Anybody else work in IT?

[svandamme]

Originally Posted by RedBaron

I hate working on people's personal machines.

Ditto... What has been seen cannot be unseen.

[tharbert]

I HATE walking into someone's office to help with a computer issue and the keyboard looks like a freaking unscrubbed toilet repleat with skid marks. Some (most?) people are nasty.

This is on my wall:

[legion]

We don't touch personal machines at work, thankfully. We do have PC support people, and network support people, but I am not one of them.

I write little known background programs that pour over the data looking for...inconsistencies. It's very rare for end users to even know that my programs exist. Usually my programs give a first heads-up to our auditors. No one ever knows where that first clue came from...

[aigel]

Even though I work in high tech and am perfectly capable of doing most computer tasks myself, I often have benign requests to the help desk. I should not spend time figuring out something that the pros can do in minutes, often remotely. Makes me look at a moron, but hopefully not as badly as the ones mentioned above.

Another example: I don't even blush asking an office assistant to send a fax for me. They look at me like I am from a different planet. I send a fax ever 6 months - they do it daily, so why not go with their expertise instead of wondering if the darn thing went through or not.

George

[svandamme]

A senior so called Important Person was working in his home office in Germany, bought a new printer, and couldn't get the driver installed.

so he calls us, now, we are not the corporate helpdesk, we are an IT service company and everybody is supposed to be capable of working with a computer in our bizz even the ceo.

so he calls us, while we are in the middle of a system down @ a customer, i tell em i'll send him instructions. Which i do, detailed instructions, step by step, well thought out. direct links to the files and all that.

I send the mail

10 minutes later, he replies with "call me".

I call him expecting he ran into some odd problem
No, nothing like the sort. he goes, "so what do i do now?"

I ask him, at what step are you? , he goes, "what step"
I ask him, have you read the email? , he goes, "yes"
I ask him again, So have you tried step 1? (download this file)
he says ,no, i'll do it now.

Long story short, i simply had to call him to read him the email i had sent him.
My 1-10 step instructions were spot on, he was just to frigging lazy/stupid to actually read em an execute them.

All the while i'm doing Remote Control server recovery for a server with 2000 users down.

I have the same thing as Tharbert on my wall. For good reason.

[t951]

I have so many stories, but this is my fav.

I was a brand new sys admin for a large construction company. (I was the entire IT department.)
I had a lady call and tell me her keyboard was messed up and putting random spaces whenever she would type.
Easiest fix first, I just gave her a new keyboard. The problem stayed.
I gave her a different keyboard, still had the problem.
I think, ok, maybe its a bad connector on the motherboard or something. Since I am the only computer person, I go for the fast fix and swap out her pc.
Next day, same problem.

Ok, I have swapped out the keyboard, and the computer.

This was based on her comments, not actually having seen the error occur. (Hey, I was a rookie!)

Anyway, at this point, I go to her cube and watch. Sure enough, random spaces.

So, I move my seat to the side see if I am missing something. I sure was.

She was a large busted gal, and the way she sat, her massive bossoms would just reach down to the keyboard and caress the space bar.

I almost died trying not to laugh out loud. Then, I had to figure out what to tell her.

I made up some crap about the cable being to tight and that she would have to keep the keyboard on a keyboard tray under the desk, versus being on it.

Months later, after we were friends, I actually told her. She laughed...thankfully.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by svandamme

A senior so called Important Person was working in his home office in Germany, bought a new printer, and couldn't get the driver installed.

so he calls us, now, we are not the corporate helpdesk, we are an IT service company and everybody is supposed to be capable of working with a computer in our bizz even the ceo.

so he calls us, while we are in the middle of a system down @ a customer, i tell em i'll send him instructions. Which i do, detailed instructions, step by step, well thought out. direct links to the files and all that.

I send the mail

10 minutes later, he replies with "call me".

I call him expecting he ran into some odd problem
No, nothing like the sort. he goes, "so what do i do now?"

