• Dude (unregistered) in reply to bitblit
    bitblit:
    4/7/2008 14:09 GMT;ROBERT J; 4/7/2008 15:11 GMT;ROBERT J; I just got back from the bathroom. Spotted some weird chafing on my inner thigh. I think this means my pants really are too tight. Size 36 pants here I come? Good god, I am so fat.

    I have size 52. Just get a job near big supermarket, and move freely, Only then you can surpass me

  • Manic Mailman (unregistered)

    It's not exactly Rover, but if your users really, really want Clippy back, here's a replacement:

    http://www.rjlsoftware.com/software/entertainment/clippy/default.shtml

  • Brainfuzz (unregistered)

    I had a user who called screaming that her brand-new ink cartridge was empty. She had to print off a few hundred customer notices RIGHT NOW, and she was stuck.
    I ran a cartridge down to her, and saw what she was doing. She typed the notice on a yellow piece of paper, put it on the glass, and made hundreds of copies of the yellow paper onto her plain white paper.
    I fixed her problem, then left the office to explain to her handler (assistant) how we keep yellow paper right around the corner.

  • (cs) in reply to wtfdude
    wtfdude:
    Code Dependent:
    Customer: "...the first six copies came out fine..." Helpdesk: "...so I walked him through the standard steps: making sure he could connect to the printer..."
    Yep, sounds like every helpdeskie I've ever dealt with.

    No kidding. I hate help desk people that can't think for themselves. OBVIOUSLY he can connect to the printer if he printed 6 pages.

    I'm afraid this is just the sort of simplistic rationalisation that some low-grade Enterprise Architect would make if they'd never done a day in the trenches.

    I remember vividly my time as a Third-Level Supportbot. I had exactly the problem described. "I just print six pages in colour an' now he dead!" wailed the twit on the other end of the phone in an annoying Spanish accent. Bloody foreigners.

    Well, I walked up to the seventh floor and checked the network: all OK. I phoned the IT department and made sure the twit in question still had valid access rights to the printer servers. I checked with Provisioning to ensure that there were, indeed, colour printers on the seventh floor, and that they did, indeed, have a plentiful supply of manufacturer-guaranteed colour cartridges. They also each had a secondary tray of yellow paper, although I must admit that this is just a co-incidence, and I didn't actually check it at the time.

    You can imagine my frustration.

    I walked back down to the basement, slaying the occasional troll along the way, and picked up the phone to the original complainant. "There's no reason you shouldn't be able to print in colour. There's nothing dead on the whole of the damn seventh floor!"

    "What seventh floor?" he asked. "I just dictate to the monk sitting next to me. Half-way through an illuminated 'C' on the seventh page, he just drop dead..."

    Addendum (2008-09-11 16:46): On all support positions from now on I intend to prefix the first question on the standard script with:

    "By any chance, Sir, are you a religious person?"

  • Mark (unregistered)

    Diary of a COMPUTER WON'T BOOT Ticket.

    That totally brings back memories of the days when I worked for Packard Bell do tech support.

    One day I had a call from a tech sent by Packard Bell to repair a broken computer. I could hear the customer in the back ground, then when she left the room the tech said "Thank god she left the room. Please help me get out of here as soon as possible. This entire house smell like dog piss."

  • (cs) in reply to JamesQMurphy
    JamesQMurphy:
    webhamster:
    - A sticky substance over all the keys and inside the keyboard (rum & coke?)
    You hope it's rum & coke. What if he was viewing porn?

    She.

  • Buddy (unregistered) in reply to amischiefr
    amischiefr:
    Death to all Office assistants!!!

    When I used to do staff support, I'd get a request, e.g. "How do I set up a mail merge?" I'd go over and type into Skippy, "How do I set up a mail merge?" Then I'd pick the answer that looks the best and read it to them. Wouldn't do it disparagingly, no smirking, anything like that. Next time it happens, e.g. "Is there a way to add numbers in Word?" Same thing, type into Skippy, "Is there a way to add numbers in Word?". It was usually two or three times I had to do this for each person before they realized, "Hey, all you're doing is typing in what I ask. I can do that!" I'd shrug, and say "I suppose." The really stupid ones never figured it out.

