Tales from Techsupport

[Ackar]

At least the tech was able to retrieve the project data off the drive and prove that she hadn't done ANY work on the overdue project she kept blaming tech support for delaying.

She was fired but will probably pull a similar stunt in the future...

[Merrick ap'Milandra]

At least the tech was able to retrieve the project data off the drive and prove that she hadn't done ANY work on the overdue project she kept blaming tech support for delaying.

She was fired but will probably pull a similar stunt in the future...

Wow.

I'm struck by multiple things.

One -- Potentially critical data being worked on locally ONLY with no backups.

Two -- No regular project check-ins that would have caught the fact that she wasn't making ANY progress.

Three -- That she got past computer number two (was given a THIRD computer) without being flagged as an "issue" with company assets. One full machine replacement? Stuff happens. TWO replacements within a fiscal year? Stuff is happening, alright, and unless it's a pattern with the hardware company-wide (I'm looking at YOU, Dell Optiplex GX 270's circa 2004) that should have been a massive asset management red flag.

There's a whole lot of fail here.

It *does* however, remind me of the time a VP of sales in a company I worked at kept getting his laptops stolen. (The final time was when he left it in the passenger seat of his car and left his car unlocked and RUNNING while he went in to get his morning coffee). "We're giving you one more laptop on the company dime. The CFO signed off on it but asked that we stress that any further replacements will be taken out of your bonus for that quarter because we order ahead for the whole year and only purchase a certain number of hot spares. (I don't know if they could actually do that or not) They don't grow on trees, Mike. What don't they grow on?" "....trees?".

Nothing beat getting to quote one of my favorite movie scenes to the guy over the issue.

[FilanFyretracker]

wow, I lock my car just to go into the McDonalds to order takeout and if I am on my way to work I still hide the iPad under the passenger seat. Even when I have had vehicles with tinted windows I always hid electronics.

[Merrick ap'Milandra]

wow, I lock my car just to go into the McDonalds to order takeout and if I am on my way to work I still hide the iPad under the passenger seat. Even when I have had vehicles with tinted windows I always hid electronics.

Yeah, there was a supreme level of self-absorbed narcissistic entitlement going on with that guy. I suppose, to some degree, such qualities are useful in that line of work, and it's not like he had to worry about the car itself getting stolen, with all of the bells and whistles on it, he could tell where the thing was at all times up to and including whether or not it was sitting level.

[Tinthalas Tigris]

My wife insists on keeping her car unlocked in the driveway.

We have had our neighborhood's cars broken into.
My wife's car only was ransavked and they took a pepper spray and some change.

[Mileron]

Sales guy comes into the office for the first time in 58 weeks (exactly).
This is a verbatim transcript below.

SG: Last year a standing desk was delivered for me. Do you have it?
Me: Do you know when? I don't remember anything that big coming in in December
(note: I was WFH quarantined from Thanksgiving until Dec 16th due to my wife having had Covid, but between myself and the guy who had been onsite, we always put received packages in the same place)
SG: Yes, it was about this time. From Amazon
SG: Did you receive any sit/stand desks last March.

Dude you are 50-56 fucking weeks too late to be asking me about a missing shipment.

[Tinthalas Tigris]

Idiot.

[PhillipDine]

wow, I lock my car just to go into the McDonalds to order takeout and if I am on my way to work I still hide the iPad under the passenger seat. Even when I have had vehicles with tinted windows I always hid electronics.

In my area, if you leave the navigator overnight in the mount on the windshield, the morning is sure to be broken glass!

[Mileron]

We have this "new" kid on the team.
We'll call him Nervous Norm.
He's been with us approximately a year and a half.
He's the type where, if you give him 5 days to finish a task which is completely within reason, he panics and worries that he'll be fired by mid-day-three if he's not done.
He calls me several times a week both to re-introduce him to operations that are done, while not daily, are pretty common.
He also calls me to "talk him off the panic ledge" because you know it's totally his fault that the group of 100 people that he supports break USB headsets as often as a cat knocks shit off a table.
His original responsibilities included supporting a large team on the other side of the world - which isn't large enough to warrant an onsite tech, but large enough to warrant a shift dedicated to 90% of their workday.
Due to extenuating circumstances, myself and two others have been splitting that shift with Nervous Norm so three of us get one day each, and Norm gets two days of what amounts to half an overnight.

Every month, we have a maintenance weekend. This could range from something simple like call testing (which still takes several hours), DR testing of certain services, or server patching. This past Saturday was the "server patching" type. We scheduled to start at 10am Eastern, but as we never would have finished in time being one man down, I started the "easy stuff" (RDS and web boxes, for example) at 7am.

Nervous Norm was 2 minutes late to the webex meeting (due to having four international locations completing these tasks, there was one scheduled) and about an hour in sends me a message saying, "Did the manager say anything about me being late?"

No dude. You were two minutes late. I don't think anyone noticed. The other guy who sits behind you though, he was 28 minutes late. We noticed that. Then again, he takes a two-hour busride to get into the office, and you are two hours behind us, and it's Saturday, so it's not like he'll get in trouble.

