Weird Call for the Week

[asbrand.livejournal.com]

Didn't happen to me, but happened to my coworker who sits beside me (who also happens to be a friend of mine for the last 20+ years).

We work for a large telecommunications company (rhymes with socks), and our particular department is working in the Backbone NOC.  We monitor / fix all the routers, switches, and circuits on our multi-state backbone network.

That said...a couple of days ago, my coworker/friend "R" received this phone call...from "Ralph"...who apparently is a telephone customer of ours.

R:  NOC Engineering, this is "R", how can I help you?

Customer:   Is this phone bugged?

R:   Um...I don't think so...who is calling?

Customer:   This is Ralph.

R:   ....um....  Is there something I can do for you?

Customer:   Is my phone bugged?

R:   <blank look> - Uh...I'm sorry, but I work on the internet side of the business.  I don't know anything about your telephone service.  You'll have to call your local telephone system support for help with that...

Customer:   <grunts>  ...huh...ok.    <click>

*boggle*


Firstly, we're a huge company, with many diversified areas.   Internet, telephone, transport, VOIP, cable tv, Video on Demand, etc...   I've always wondered why so many customers think that everybody in a parent corporation knows the same info as everybody else.   I don't know squat about cable TV or telephone service, and I'm quite sure those guys don't know jack about what we do here.   This isn't "Billy-Bob's Car Shack" with 10 employees who all know each other and what they do.

Secondly...we have no idea how "Ralph" got the number to our support queue.  We don't take calls from customers.   We get calls from vendors, circuit providers, and service engineers in our various markets.

Very, very surreal...



-Az

On, laptop!

[margaretc.livejournal.com]

This post made me think of this story:

Long ago, I was the #2 person in a small computer support firm of 4 employees. One day, the power blinked long enough to make all of the computers we had turn off and then back on again. I said "#&@(#!", and $BOSS said "What happened?"

"The power blinked! My PC just rebooted!" (we yelled back and forth between our offices, usually.)

"Huh. Mine didn't," said $BOSS. "The power must not have gone off in my office." (Note: the lights blinked everywhere in the office suite, including his office.)

"Er, $BOSS? That's because you have a laptop. It has a battery."

$BOSS said "Oh."

He bought me a UPS after that (I'd been lobbying for one for years).

(no subject)

[lavabeast.livejournal.com]

Webhosting game. Transcript of LiveChat support, today. Values and hosting service details have been altered.

Me: Hello, I understand that you are having issues uploading. How can I help you today?
Them: I am uploading, and I see the numbers in the bar going up like they do when I pump gas, but it's going really slowly.
Me: How large is the file that you are trying to upload?
Them: It's a 150MB .psd.
Me: This is likely why you are experiencing slow upload time - This is a lot of information to be transfered.
Them: It disconnected me.
Me: *views account details* I see that you are using our basic hosting service. This service has 50MB of total storage. You have been disconnected because your partial upload has filled your storage space.
Them: Should I upload it to a different directory?
Me: Changing the directory will not help. Your account has 50MB of total storage. It is not possible to upload a 150MB file.
Them: I guess I will have to remove my other files and folders and try again.
Me: You are certainly welcome to modify/remove whatever content you wish. However, this will not help. It is not possible for 150MB of content to fit into 50MB of storage space. This is because the size of your file is 3x the available total space.
Them: A friend uploaded my site. I will get them to help me. Bye! *disconnects chat*

I feel sorry for the friend, but at least they were friendly?

Have you been living under a ROCK????

[manuka.livejournal.com]

For the last 9 months or so, we've been gestating our new church management system, and finally gave birth to a healthy application this past Tuesday. Because the new application still requires some components to be developed, portions of the legacy application will still be used for a while (such as our accounting)

This has been widely publicized to the staff, hyped, trained, and generally beaten to death. On tuesday at noon (as announced), we administered general anesthesia to the legacy app and performed a lobotomy that locked out everyone from the portions of the application that were no longer to be used (which was darn near everything). at 2:30, we brought it out of its IT-induced coma and told everyone that the new app was up and running, and had a launch party with ice cream sundaes. A good time was had by all, and everyone was excited about the new app, because the old app simply sucked that badly.

The cutover has been generally smooth, the support hotline rang only once today (yay!), and most folks are easing into the new way of doing things quite nicely (although our ticket load for other stuff is climbing rather rapidly)

And then, just as the day is ending, we get a new ticket alert:

11997 - Need information to access $legacy_app.
Description:
I am not able to access $legacy_app. I don't know if I have forgotten my login name and password or what? I think it use to automatically connect..? Could you please let me know what my information is to access it? Thanks.

My boss about hit the roof. He's going to escalate that one to her director. I suggested we merely close the ticket with "application functioning as designed, contacted facilities about removal of the rock you've been hiding under for the last 9 months."