Your Favorite Support Anecdote 1177
Most of us have had the unfortunate opportunity to have worked tech support at some point, whether it was for a paycheck or for a relative. The Register has offered up a vote for several of their favorite support stories but I'm sure there are many more out there to be had. My favorite horror story was while working a tech support call for a governmental employee, when asked to take her mouse and click on the "start" button all I could hear over the phone is what I later found out was the user banging her mouse against the monitor. What other horror stories have people seen from the trenches?
My Personal Anecdote (Score:5, Funny)
Not more than two weeks later my mom called me up saying it had a blue screen of death whenever it tried to boot up. I asked her what the error said and she started reading to me the hex from the screen.
She said my older sister had been using the computer last so I told her to put her on the line and asked her what had happened. She told me her friend in college had sent her an attachment in an e-mail named "ms
A day at work (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A day at work (Score:5, Interesting)
he had inserted the network cable in the cd-rom drive
I had much the same thing happened to me, except that it was my own wife calling me at work to tell me the digital camera wasn't working. After asking if she had plugged it into the USB hub I sitting on top of my wireless router, she got a little irritated with me, saying she knows how to plug a USB cable in. Long story short, when I got home I found the USB cable shoved into a port on the router. Being a little smarter than I was when first married, I said nothing.
Re:A day at work (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, and then I had to explain that the extremely important data on this disc he just folded was likely no longer in existence.
Re:A day at work (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know how old you're client was, but I have a pet theory that the reason our grandparents can't handle VCR's or computers is because they're used to farm machinery and exposed gears, where if you screw up because you don't really know what you're doing, somebody gets maimed or killed. They don't like messing with things they don't fully understand.
With computers, screwing around with something that you don't get just means losing a little bit of data or picking up a virus.
Re:A day at work (Score:5, Informative)
Back in high school, when I was still living with my parents, my mother would constantly pester me with questions about how to do inane little things in Word or AppleWorks or how to change settings. Finally one day I told her, "You don't need to keep asking me for this stuff. You know how I found out how to do it? I opened the menus, looked for somthing that sounded close and clicked on it. If it's a setting, just make sure you remember what it was set to before you start messing around. You won't break anything." Haven't had a single question since then and she's far more computer literate.
Re:A day at work (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A day at work (Score:5, Funny)
Wow I'm amazed that that phrase hasn't come back to haunt you.
Re:A day at work (Score:5, Interesting)
One person in particular kept asking me questions about how to do various things in Excel or Word - nothing that was too obvious, but nothing too difficult either. What I realized after a while was that even though these people spent literally hours a day working in these applications, whereas I used them (at most) an hour or two out of every week, they considered me an expert.
Eventually, I started responding to every question with, "I'm not sure - I need to look that up in the help" before every question. I usually needed to do that anyway, but once they realized that's what I was actually doing, I think it emboldened them to try it themselves.
Re:A day at work (Score:5, Funny)
my aunt left her alone with the computer for about 2 minutes and upon her return the computer was on fire (well it was letting the magic smoke out at least)...aparently my grandmother had decided to try to use the thing so she wanted to load some program off a floppy disk, she put the thing in sideways or upside down (round peg square hole style) jamming it in there until it fit...the floppy motor jammed and the friction caused the motor to make smoke come out the drive...
it took us another ten years to get her to touch another computer...
Re:A day at work (Score:5, Interesting)
"... I do CAD work that gets output to a large CNC router, and by setting some values incorrectly, I could at the very least create a situation resulting in the possible loss of a hand, if not more..."
Takes me back to my salad days, when I was studying Mech Eng at a tech college in Oxford. Got myself a summer job at a local engineering concern where I was filling in for various people as they disappered off for their holidays.
It was a decent gig and because of the reason I was there, the work was pretty varied. No way I could fill the shoes of the three or so production engineers, but I could cover tasks that were mainly routine or boring to the full-timers.
