Tales from Techsupport

[Melcar]

We would have FAR fewer connection issues if you could have a docked and an undocked profile for laptops again. (Docked? Wireless disables. Undocked? Enables. etc.)

Oh god yes.

[Merrick ap'Milandra]

1800 end users.
12. count them, TWELVE domain controllers.

The primary domain controller, for years now, has had trouble replicating.

It'll go into JRNL_WRAP, it'll just fail to sync up the AD database (leading to new hire and departure headaches) and since it's the primary domain controller, when someone changes their password while authenticating through the primary, then hits a different one, their account locks out due to failed password attempts.

Months upon months upon months of investigation and attempted remedies. Dozens of hours of enlisting Microsoft Support.

Finally everyone gives up and decides that instead of a dozen fucking domain controllers, we should consolidate and take things back to the low single digits.

Today.

Today I happen to be looking at the PDC and what do I see on the root of the drive?

Windows.old

YEP!

That's right!

Some MENTAL MIDGET fucking UPGRADED THE PDC IN AN ENVIRONMENT WITH TWEEEEEEEEEEEELVE FUCKING DOMAIN CONTROLLERS!



I'm sorry, but if you don't know how to transfer roles and promote/demote in order to do a full OS install on a DC, YOU SHOULDN'T BE TOUCHING DOMAIN CONTROLLERS.

OS UPGRADES ARE FOR HOME USERS.

Enterprise infrastructure that can afford load balancers, HA Citrix farms with vMotion, and redundant offsite SAN backups SHOULD NOT BE PRESSING "UPGRADE".

Back up your DAMNED SETTINGS, TRANSFER YOUR ROLES, AND DO A FRESH INSTALL YOU CUM-GURGLING GROUPTHINK-SPOUTING TROGLODYTES!

[Eremius]

Back up your DAMNED SETTINGS, TRANSFER YOUR ROLES, AND DO A FRESH INSTALL YOU CUM-GURGLING GROUPTHINK-SPOUTING TROGLODYTES!

9.5/10 I could have used more profane ranting.

[Melcar]

Some MENTAL MIDGET fucking UPGRADED THE PDC IN AN ENVIRONMENT WITH TWEEEEEEEEEEEELVE FUCKING DOMAIN CONTROLLERS!



I'm sorry, but if you don't know how to transfer roles and promote/demote in order to do a full OS install on a DC, YOU SHOULDN'T BE TOUCHING DOMAIN CONTROLLERS.

FUUUUUCK!!!!!!!

[Mileron]

Customer: It takes me 25 seconds to enter a transaction into the database, this is unacceptable!
Me: does some troubleshooting, including changing her UNC shortcuts to mapped drives
Customer: It takes me 8 seconds to enter a transaction into the database, this is unacceptable!

[Melcar]

Customer: It takes me 8 seconds to enter a transaction into the database, this is unacceptable!

Me: Learn to type faster.

[Mileron]

What follows is a conflagration of fuster from my problematic user Sales Rep.

These are back-and-forth emails:
Sales Rep: Hi, I received this email from a customer. In it, the customer sent a complaint to Usage Support regarding a problem she's having with certain data entries, and requested a refund. The Usage Rep provied an answer. However, do you see any prior calls that would indicate why she's requesting a refund?
Me: The customer's issues, as described in your original email, seem to be wholly usage related. She had two support calls, both (earlier in July). In the first ticket, (Usage Rep 1) tried to help (customer) with some (account) balance problems. (UR1) needed a copy of the dataset. After getting the customer in contact with (Tech Rep 1), (UR1) indicates she didn't receive the copy of the (client dataset) as of July 14th.
Sales Rep: Anything else?
Me: In the second ticket, (TR1) helped the customer update the data backup utility. The customer was apparently trying to use a version from 2004.
Sales Rep: What about before that?
Me: Prior to that, her last Support calls were from March and April 2014 regarding migrating her programs to a new Windows 8.1 computer.
Sales Rep: What about before that?
Me: Before that, I'm seeing calls from March 2011. She doesn't seem to be a new user of the programs, so I'm not sure why she's having trouble with working with support for her answers.

