Tales from Techsupport

[Melcar]

What I said "As soon as we finish these laptops we're distributing them to the people they go to."


What he heard: "Stack them by Melcar's desk and let him finish my fucking job!"

[Merrick ap'Milandra]

Intern to me: So I got the drive replacement done but I can't log in as the user to copy his profile data over.

Oh, and one more thing, I was using the trackpad on his laptop and accidentally dragged the network share full of the company's accounting data into another folder and I don't have permissions to drag it back out.

Me to intern: *thankful that this is over IM so my expression can't be witnessed* np. Hang on.

Me to a domain admin: *paste*

Domain admin to me: Uhhh, that's not good. At least he told you. Hang on. There. Should be back now.

Me to a domain admin: Yeah, not really sure how he had permissions to do that as a temporary intern.

Domain admin to me: Looking into that now. Might be time to change some of these inheritances.

[FilanFyretracker]

honestly this is why I shut off tap to click on laptops, It is one of the most pointless and irritating functions and should be off by default. I have dragged things around by accident a few times, but then I learned to shut off tap to click and problem solved.

[Eremius]

While that may be a new annoyance Windows has always had the 'drag and lose' functionality.

[FilanFyretracker]

well one flaw I see with the issue mentioned is why was that person able to copy data to a folder that they did not have access to. sounds like some borked permissions.

[Merkus]

http://formalsweatpants.com/comic/the-call-center/

[Dawlin]

http://formalsweatpants.com/comic/the-call-center/

Holy crap that's golden. Sharing it with the world!

[Mileron]

Coworker: I'm trying to submit my expense report according to the instructions, and every time I do, I get "Do not send emails, this is an unattended mailbox." What's wrong?
Me: Seems like you've got two problems.
Coworker: Huh?

[Melcar]

Other Tech: Outlook on this computer is doing something weird! Maybe it's a bad switch port?

Me: Now why in the hell would you think that? Here is OSI model, see here's switch port layer 2. Layer 1 is physical - that's your ethernet cabling.

Other tech: Yeah, yeah yeah, I understand the OSI model -

Me: I don't think you do if you're asking me if a TLS connection error from this client, to this server, on this service - could be a problem with the switch port configuration.

[Mileron]

Same coworker as last post.
He's on the phone with his pharmacy attempting an automated refill of his prescription.
He's actually conversing with it.
"No, I don't have the prescription number, I just want to give you my phone number to look it up"
"I know it's not a valid prescription number"
"Look I just want to talk to a person"
"Transfer me to a representative"
"Come on, I want a person"

Unfortunately I can't report much more because I ended up getting a call of my own, but dayum.

[Tinthalas Tigris]

Same coworker as last post.
He's on the phone with his pharmacy attempting an automated refill of his prescription.
He's actually conversing with it.
"No, I don't have the prescription number, I just want to give you my phone number to look it up"
"I know it's not a valid prescription number"
"Look I just want to talk to a person"
"Transfer me to a representative"
"Come on, I want a person"

Unfortunately I can't report much more because I ended up getting a call of my own, but dayum.

I sometimes do that to observe who in my immediate presence is snooping.

[HerbertDypp]

CoWorker: I'm trying to listen a telephone call recording, I can hear the call but the volume is so low I can't make out any of the words. Can you help?
Me: Ok, I'll pop-up to your office and take look.
...
Me (after walking into office): So what is it like when you put those earbuds, that are plugged into the headphone socket on your laptop, in your ears?
CoWorker: ah...

[Melcar]

"Why couldn't I connect to the VPN".

I dunno - your accounts enabled, there's licenses available, this seems fine - that seems fine. What was the error?

"I dunno".

Me neither.

"but why couldn't I connect".

I dunno.

[Dawlin]

I've conditioned most of my users to screenshot stuff and/or send example customer data. Getting a swift answer instead of a "I'll take a look when I have the time" tends to promote that behavior

[Melcar]

I've conditioned most of my users to screenshot stuff

Tried -- some do really good - others... it's like they don't even care. Of course, half my other staff is completely 100% incompetent.

"Why can't connect to \\hostname from this vendor provided server and I'm out of ideas and completely clueless about this networking stuff"?

- Did you try connecting to \\10.10.1.45\? or \\hostname.fqdn\?

"No."

- Then why are you talking to me?

[Bonlainy]

Tried -- some do really good - others... it's like they don't even care. Of course, half my other staff is completely 100% incompetent.

What helped us get more screenshots was making sure everyone knows how to use the snipping tool in Windows, even dumbasses can capture exactly what we need to see with it.

[Tinthalas Tigris]

What helped us get more screenshots was making sure everyone knows how to use the snipping tool in Windows, even dumbasses can capture exactly what we need to see with it.

This is not a bad idea.

I work in a company where getting everyone to a meeting on the same day at the same time and place outside of my department is a multiple-month endeavor. Even then, there are always stragglers, people who don't show, and individuals who despite being there and being called on individually completely miss what was said or just decide to continue to do things their own way, insisting it is a better way.

I can only imagine how long they would take just to show how to use Print Screen on every single individual's unique keyboard.

[FilanFyretracker]

thankfully on a standard computer print screen is generally in the same place. Your real challenge is getting them to figure out MS Paint. Opening that and Ctrl+V is another week of training.

Have mercy if they are the rare Mac user which has no print screen function and instead has some other button sequence because think different.

[Melcar]

thankfully on a standard computer print screen is generally in the same place. Your real challenge is getting them to figure out MS Paint. Opening that and Ctrl+V is another week of training.

Well that is where Win7's snipping tool comes in handy.snipping tool.jpg

[HerbertDypp]

i've got my users all using Greenshot for this.