One of the jobs I got to do was to produce programs for a horizontal machining center. This was done entirely by reading the drawings and typing in "G" codes at the machine's keypad. Offline programming had yet to rise over the horizon for this particular company. It was pretty easy, as the designers were all ex-apprentices and they knew instinctively how to keep things simple (and quick) to manufacture.
I'd usually run a program through in fresh air to make sure it looked correct and safe but on one occasion I'd either got complacent and hadn't bothered or I'd just missed a bad step. I set the program going with a cube of steel about one foot sized in xyz bolted to the machine bed. All was going well, and a serioes of pockets were cleared and holes drilled until the load meter redlined, the motor noise went from a whine to a loud hum and then a piece of something bounced around the enclosure, spang-spang-spang!
I hit the Big Red Button, killed the power and opened the enclosure to see what was up. Turns out that whatever was bouncing around in there was the actual tool head which was now snapped from it's shank.
Going back over the program and the drawing it appeared that I'd done a rapid traverse without withdrawing from the hole I'd just cleared. Even worse, the tool I'd just broken was a custom diameter end-mill which cost us about GBP200/ea even back in those days. I nearly started crying. I'd have to work for a month practically for free to make up the damage. I walked out of the shop and strolled around the outside of the factory to pull myself together and come up with a plan.
I went back to the shop to find the foreman standing next to the machine, wondering why it was sitting there idle and costing us money. I said I'd broken the tool and offered to meet the company half way and cover 50% of the damage. The foreman looked at me like I was a complete tard for a moment, then burst out laughing. He took me over to the tool store where there was a small pallet with dozens of such tools sitting there in rows like good little soldiers. "Those things go out of spec about four times a day on that machine. Get a new one, take it over to measurement to get it mounted in a toolholder and GET THAT FUCKING MACHINE BUSY AGAIN!"
Long, boring (NPI) and mainly OT, but the lesson of the day is that you can do anything you like short of maiming and killing but don't ever hold up production.
Re:A day at work (Score:5, Funny)
Which, while very off topic, reminds me of when I was at the local grocery store buying a nice little piece of brie and a baguette to go with dinner that night. At the register, the Neanderthal clerk scans the wedge of cheese, drops in the suspended plastic bag, then scans the 24" baguette, drops it in the bag, and finds that it rather wants to fall out for being sort of top heavy. So, without blinking, he folds the loaf of bread in half, and sticks it down in the plastic bag. "$6.98, sir!"
Re:A day at work (Score:5, Funny)
I'll forgive you, this once, since you were obviously raised by wolves, or in California.
A significant part of putting a baguette and a nice piece of artery-clogging cheese on the table (to be complemented, of course, by a nice bottle of red wine, chock full of anti-oxidants that magically cures the cheese problem) is the presentation. Plus, it's nice not to have the middle third smashed flat by the cashier - if I wanted pita bread, I'd have bought pita bread.
Re:A day at work (Score:5, Funny)
- The service refused to let her shop online, always saying that she hadn't put in her credit number
- The computer would not return her credit card that she had apparently crammed into the 3.5" drive
Some people just leave you dumbfounded.Re:A day at work (Score:4, Funny)
I remember talking to a WordPerfect tech (before Corel bought WP) where the customer at theother end of the phone had CUT the 5 1/4" floppies so that they would fit in a 3 1/2" drive!
Re:A day at work (Score:5, Funny)
10 - 15 years or so ago... My grandmother had a CD of the phantom of the opera and a fakebook. She asked me to put the CD on for her ... I asked her if she wanted it on any particular song to which she replies, "No ... I'll just wait for the one I want" ... I say, "Grandma there's no reason to wait." ... she says, "I don't want to scratch it!"
(she thought they worked like records)
Re:A day at work (Score:5, Funny)
I've never rescued a CD-ROM from a 5-1/4" drive, but back in the olden days, while working in the campus computer lab, people did all sorts of fun and interesting things to their 5-1/4" disks. One student punched holes in them so they can be stored in her binder.