The rest is chats:

Sales Rep: who didn't receive copy of client data?
Me: (UR1). The customer seems to have never sent it to (UR1). Talk to (UR1)
Sales Rep: and what do you suggest? Can we resolve this? Can we do a conference call, you and I? Maybe we need someone to communicate this to her
Me: Either she follows (UR1)'s instructions, or you deal with it from a Sales point of view. (UR1)'s answer will very likely resolve her problem. Talk to (UR1) because I cannot help the customer with this. It's not a program problem. It's a customer-doesn't-know-what-she's-doing / training problem
Sales Rep: i need a good contact from support to deal with this because obviously (UR1) is not getting thru
Me: I don't know how to use the program or fix the issue she's complaining about. Your options are limited. There's only three people in the usage group. Talk to (UR1).
Sales Rep: ok i'll call (UR1) what do you think she needs to do to get this going?
Me: Who, the customer? She needs to follow instructions provided to her from (UR1). Talk to (UR1).
Sales Rep: what does she need to do provide the client file to (UR1)?
Me: Zip it and email it. It's possible that the customer didn't email the dataset, instead intending to complain. Talk to (UR1)
Sales Rep: ok so the customer needs to zip the client file and then email to (UR1)?
Me: Talk to (UR1).
Sales Rep: ok thanks for your help

It's maddening.

[Alikat Astrae]

As is completely typical of people who do not work directly with high technology, this sales rep has an inherent distrust of those who do. This sales rep appears convinced that UR1 is holding out on him and deliberately ignoring the customer, even in the face of your own company contact records for that customer that strongly indicate otherwise.

[Mileron]

Tech: My users are getting an error that indicates (specific state module) isn't installed. I'm on the website. Should I install it?
Me: um Yes please
Tech: Are you sure? I want to make sure I'm installing the right item
Me: You are
Tech: I have in my notes that I installed it though
Me: directs him to the executable folder Do you see an executable named statemodule.exe?
Tech: No
Me: Then we'll need to install it
Tech: Okay now it's installed but when I try to activate it I keep getting server errors
Me: What are they saying?
Tech: That the program can't reach the file server
Me: I see here that you moved the programs to new server last week... Is the new file server named FS01?
Tech: No, that server was taken offline
Me: Well then what are you running the programs on?
Tech: A cluster
Me: The programs don't support cluster installs. They need to be on a discrete file server.
Tech: Why didn't anyone tell me that?
Me: Did you mention that you were moving to a cluster?
Tech: No, why would I?

[Mileron]

Tech: My users are having font problems and errors after installing a program
Me: Which program?
Tech: I don't know
Me: What error?
Tech: I don't know
Me: What are they doing when it occurs?
Tech: I don't know
Me: ... Perhaps you could find that information out for me?

A few minutes later, I receive an email with an error log and a screenshot from the user.
I contact the tech.
Me: You can fix this easily by reinstalling the most recent tax year program from the website. Not only will it fix the font problem, but it'll resolve the other error too.
Tech: Can you give me manual font fix solutions?
Me: given
Tech: Thanks, I'll call you back
She hangs up before I get to follow up on the other error.

Two hours later:
Tech: The users are still getting the error message but the font problem is fixed
Me: Did you reinstall the current tax program from the website as I mentioned before?
Tech: No, installs have to be scheduled for after-hours to ensure no one's using the program.
Me: Ma'am, the error you gave me is a show-stopper. No one will be able to use the program at all. So long as people stop trying to click the shortcut, we'll be able to complete the install inside of ten minutes.
Tech: That's unacceptable

Two hours later...
Tech: The users are still getting the error message
Me: Did you reinstall the most recent tax program from the website as I mentioned before? The deja vu is strong...
Tech: Why can't you just fix the file?
Me: Can you tell me what update was applied?
Tech: No
Me: Can you tell me how the users are going to use a program that doesn't work?
Tech: ... No
Me: So how about since you have me, we do a remote session and I look at it.

So I remote onto their system and look at the issue.
Me: The only way this issue would have happened would be if someone reinstalled an older year program onto the folder structure, thereby obliterating certain common data files that get updated year-to-year.
Tech: How would that happen?
Me: ... Someone reinstalled an older year program ...
User: You know, I was accessing (non-tax other program) and the login screen looked weird.
Me: Pardon?
User: shows me and opens that program... the login screen that appears is from 2005 This doesn't look right
Me: No... This is from 2005. I look deeper into their folder structure and find that there's a folder full of old, old installer files dated 11/2005 and earlier Do you know why these installer files are still present?
Tech: Oh, I grabbed those from our archives when I reinstalled the program to fix the fonts as you mentioned earlier today.
Me: But those installers are from 2005. That would not fix a 2016 program. These are not the most recent installer files.
Tech: So what do I do?
Me: Reinstall the most recent program.
Tech: But installs have to be done outside of business hours!
Me: Fine. I rename the folder in which the archival installers are stored and mark it DO NOT USE then replace a handful of datafiles that the older installer would have broken from a clean install on my computer.
Tech: Now was that so hard? Why couldn't you do that this morning?
Me: You mean before you knew what the error was?
User: You didn't tell him what the error was?
Tech: No, he's supposed to know what they are!
User: What, does he have ESP?
Tech: HE SHOULD KNOW!
Me: Thank you for calling, ladies, have a good weekend *click*