Anyway, one of the box pairs we patched (a couple of our services have redundant or synchronous duplicates) deals with our call recording software. To reduce latency, each large-complement location (my office, and another in the UK) has a dedicated VM for the processing of those calls. It handles the recording, converts the audio to MP3, and shuffles it off to storage.

We discovered early last year that for whatever reason, the software in use would cause one of two things to happen after a certain period of time:
1 - It would stop recording entirely
2 - It would stop converting the audio to MP3 and just build and build a backlog until either RAM or storage were unavailable then shit the bed (which might contribute to #1, but there were discrete instances of both happening)

The vendor said "update the software engine" which we did do, but they couldn't give us a straight answer (and have been publishing further updates that haven't fixed the problem) so we came up with a solution: Reboot the server(s) every two weeks on Sunday.

So Saturday was our patch period.
All of the servers were patched.
All of the servers were rebooted - including the call recording servers - I did them myself and marked them as rebooted

Last night around 8pm I get a message in our Team chat from Nervous Norm

Nervous Norm: Call recording servers were rebooted.

Yes. The ones that were rebooted not 18 hours prior.

Me: Why did you reboot those servers? They were done yesterday.
Norm: I had a reminder to reboot them on Sunday, so I rebooted them
Me: I did them yesterday
Norm: I had a reminder to reboot them on Sunday

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Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he's adhering to his reminders
But seriously dude, this is like the tenth or so time in a row that he's done this, and it's completely unnecessary and he doesn't understand why

[Mileron]

Actual Ticket - I'm trying to release an email message (in our spam filter) which gives me access to (insert site here). When I click Release I get the error "Message action failed. The message action couldn't be completed, or the message may have already been processed."

Me: Please send an email with a screenshot of the "hold message" that includes the from address, to address, and subject line

I receive back the screenshot.

The email that was sent was dated May 10th, 2021. The spam filter sent the "this message is being held as spam" message on May 11th.

Me in response to user: That email was delivered May 10th - three full months ago. You cannot release that email as by this point it will have automatically been deleted. You'll need to re-engage the account creation or trigger a "forgot username" or "forgot password" prompt in order to receive the followup email. However as you never completed the initial step of responding to the account creation in May, it's likely that creation process will need to be done again.

User: So what username do I use?

Me: As this is not a (company) internal site, I can only guess. Unless they're using custom usernames, typically the login would be your (company) email address.

User: I tried using "forgot password" but received no email. What next?

Me: Your account was likely never created as you didn't complete the signup process. Please re-attempt account creation but please let us know in a timely manner if you're unable to release any spam emails from this site. Held emails are automatically deleted after 30 days.

User: I'll just contact their support. Something must be wrong with their account system.

OpoQQ.jpg

[Tinthalas Tigris]

Jesus.

[Branaman Starbinder]

We have this "new" kid on the team.
We'll call him Nervous Norm.

Ever had the chance to talk to him in a non-workrelated setting and ask him about the clear trauma he has from a previous employment?

[Mileron]

Ever had the chance to talk to him in a non-workrelated setting and ask him about the clear trauma he has from a previous employment?

Unfortunately as he is an international employee, no.

And that counts nights when he calls me moments before I'm supposed to leave and he ends up talking for 45 minutes.

[Mileron]

Wow, two trips overseas and I didn't really post anything here.

Today's candidate of ""

Ticket:
User: I'm having trouble in video meetings. They start out just fine, but after 10-20 minutes the audio just dies and no one can hear me.
Me: I'd like to do a remote session, please connect to (insert URL) and call me at (blah blah)
Microsoft Teams rings.
Microsoft Teams is NOT connected to our phone system.
Me, aloud: Hi, I cannot hear you, could you please call my desk phone?
User:
User:
User: joins the support session
User:
User:
Me, aloud: I'm sorry but I can't hear you. You need to hang up MS Teams. Please use your cell phone to call me at (blah blah)
MS Teams rings again, triggered from their computer
...

[Mileron]

In a meeting - with two signs hung.

One says "In a meeting, please submit a ticket. Do not disturb.

The other is Yoda saying "if headsets are on, hear you we cannot"

I hear mumbling. I figure it's someone walking by saying hi, because it's early. Then someone comes around my desk and practically waves in my face. (At least they didn't snap their fingers.)

C-level person: I need a minute with you, I'm having problems with my speakers. They sound terrible. Can you fix it? I have a meeting in six minutes.
Me: Sure, let me take a look.

After two quick audio tests (< 30 seconds) I realize it's just the left speaker. It sounds blown, but from an external view can't figure out why (object, liquid, etc)

Me: If you let me reboot your computer, I can..
C-level: Absolutely not. I Just did it (actually, Task Manager proves that's a lie)
Me: In that case, bring it back after your meeting or before you go to lunch, so I can update drivers (since we haven't touched this particular laptop in about 10 months due to him being a primarily remote user) and reboot
C-level: Absolutely not. I'll just use headphones.