Another, I couldn't find why so many went bad for him so quickly, until I found he was storing them on the dorm fridge - holding them in place with an old speaker magnet.
Re:A day at work (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not that bad of an idea, so long as you knew where it was safe to do that: one hole in the corner would be sufficient to fit it on the center ring of a three-ring binder. Half an inch in from a corner is easily safe.
I take it though that she did it midway down a side.
It's a good think 3.5" disks have a hole built in for this (once you slide the write-protect slider to the open (protected) position). That's another think 5.25" disks got wrong: using a notch taken out to enable writing, which was the opposite of the cassette tapes used previously where breaking off the tab would protect them.
Re:A day at work (Score:5, Insightful)
"Back in the day" for "us in the know" we viewed this as a feature. Why? Because we could buy single sided disks that were cheaper than double sided disks and make them double sided by punching a hole on the second side.
Oh, and that worked with 8" floppies as well.
Re:A day at work (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My Personal Anecdote (Score:5, Funny)
Stupid User Story [slashdot.org]
Another e-mail anecdote: Lots of crow to eat (Score:5, Funny)
Back in the days of Windows 3.1, I installed a small Microsoft Mail post office for our department, a state government agency. My manager got a call one morning from one of our
I went over to his office where he was with some other employee. As soon as he saw me, he started up. "This e-mail sucks! The Commissioner sent me several important e-mails yesterday and I never got them! This is ridiculous! What the hell is wrong with tis thing?!" I calmly wlaked over and stated, "Let me look at it."
After about two seconds of looking at the screen, I calmly stated, "You're not in your Inbox." { click on Inbox }
{ dramatic pause as his stupidity sinks in while the wind howls and a tumbleweed blows by }
"I am so sorry. I can't believe I didn't see it."
"Not a problem. Let me know if you have any other issue with it." as I walked out with no indication of the "You moron!" attitude on my face.
I even had the gratification of hearing, "I feel so stupid" as I walked out the door. Well, who am I to argue with management?
Re:Another e-mail anecdote: Lots of crow to eat (Score:5, Funny)
It turns out that this older lady had just gotten their service and made a call because she couldn't get online. They walk her though the basic steps of asking her if she had a network card and if it was plugged into the wall.
Still no luck. After a while, they sent someone around to her house (it was a small town. Total population was something like 5,000) to see if they could sort things out because it was taking too long on the phone.
They got to her house and found that she did indeed have a modem, and it was in fact plugged into a standard phone line which was then plugged into the wall. However, she did not have a computer. She had bought the modem and set it on top of her television...
Some of these stories are so strange that you just can't make them up.
Re:My Personal Anecdote (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:My Personal Anecdote (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because you know the workaround doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist, or that someone faced with the actual problem who does not have knowledge of said workaround is an idiot. I have a feeling 'this guy' probably doesn't hold you in the highest regard, and rightly so. There are stupid users, but there are also arrogant IT staff as well. The latter is much more likely to cause problems than the former.
Re:My Personal Anecdote (Score:5, Interesting)
A great example would be when companies operate fleet vehicles. They lay down a few basic policies, and handle ALL maintenance of the vehicles or hire only those they can trust to do the maintenance if the vehicle is in the care of the individual.
The maintenance people don't cop an attitude to the drivers, if they ever even see them, and they certainly don't question the boss for giving the driver the vehicle. They just fix the damn cars/trucks so the company can keep doing business.
Too many IT people think they're more than just glorified copy-machine repairmen. Only those who actually HELP their companies make the situation better and fix the root-cause problems (get the users training, provide only "kiosk" machines for workers too untrained to use a full operating system, make or keep the company's money) are anything more than that.
