Tales from Techsupport

[Mileron]

Among my tasks for the next couple weeks:

1 - Wipe and recycle old network hardware. Yesterday this included repairing a 12+ year old HP switch so that it could in fact be factory-reset.
2 - Remove hard drives from over 80 desktops, and recycle. We've been trying to get them donated for over two years and no one wants them. Partly because they're old Core2Duo units and max out (most of the models, anyway) at 4GB RAM, which is all but useless with Win10 and Chrome. Yes, they'd probably make ok Linux machines but none of the computer organizations I've contacted want them either.
3 - Prepare the office for a return of an unspecified number of people - which is and has been basically ready for such for about a year, but someone complained about something, apparently
4 - Ship several large network devices to a satellite office overseas, hopefully in time for the guy who is going to that office to be able to make use of them. (The last time I shipped something to AUS, it took five weeks to arrive, and I've got three to get it there. This delay is partly due to the primary unit not showing up until last week.)
5 - continue to give my intern his normal daily duties while also trying to transition him out due to a number (more than five, less than ten) of top company leadership catching him reading questionable content (not the webcomic) on his phone. This coupled with his recurring propensity to damage hardware means he needs to go.
6 - Swapdeploy over two dozen laptops - upgrade people who don't need it, and slide their laptops down to people who for some reason have yet to receive laptops at all (mostly due to job function).

fun few weeks.

[Bonlainy]

Among my tasks for the next couple weeks:

1 - Wipe and recycle old network hardware. Yesterday this included repairing a 12+ year old HP switch so that it could in fact be factory-reset.
2 - Remove hard drives from over 80 desktops, and recycle. We've been trying to get them donated for over two years and no one wants them. Partly because they're old Core2Duo units and max out (most of the models, anyway) at 4GB RAM, which is all but useless with Win10 and Chrome. Yes, they'd probably make ok Linux machines but none of the computer organizations I've contacted want them either.
3 - Prepare the office for a return of an unspecified number of people - which is and has been basically ready for such for about a year, but someone complained about something, apparently
4 - Ship several large network devices to a satellite office overseas, hopefully in time for the guy who is going to that office to be able to make use of them. (The last time I shipped something to AUS, it took five weeks to arrive, and I've got three to get it there. This delay is partly due to the primary unit not showing up until last week.)
5 - continue to give my intern his normal daily duties while also trying to transition him out due to a number (more than five, less than ten) of top company leadership catching him reading questionable content (not the webcomic) on his phone. This coupled with his recurring propensity to damage hardware means he needs to go.
6 - Swapdeploy over two dozen laptops - upgrade people who don't need it, and slide their laptops down to people who for some reason have yet to receive laptops at all (mostly due to job function).

fun few weeks.

Ah, it's good to be retired! Those kinds of tasks would be part of my workload right now as well, if I still had a workload.

[Bonlainy]

*Damn the no edits*

I know what you mean about donating old desktops, we had the same issue, so we just started e-wasting all of them after destroying the HDs.

[Mileron]

*Damn the no edits*

I know what you mean about donating old desktops, we had the same issue, so we just started e-wasting all of them after destroying the HDs.

The first two bins of 20 devices disappeared 20 minutes after the building opened the next day.

-==--==-

So we rolled out MFA to the entire org.
Got 500+ people between January and March.
The last 120-odd in the last ten days, over a quarter of which had complaints or supremely stupid problems.
We've had people complain about sharing their phone number with a third party.
Uh... ok so you're putting the number into a third-party website, but it's only going to be used if you lock yourself out of MFA, or if you get a new phone and need to reactivate.
One guy complained about adding a third party app to his phone that can track him.
He uses an iPhone.
One lady installed the MFA app, validated once, then removed it from her phone because she thought one-and-done was how it worked.
Then there were the people who installed an app with a similar name, but was not an MFA app.
Oh and the other guy who called up saying his fourth device wasn't compatible with the app install, to which our question was "why do you need it on four devices, let alone two?" - it's because he travels between his house in the Poconos (tablet), and his house in France (tablet), and his USA and French cell phones.

[FilanFyretracker]

I love it when people are worried about tracking and own a smartphone. Because Apple, Google, CellCo are not already tracking them and selling location data.

tbh multiple devices for 2FA seems like a major security risk, So he would just have this tablet in oh France sitting in another country in a home hes not at for extended periods with the ability to code generate the code needed to login to a corporate network? Generally the idea of 2FA apps was that people tend to maintain constant control of their device.

