Tales from Techsupport

[Tinthalas Tigris]

Notice goes out to building on Friday:

"Water will be shut off in entire building between the hours of 9am and 1pm, Monday Morning. Maintenance will work to have water back on as soon as repairs to building are complete."

Water was shut off from 10am until 12:30pm

Today, a a lady walks up to me and asks, "How come the water is always getting shut off?" I pause a moment and realize this woman is always condescending, and if I saved her last penny from falling into the gutter, she'd complain that it touched the ground after falling from her purse.

Me: "Well, we perform maintenance on the building, and at regular intervals, we service valves, boilers and several other pieces of plumbing to lessen the chances of a big problem occurring outside of our controlled conditions."

Lady: "Well, it just seems like the water is always getting shut off here."

Me: "Well, regular maintenance does require service of pressurizedlines from time to time, and as we live in a city that has very hard water, these water lines tend to have an increased amount of sediment in them than other areas of the state."

Lady: "Oh, its because the building is so old?"

::grumble::

[Melcar]

I told you not to do it this way last week didn't I?

"well, yeah - but I didn't want to do it because it's more work, and I'd have to redo it from the start"...

Well, if you'd have started this last week like I told you; you'd already be done now right?

"well, yeah - but I didn't want to, but now the way I did it isn't working".

WTF do you want from me - I told you what to do, you didn't do it that way. Now you have a problem this way -- this is why you have the problem - if you did it the way I told you it would work.

"Oh, I can make this work".

Fine make it work - quit bugging me.

[Melcar]

"organic tape library device" Says: Melcar... I think I did a bad thing... The backup job on ServerX I thought it was running, but it wasn't, but I was trying to stop it, so I deleted the job. and now they all disappeared. See I thought by deleting the running job, it would just stop it - and instead it deleted it.





ya think? Jeee I didn't think "Deleting" it would actually Delete it... p.s. How do you tie shoes? Or put on pants? I Just can't figure it Out!

[Eremius]

Same boat. I really wonder how some of my lusers can manage to keep breathing on a regular basis.

[Melcar]

Same boat. I really wonder how some of my lusers can manage to keep breathing on a regular basis

Yeah, this was our AS/400 specialist... " I don't really get Networking or PC's though... I just know my old obsolete piece of junk & that's OK cause I'm retiring in 2 years anyways".

[Tinthalas Tigris]

I told you not to do it this way last week didn't I?

"well, yeah - but I didn't want to do it because it's more work, and I'd have to redo it from the start"...

Well, if you'd have started this last week like I told you; you'd already be done now right?

"well, yeah - but I didn't want to, but now the way I did it isn't working".

WTF do you want from me - I told you what to do, you didn't do it that way. Now you have a problem this way -- this is why you have the problem - if you did it the way I told you it would work.

"Oh, I can make this work".

Fine make it work - quit bugging me.

Story of my life.



_____________


My wife's mother bought each of her children a "one last gift" each a couple of years ago - laptops (except for my wife. Weird).

None of them came with restore cds, but they did all have the restore programs on them. THey all require end user to provide blank DVDs.

I gave everyone who received them 4 DVDs, which each computer would require in order to build the backup software.

I told everyone that the first thing they needed to do when they turned on the laptops was run the restore software from the start menu, etc.

Within 6 months, each and every one of the siblings had asked me to fix their computer.

First question I asked:

"Where are your restore dvds?"

They: "What?"

"Remember the blank DVDs I gave you, and told you to run the software, first, as soon as you got the computer turned on?"

They (in variant forms): "Oh. I didn't run that."

"Why didn't you run it?"

They: "I couldn't figure it out/I didn't understand it."

"Why didn't you ask me how to do it?"

They: "I didn't want to bother you."

[Mileron]

Our internal call tracking db app went tits up.
Manager emails the group saying it would need to be reset at the server level (including a server reboot).
Cue no less than 17 emails from people in my group saying "I can't get access to the tracking app".

[Melcar]

"organic tape library device" Says: Melcar... I think I did a bad thing... The backup job on ServerX I thought it was running, but it wasn't, but I was trying to stop it, so I deleted the job. and now they all disappeared. See I thought by deleting the running job, it would just stop it - and instead it deleted it.

So, how come this server doesn't eject the tapes anymore?


I'm gonna go with "somebody" deleted the job... {and of course somebody else didn't check that checkbox when they recreated said job}...

[Dawlin]

Our internal call tracking db app went tits up.
Manager emails the group saying it would need to be reset at the server level (including a server reboot).
Cue no less than 17 emails from people in my group saying "I can't get access to the tracking app".

When my wife asks me what my biggest work-related talent is, I tell her "The ability to actually read and comprehend a piece of text". I'm quite serious, all of the coding stuff is just a toolbox

[aazdazen]

When my wife asks me what my biggest work-related talent is, I tell her "The ability to actually read and comprehend a piece of text". I'm quite serious, all of the coding stuff is just a toolbox

It's not putting up with absolute idiots and not murdering them or at least causing physical harm to them?

[Mileron]

Coworker: I can't print
Me: What happens?
Coworker: The printer says "out of toner"
Me: Choose a different printer. #87 is right next to your desk.
(a few minutes later I get an IM from her)
Coworker: There's no 87 printer in my list
Me: (at her desk) The reason you can't print is because you don't have any of the new printers listed
Coworker: What?
Me: The first week of December I sent an email saying that all the printer info will be changing and must be handled before the end of the year or you wouldn't be able to print
Coworker: OH yeah I saw it
Me: And?
Coworker: I ignored it because I knew I could call you if I had a problem
...
(At this point I should have told her to fuck off and walked away, but I didn't)
Me: I didn't send the email because I enjoy typing it - I sent it to prevent this kind of problem
Coworker: But it's not a problem, you're here to fix it now. I don't have time to read emails

[Bonlainy]

Then you should have said, "And I don't have time to fix problems for idiots who feel their time is more important than mine. Good luck with printing."