Complaining about "stupid users" without providing training in the use of the complex equipment sitting in front of them is stupid. It's like pointing someone at an F-16 and saying, "She's all yours. Go do your job. We'll make sure you're shot down quickly so you don't have to do anything other than get it airborne."
Re:My Personal Anecdote (Score:5, Insightful)
1. There is rarely a need to see the extension on a file, if the OS doesn't recognize it then feel free to poke around.
What about how lookOut Express hides the extensions too and the user receives virus.txt.exe
Hiding extensions is a dumb idea WHEN THE OS DECIDES WHAT TO DO BY THE EXTENSION.
Backups need the network? (Score:4, Funny)
Okay, will you please email me your bp.conf, bpsched, bpcd logs?
No, I can't.
Okay, why not.
Well, we are having problems with our network. Nothing seems to be working.
What part of NETBACKUP don't you understand?
Re:Backups need the network? (Score:5, Funny)
My favorite netbackup horror story was when a coworker took out "the" DNS server with an accidental rm -rf / . And then we couldn't get a restore to happen. Because it used DNS to resolve names. And an anal retentive sysadmin refused to allow a hosts file entry because it was against "corporate standards". So we had to do a new bind instance with two entries for the server we were restoring to and the netbackup master. Which then got overridden in the middle of the restore process. Which bind didn't notice, but then the admin (enforcing "corporate standards") did notice. So he rebooted the machine. And we had to restart the process again. Which failed because bind was broken because not all of it had been restored. So we recreated bind again, with a few more entries this time. And restored. And this time it 'took'. My coworker was very sorry (and learned why everyone uses sudo that day), but the "corporate standards" sysadmin blamed netbackup for the length of time of the restore.
Damn that netbackup, why doesn't it function when you chop the network out at it's knees!!
I do love netbackup though. But only because it paid the bills because noone wanted to learn it.
Best support stories page (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Best support stories page (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Best support stories page (Score:5, Informative)
Such machine-generated code can get quite big. It would really sucks to have a silly hard-fixed limit for the number of variables in a function.
Now I understand that in the case of the anecdote the programmer might really have had more than 16,384 variables in a function for hand-written code. That would be
Uh Oh (Score:5, Funny)
ZoneAlarm blocking the database server (Score:4, Interesting)
So this woman (afaik, a sorta boss for that particular office too) calls that the application stopped working on her machine. The tech-support guys can't solve it, so they forward the call to us programmers, namely to the guy next to me. Turns out that she had heard about evil hackers and whatnot, and someone recommended that she installs ZoneAlarm and forbid any programs to connect if she doesn't know what they are and what they do. So she installs it on her work computer too. And forbids our application from talking to the database.
A metric what now? (Score:5, Informative)
An oldie... (Score:5, Funny)
Angry Customer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Angry Customer (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this is because people just expect their computers to work. Even I've started to get over to the computer to check the utility website to see when the powers coming back on (just a teeny bit - I remember DUH! pretty quick). It's because we are so used to that instant gratification and information. It's pretty interesting when you compare how you found information even 15 years ago...
Re:Angry Customer (Score:5, Funny)
After I quit teaching, I worked at Egghead for a few months while deciding what to do next. Then they were closing the stores, so the store was crowded with all the people in there after work for one of the first days of reduced prices. I was up near the register, which, in this store, was easily visible to the entire store and dealing with a difficult customer on the other end. We could not do refunds anymore (since the store was closing) and, like you, the store could hear me. It started with a few people nearby listening in, then it seemed to spread and I realized almost everyone in the store was listening in and could tell I was dealing with an irate customer. The teaching I had left was teaching emotionally disturbed kids, so I had a lot of experience handling irrational people, and also in not letting them push me around.