[Zarbonius]

tbh multiple devices for 2FA seems like a major security risk, So he would just have this tablet in oh France sitting in another country in a home hes not at for extended periods with the ability to code generate the code needed to login to a corporate network? Generally the idea of 2FA apps was that people tend to maintain constant control of their device.

I mean, it's possible that he does keep all of his devices at home all of the time, and brings the relevant ones (tablet 1 for France, tablet 2 for Poconos, etc) with him on his various trips (presumably there are connectivity issues when they are out of region?). But then he's still leaving the rest of the devices at home while he's away, so there's still a risk with them being unattended while he is out of the country.

Whatever happened to keychain 2FA devices (I'm referring to a dedicated code-generator, not a plugin USB device)? Have they fallen by the wayside entirely?

[FilanFyretracker]

I am guessing companies now prefer apps because cheaper. I have the keychain thing for my Battlenet still.

Don't get me started on the fact that banking still uses text sent codes over a codegen app or keychain.

[Mileron]

Keychain 2fa devices are cheapish - 6-10 bucks - but more likely to be lost/forgotten etc than a phone.

[Mileron]

Remote New Guy (position irrelevant) started back in January (actually as of this posting, it might be exactly or very close to three months).

We shipped him a laptop to arrive before his start date. I actually shipped it the week between Christmas and New Years because at that time we were shipping quite early due to the holiday/new year expected shipping crunch.
It went missing.
We shipped him a second laptop.
The second one arrived, and the first one arrived several weeks later.

RNG replaced his phone a day or two before his start date and screwed up something where he wasn't receiving emails.
So he missed being scheduled for his first-day conversation with IT about how to access his laptop and certain other sites/vpn. Things like that.
(We don't send written instructions because if the device goes missing, we don't want some rando having that info.)
I got to him late on his start date, but spent about ninety minutes with him to get him on his feet.

He still to this day (just about three months later) sends me messages asking how to access certain things. After the first two, I've decided to ignore the messages and hope he figures it out on his own or asks his manager/peers because these are apps/sites/whatever he is using daily.

RNG was not among the first, second, or third wave of people to be enrolled in MFA.
This is because in his first two weeks he sent four emails to HR - NOT IT - that he couldn't log into his computer due to bitlocker PIN.
Which I had explicitly told him what it was, and had him write it down.

RNG has also been completely blindsided by the fact that we require passwords, and that they need to be changed.
I walked him through the process of changing his password as the second or third task on his first day. And told him (at the time) that password resets were required every thirty days.
Both times that has occurred(1), he has emailed HR, and this time CC'ed IT.
From his personal email address.
Which got blocked by our spam filter due to impersonation rules.

We implemented auto-reboots of devices with high uptimes, coupled with automatic reboots every month on the weekends where we have our scheduled maintenance/patch periods.
Also, we have disabled Sleep mode through Intune because people are sleeping their devices through maintenance periods and causing all kinds of red flag warnings indicating missed patches or not receiving important app updates etc.
Needless to say, having his computer shut down is causing him fits and he kept emailing HR (from his personal email address) for his bitlocker PIN - which no less than five people (two in HR, three in IT including myself) have told him what it is.

After the 5th? or 6th? such email my manager got involved and told him we will under no circumstances will we accept IT contact from a personal email address, and blocked his personal email at the org level.
So as of yesterday we were up to 11 separate instances of communication - in under three months - of him contacting HR or his manager and NOT IT about passwords/PINs.
The last two times his manager submitted a ticket, blaming the laptop.

No.

No.

No. No no no.

My manager forwarded his manager several of the multiple emails. That manager requested re-training.



So my manager asked for a volunteer. I volunteered because I didn't want to be voluntold. It usually ends up me, see, so I figured I might as well. I'd given him his original first day IT meet&greet. I'd contacted him the lion's share of the times he needed assistance. I was rejected.
I was rejected. Denied. Shot down.
My manager pinged Nervous Norm for the task.

As mentioned before, Nervous Norm is a good kid. Young, a little green, does some quite good work. Listens to most instructions.
He spent more time than was necessary with the guy, because RNG couldn't understand Nervous Norm's accent.

I'm thinking my manager did that because it might require the guy to pay attention during the training.
Which I'm not quite sure will have been a factor.
It remains to be seen how this will turn out.

(1) - now that the entire org is on MFA, password resets are at 90 days. No one yet has noticed.

[Mileron]

We've been doing license audits for various softwares.

Cleaned up shop on Adobe licenses, for example, and reduced our Adobe bill in half.

IN HALF. due to removing licenses from people who no longer need it. Thousands of dollars a month saved.