  • (cs) in reply to wtfdude

    [quote user="wtfdude"][quote user="Code Dependent"] No kidding. I hate help desk people that can't think for themselves. OBVIOUSLY he can connect to the printer if he printed 6 pages. When ever I have to deal with my ISP call center I feel like scalping myself. Can you connect to the internet? "NO THATS WHY IM CALLING YOU WITH A TICKET REQUEST OF MY INTERNET CONNECTION IS DOWN." I mean I know they have to ask some dumb questions as you do have computer illiterate people calling in, but geez. how about you actually use your brain instead of basically being a robot. [/quote]

    Because when you don't follow the process things get n factor more complicated. Most calls can usually be handled with those first questions. I remember one night I spent with a customer re-configuring stuff, re-installing drivers, etc. only to discover her modem was never plugged in. I could have saved myself a ton of work if I had asked that basic question off the top.

    The know-it-alls who call are the worst. Because by and large they don't "know it all".

    But then, I haven't worked in or managed a helpdesk in 7 years so what do I know?

  • PublicLurker (unregistered) in reply to webhamster
    webhamster:
    JamesQMurphy:
    webhamster:
    - A sticky substance over all the keys and inside the keyboard (rum & coke?)
    You hope it's rum & coke. What if he was viewing porn?

    She.

    Was her name Patty or Selma by any chance?
  • Alcari (unregistered) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    What do you think they will say when you call and tell them "I'm really smart, so you can totally skip all those basic steps"?

    Ignorce you, because that's exactly what all the idiots say.

    What you actually want to is list each and every thing on their list, and if you're lucky, it might work.

    so that would be something like: "Hi, my internet isn't working. I connected directly to the modem, reset it, reinstalled your software, reconfiguredmanually,checkedthecables,flushedDNS,yadyadayda......"

    and if you're lucky they won't reply with "Did you reset your router?"

  • (cs) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    wtfdude:
    No kidding. I hate help desk people that can't think for themselves. OBVIOUSLY he can connect to the printer if he printed 6 pages. When ever I have to deal with my ISP call center I feel like scalping myself. Can you connect to the internet? "NO THATS WHY IM CALLING YOU WITH A TICKET REQUEST OF MY INTERNET CONNECTION IS DOWN." I mean I know they have to ask some dumb questions as you do have computer illiterate people calling in, but geez. how about you actually use your brain instead of basically being a robot.

    This guy doesn't even grasp the concept that you can put colored paper in a printer and it's not actually "coloring" a white sheet of paper. Is it really outside the realm of possibility that someone else printed something and he thought it was his printout?

    What do you think they will say when you call and tell them "I'm really smart, so you can totally skip all those basic steps"?

    "Great, is your network cable hooked in?"

  • (cs) in reply to PublicLurker
    PublicLurker:
    webhamster:
    JamesQMurphy:
    webhamster:
    - A sticky substance over all the keys and inside the keyboard (rum & coke?)
    You hope it's rum & coke. What if he was viewing porn?

    She.

    Was her name Patty or Selma by any chance?

    That's actually a pretty good description of her (especially the voice) but without the big hair. And her name was Christine. Ugh. Bad, bad memories.

  • m0ffx (unregistered)

    It's maybe not that surprising to be assigned a ticket for an issue you reported. Once the ticket's assigned to you, that can surely be taken as grounds for you to stop what you were doing and get to work on it. Thus, when what you were doing falls behind schedule, there's your reason why. Whereas if you'd not reported it at all, you wouldn't have that.

  • (cs) in reply to gabba
    gabba:
    The last one is not a WTF. The Clippy things were actually quite popular with certain users. Yes, those users did not include computer nerds, but ... so what? Here's a clue: not everything is intended for you.
    And not everybody was intended to use a computer.

    It's kind of neat, really. In a Venn diagram sort of way.

    Look, if you want to buy a puppy, buy a puppy. (Or, if you must, a Packard Bell.)

    Just don't do it near a Korean McDonalds. Remember: "Dogs aren't just for Friday Night Barbecues..."

  • (cs)

    And I really don't see what Paul Anderson's problem is. Me, I don't trust anybody else with my defects. Not even my proctologist.

  • cod3_complete (unregistered)

    "No," the caller scoffed, "you I.T. people don't know anything! Rocky... the dog... on my computer!"

    LOL...LMAO...

  • tbrown (unregistered) in reply to wtfdude
    wtfdude:
    Code Dependent:
    Customer: "...the first six copies came out fine..." Helpdesk: "...so I walked him through the standard steps: making sure he could connect to the printer..."
    Yep, sounds like every helpdeskie I've ever dealt with.