I kept calm and had a flat (not patronizing voice), which is what I think started catching people's attention. It was almost like a Bob Newhart phone call where you can tell exactly what the other person is saying from your end of the phone. Toward the end, the people near me could hear the idiot woman screaming over the phone since she was so loud I had to keep the earpiece a ways from my ear. Finally, when there was nothing more I could do, and the woman was screaming, and I had tried hard to help her get a program working and she refused to work with me, I finally said, "Well, if it's not working, then there's nothing more I can do unless you want to try my suggestions," and there followed a long string of profanity that people near me could her. At this point I realized I only had my job for a few weeks, the manager not only liked me, but counted on me finishing out the closing time, so the few weeks I had left were secure AND we were really didn't have to kiss up to customers any more, so I said, "Ma'am, think you for shopping and calling Egghead. It has been a pleasure working with an enthuiastic, calm, and cooperative person like you. Please shop here again. Thank you very much," and calmly hung up.
I got a HUGE round of applause from all the customers in the store. If I were a performer, the applause was enough I would have had to do an ovation.
Never heard from the angry customer again, either.
Re:Angry Customer (Score:5, Interesting)
An easy mistake to make, especially in the days before the cables and connectors were colour-coded.
Someone [google.com] developed a fix, but the idea was killed before it could catch on...
Re:Angry Customer (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, like when I call Charter Communications because my cable modem keeps dropping its connection for a day at a time, every other day. Both times I called, I suggested it was a line problem, the second time because I had actually looked to see what the signal strength was when it managed to connected.
Some of the amazing things that were asserted to me:
* I needed to turn off my computer, even though there was a wireless router between me and the cable modem, as that might have some bearing on whether the cable modem was able to find a usable channel.
* I needed to plug my computer directly into the modem, even though I already had the very same cable modem HTTP diagnostic pages we were headed for pulled up on my wireless laptop through my wireless router, as though those were a figment of my imagination or somehow flawed.
* I have to power-cycle the cable modem anytime I change the plug in its Ethernet port so that the computer plugged into it will be able to discover it. Amazing advances like hot-plugging 10Base-T and DHCP apparently don't exist.
* The cable modem's signal strength indicator "usually lies", even though it amazingly registered just about exactly what a physical test of the line showed on a following service call.
While some of these steps were probably in the tech support checklist, I suspect the tech support workers were filling in the reasons behind those steps with their own misconceptions. I've taken to simply lying to the tech support person when I can tell a step is totally pointless, and that shouldn't be necessary to get prompt resolution.
The sad truth is that many of those staffing front-line tech support are clueless, too, just at a slightly higher level.
* One last bonus one. Okay, this wasn't Charter, but our phone company when I was checking out their new DSL product a few years ago. This "technical" guy I was transferred to insisted that you couldn't put together a LAN behind a Linux-based router and share an outbound Internet connection because--not in his words, but what he feebly tried to explain--that the HTTP requests would serialize, each computer waiting for other computers' HTTP requests to finish before theirs began.
True story... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:True story... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:True story... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:True story... (Score:5, Informative)
personal experience... (Score:4, Funny)
Tech: If you are having a problem cancelling your AOL account, you may need to call them...
User: No! AOL stole my credit card, and I want it back!
Tech: Wait... Tell me exactly what you did...
User: Well, I was installing AOL, and it asked for my credit card number. So I put my card in the ATM slot and now it won't give me my card back.
Yes, the user had stuck her Credit Card in her floppy drive. She had to send the machine back to the manufacturer, who then had to disassemble the floppy to get it out.
Re:personal experience... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:personal experience... (Score:4, Funny)
So, like I said, I was installing Diablo 2 onto the computer and it wanted the second or third CD (I forget, and it doesn't really matter). I open up the drive, and I forgot to pull out the first CD. I close the drive with the two CDs in it, and hit the button to start the next part of the install. At this point the drive starts buzzing pretty loudly and I don't know what's going on. I hit the eject button, but before it responds the cd on the top shoots to the back of the drive and shatters.
The PC is locked down so it can't be stolen, and now I figure I'm fucked. I figure they can track when this thing broke through logs and whatever, so I'm screwed. But wait! I have a friend who works in the computer support department. I called him up and he came down with keys and a screwdriver. We ripped the sucker apart, emtied the cd-rom bits out... and were never caught.