But Visio. People are hanging on to their Visio licenses - even if they only use it once a month - like a dog clamping down on their favorite bit of rope toy right before you throw it away.
We yanked Visio from all but five devices of people that are expected to be using it. Several dozen uninstalls.
One or two people complained.

So I was charged two weeks ago to find a suitable replacement. A free replacement.
Lucidchart is out.
That doesn't use Java.
yEd is out.
That is updated.
Pencildraw is out.
That opens up Visio files. And saves files to a file type that can be read by Visio.
Which my search ended up bringing me to LibreOffice's Draw application.

Sure, the UI isn't exactly as polished as Visio 2019, but it draws diagrams and flow charts. And there's a little massaging that needs to be done when re-opening the EMF file in Visio (because Visio doesn't open the open-source Draw file) but it is pretty quick in my testing. Unless you have multiple-page diagrams - that takes a little more work.

I had a brief conversation yesterday with one of the primary requesters asking for Visio and gave her a briefer demonstration.
Yes, you read that right.
I pushed the install in the background and called her when she confirmed she could access it.

Visio Requester: So what is this blank page you're showing me?
Me: This is called LibreOffice Draw. It's a replacement for Visio.
VR: What am I supposed to do with this?
Me: ... I don't understand? Do what you would do with Visio.
VR: But Visio comes with squares and diamonds and circles and lines...
Me: as she says the shapes I'm drawing them in the app.
VR: momentary silence Wait, you mean this is manual?
Me: I don't understand, what do you mean manual? You have to create the flow chart. Add text and lines. Yes there are templates, but...
VR: But I have to build it myself?
Me: Well yes...
VR: Oh no no no. That won't do, that won't do at all. We need to figure something else out.



The conversation was just under six minutes - only 18 seconds or so was screentime on the program.

Later I told my manager whose question was, "how does she think Visio works, anyway?"
Thankfully, I did NOT say that to her even though I really, really wanted to.

[Mileron]

I have a long-winded post I want to share about my intern, but it might be too soon.

So I'll leave you with this nugget.

We are setting up a number of semi-surplus machines to be sent to one of our satellite offices and they need to be shipped out by the end of the month.
My list of tasks was simple.
1 - Replace CMOS (over half are showing signs it is dying)
2 - Install SSD if one is not present
3 - Reimage and place at a certain desk
4 - After we get to the target number required, stop 1-3 and go to 5.
5 - Get a surge protector. Stack 6 completed devices (they are very small) at a desk with monitor and keyboard, plug in only power, and let them sit for 15 minutes.
6 - Log into remote management tool and push final config script.
7 - Let them reboot and let them sit for no more than one hour (longer is not necessary).
8 - Gracefully shut them down and stack back at desk in step #3.

Some minor technical hurdles aside (found 8 with bad motherboards in the first twenty machines) steps 1-3 should have taken him no more than two days if he spread out the devices to desks that haven't been used in two years.
Instead, he was doing two at a time. Total. Even after my demonstrating to him that was poor efficiency. (Partly because I was doing 7-10 at a time in between my other tasks.)

So yesterday after I finished almost 40 devices in a day and a half by myself (again, not completely focused) I asked him to finish 6-8 for me.
He stacks 6 of them each at 4.5 desks (four desks, one filing cabinet near them, totaling 30).
I'm on a meeting.
He disappears and comes back a half an hour later. He checks the remote tool and finds none of the devices have dialed home to get the final config.
I hear him over in those desks banging around, complaining about the power cords or the surge protectors.
I peek over the cube wall.

Me: You need to turn them on.
Him: Really?

62324017.jpg

So then we get confirmation that the devices have received the final config and I start hearing him unplug them.

Me: Wait, wait wait. Why are you doing that? I need them gracefully shut down.
Him: Occam's Razor
Me: ... what?
Him: Occam's Razor.
Me: I know what Occam's Razor is - but how does it apply here to the steps I gave you to complete?
Him: You're overcomplicating the process
Me: No, you're not listening. I need you to follow the steps I gave you. You didn't ask any questions so I figured, based on our prior conversations about you not pulling the power out, or holding down the power button to shut devices off, that you might have understood why. But since you're not listening, here you go: I need them gracefully shut down to complete software updates in preparation for their shipping.
Him: But that means I need to find keyboards and monitors for all of them.

OpoQQ.jpg

Me: You do realize one keyboard and mouse will work, as HDMI and USB are hotpluggable?
Him: I still think Occam's Razor applies.
Me: Not in the way you're thinking it doesn't.

jiFfM.jpg

[Nerkahia]

I mean, sure. There are lots of instances where colleagues, and / or internal customers seem woefully under equipped to deal with (what we perceive to be) simple, technological issues.

