20 minutes and is unable to get rid of the yellow box. Rep schedules a technician to go to old woman's house to look into the issue. Tech arrives, leaves thirty seconds later with the issue resolved.

The problem: There was a sticky note in the middle of the TV screen.

Ah...stupidity.

[phaedra-13.livejournal.com]

I just glanced through a service ticket where the issue was:

"I have a rejection on this stating that 'No decimals in qty field allowed'. What field is this referring to?"

Uh....how about the quantity field, jackass?? (Which, btw, shows up on the GUI as "qty" amazingly enough.)

**headdesks**




X-posted to my own journal

First time caller (contributor) long time listener (reader)

[snyperwolf.livejournal.com]

A short introduction: I'm a developer at $SMALL_HEALTHCARE_SOFTWARE_COMPANY who occasionally has to take the support phone for night and weekend L2 support. Now, as a developer, I hardly ever touch the software outside of $FINANCIAL_APP except when I need it to test something inside of said app. However, I'm smart enough to bumble my way through $CLINICAL_APP when I need to in order to test what I've written in $FINANCIAL_APP ... or to do just the smallest amount of support for it. I guess that I would technically be L3 support, as the L2s come to me when they have issues that are going to require a major code change (most L2s can do minor code changes on their own), but that's neither here nor there.

So, over the weekend, I get a call from L1 at about 10AM on Saturday morning (while brushing my teeth, mind you) about a very minor setting change in $CLINICAL_APP. I know that I've made this setting change before for my own user profile, but it's been a while, so I bumble my way through it and finally tell her where to make the setting change in order to give access to the customer's other office. The L2 line shouldn't be called for such an easy ticket, but so long as this was the only call I got this weekend, I was glad to help.

After signing off, I remembered that we didn't have to pick up the support phone, so long as we responded to voice mail in a timely manner. I decided that if it was important, the L1 tech would leave a message. If it was more piddly crap, then L1 could figure it out, or it could wait until Monday. A few hours later, I got another call and let it go to voice mail ... 4 hours after that, after calling my boss 2.5 hours in and us working together to fix one poorly written chunk of code buried deep in $APP, we had it all straightened out.

I know that the L1 did the right thing to escalate the second ticket, but I still feel ill will toward her for calling me on a piddly ticket and utilizing me for an app related problem. Moral: Don't make the L2 tech do your job if you want L2 to do their own job.

Sorry if it's not as epic as most of the posts here, but I had to blow off some steam.

Electricity? What's that?

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

Good morning, fellow techsupport types. What a wet and grey Monday morning it is over here in UK land, just what I need to make me look forward to the week. And so I have a tale to tell you, one that's funny now I don't have to deal with these idiots any more.

We all know the urban myth of the guy calling support because his computer wouldn't work in a power cut, yes? I never thought I'd ever encounter someone that idiotic, but it seems I was wrong.

A couple of years ago, I worked on the IT Helpdesk for a certain UK police force, one that covers the transport network. We had many offices around the country, and I swear that when recruiting officers and staff, they chose only the most computer illiterate. Every clichéd ticket you can think of, we got it. One call beat them all. A clerk called from one of our stations, bemoaning the fact that she couldn't access the network. Every time she tried, the computer told her that her roaming profile was not available. So I do the usual troubleshooting, we check the cables and reboot, no joy. I try to ping the machine, but it's not responding. I ping the server, get no response.
At this, I realise that I am going to have to take a risk, and get dangerously technical (for the Force staff, anyway).

Could she tell me if the server is up and running, all lights on, etc? After all, it wouldn't be the first time that a server had been turned off by staff or officers.

"I don't know", she says, "I don't have a torch."
"A torch?" I respond, very confused.
"Yes", she replies, "I need a torch, it's very dark in the server room. We were hit by lightning last night, and the office I'm in is the only room with power..."

Users. Don't you just love them?

i don't work for adobe.

[heinousbitca.livejournal.com]

...so why again are you calling me looking for tech support on Acrobat Professional?

Also, when i say the software doesn't do that (feature), you might want to trust me since i did co-write it and all. Asking me if i can "check with someone else" is likely to be futile. Hope this helps!

Tell me why ...

[dragonbofh.livejournal.com]

... I don't like Mondays
You know it's Monday when all the stupid that's been stored up over the weekend slaps you in the face like King Kong's Dong...

( Standard pain in the arse )

( Stupid pain in the arse )

( F-off and leave me alone! )

*Deep breaths, deep breaths*

Can I Get A WTF?

[ptstech.livejournal.com]

(x-posted to my LJ and TSC)
From a ticket submitted over the weekend

From:$Luser
To:Me
Subject:HELP!

ptstech, I have several projects that I need to work on and I need access to $DRIVE and $DRIVE_2 (mapped network drives). Please call 000.000.0000

Second email, sent to colleagues who were waiting for a file

From:$Luser
To:$Luser2, $Luser3
Cc:Me

Hi $Luser2,
I'm just finding that I have access to e-mail but not to the network. I have a call into the help desk, but if you're on line, would you send me the file that you put on the $DRIVE/$Subject. I believe this is the file that had the calculated inventory, the days of supply and the forecast. Thanks much.

P.S...hopefully you have something better to do on Sunday that work and you won't get this message until tomorrow. But, if you're a poor soul like myself and you are on-line, pls send me the file.

Resolution: User connected to Outlook Web Access instead of VPN and therefore could not access files.

NOTE: Shortcuts are placed within IE and are (I thought) clearly marked. In the case of the VPN, with big-assed letters (henceforth known as "big caps - don't ask) labeled V. P. N.

I hate Mondays.

"You can get more with a kind word and a two-by-four than you can with just a kind word." - Marcus Cole

Cold...colder....

[fuego.livejournal.com]

So last Thursday during my afternoon/evening shift, when I was doing some Actual Work (tm), a call came in that forced me to ask the customer to describe the situation a couple of times over to be sure I was understanding what he said correctly before determining that his scenario was not possible (In a nutshell, he was trying to tell me that he had the software for one of our videoconferencing units installed on a third-party bridge and that he needed help accessing the software because the guy that used to maintain it left the school and didn't give him the password.

A bit of nonsense and hair-pulling later, I've gotten it through to him that the only way he could be experiencing the particular situation as described would be if one of those unit was actually connected to his network somewhere. It finally dawns on him and he says "Oh, man. I guess I'm going to have to find it. All I know is that it's not in my building...it's somewhere on campus.

I forget which school this was, but I know that it was a university with a rather large campus. Later on, I was telling my supervisor about this, and he wondered if the guy could have called up the former employee to find out...and that if he did, he hopes he left the job happy and is willing to tell them where the unit is.

As a result of this conversation, I spent a good while imagining a very sadistic campus-wide game of Hotter and Colder to locate this $40,000 piece of equipment. "You're in the student union now? Okay good, you're getting hotter. Second floor? Cold, colder...Third floor? Oh, you just lost it...

Dear Luser

[badpauly.livejournal.com]

If you delete an email, and the program asks "are you SURE you want to permanently delete this email?", then answering YES will do what it says.

Asking me a few hours down the track if the permanently deleted email can be recovered will have me treat you like an idiot, for the obvious reasons.

See you in hell
Pauly, Your Friendly Office Geek.
( And, the following was me interacting with a new employee. )

When I mentioned both of these tales to the editor (who was at lunch when both occurred) she replied - "I really thought they were just urban-myths?"