    No kidding. I hate help desk people that can't think for themselves. OBVIOUSLY he can connect to the printer if he printed 6 pages. When ever I have to deal with my ISP call center I feel like scalping myself. Can you connect to the internet? "NO THATS WHY IM CALLING YOU WITH A TICKET REQUEST OF MY INTERNET CONNECTION IS DOWN." I mean I know they have to ask some dumb questions as you do have computer illiterate people calling in, but geez. how about you actually use your brain instead of basically being a robot.

    Wow, deja vu! Just yesterday a co-worker lost his internet connect, called the help desk, and the first question from the help deskie was "please tell me your IP address." (all IP addresses are DHCP assigned). Sheesh!

    captch "tation" -- (I guess we can fill in the prefix as desired)

  • tbrown (unregistered) in reply to webhamster

    [quote user="webhamster"][quote user="wtfdude"][quote user="Code Dependent"] No kidding. I hate help desk people that can't think for themselves. OBVIOUSLY he can connect to the printer if he printed 6 pages. When ever I have to deal with my ISP call center I feel like scalping myself. Can you connect to the internet? "NO THATS WHY IM CALLING YOU WITH A TICKET REQUEST OF MY INTERNET CONNECTION IS DOWN." I mean I know they have to ask some dumb questions as you do have computer illiterate people calling in, but geez. how about you actually use your brain instead of basically being a robot. [/quote]

    Because when you don't follow the process things get n factor more complicated. Most calls can usually be handled with those first questions. I remember one night I spent with a customer re-configuring stuff, re-installing drivers, etc. only to discover her modem was never plugged in. I could have saved myself a ton of work if I had asked that basic question off the top.

    The know-it-alls who call are the worst. Because by and large they don't "know it all".

    But then, I haven't worked in or managed a helpdesk in 7 years so what do I know?[/quote]

    Yeah, but they should still apply some common sense to their stock questions. E.g.:

    Caller: My router isn't working, only one light comes on and it blinks in a fixed pattern.

    Help Desk: Is the power cord connected?

    Captcha "appellatio" (applied fellatio?)

  • moz (unregistered) in reply to d3matt
    d3matt:
    The RWTF is the fact that MS let all that revenue out the door when they allowed people to upgrade Outlook without the rest of the office suite.
    That didn't lose them anywhere near as much as when they let people download Internet Explorer free of charge.
  • ShatteredArm (unregistered) in reply to Nerf Herder
    Nerf Herder:
    I don't work for the help desk, but my favorite developer email/call recently went like this:

    User: "You are missing $9 million from the report for this month. Nancy told me they got $9 million in business this month and your report is WRONG"

    My Boss: "Nerf Herder I am getting frantic emails about $9 million missing from your file - what went wrong?"

    Me: "I just looked at the table and there is no data for the month, let alone $9 million. Let me call Nancy and find out what is going on"

    Nancy: "I have no idea what went wrong - your form must be deleting our data!"

    10 minutes later I get an email from Nancy cc'ing a bunch of folks.

    Dear Mike, You must actually go into the form and enter the data into the system otherwise it will not get on the file. Please go ahead and do so as soon as possible.

    Nancy.

    WHEW CRISIS AVERTED!!!

    My favorite user ticket I was assigned:

    Percentages on pie charts don't add up to 100%. Sometimes they are 99.9%, and sometimes and 100.1%.

    I carefully explained that there is a glitch in the universal laws of mathematics that prevents the percentages from always adding up to 100% when rounded, like, for example, three equal segments, which would be 33.3%+33.3%+33.3%=99.9%. I asked if lying about the percentages and arbitrarily increasing or decreasing one of them by 0.1% would make them feel better about the math. Our project manager was cool about it and just said to leave it as an open low-priority issue.

  • Manic Mailman (unregistered) in reply to tbrown
    tbrown:
    Wow, deja vu! Just yesterday a co-worker lost his internet connect, called the help desk, and the first question from the help deskie was "please tell me your IP address." (all IP addresses are DHCP assigned). Sheesh!
    This is a legitimate troubleshooting step. - it may surprise you that it's entirely possible to have an IP address (a valid one, even) and still have problems connecting to the Internet.

    Some of things that could be cause problems connecting to the Internet even when you have a valid IP address: malware, firewalls, defective or misconfigured routers, DNS problems, retards at the keyboard...

