BEEP

[akage.livejournal.com]

First call of the morning:

User: "Hi, yes, there's something beeping in our telephone room and I don't think I can take it all day. Fix it, please."

Now, we're PC support. Not telephone support.

Me: "Telephone room? Have you called the telephone support desk?"

User: "Well I don't know if it's the telephones or not. There's a lot of boxes in that room too."

Me (realizing that this is probably their server closet): "Oookay. Are you having any computer issues?"

User: "No."

Me: "Telephone issues?"

User: "No, everything's working fine, it just won't stop beeping."

Me: "What exactly is beeping?"

User: "I DON'T KNOW! JUST FIX IT!"

Me: "....Ma'am, I can't just send a tech out because something somewhere is beeping..."

User: "Look, if something's beeping, then there must be something wrong."

Me: "Granted, but you just said that you're not seeing any problems with your computers or phones, and you can't tell which item is making the beeping."

User hangs up.


Is it wrong to hope it's a bomb?

Comments

[jecook]

I got that one time early last year. On a sunday, during a period of friction between the EVP that I'm supporting in my area, and my boss. (who is some 200 miles away at the Home Office)

I get this voicemail that said "there's something beeping in the phoen closet, and I can't get in to look at it, so you'll need to come in and look at it."

after some quick phone calls to my boss, I went down there to... Nothing. My guess is that it was a self test on the UPS, a power sag, or something else that cause it to flip to battery.

At least I got paid for it.

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

A few times work has put my ass on an airplane to fly out to bumblefuck middle-america to fix something on one of the mobile units, only for me to find nothing wrong with it when i get there.

I so love when that happens. Hey, free trip to backwoods Missouri.

[jecook]

Heh. I narrowly avoid that situation at least once.

what makes my above comment interesting is that it's a 30-40 minute drive from the house to work, depending on how clogged the freeways are, and my minimum charge of off hours work is one hour + travel time + mileage.

Got me two hours of OT and a 63 mile bonus to my mileage reimbursement that day. :)

There was also a few calls where I had to drive some 150 miles round trip out to this place in the desert to look at a laser printer, only to find that it was behaving when I got there.

[revchris.livejournal.com]

One saturday I'm at my folks' helping with a remodeling project, and I get a call from my wife saying that somebody from work just called because there was a problem in the computer lab, but she couldn't understand them enough to find out what it was, but they were very insistent that it was an emergency. She relays these calls to me rather then just telling people what number I'm at because if somebody doesn't already have my cell number, it's because I don't want them to be calling me at all hours of the day.

2.5 hours driving later, I get to work, and there's nobody in my computer lab, and nothing wrong. I go looking around the building, and eventually find out that there was a mouse (the live furry kind) running around one of the research labs. I left them a note with who to call (facilities) and what to say "We have a mouse problem and need Doug to stop by," and then got back in my truck and drove back to my folks.

Unfortunately, I don't get reimbursed for drive time or mileage, but since I'm the building manager too, certain people wer in for a lot of crap the next week or two.

[kuang.livejournal.com]

Our phones beep constantly after a few minutes when left off the hook with no connection. Cue panic calls, and the realisation that the noise appears to have stopped now they're on the phone to you..

[caerleon.livejournal.com]

Is it wrong to hope it's a bomb?

Not at all.. it's *right* to hope it's a bomb.. far more likely to be someone's cellphone with a flat battery or a wristwatch alarm though, unfortunately..

[kuang.livejournal.com]

We had a bomb scare today on one of our campuses. An electronics teacher had thrown out a door buzzer after attempting to fix it, but didn't bother to close the case. A report is phoned in to security to say there's a buzzing box with wires sticking out of it in one of the external bins...

[devilkitty0.livejournal.com]

Or its the closet with the fire equipment.
worked near a UPS that would just randomly beep once or twice a week.

DK

[jjjiii]

Most likely a UPS that needs its battery reconditioned.

[akage.livejournal.com]

Bingo. Best of all, the user who called in to begin with apparently found it and shut it off to relieve her frazzled nerves.

Unfortunately for her, that UPS apparently had EVERYTHING in that office plugged into it. Network servers went down, telephones went down, you name it, she killed it. We're laughing our asses off over here all day about that one.

Famous last words

[jjjiii]

"Hey, what's this do?"

"I dunno. Press it!"

Re: Famous last words

[be4u.livejournal.com]

I remember that happened to a certain data center in Houston, about 2 years ago. Someone, presumably a janitor, pressed "the big red button" to see what would happen.

A lot happened.

Re: Famous last words

[jjjiii]

Janitors are usually too smart to do something like that. It was probably a junior vice president.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

This is why each server closet and room needs a streaming webcam with its own, separate UPS.

"Email to all: Here's a link to the video of why everything died in the middle of your work the other day. Notice the added-in captions giving you the name, division and phone number of the culprit."

[guterballofdoom.livejournal.com]

hehe, I like that solution ^_^

[wyldthyng.livejournal.com]

I work for an alarm company, and you'd be amazed...

alarm clocks, cellphones, nonmonitored smoke detectors (we have nothing to do with those)... YAR.

Depending on the state in which you live...

[be4u.livejournal.com]

Is it wrong to hope it's a bomb?

AFAIK, in some southern states, that consitutes reasons for justifiable homicide. I believe it falls under the "s/h/it needed killin" defense.

Your mileage may vary...