My favourite.. (Score:5, Funny)
from my journal (Score:4, Funny)
This was a real support call [slashdot.org] I once did:
gah (Score:4, Funny)
The best antecdote though, was working with a customer, who couldn't figure out why he couldn't reach his server, and was cursing a storm about it, wanting to talk to vps, etc. I can't hit the box either, and no response from the remote console, so I have the data center tech check the box, and it's powered down. I have him power the box back up, and lo and behold, connectivity restored. Customer is livid at the news that the box was down, and wants to know why. I start digging in, and notice that the user was on the box when it when down. I check his history, and sure enough, "shutdown -h now". I brought this information to him, and he hung up on me. I made sure that our trouble ticket was noted with the info, and by the next week, the customer had a new technical contact, who was much nicer.
Support e-mail (Score:5, Funny)
Those wacky VPs (Score:5, Funny)
"I can't login! I've tried and tried, but the ^%((* thing won't let me in."
No one else had reported a problem, so I went over to his office.
"OK, please restart your computer and login for me."
He dutifully restarted, typed in his login name, and proceeded to type in his all-numeric password on the phone next to his keyboard.
Every time I flush the toilet... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Every time I flush the toilet... (Score:5, Funny)
Back in 1989, when the french railroads put in service their new TGV Atlantique silver screamer 190 mph trains, there was one trainset that would, once in a while, big-hole it (do an emergency stop).
So they pull it out of service, check everything, and everything checked fine. So they put back in service, and, eventually, big-hole again.
This happenned at least ten times; they wouldn't find anything wrong with the train, and it would only fail when it was in regular service with passengers on board.
One day, a maintenance boss was riding the train while it was in regular service, and as soon as he went to the can, the train big-holed it as soon as he locked the toilet door.
He had a hint, and called the engineer on the intercom: "What were you doing when it big-holed"?
-- Well, I was cutting the power and putting it in electric braking...
Turns out that one of the wiring harness in the car had an intermittent short where the toilet doorlock indicator light shorted against the emergency braking signal wire, but it was only energized when the train was in dynamic braking... So whenever someone went to the toilet while the train was in dynamic braking, it caused the train to stop.
Re:Every time I flush the toilet... (Score:4, Interesting)
They chose a long weekend (public holiday monday) in order to do this, so it gave them more time to fix any problems. After starting early saturday morning, by sunday evening they had the exchange fully on digital and were congratulating themselves - and then the exchange crashed, entirely.
All sunday evening and night it went through a cycle of 'reboot, work, crash' on an hourly basis. The engineers could not figure it out, tehy did acomplete code dump and laid out the entire codebase on tractorfeed paper in the halls, went over it line by line to find out what was wrong.
Eventually sometime monday morning, the night guard from a factory across the road popped across the road and mentioned his phone was going absolutely crazy, every hour he would try to ring his head office to report onsite, and the phone would emite a high pitched buzz and go dead.
Turned out the exchange switchover had put his phoneline in limbo with no phonenumber associated but in a live usable state, and the exchange software couldnt handle that state and so it died with no error state reported.
Re:Speaking of rural... (Score:5, Funny)
Speaking of rural... (Bellsouth country) We had an interesting DSL tech story.
One of customers bought our DSL package, but for some strange reason it would stop working as soon it got dark out. We troubleshooted to see if anything happened at that time such as him turning on 900mhz phones, tvs, halogen lamps, lived near AM radio station etc, but none appeared to be the case.
So one day my supervisor was helping him out since the guy wanted to keep the service because it worked fine during the day and had blazing speeds. So my supervisor is sitting there and asks him to kind of watch what is going on around sundown and not just in the house... The guy looks out his window and sees one of those street lamps turning on near his road and says he noticed lights going on and it turns out his phone line ran directly under that line.