[Ronaan]

Pretty minor:

We run win7 and I never bothered to disable the win10 upgrade icon in the taskbar on our ~ 50 machines. Took until today for someone to ask if they should upgrade (mail with screenshot where it says right in the middle to keep your fingers still if you aren't the person responsible for computers)

I'm somewhat proud of the other 49 people

[Merrick ap'Milandra]

Pretty minor:

We run win7 and I never bothered to disable the win10 upgrade icon in the taskbar on our ~ 50 machines. Took until today for someone to ask if they should upgrade (mail with screenshot where it says right in the middle to keep your fingers still if you aren't the person responsible for computers)

I'm somewhat proud of the other 49 people

That's EPIC.

That's even bigger than the feeling I get when someone notices they got an e-mail from themselves to themselves with a cryptically named attachment and a subject line of "FW: Your Invoice" and REFRAINS FROM OPENING IT.

[Mileron]

That's even bigger than the feeling I get when someone notices they got an e-mail from themselves to themselves with a cryptically named attachment and a subject line of "FW: Your Invoice" and REFRAINS FROM OPENING IT.

I wish most of my users were that perceptive.

[Merrick ap'Milandra]

I wish most of my users were that perceptive.

Where I'm at, all users are limited to 2gb of space on their personal network drive.

This means they're ALL storing stuff locally.

Some of them buy their own external drives or burn to disc, but most don't, so with cryptovirus ransomware having been out there for a few years now, people are hearing stories from their coworkers about how soandso lost 14 years of archived e-mails in PST files and being just a teensy bit more careful.

[FilanFyretracker]

I have to wonder why someone needed to save an email for 14 years.

[Merrick ap'Milandra]

I have to wonder why someone needed to save an email for 14 years.

Because nobody enforces records retention rules or cares about eDiscovery, and we have some customers who have been with us for decades.

[Mileron]

I have to wonder why someone needed to save an email for 14 years.

Today is my 12 year anniversary with my current company.
I had to access emails from 2008 over the last week. I still will keep them. Sure, I could go in and clean them up and remove "cruft" in favor of "important stuff" but that's too much time for a modicum of space savings.
Last month I had to access emails from 2004 and 2005.
They're still useful.

[Tinthalas Tigris]

"resident took oben door off to light pilot and can not get door back on."


Me:"okay, door is back on. But it says here you did it to light the pilot? "
Res:" yeah, we couldnt light the pilot with the door on there."
Me: "this unit has an electronic ignitor"
Res: "yes we lit it for you."
Me: "the ignition is done by the glow coil."
Res: "well, it stopped cooking, so we lit the pilot, becauase it went out."
Me: "there is no pilot."
Res:" then what did we light? "

[Merrick ap'Milandra]

"resident took oben door off to light pilot and can not get door back on."


Me:"okay, door is back on. But it says here you did it to light the pilot? "
Res:" yeah, we couldnt light the pilot with the door on there."
Me: "this unit has an electronic ignitor"
Res: "yes we lit it for you."
Me: "the ignition is done by the glow coil."
Res: "well, it stopped cooking, so we lit the pilot, becauase it went out."
Me: "there is no pilot."
Res:" then what did we light? "

It's times like this that I'm grateful for my job in IT.

At least when people do something COLOSSALLY stupid, there's no chance it can blow up an entire city block.

[Mileron]

I've rescinded my dancing banana.

Three more Program4-Sub-Print executables are due to be released today and guess what?

All three of them have the same fucking bug.

Another Program4-Sub-Print executable was due to be released today.
Guess what? Same bug.
Oh and the other three from 6/23 have yet to be fixed.
I've sent messages to the dev's manager and the product manager, and have yet to get anywhere (though to be fair, both might be OOO today; even though they don't have autoresponses set up, neither is listed as online in our internal chat app.)