I ask him, at what step are you? , he goes, "what step"
I ask him, have you read the email? , he goes, "yes"
I ask him again, So have you tried step 1? (download this file)
he says ,no, i'll do it now.

Long story short, i simply had to call him to read him the email i had sent him.
My 1-10 step instructions were spot on, he was just to frigging lazy/stupid to actually read em an execute them.

All the while i'm doing Remote Control server recovery for a server with 2000 users down.

I have the same thing as Tharbert on my wall. For good reason.

I had a similar issue yesterday. I need to get a server name from a user, so I send her a 5 step process something like "open _app_, click "connect", highlight the server that you connect to, copy down the name or IP, send me that info. I get a message from her asking, "what do I do?" So I send her step one
she says "ok", so I send her step 2. It proceeds like that until I hold her hand through all 5 steps. Honestly, it's very, VERY hard to bite my tongue in situations like that. I wish I was independently wealthy and doing this for fun. I might be tempted to say what I was thinking more.

Last week a coworker sent a technician to a location to troubleshoot a phone that wasn't working. When the tech got on site, he walked up, noticed that there was a phone line laying on the floor and no line plugged into the phone itself. He plugged the line into the phone and was done. Yeah, it's not even like the line was plugged into the phone, but not plugged into the wall behind a desk or something. Retards!

I did have a good experience yesterday. I sent a simple list of instructions to a user to go through 2 or 3 steps to isolate the problem on a phone to the phone or the wiring. I got an email back

"I was going down the list below checking each item and when I connected a good phone, I realized that the phone cord was plugged into the headset vs the handset. So, I switched it on the old phone, and now it works just fine.

I apologize that I didn't check this before - I wouldn't have known to do so until I connected the good phone and noticed the difference.
Please close the ticket as this is resolved now with your help."

If I could have sent this girl flowers I would have.

[svandamme]

I allready have a rep for speakin my mind to much, regardles of protocol.
Things like
- ah crap mgmt meating her , again? Why di nobody tell me so I can work from home today?
- It's not coz I manage it that I'm responsible fer yer issues
- all staff meeting? Great, another vacation day I gotta waste
- if I wanted to do 1st line support, now , 15 years in my career, I would'nt ave been hard workin, and ambitious 15 years ago, so no.
- not right now, I'm off to lunch.

Frankly, my tolerance is dropping.. They should just sack me so I can have a sabatical at their expense..they won't.. They need me.. And I'm a sucker for the paycheck and company rally car

[campbellcj]

A few weeks ago I got a frantic call from my wife's medical office front-desk person. She is very sweet but also very blonde. The computer was frozen so the checkout/POS system was unusable. We tried various things and concluded a cold reboot was needed.

It took me literally almost 10 minutes to explain where the power switch is, and the difference between the monitor and the computer itself...but, it worked-out in the end.

[Head416]

Came back from lunch to this email:

*names have been obscured to protect the innocent (?)

I get copied on these Help Desk emails, but thankfully I don't have to deal with them. This was not a continuation of a previous email chain, just out of the blue. Where do these people come from? I've been in IT for 12 twelve years but I'm still shocked every day.

[svandamme]

I got a nice one the other day, from our spanish sales.

He basically forwarded the out of office not from our spanish consultant.
It said " I'm out of office , back on the 29th, if yyou can't wait, contact support"

So to that he added ,can you advise me about this"

I replied with" sure thing I can advise you; I advise you to wait till he get's back, or you send a email to support with a clear question or problem description in it"

[Head416]

The saga continues...


Now, as a point of reference, we don't snapshot users' vm machines around here. I'm shocked to think a user even knows what a snapshot is, let alone why he thinks he needs one.

[svandamme]

Find an old school polaroid, make a snapshot of something and send it to him

[aigel]

This person is looking for a tool that does screen shots to the clipboard. Like the windows snipping tool or something like Gadwin print screen.

George

[Head416]

You know, I had considered that. The emails still aren't clear though. Somebody else is helping him, I'm just enjoying the show.