  • jas88 (unregistered)

    "Had C. from L.T. in to look at printer. Issues caused by dead mouse. Removed, cleaned, and put back in service."

    What was, the printer or the mouse?

    I sometimes get a kick out of these boomerang tickets, particularly having been part of the central IT department before moving to a dev role with occasional guru work (anything everyone else gives up on seems to get sent my way, and usually resolved). A year or two back, I filed a ticket noting that one of the central NTP servers was down. This was assigned to my old team, Unix Support, who investigated - and passed it to my department's technician, because apparently one of the central NTP servers was actually trying to take a time feed from one of our client systems. Since the technician had no idea about NTP, he escalated the ticket back to me... (Rather than try to get the ticket reassigned back, I just talked to the new Unix guys directly and sorted it out. Thanks very little, Helpdesk.)

    Our crappy e-mail system's spellchecker invariably offers 'helpless' as a correction of 'helpdesk'. Having dealt with them far too often, I consider this a Freudian slip; however, they now call themselves the Servicedesk instead.

    It does infuriate me that ALL requests have to be raised via the Helpless, leading to exchanges such as:

    "Port #12-A-27 is on the wrong VLAN, can you ask Networks to get it reconfigured please?" "What's a VLAN?" (Networking 101 in 30 seconds) "Oh. So, er, what does that affect?" "Well, it means the IP address is on the wrong subnet, so this machine can't access departmental resources which are address-limited, like printers." "So I'll put it down as a printing problem?" "No. Just assign it to Networks, they know what it is."

  • Konstantin (unregistered)

    I had a user, who called me and wondered if we are keeping track of what she's doing on her PC. I said no and asked why is she asking that. She said she sees eyes on her monitor and they follow her. I had to connect remotely to see this. It was the MS Assistant - Clippy.

  • (cs)

    If I ever have to call a help desk, I don't mind going through their call scripts. It used to bother me until I had to start writing them at my current job. Help desk people are idiots and are just reading the script, so I don't hold that against them.

    What is worse is when help desk people THINK they know what they are doing and stray from the script. I am a PM for several web applications and I occasionally get tickets assigned to me when the helpdesk can't solve the problem (most of the time), like the following:

    "User called in and said he was trying to access such-and-such web application. He received an error stating that his account was locked due to excessive incorrect login attempts and to contact the help desk for more information. I had him restart his computer and disable all peripherals, but that didn't fix the problem. Please fix your application."

    That annoys me especially since my call scripts clearly would say "When the user receives an error saying they've been locked out due to excessive invalid login attempts, log into such-and-such management tool, right click on their account name and select 'unlock'."

    In my experience as someone who deals with both users AND help desk personnel, I can say that most of the time help desk employees tend to be bigger idiots than the users.

    And to any help desk personnel reading this, please stop f*cking writing tickets in "txt message" speak.

  • Peter (unregistered) in reply to h
    h:
    Jesse:
    The way a pun ought to be told: with subtlety. Brilliant.
    And pointing it out does not make it better... -.-
    I honestly had passed right over it. I appreciate it being pointed out, but still being subtle originally.
  • Moz (unregistered) in reply to wtfdude
    wtfdude:
    No kidding. I hate help desk people that can't think for themselves. OBVIOUSLY he can connect to the printer if he printed 6 pages.

    I sentence you to one month working on a help desk.

    Users are regularly mistaken about even the most obvious things. I've had users "not notice" that none of their print jobs come out, ever. Often because when they walk to the common printer there's stuff in it, so they grab that and ring the helpdesk complaining that it is not printed correctly. Then their coworker rings to complain that their print jobs disappear.

  • Mark V Shaney (unregistered)

    One of my friends was an intern in a big telecom company. He worked on the code of some old system, that didn't really had much documentation, and, to the amazement of its cow-orkers, was able to make some sense of it. He got some karma points that way.

    One day, he starts digging deeper in the undocumented code, and can't really make sense of it. So, he take the phone (there were 4 phones at the center of the 4 desks, so everybody has its phone, but, if you are online, someone else can take the call. After all, this was a telecom company) and call his boss, asking for some help. The boss redirect him to some IT service, where the helpful guy said "no problem, we have access to an expert on that code", and, a few seconds later, one of the 3 other phones rang...

    In French, we say "Un grand moment de solitude" (a great moment of loneliness)...