But seriously... Not this many. -Not 99 pages of such.

Y'all come off as privileged bitches, whining about fellow employees that don't happen to have had the same educational background as yourself.

Suck it up, buttercup. Everyone in a specialized field deals with the same thing every day of their working lives.

Sheesh.

[Mileron]

I mean, sure. There are lots of instances where colleagues, and / or internal customers seem woefully under equipped to deal with (what we perceive to be) simple, technological issues.

There are lots of instances where people who walk into a hospital having injured themselves doing dumb things.
This isn't Tales from the ER.

There are lots of instances where privileged Karens walk into a hotel or restaurant or retail establishment and yell and scream like toddlers who want their pacifier-like equivalent and either get everything they wanted and more or get their tiny little moments squashed by people with more brains than corporate toadyism.
This isn't Tales from The Front Desk or Tales from the Customer.

But seriously... Not this many. -Not 99 pages of such.

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/
738 thousand subscribed readers.

Y'all come off as privileged bitches

No, we're just people who are commiserating in a manner similar to "drinking at the bar and bitching about the day"
but I don't drink
I haven't been in a bar in over three years
the last trip that I can remember that wasn't "wings only" was this one
https://www.graffes.com/forums/showt...=1#post1872398

seven years ago

whining about fellow employees that don't happen to have had the same educational background as yourself.

You make assumptions.

Related to my immediately prior comment:
I had some very simple instructional steps I needed followed.
They weren't.
It cost me more time that could have been used finalizing the task or on something else, because I had to do it myself as the intern took it upon himself to leave shortly after I asked him to do it the way I had originally asked him to do it.

Suck it up, buttercup. Everyone in a specialized field deals with the same thing every day of their working lives.

Start your own "Tales From (Work Annoys Me/Lifts Me Up/People Suck Because X)" thread, then.

I'd love to read a few examples of what you deal with.

Sheesh.

I don't read a lot of the other threads that come up in my New Posts list.

No one's forcing you to read the thread.

[Nerkahia]

Fair enough. Was a drunk post anyway. I really gotta stop doing that one of these days.

Apologies if I offended anyone.

Start your own "Tales From (Work Annoys Me/Lifts Me Up/People Suck Because X)" thread, then.

Oh its tempting. I work in such a niche industry though I doubt anyone else would relate.

Carry on ~

[Tinthalas Tigris]

I have been dealing with my site being outside of the norm of our regular corporation.

To put it simply, my location is one of 13 national "red headed step children" that has a minimal server room. Almost everything is done through the ages old Linux based server that dials into our corporate server in North Carolina.

The rest is inventory and requisitions handled at a server in "normal" site with our server at its location, controlling a/r at a pricing index located within the district which it resides in.

My "step child" location is in district a. Our requisition and pricing is in district b. Our invoice generation is in district c.

Prices, logistics, carriers, etc, are completely different between all 3.

They have "upgraded" all normal locations to use a completely separate price and requisition as well as invoicing generation tool.

Our quarterly updates will not import properly from site C, because site B overrides our site A pricing/logistics utility with site B's district data.

Since March 3rd,i have been aware of this and have gone back and forth from IT (solomon's key procedure #1) to Pricing Center (solomon's key procedure #2) and both sites indicate the problem is with the other.

I have no way of expressing this hypothesis to anyone with sudo privileges, because I do not have sudo privileges, and I have been refused access, because I am not a senior enough level to do so, and none of the management chian above me has authorization to grant me sudo priveleges, because they do not have {or need} sudo priveleges.

So instead if remote desktopping in from IT and me walking them through grabbing or developing a packet sniffing and parsing tool, I have spent the last 9 weeks conveying the entire procedure of pricing and logistics that refuses to update properly at our location to a new person every single week on the pathway up the corporate ladder who after realizing I might be worth my salt has forwarding my email tree to the person above them.

I did not *know* that there were 9 levels of hierarchy above me,and it sounds as though it might be as many as 11 levels before I get to the person who has sudo priveleges to analyze, parse, and then diagnose the ledgers that are not handshaking data properly, until finally, I might be able to have that data forwarded to development to correct it.

I am the highest level of management (currently) at my step-child location, but my lack of ability to produce the error in a way that makes sense to the folks in charge who have facilities that are not step-children locations is absolutely daunting.

[Mileron]

Later I told my manager whose question was, "how does she think Visio works, anyway?"
Thankfully, I did NOT say that to her even though I really, really wanted to.

So I had a follow up call with the lady, and someone else in her identical position with whom she has no usual direct contact with.
Went over the app options.

