Tales from Techsupport

[Mileron]

Me, early 2024: Windows 10 EOL is on the horizon. We should look into testing and schedule rolling laptop purchases to remove incompatible devices from the fleet because MS won't support Win10 updates after October 2025
... and late 2024, and early 2025
Me, October 2025: Windows 10 is now EOL. We're going to get alerts every month about devices not getting patched.
Me, November 2025: Please remember, Win10 is EOL, these devices cannot be patched because we did not pay for the extended support
... and December, January 2026, February, March

Team, yesterday: Why are all of these Windows 10 machines unpatched?

[Mileron]

CIO: Please contact C_level, they are getting a weird Microsoft error when trying to access a software service
CIO: Here's a screenshot of the error. He's traveling and you'll have to do it through email.
Error: Your admin has blocked your access to this service. Please contact your admin.
Me: Hi C_Level, please let me know what you were doing when you saw this - was this when logging in to an app, or when accessing the service website on your phone?
C_Level: Please fix, I need this service
Me: Hi, I need to know how you got this error
C_Level: I'll be in the office next week
CIO: Is he fixed yet?
Me: No, he refuses to respond to questions via email, so I'm waiting til he's back in the office
CIO: Keep me informed

Two days later
CIO: Is he fixed?
Me: No he's not in the office

Two days later: Same thing

Weekend goes by
CIO: He should be in the office by the end of the week
C_Level: in meetings and is unapproachable
CIO: Did he stop by your desk yet?
Me: I didn't even know he was in the office, he hasn't come by
C_Level: CIO told me I needed to stop by. You know this is a real inconvenience.
Me:
Me to both CIO and C_Level: We need to fix the request process, give us two days

(Narrator: We had turned off user ability to request access to third party apps, because we'd been getting inundated with more and more requests for Random_AI_App_ABC987, so on the admin side we never received "Please allow access to app" request for this service)

Two days later:
CIO: I need this closed out today
C_Level: Traveling, and not responsive
Me: We've adjusted the request process, so if you re-submit the request for access, we'll get it
C_Level: I don't have time for this

...

[Tinthalas Tigris]

CIO: Please contact C_level, they are getting a weird Microsoft error when trying to access a software service
CIO: Here's a screenshot of the error. He's traveling and you'll have to do it through email.
Error: Your admin has blocked your access to this service. Please contact your admin.
Me: Hi C_Level, please let me know what you were doing when you saw this - was this when logging in to an app, or when accessing the service website on your phone?
C_Level: Please fix, I need this service
Me: Hi, I need to know how you got this error
C_Level: I'll be in the office next week
CIO: Is he fixed yet?
Me: No, he refuses to respond to questions via email, so I'm waiting til he's back in the office
CIO: Keep me informed

Two days later
CIO: Is he fixed?
Me: No he's not in the office

Two days later: Same thing

Weekend goes by
CIO: He should be in the office by the end of the week
C_Level: in meetings and is unapproachable
CIO: Did he stop by your desk yet?
Me: I didn't even know he was in the office, he hasn't come by
C_Level: CIO told me I needed to stop by. You know this is a real inconvenience.
Me:
Me to both CIO and C_Level: We need to fix the request process, give us two days

(Narrator: We had turned off user ability to request access to third party apps, because we'd been getting inundated with more and more requests for Random_AI_App_ABC987, so on the admin side we never received "Please allow access to app" request for this service)

Two days later:
CIO: I need this closed out today
C_Level: Traveling, and not responsive
Me: We've adjusted the request process, so if you re-submit the request for access, we'll get it
C_Level: I don't have time for this

...

"I dont have time for this."
I get this response all the time.

For spring, we have our preventative maintenance and interviewing of departments completely removed from our visits. We are there for deployments and the only PMs we do are for printers and r currency ecyclers. If someone approaches us saying something is down, we can stop by and look at it for 2 minutes and plug a cable back in, otherwise, "have you called this into the help desk?"

All of my sites at the commercial sales, paint counter, front end... Yiu name it. They all say, "I'm too busy."

But the number if times I see them all just standing around and socializing with coworkers is ridiculous. I used to work in their side of things and until I was put in charge of making all help desk calls, I was the same way.

Making help desk calls is what lead to me getting hired in the IT FST side.

So, after over a year of servicing a pariticlar site. Their commercial sales desk telling me about OS issues (Linux terminals that download and install the OS from the network on each boot, and uses all data transactions via the server in the MDF), me constantly telling them to call the issues in, because it has to get forwarded to engineering.

A year of these and they've, presumably never called it in.

All my other sites have apparently called it in, and they have received 5 to 7 new Dell Terminals with faster NICs. Upon installing them, all commercial sales desks are running so much faster. The EUs are very appreciative.

Except for the site that no one ever calls in. The one where Everytime I tell them to they say they are too busy. The place I see them constantly socializing.

They get 1 new terminal sent and it isn't even intended for their commercial sales desks.

They throw a hissy fit saying how much more important they are.

"call stuff in. Help desk sends stuff they can't fix to environment engineering and they make solutions. No one ever calls anything in here."

"well why don't you call it in for us?"

"because time and time again I tell you, they don't want to hear from us about anything on operating environment. They want only to hear from end users. Every other store made the time. They asked supervisors and managers to call in. They received additional terminals. No one here called it in, so they never thought you guys had an issue. They sent me you guys one terminal upgrade. "