  • JB (unregistered) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    wtfdude:
    No kidding. I hate help desk people that can't think for themselves. OBVIOUSLY he can connect to the printer if he printed 6 pages. When ever I have to deal with my ISP call center I feel like scalping myself. Can you connect to the internet? "NO THATS WHY IM CALLING YOU WITH A TICKET REQUEST OF MY INTERNET CONNECTION IS DOWN." I mean I know they have to ask some dumb questions as you do have computer illiterate people calling in, but geez. how about you actually use your brain instead of basically being a robot.

    This guy doesn't even grasp the concept that you can put colored paper in a printer and it's not actually "coloring" a white sheet of paper. Is it really outside the realm of possibility that someone else printed something and he thought it was his printout?

    What do you think they will say when you call and tell them "I'm really smart, so you can totally skip all those basic steps"?

    I accept that and can be patient but I can't stand when they should be getting that I know what I'm talking about and don't.

    For example, when I start the conversation on diagnosing my recently lost internet connection with the results of pinging the dhcp address & various other meaningful info, I don't want them to walk me through pinging google keystroke by keystroke and eventually conclude something that I'd already ruled out before calling.

  • Peter (unregistered)

    I work as an EE in a small design consultancy. There are about 150 very bright people and four IT guys. Four of the greatest IT guys I have ever had the pleasure of working with.

    I try not to call them, but sometimes I need to. They are not overworked, and so I get very good response. Usually it's printer toner or a file on the network share that needs to be restored or have its permissions changed. Sometimes it's more interesting. Like the time last week, when one of the guys came by asking if anyone had a floppy disk he could use. He came to me, because I'm the old fart with the stash of crap in his desk. I gave him the disk and he went off to put a system rescue kit on it. Next day, he came by with the new Dell laptop they're going to issue me in January.

    These guys are the best. They had no problem when I asked if I could install Ubuntu as dual-boot on my laptop, even offered to help. We get along great, the EE department is the only one whose PCs aren't locked down, we swap tips and tell each other about new software we've discovered. They support PCs, Apples and Linux equally well.

    Just thought this thread needed an "outstanding helpdesk" posting. And, if you're reading this, Andre, Ed, Kyp or Brendan; keep up the good work!

  • (cs) in reply to JB
    JB:
    akatherder:
    wtfdude:
    No kidding. I hate help desk people that can't think for themselves. OBVIOUSLY he can connect to the printer if he printed 6 pages. When ever I have to deal with my ISP call center I feel like scalping myself. Can you connect to the internet? "NO THATS WHY IM CALLING YOU WITH A TICKET REQUEST OF MY INTERNET CONNECTION IS DOWN." I mean I know they have to ask some dumb questions as you do have computer illiterate people calling in, but geez. how about you actually use your brain instead of basically being a robot.

    This guy doesn't even grasp the concept that you can put colored paper in a printer and it's not actually "coloring" a white sheet of paper. Is it really outside the realm of possibility that someone else printed something and he thought it was his printout?

    What do you think they will say when you call and tell them "I'm really smart, so you can totally skip all those basic steps"?

    I accept that and can be patient but I can't stand when they should be getting that I know what I'm talking about and don't.

    For example, when I start the conversation on diagnosing my recently lost internet connection with the results of pinging the dhcp address & various other meaningful info, I don't want them to walk me through pinging google keystroke by keystroke and eventually conclude something that I'd already ruled out before calling.

    Remember, that at most phone farms calls are recorded and selectively monitored. If these guys/girls DO NOT follow the script and meticulously note the result in the ticket they can be written up, docked pay, demoted, or even fired. If their ticket gets escalated and it's missing that info it's a bad day for the front line rep. A really bad day.

    I got out of tech support long before it became indentured servitude but take into account that not following the script because you're impatient could lose them a job. Independent thought alarms are installed at every phone these days.

  • (cs)

    "Help Desk, this is Jack. How can I help you?"

    "I'm having trouble posting comments to TheDailyWTF. I can reach the site, but when I type in a message it doesn't show up."

    "Are you connected to the Internet?"

    "How the hell could I reach the site if I'm not connected to the Internet? Look, I'm really smart so let's just skip the baby talk."

    "Okay, walk me through walk me through your problem, then."

    "I read an article, click 'Add a Comment', type in my message, and when I refresh the comments, mine doesn't show up."

    "Did you click 'Submit'?"

    "Submit?? I will never submit! Not to you, not to TheDailyWTF! NEVAR!!!"

    "And is your modem plugged into the wall socket?"