My sup advised him to call the powercompany if they could do something about it
The guy sad... "Hold on...." And about 5 minutes of silence my supervisor hears a loud bang and the guy comes back and says his DSL is working fine now.
I _was_ the horror story! (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the many known and expected email attacks hit us, and crashed our server.
We couldn't get the server back up. Our "home office" back in the US couldn't figure out how to get our server back up. We got permission to pay for the service, and called the MS Service line. After a short discussion, the MS Techs knew exactly what our problem was, and told me to download a 4.2 Meg update. At this point I had to interrupt, and point out that my connection to the world wasn't that stable, and didn't have enough bandwidth to keep that download under 12 hours, if the connection didn't get lost.
The next thing I knew, I had two MS Engineers on the phone, talking to each other while I listened, trying to figure out how to deal with the problem without using the download. That phone call ran nearly 5 hours. It ended with me typing in hex edits to the MS Exchange software . .
EVERYTHING these men suggested short of that I had to refuse, for technical or mission reasons. The direct hex edit was something like the 7th or 8th solution the engineers came up with.
How would YOU like to hear "Yeah, that would probably work, but, I can't do that because . .
NEC CSD war stories (Score:5, Funny)
Packard Bell was able to manufacture their systems so cheaply because they had rent-free facilities on a disused airbase in Sacramento, CA. NEC, wishing to enter the end-user/retail sector and covetous of this manufacturing facility, bought 49% of Packard Bell, re-named them to NEC Consumer Systems Division, and put a clause in the contract that allowed them to gain ownership of the other 2% if certain milestones were not reached. Then, NEC seeded the CSD division with internal executives, who made sure those milestones would never be reached. Mission accomplished, NEC now had their manufacturing facilities rent-free, and they shut down the consumer systems division, no longer willing to compete with Dell & Gateway.
I was one of the end-user technical support nerds for NEC-CSD, and wow did we get some crazies. Among my favorites were the black supremacist who refused to speak to me because I sounded white, so I put him on hold and then picked up a few minutes later with a badly faked "black" accent ("Yo what up? This is NEC, I'm Johnson. How can I help you?"). His issue? He'd set all of his Windows desktop color settings to black - backgrounds, borders, buttons, and text - and was calling to complain that his monitor was broken, because all he could see what his mouse cursor (which he was angry at for being white).
Also good was the hung-over stoner who'd woken up to find that he'd thrown up IN his monitor. No, sorry, that's not covered under warranty, but could you tell me how you did it?
But the best call didn't even happen to me, it happened to Chuck. One slow afternoon Chuck came around and motioned for everyone not currently on a call to follow him. We gathered around his cube and he muted the input on his phone, put on his headset, and then piped it to the speaker.
Chuck: "Hello sir, I have my supervisor here with us, could you please repeat for us what you told me?"
Cust: "Well, this laptop is junk, and I want a new one."
Chuck: "Okay, can you talk me through what's wrong?"
Cust: "My modem wouldn't connect, and I got really angry, so I pulled the card out and snapped it in half. Then I threw it across the room."
Chuck: "So your modem is no longer functional?"
Cust: "My computer's busted and I want a new one."
Chuck: "Okay, so how did we go from broken modem card to broken laptop?"
Cust: "So I calm down and I figure I can fix this modem. I got the pieces, and I figured out how they were supposed to go. Then I superglued them together and put them in a vice clamp overnight."
Chuck: "Okay. What happened next?"
Cust: "Well, I put it in my computer and tried to dial out to the internet again, but it still didn't work. Then I tried to pull out the card, but it got stuck. I had to use needle-nose pliers to pull the damn thing out, and I only got half of it. The other half's stuck in there, and now my computer's ruined! Your computer is junk, and I want a new laptop!"
At this point, the twenty or so people gathered around Chuck's cube were in hysterics. Chuck reached over, released the mute so that the man on the other end of the phone could hear us, left it open for a few seconds, and hung up on him.
