techrecovery | Aug. 21st, 2008

And I've been working helpdesk for a little over two years. Before that I was a computer operator, which didn't have nearly as many idiotic or entertaining stories.

I currently work for a hospital. Before this, I worked for a distributor of DVDs, video games, and beer (excellent combination, eh?).

One might think that since I deal with doctors and nurses now, whereas before I dealt with DVD salespeople, that I might deal with more intelligent users now. After all, doctors and nurses save lives! One might also be very, very wrong.

I work every other weekend, and when I work weekends, I work alone. I also get at least one call per weekend day from a user who cannot get his or her PC to come on. 99.9 percent of the time it is either a) not plugged in or b) no one pushed the power button. I get these calls ALL the time, and it's such a simple thing that I do not understand.

I got a call one weekend day from a nurse in one of the rooms in the ER. ER nurses are, um, a little demanding (one might say bitchy, even). She wanted someone down there NOW. Since I was the only one there, I logged in the cell phone, put on my pager, and walked down to the ER. I get in the patient room, and the PC is in a bracket way up on the wall. I am 5'1". So I climbed in a chair and hit the power button on the tower. The PC miraculously came on. The patient in the room was an old man, and his adorable little old lady wife was in there with him. The wife said, "Honey, did you just hit the on/off switch?" I said yes. The man said, "Well, that other girl checked all those wires but she didn't do nothin to the other side of that box." So... the nurse checked all the cables... but didn't hit the power button. BRILLIANT.

The users at my last job were NOT this dumb. We did have one lady who would constantly pull her keyboard cable so tight that the connector would come out of the PC, and then would call the helpdesk to say that her keyboard quit working again. But she was the only really "special" user I can recall from that job.

The hospital users? YEAH. They're REALLY, REALLY special.

I wish I could think of more entertaining stories to tell you, but as I just joined, I'm on the spot and can't. But I assure you, now that I'm in this community? I'll share stories as I get them. And I'll get them.