  • (cs)

    The real WTF about roaches in the computer is the fact that it happens all too often.

    shiver

  • contractor (unregistered)

    Being a contractor, you tend to make your rounds and have repeat business as it were with the same clients.

    Me: Hello Help Desk. I need my e-mail account to be re-activated. I left 3 months ago and am back now for a while.

    Help Desk: That's fine. Please send your request via your e-mail account.

    Me: But that's the reason for my call. I cannot access my e-mail account and therefore cannot send you a request from my e-mail account to activate it.

    Help Desk: Sorry, but that's the rules.

    Me: Arrrrgggh!!

  • jimbob (unregistered) in reply to anon
    anon:
    Code Dependent:
    Customer: "...the first six copies came out fine..." Helpdesk: "...so I walked him through the standard steps: making sure he could connect to the printer..."
    Yep, sounds like every helpdeskie I've ever dealt with.

    Yeah, this is TRWTF... Doesn't anyone know how to troubleshoot anymore?

    If you've ever worked a (typical) helldesk you'll know you're not allowed to deviate from "the script", and getting the customer off the phone so you can take the next call is your only goal.

    Complain to your ISP/whoever that they outsourced the wrong part of their business, not about the poor bastard that has to recite the same stupid steps 50 times a day.

  • Amorya (unregistered)

    I once had to phone Apple technical support, after buying a new PowerMac which had died after only a week. I suspected a PSU failure, but since it was under warrantee I just wanted a replacement.

    I spoke to a woman who asked me all the basic questions: is it plugged in, have you tried holding down the power button for 5 seconds, etc. For each one, I replied with something along the lines of "I've done that".

    She then said "I'm going to talk you through opening the case and pressing a small button on the motherboard". I replied "I've done that" again. She said "Oh? What does it do?", to which I correctly responded that it resets the power management system.

    Upon hearing this, she instantly authorised a replacement computer.

  • (cs)

    I'm having a problem with The Daily WTF. The first few comments were in colour but the rest are in black and white!

  • TopTension (unregistered)

    The real WTF with the Rocky story is that it is possible to break your Office installation by upgrading your email program.

    TopTension

  • (cs) in reply to Amorya
    Amorya:
    ...but since it was under warrantee I just wanted a replacement. *snip* She then said "I'm going to talk you through opening the case and pressing a small button on the motherboard". I replied "I've done that" again. *snip*

    Upon hearing this, she instantly authorised a replacement computer.

    You opened the case on the computer without voiding the warranty? (Note spelling)

    Impressive. What country?

  • (cs) in reply to fungible
    fungible:
    I used to work for a casino as a network tech. We contracted our printer repair to a local company because our boss didn't believe in training OR spare parts. One day when C. came in, I was the lucky one assigned to "work" with him. Basically, I had to stand around while he worked, which didn't bother me that much because he was cool and had lots of stories. So this day, he's telling me he just got done working on a printer in one of the local hospitals which had been having lots of jams and other problems. The cause of the issue? A dead mouse in the printer.

    Fast forward 18 months to my new job at a local hospital. I walk into my coworker's cube where we keep our Luser hall of fame. On the wall is a helpdesk ticket for a printer. The resolution read as follows: "Had C. from L.T. in to look at printer. Issues caused by dead mouse. Removed, cleaned, and put back in service."

    ... the printer or the mouse??

  • (cs)

    Must be one of these new environmentally friendly printers powered by Mice in exercise wheels.

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to wtfdude
    wtfdude:
    No kidding. I hate help desk people that can't think for themselves. OBVIOUSLY he can connect to the printer if he printed 6 pages. When ever I have to deal with my ISP call center I feel like scalping myself. Can you connect to the internet? "NO THATS WHY IM CALLING YOU WITH A TICKET REQUEST OF MY INTERNET CONNECTION IS DOWN." I mean I know they have to ask some dumb questions as you do have computer illiterate people calling in, but geez. how about you actually use your brain instead of basically being a robot.

    Yes, reminds me of the time I called 999 as I'd just seen a guy knocked off his motorcycle. I explained that he looked like he'd hurt his ankle as he was walking around with a heavy limp. Next question from the emergency operator was "is the victim conscious?". Well, what parts of "walking around" are you having trouble with?