Honestly - I don't understand why so many people push back against headphones. Both the audio in and audio out quality is so much better - even with a $30(US) pair of USB headphones. Better audio quality for you AND the people on the other end.
Is it because they don't like shit on their head? Do they think it looks bad in meetings? I don't get it.

[Bonlainy]

So even though I am retired I keep in touch with my old boss, and yesterday he told me a good tech support story:

One of the foremen called him about 3:30pm, the time he usually leaves, and tells him he opened a spreadsheet and got a pop-up asking if he wanted to allow editing, so he said yes, then he got another pop-up about something else and he said yes. Then shit started happening and he realized he screwed up. It was a spreadsheet that was an attachment to an email with the subject FWD: and nothing else, the name of the spreadsheet was report.xlsx and the from email was obviously not from anyone internal. The field staff are all on terminal server instances, so that sever was instantly screwed, and about the time my ex-boss hung up with the guy the security breach emails and phone calls started coming in from Secureworks. He quickly shut the server down, deleted it and restored it from a backup.

The really bad part is that for the past 2 years all staff get an email from Ninjio every month that is a cartoon showing ways people hack, load malware and any other kind of computer crime you can think of, but this guy who has been at the agency for at least 15 years went against all of it and clicked on a spreadsheet on an email that was so obviously not legit. It just boggles the mind. If this had happened 2 months ago it would have been my headache.

[Delores Mulva]

On another forum, a poster posted a message from a crazy person that had been fired. The person had sent e-mails to every employee of her former company from her new address in Russia, each e-mail with 32 attachments of ranting about how the company was still tracking her, she shouldn't have been fired, etc. Everyone else in the thread is yucking it up about how nuts this is, and all I can think is, you got an e-mail from a .ru address that was (if legit) from a disgruntled ex-employee, it had multiple attachments, and someone opened one of them? This is why you can't have nice things!

[FilanFyretracker]

My hard rule on email attachments is if you did not already discuss with me sending one I Shift-Del the email not even giving it the respect of the trash bin folder. When someone hit my truck, The insurance and body shop both told me on the phone there would be emails with PDF attachments shortly for example. So clearly they know this is not an uncommon action on emails.

[Mileron]

a brand new iMac owner with a printing issue

This is an oldie, but a wowie-goodie.

The last couple of years of high school, I worked under the table summers for an accountancy office. (fact 1)
After high school I worked retail in an office supply store for a couple of years (fact 2), and was head-hunted for a Mac support position at an online catalog retailer.
I started training the week after Thanksgiving.
I got on the phones the week between Christmas and New Year's 1999.

I was seated at the desk of the Mac trainer (because shadow training was a thing then).

One of the first calls I had was from a woman who had received a brand new iMac and printer for Christmas.

She was a worship leader of some sort at her church and was trying to print out something inspiring and heart-warming because the winter of 99 was a bad one wherever she was and she wanted to evoke Spring early in the New Year.

Except the graphics she was adding to her newsletter weren't showing up.

We reinstalled drivers.
We reinstalled her publishing software.
We tried different USB ports. Even tried going through the keyboard USB port.
We tried cleaning the print cartridges (even though they, like the printer, were brand new, and the cleaning cycle on Epson inkjets at the time were tremendously wasteful processes.)
We tried replacement ink cartridges, because someone had the foresight to send her extras.

At this point I've got both support managers listening into the call, both trainers leaning over my shoulder, and a good handful of the team milling about trying to offer suggestions.
I was about to process an RMA for the printer when something she stated out of pique caught my attention.

Church Lady: I just don't get it. Where the graphic is supposed to be is wet.
(needless to say she never mentioned this before)
Me: latching onto that Say that again please? What do you mean wet?
CL: Well it's a newsletter, which I think I've already said. I just love flowers - daisies are my favorite - so I wanted a few daisies on the page for spring-y feelings, you know?
Me: Ma'am, out of curiosity, are your daisy images black line art?
CL: Oh no honey, they're full color. Just a beautiful yellow. You wouldn't know they weren't photographs, this technology is so amazing!
Me: And you say the page is wet.
By this point, her frustration had waned and she's just answering questions in between stories about her church, her grandkids etc.
CL: Yeah, right where the flower is supposed to be.
lightbulb
Me: Ma'am, what color is your paper?
CL: Why, goldenrod, of course!
...

...
Me: Ma'am, you can't print yellow flowers onto yellow paper. That's like using a blue crayon on blue construction paper. It just won't work.

I had to mute my phone because of all the people laughing behind me.

Later, someone asked me how I knew what in the hell color "goldenrod" was.

Well, outside of C3P0 being called that as a nickname pretty consistently in Star Wars, I'd worked with (facts 1 and 2) all different colors of color-specific corrective liquid.

One was goldenrod, and it was a mix of nearly-nuclear yellow and orange.

[Mileron]

20220309_083458.jpg

I don't have too much to say about this one.

It did however get accepted by at least two airports' worth of security, and crossed through customs on two international borders.

And yet we still can't carry bottled water.