[Schezar]

Coworker: I can't print
Me: What happens?
Coworker: The printer says "out of toner"
Me: Choose a different printer. #87 is right next to your desk.
(a few minutes later I get an IM from her)
Coworker: There's no 87 printer in my list
Me: (at her desk) The reason you can't print is because you don't have any of the new printers listed
Coworker: What?
Me: The first week of December I sent an email saying that all the printer info will be changing and must be handled before the end of the year or you wouldn't be able to print
Coworker: OH yeah I saw it
Me: And?
Coworker: I ignored it because I knew I could call you if I had a problem
...
(At this point I should have told her to fuck off and walked away, but I didn't)
Me: I didn't send the email because I enjoy typing it - I sent it to prevent this kind of problem
Coworker: But it's not a problem, you're here to fix it now. I don't have time to read emails

Resend the email. Walk away.

[Mitebe]

Resend the email. Walk away.

This.

Plus does your company have any sort of weekly interdepartmental meetings between middle managers? I know where I work we have these, with varying degrees of attendance) designed to air out gripes between groups. This would be something that your manager might be able to bitch about when they ask why IT costs so much money.

[FilanFyretracker]

Coworker: I can't print
Me: What happens?
Coworker: The printer says "out of toner"
Me: Choose a different printer. #87 is right next to your desk.
(a few minutes later I get an IM from her)
Coworker: There's no 87 printer in my list
Me: (at her desk) The reason you can't print is because you don't have any of the new printers listed
Coworker: What?
Me: The first week of December I sent an email saying that all the printer info will be changing and must be handled before the end of the year or you wouldn't be able to print
Coworker: OH yeah I saw it
Me: And?
Coworker: I ignored it because I knew I could call you if I had a problem
...
(At this point I should have told her to fuck off and walked away, but I didn't)
Me: I didn't send the email because I enjoy typing it - I sent it to prevent this kind of problem
Coworker: But it's not a problem, you're here to fix it now. I don't have time to read emails

Bullshit they do not have time. I bet if you could check their internet usage they would mysteriously have plenty of time for checking Facebook.

[Tinthalas Tigris]

Walk into a new rennovation, look at cabinets, and realize the cabinet doors wrong. They didn't install them to open butterfly style, and they intended to, but drilled the holes on the cabinet doors in the wrong place. Then they tried to make it look like it was intentional, but left the hinge pieces on the inside of the cabinetry. BIG Mistake.

So I took a picture of it, e-mailed it to the property manager and let her know that it was going to take me a while to fix it.

About 5 minutes later, she was in the renovated unit spewing up a storm on the phone.

Manager: NO GOD DAMNIT. I DON'T WANT ANY EXCUSES. I DON'T CARE IF IT WAS YOU, OR YOUR RETARDED BROTHER. IF YOUR RETARDED BROTHER CAN'T DO THE JOB RIGHT, FRANCO, YOU NEED TO LEAVE YOUR RETARDED BROTHER AT SPECIAL ED CLASS. THINK ABOUT THAT WHILE WE DON'T USE YOU TO DO OUR CABINETS.

Me: ::whispered:: holy shit.

Manager: ::hangs up phone:: - it's okay. It's just franco. He needs to be afraid of me, because he won't do a good job otherwise, and this way he'll come begging for work at a discounted price next time he needs *us.*

Me: We need new hinges as well.

Manager: Okay. Who do we get our hinges from?

Me: Franco

[Charbok]

We have a special hosting customer that doesn't care for "unnecessary automation". Sales team of course acquiesces to every demand, and my support team gets stuck doing the menial, laborious tasks that should be happening automatically.

Like log rolling.

A monitoring alert for the server's Logs drive reports it is filling up and breached 90%. Standard SOP is for the tech on duty to hop onto the server and compress IIS log files. This takes a few hours, as there are multiple sites on the machine and the log files each take up around a 1 to 1.5GB per day. (I just counted; there are 36 sites hosted on this server).

So the tech starts this process, and leaves a note in the tracking ticket that reads - "Compressed last month's logs for all sites. Space utilization still rising, now at 94%. Something appears to be eating up the space and it's not logs."

Next tech investigates. Finds a couple of sites that didn't get compressed. Does so. Leaves a note in the tracking ticket - "Agree with [other tech]'s assessment. Space still rising, now 95%."

As 95% is considered a critical event, the issue was escalated. I look at it. I return the ticket with this comment: "After moving the files to the compressed folders, you still need to delete the originals. Space now at 73%."

[Eremius]

It's not putting up with absolute idiots and not murdering them or at least causing physical harm to them?

This has my vote.

It is physically painful for me to not pimp slap some of my users occasionally.

[Ninetoes]

It's not putting up with absolute idiots and not murdering them or at least causing physical harm to them?

That's my greatest talent.

There would be whole branches of the USDA sitting empty if I wasn't a freaking GOD at that.

[Melcar]

It's not putting up with absolute idiots and not murdering them or at least causing physical harm to them?

Yeah, something I need to work on - running out of hiding places for the bodies...