  • (cs) in reply to Mike
    Mike:
    Yes, reminds me of the time I called 999 as I'd just seen a guy knocked off his motorcycle. I explained that he looked like he'd hurt his ankle as he was walking around with a heavy limp. Next question from the emergency operator was "is the victim conscious?". Well, what parts of "walking around" are you having trouble with?
    The operator wanted to be sure that the victim wasn't a zombie.
  • psini (unregistered) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    What do you think they will say when you call and tell them "I'm really smart, so you can totally skip all those basic steps"?

    When calling my ISP help desk I used the technique of "brain overflowing": don't let the h/d person the time to start the script (all that fundamental questions like "power is connected to the PC" or "your modem is connected to the line") but describe the problem with the maximum possible of technical details.

    They never understand a word of it, but cannot tell you so, so the usual answer is "oh, OK, I'll forward your call to a tech..."

  • Kyp (unregistered)

    I work as a sysadmin in a small design consultancy. There are four of us in the IT dept - the IT manager, two sysadmins, and a PFY-type dogsbody. As for users, there are about 149 very bright people, and one other old guy. Nobody quite knows what he does. We think he's the boss's brother-in-law, but nobody's really sure - and we sure as hell don't know what his job is meant to be.

    He calls us about three times a day. The call always starts "I tried not to call, but y'know sometimes I need to..." We are worked into the ground, but he's an amiable old fool and he buys us drinks on Fridays so we try to do the right thing by him. Usually it's printer toner (in the cupboard under the printer, like we showed him last time) or a file on the network share that needs to be restored (because he deleted it) or have its permissions changed (which he has no business trying to access). So sometimes we try to at least get a bit of entertainment out of him. Like the time last week, when I went by asking if anyone had a floppy disk I could use. Of course, because he's an old fart with a stash of crap in his desk, he had one. Somewhere. No, he definitely had one because he used it last year when he was 'upgrading' his laptop to dual boot (oh, we remember sorting that one out for you, Pete). Under the complete printout of the Linux kernel sources? Nope. What about in that drawer? No, that's got eyes-only stuff in it (like his gin bottle). After about 20 minutes of shovelling piles of shit around his desk he finally found it under an old ham sandwich that he was probably eating when he did his upgrade. (Of course the PFY had come by earlier and moved it there from where it was, in the drawer with the gin.) He gave the disk to me and I went off to 'put a system rescue kit on it' (i.e. look at what dirty pictures he'd managed to fit into 1.44Mb). Next day, I went by and gave him a crappy old Dell laptop with Windows ME on it, telling him he was due to get it next January but since he's our pal... So we now have a nice shiny new Dell laptop to play with.

    This guy is the biggest pain in the ass. When he asked if he could install Ubuntu as dual-boot on his laptop, and we couldn't talk him out of it, we begged him to let us do it for him. Of course he tried to do it himself (with his trusty floppy) and we spent the next fortnight putting it back together for him. We take the piss constantly - we tell him the EE department is the only one whose PCs aren't locked down, we swap 'tips' (e.g. you should disable the recycle bin and always use secure delete, and do a full defrag daily) and tell each other about new software we've discovered, like Spectate Swamp Desktop Search, or the latest 3D GUI file manager. Of course we tell him we support PCs, Apples and Linux equally well, although there are no Apples in the company and he's the only Linux user (not that he uses it).

    Just thought this thread needed another "infuriating user" posting. And, if you're reading this, Pete; keep up the good work!

  • (cs) in reply to Mark V Shaney
    Mark V Shaney:
    One of my friends was an intern in a big telecom company. He worked on the code of some old system, that didn't really had much documentation, and, to the amazement of its cow-orkers, was able to make some sense of it. He got some karma points that way.

    One day, he starts digging deeper in the undocumented code, and can't really make sense of it. So, he take the phone (there were 4 phones at the center of the 4 desks, so everybody has its phone, but, if you are online, someone else can take the call. After all, this was a telecom company) and call his boss, asking for some help. The boss redirect him to some IT service, where the helpful guy said "no problem, we have access to an expert on that code", and, a few seconds later, one of the 3 other phones rang...

    In French, we say "Un grand moment de solitude" (a great moment of loneliness)...

    France Telecom? Incumbent ex monopoly telco? That would explain a LOT.

    Of course what is fantastic nowadays is that... France has opened the telcoms market to competition and now has the best triple play deals in Europe. $40/month for phone, internet, TV... with about 8mbps minimum down, 512kbps up, and fibre to your door very soon in urban areas. Free landline calls to most of Europe and the USA. Excellent TV offering. VOD, WiFi, Timeshifting (Tivo-like) and all sorts of extra goodies included.

