I got to be an asshole today! Twice!

[superbus.livejournal.com]

I've always had a reputation around the office as a "loose cannon". I'm one of those guys that the more malleable workers in the company don't ever want to raise my hand to ask any questions, because I tend to be blunt, and I don't mince words, causing executives to be flustered, suck-ups to go into overdrive, and my managers to cringe, knowing that they're going to catch the brunt for the asshole that decided to not drink the Kool-Aid.

Despite all that, I've always been good with customers. I rarely lose my cool, and am very helpful to customers of all technical proficiencies. So it's rare that I get TWO cases where I snap at someone.

The first one was a customer that cancelled his contract with the company. I handled the turndown, and created him an administrative account on his PIX firewall with a randomized password. I sent him his password on July 8th. Between then and now, I cleared out my sent files; since my current department doesn't control the mail queues anymore, that's necessary, as I can no longer give myself a 5GB storage space. *sniffle*

He sent in an urgent ticket today, stating that he never received a password, and that he needed one ASAP. I looked in my sent items, and didn't have the password anymore, and since his old configurations encrypted the password, like they should, he was out of luck. I sent him a message letting him know this, sent him a page on Cisco's site that explained what to do to password recover, and even sent him my direct line if he had questions. I then went to lunch.

That was stupid.

I came back to eight missed calls, an incindiary update to my ticket, and as soon as I de-idled, I got a jabber asking "are you familiar with $IDIOT?". I got on the call, and let the guy know that I looked for the password, but we don't have it, and since the mail was sent securely, it comes off the server in a month.

"I KNOW YOU HAVE THAT PASSWORD! YOU DON'T GIVE A SHIT BECAUSE I'M NO LONGER A CUSTOMER!" (quoted actual profanity)
"No, sir. I understand your situation, and we did what we could at the time. But we don't have your password in plain text four months later, and that's a good thing. We encrypt them"
"SO I CAN'T GET IN MY FIREWALL!?"
"You will have to follow the procedure that I linked in the ticket"
"I KNOW YOU HAVE THAT INFORMATION AND YOU'RE JUST NOT GIVING IT TO ME. I KNOW IT!"
"No, sir, I would much rather give you the password, it would make my life a lot easier, TRUST me"
"THIS IS WHY I DUMPED YOUR COMPANY. YOU ARE USELESS"
"And you're the one that needed a third party security provider"

-----

The second one was an end user that started impatient. That one, I was able to bring down...

"I can't connect to VPN!"
"OK, what's your ticket?"
"I don't know, get my VPN working!"
"What company do you work for?"
"You have that information on the screen!"
"No, sir. I'm given nothing to go off of when I take a call"
"Well, I work for $COMPANY. Now hurry up and get me working! I'm a busy man!"
"Understood, sir. Wait one while I log in"
*one minute later* "What the hell is taking so long!?"
"Excuse me?"
"I said, what in the HELL is taking so long! You're wasting my God damned time!"
"... Lighten up, Francis. I'm doing this as fast as I can. Be quiet and let me work or I'll hang up, and just to call back in and get past Triage, it's going to take another ten minutes of your PRECIOUS time"
"I-- I--... Heh. You like Stripes?" (reference: "Lighten up, Francis" is a reference to the movie Stripes)
"Hell yeah! OK, now what's wrong? You not getting past authentication?"

Needless to say, the rest of the call went smooth, and he even apologized afterwards.

I guess this is what they mean by meeting the aggressiveness of someone that's irate to bring them back down, eh?

*sigh*

[taleya.livejournal.com]

You know, I really love arguing network topography with misconceived n00bs.

I mean, I've only been working in the field for a decade or so, and went to uni for this shit, I'm happy to be put in my place by someone who thinks it's "a series of tubes"

(That aside, anyone else getting screwy intermittent "Host not found" errors from yahoo and comcasts mail servers?)

Once in a while, techies need love too....

[emt-hawk.livejournal.com]

I have a Dell D620 laptop, that I bought, used. Last night, I was settling in for a short round of Hellgate: London, and my monitor suddenly went dark. I could see the desktop in there, but it was like the backlight was gone. It's a used laptop, and I thought for certain that I was screwed out of the price of a new internal LCD monitor.

Today, I borrowed a monitor from work, and attached it to my computer, and it worked fine. That tells me that the LCD panel seems to have gone bad. Just to be complete, I had already reseated the LCD connector of the original monitor to the motherboard, and that didn't fix it.

The good news is that it's still under warranty, and I'm working with the guy who sold it to me to get the machine in my name, so far as Dell is concerned, so I can exercise the warranty.

The better news is that I got online with IM tech support from Dell. No bullshit, no fooling around with "we need to send a tech out" to do the warranty replacement.

The best news is that they're shipping me a new LCD panel for me to put in!

--Hawk

just so you know

[pixilated-serra.livejournal.com]

the more you hassle about when you're going to get your new laptop
the longer i will wait to image it

luser:  "so are these the new laptops?" (points to stacks of dell monitors)
me: "no"

..... awkward silence

luser: "so uhhh any idea when mine will be ready?"
me: "no"

..... awkward silence


luser:  "have you even recieved them yet?"
me: "yes"

.........

luser: "oh"
me: "yeah"



there's a little BOFH in all of us i guess

(no subject)

[drquuxum.livejournal.com]

Dear Chair,

Installing printers on your laptop is NOT considered a critical ticket.

No love,
Q