OtherGuy says, "hey, what do you think about Powerpoint?"
Me: In what respect
OG: It allows editing of org charts on a slide
Lady: Sold, show me how to do it

Narrator: Of course, she still has to do manual entry... but now she has a template. And someone else to show her how to use it.

[Zarbonius]

Narrator: Of course, she still has to do manual entry... but now she has a template. And someone else to show her how to use it.

There is something that's comforting about a template, though. "Yes, I'm doing this correctly. Yes, this is how it is supposed to look - I just need to change the names/titles as needed."


A totally blank page can be a terrifying thing, but the presence of a few pre-existing text boxes, with reasonable spacing and defined links between them, along with a soothing pre-selected colour scheme, can make a big difference in terms of perceived task difficulty.


I'm not actually being sarcastic or condescending here; perceived task difficulty is a real obstacle to productivity. If a template can act as a catalyst to get things moving forward, then why not use one, right?

[Mileron]

There is something that's comforting about a template, though. "Yes, I'm doing this correctly. Yes, this is how it is supposed to look - I just need to change the names/titles as needed."

A totally blank page can be a terrifying thing, but the presence of a few pre-existing text boxes, with reasonable spacing and defined links between them, along with a soothing pre-selected colour scheme, can make a big difference in terms of perceived task difficulty.

I'm not actually being sarcastic or condescending here; perceived task difficulty is a real obstacle to productivity. If a template can act as a catalyst to get things moving forward, then why not use one, right?

Absolutely.

The issue I had was that all people would give me the time for, when asked why they need Visio, was "we know we use Visio that's why we use Visio".

When I was doing my testing for a possible replacement I was tunnel-vision gung-ho set on Libreoffice because
A) Updated regularly
B) didn't break MS Office
C) Could import from (but not save back to) visio files

Since they already had an apparent glut of Visio files, why not use it?

But Powerpoint is already installed on all devices. Already licensed. And more of the people in the respective departments use PP for "normal stuff" that I don't need to worry about anything in relation to training.

[Tinthalas Tigris]

Absolutely.

The issue I had was that all people would give me the time for, when asked why they need Visio, was "we know we use Visio that's why we use Visio".

When I was doing my testing for a possible replacement I was tunnel-vision gung-ho set on Libreoffice because
A) Updated regularly
B) didn't break MS Office
C) Could import from (but not save back to) visio files

Since they already had an apparent glut of Visio files, why not use it?

But Powerpoint is already installed on all devices. Already licensed. And more of the people in the respective departments use PP for "normal stuff" that I don't need to worry about anything in relation to training.

My company switched to Libreoffice after they got rid of the IBM terminals in the early 90s. I love the suite. It is tremendous. THey have the ability to save permanently onto workstations completely disabled.

We have to download to a temp directory and then upload to our Microsoft One Drive, because the temp drive purges ever hour.

Hypothetically, this is to keep "sensitive" information and documents from being exposed to individuals on the networks/terminals that shouldn't see it. but it is a pain in the ass.

They could just as easily provide single directories on the server with each of our logins... but... we don't login to the terminals using a linux user. that is always automatically logged in as a generic, and the individual applications that run from it have our IDs tied to each of those programs.

But .. yeah..

for my same issue that i posted with the other day, they continue to try and circumvent various errors in pricing/inventory/invoicing by attempting to draw from different resource fields of pricing. MSP as opposed to cost... They just won't fix the problem, but instead circumvent making it a smart fix, and continue to break two additional modules of pricing/shipping/invoicing/ordering in order to fix one.

Part of the problem of our "step child" version of our location is that we don't have don't have any of their hotfixes in place that should work fo rthem at alternate locations. We are a beta product that no one properly designed from the ground up, for data logistics.

I'm now on level 12 of tech support, and who knows how many laterals that I've actually been placed on, because a 12 level tech support/development support hierarchy seems stupid. there's no fucking way. I couldn't be above level 3 or 4.

[Merrick ap'Milandra]

Fair enough. Was a drunk post anyway. I really gotta stop doing that one of these days.

Apologies if I offended anyone.

No worries!

Some of this is "Holy crap, that's a new record!" e-peen measuring for some of the stupid stuff we have to put up with.

Like, after a long enough period of time working in IT, you think "I've seen it all" and then, at some point, someone one-ups you in a way you never thought possible.

Like a "server room" where someone "racked" the Ubiquiti gear by resting it on top of a zimmerframe/walker (just saw that pic a few hours ago, NOT MINE thank goodness).

zimmerframe_racking.jpg