  • mara (unregistered) in reply to ShatteredArm
    ShatteredArm:
    My favorite user ticket I was assigned:

    Percentages on pie charts don't add up to 100%. Sometimes they are 99.9%, and sometimes and 100.1%.

    I carefully explained that there is a glitch in the universal laws of mathematics that prevents the percentages from always adding up to 100% when rounded

    Wouldn't it have been easier to just mark it false report and write "described behavior is correct" or something.

    Besides, the only glitch there is in that users brain.

  • Channel6 (unregistered) in reply to Kyp
    Kyp:
    I work as a sysadmin in a small design consultancy. There are four of us in the IT dept - the IT manager, two sysadmins, and a PFY-type dogsbody. As for users, there are about 149 very bright people, and one other old guy. Nobody quite knows what he does. We think he's the boss's brother-in-law, but nobody's really sure - and we sure as hell don't know what his job is meant to be. <snip> And, if you're reading this, Pete; keep up the good work!

    Absolute class reply. Brillant!

  • (cs)

    R O A C H E S ?!! Adds new meaning to the phrase "Bug Fix"

  • Dale (unregistered)

    The one on the Helpless Desk assigning the reported defect back to the tech who reported it reminded me of the times that the reverse happened. I spent 2 1/2 years on a corporate Help Desk for a major bank. Users at some of the different local operations offices would call in their hardware problems to be forwarded on to the company to which these break fixes had been contracted out. The company which had the contract was supposed to have the standard hardware and software configurations documented in the system for their own help desk for the bank that I worked for. Often enough we would get calls from the techs in the field asking how to fix the problems that they had been assigned. Sometimes it took a lot of effort to convince them that they had to call the help desk for their company.

  • (cs)

    Once upon a time, I was the email backbone postmaster for a VBC. The servers I ran had no users themselves, but all the email in or out of the company went through those servers, as did any email which went from one of our many email clusters to a different cluster. Whenever there was a problem with email which was not strictly limited to a single cluster, it went to my team first for diagnosis. Frequently, even when it was strictly limited to a single cluster, it went to my team, because we were very good with diagnosis, and had a better track record for routing it to the right group on the first try than the helpless.

    About once a quarter, on average, one of the hundreds of unregistered email systems would throw up a mailbomb. The typical scenario was that some brainiac would make a "harmless" change, and then go home for the night without testing. A common example was the user who would set their email to forward to their home email account - which had previously been set to forward to their work email account. To make matters worse, the work system in question tossed the Received headers when it forwarded, thus making a truly indefinite loop. Since the system was unregistered, all I could do was block the traffic, and send an email to the postmaster and user. As those contact points might not work (the system might not be keeping copies of the user's mail at each hop, or it could have filled up the user's quote, or it could have filled up the system's harddrive, keeping even the postmaster from receiving my email. Or, there might not be a postmaster address for the system, and the user might have left for three week's vacation - which happened more frequently than you might think, as that sort of thing was a common motivator for them to forward their email to their home system), the standard process also required a call to the helpless, to register the issue.

    Since the system was unregistered, they generally didn't know where to put it. Or, rather, they did - my queue. About once a year, I even got a call back from the same person who took my call - although that tended to go fairly well. "Hello, this is Rob from the... wait a sec. Your voice sounds familiar. Did you just call me?"

    (For reference, the officially correct thing for them to do was to file the ticket as a 'known issue', so that when one of the users from that system called the next day, the helpdesk could say, "Oh, one of the users misconfigured their email, and your system administrator needs to fix it; your mail won't work until then." Basically, 'known issue' tickets are plugged into the knowledge base, as a (hopefully) temporary entry to trigger when someone with a related problem called. They needed to be entered as 'known issue' tickets; a normal ticket could not be promoted to a 'known issue'. After I found out this detail, I always told the helpless staffer when I first talked to them that they needed to file it as a 'known issue', but that was more often than not ignored as these sorts of problems didn't happen often; helpless turnover rate combined with scheduling the 'senior' people during the day tended to have this be the person's first time at this.

    These days, things are much better - they're down to an estimated less than a dozen unregistered mail systems, all work notice calls are filed as 'known issues', so the helpdesk gets lots of practice with them, I don't work for the same company, and, best of all, I'm not doing email support.)

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