Common/Repeated Things Wot I Am Overhearing Today:

[toxico.livejournal.com]

"What do you mean it's not supported?"
(It's on our web site, genius...)

"When did Microsoft end support for that?!"
(It's on their web site, genius...)

"That's not really helpful to us."
(Oh holy fuck, I didn't realize that!)

"You can help us anyway, right?"
(Let me think about thatNO.)

"Well, what if we can't upgrade?"
(Not our problem your business sucks and doesn't pay attention.)

"Well, my problem is (blah); can you suggest anything anyway?"
(FOR THE LOVE OF SINGLE-MALT WHISKEY NO!)

"Great. What are we supposed to do?!"
(UPGRADE.)

...and this tirade from multiple people. For a product that we haven't supported since January 1.

Comments

[unluvedpenguin3.livejournal.com]

what products that ?

[toxico.livejournal.com]

Microsoft ended support for Exchange 5.5 on 31 Dec 05; we (McAfee) ended support for any of products for this platform in conjunction.

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

For the love of single-malt whiskey, no!

Beautiful. Glorious. I'm stealing it.

[ravenshrinkery.livejournal.com]

Mmmm... makes me want to break out the Bushmills Malt in honor.

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

Mine for today: "You mean you won't completely ignore DoD security regulations and just give me my password, even though you have no way of proving that I am who I say I am? WELL, I'LL HAVE YOUR JOB! I AM TIRED OF YOU PEOPLE MAKING EVERYTHING SO DIFFICULT! GET ME YOUR MANAGER!"

Nope, sorry, losing my job AND becoming the subject of a governmental investigation are really not worth helping you. Permit me to hang up and laugh.

[toxico.livejournal.com]

"So, if you're taking MY job, can I have yours? Maybe I can un-fuck something..."

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

Heh, cool.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

It probably says something sad about the length of time I've been in the biz that threats like that barely ping the radar any more.

"I want a supervisor!"
"Really."
"Get me a manager!"
"Nope."
"I'll have your job!"
"Uh-huh."

Eventually they figure out that, gee, they can HANG UP all by themselves! Unfortunately, by the time they call back (and wait in the call queue), everyone on the 'desk has been IMed telling them to transfer that specific caller back to me again.

The persistent ones take a couple of days to learn that I also have the incoming faxes and public email addresses covered, and that none of my managers' personal mailboxes or phone numbers can be found on the systems they have access to. The one channel I don't technically control requires them to escalate their complaint about five levels up, one sideways, and five down again. By the time it gets to me, no-one cares any more.

...I'm bored.

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

Well, it's very easy for them to look up my manager and how to contact him, but fortunately it is also equally easy for me to look up their manager and remind them that the call is being recorded... I've never lost yet and I've only actually had to follow through on the your-manager-is-getting-a-copy-of-this-call threat once. That was to a guy who called me abusive after he spent fifteen minutes shouting at me for writing him a ticket and not resetting the server myself (which I couldn't have done anyway but the benefits people told him I could and he chose to believe them so that he could take it all out on me).

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know this pain.

HOW LONG AGO did M$ stop supporting Office toolbar?

We've STILL got people who insist on it being on their desktop. and even though we upgraded them to office 2003 we have to go out & put back the toolbar.

*headdesk*

[compwizrd.livejournal.com]

I get complaints about the "Wavey flag thing" from netscape 4.8 being gone...

[jecook]

True story: at Company A, we had a customer who held on to their Peer to peer windows 3.1 network right up until January 1, 2000. And comapny A, to my knowledge still ran a NT 3.51 server right up to the day I left, which was 2003.

Hell, my current place of work is still running IIS 4 on an NT 4.0 machine, along with the PDC which is also NT 4.0.

Fortunately, I can forsee that the time for Active Directory will be upon us later this year, and All Will Be Right In The World... :)

[floatingpencil.livejournal.com]

Our company is about to stop supporting versions which basically should have been unsupported for the last five years. But we're suckers, so we carried on. The amount of whining from customers is unbelievable.

"I don't believe this! You're, you're forcing me to upgrade!"

No, we're just saying that if you don't, you're on your own. And good luck getting the thing to work on XP, never mind when Vista comes out.

"I'll take my business elsewhere!"

No you won't. You're too damn lazy to change packages when it means re-entering all of your information. And if you do? So what? You upgrade once in a galaxy-hopping blue moon. Trust me, you're not going to sink us.

They're lucky I'm not in charge. We'd support the last three versions, tops.

[codecattx.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of one of my clients - who has an application that runs on NT4 ONLY and is so buggy and leak ridden that it requires all six servers needed to support it (two web, a SQL cluster - running SQL 6.5, and two application servers) every week or the app will start crashing due to memory leaks every three to four hours.

I have had to surround these servers with a special set of firewalls just to keep all of the nastyness away from them. The customer (big multi-national) will not change to a new app and the company that wrote the original app has gone out of business, so it will never be improved.

I keep looking forward to the day that the aging hardware that they bought will finally give up the ghost and force the issue.