My Tech Support Story (Score:5, Interesting)
Customer: Hi, my name is Customer.
Me: Hi, how may I help you today?
C: I just bought a Powerbook G4 and I can't get it connected to the internet. There are no ports at all, no USB, no Ethernet, no modem.
Me: What? Are you sure there are no ports on it?
C: Yes, this is the worst purchase I ever made! Can I bring it to you guys to have a look at it and get ports added?
Me: This is the first time I ever heard of this! You're sure you flipped down the panel in the back?
C: Panel in the back? I don't see a-- I am such an asshole! Thank you so much, I feel so stupid.
Me: It's okay, don't worry. I'm glad I could help.
C: I am sorry for cursing, thank you so much you just saved me so much money.
Me: You're welcome, have a good day.
C: You too!
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My Tech Support Story (Score:5, Funny)
I was so scarred by his explanation that I'm now 39 and still posting on Slashdot...
Bad Router? (Score:5, Funny)
Not my favorite, but surely my most memorable... (Score:5, Funny)
Coworker: tell me what's happening.
Caller: It's broken, I need it fixed.
Coworker: ok, so what is the problem.
Caller: It doesn't matter, just open the ticket.
Coworker: I need to know what's wrong before I can open the ticket.
Caller (screaming now): Do you know what your purpose in life is????
Coworker: Ummmmmmm.....
Caller: Your purpose in life is to open this ticket for me!!
And they say there is no such thing as workplace abuse.
Re:Not my favorite, but surely my most memorable. (Score:5, Funny)
The non-closable application (Score:5, Funny)
So I went over and indeed, one of our programs was in the middle of his screen and did not react to anything. On a hunch, I checked the dektop settings. Lo and behold:
Somehow the guy had made a screenshot while running the application and used that screenshot as Windows wallpaper. Changing the wallpaper got rid of the phantom application
Warranty doesn't cover that (Score:4, Funny)
Back when I was assembling i386 PCs for a small reseller, one of our regular clients walked in the door carrying a machine we had recently sold to his company. He said that it had "just stopped working", and implied that it should be covered under warranty.
When I opened up the machine, I discovered that every screw and stand-off holding the motherboard had been sheared off, and the board was shorting against the case. There was no obvious damage to the case itself. I figured the guy must have dropped the machine and it landed flat on the bottom. Amazingly, after the board was re-mounted, everything seemed to work perfectly.
Of course, we were rather curious about what had happened, so my boss asked the client when he returned. The client sheepishly admitted that they had planned to use the machine for tracking wildlife, running off a generator in the middle of the forest. They flew it to the intended location, and dropped it from the aircraft with a parachute. I turned around and headed back into the shop stifling my laughter while my boss told the client he couldn't justify covering the incident under warranty.
Rinkworks Computer Stupidities page (Score:5, Insightful)
I discovered what I call the Rinkworks site [rinkworks.com] a few years ago. It doesn't get updated very often, but because it's edited, the content is usually pretty good.
I love the comment at the top of the "Computer Stupidities" page:"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
-- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
Stop me if you've heard this one... (Score:5, Funny)
It's RUNNING I tell you! (Score:5, Funny)
This went on for a long, long time. Finally I asked her how she knew it was running, when, well... it obviously wasn't running. She said, "Well, obviously I can see its legs moving."
Never heard that one before. Long pause.
Ah... remember the animated pointer sets that NT came with? You know, the one where the "busy" mouse pointer (hourglass) could be replaced with an animation of... a running horse? Gaaah!
Angry professor + full bladder == dead laptop. (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, war stories. (Score:5, Interesting)
Many moons ago, back in the 80s, I worked for a company that sold and serviced mini and microcomputer systems. We had one company that was complaining and threatening to sue because the "crap" computers we had sold them kept crashing several times per day. So we sent a tech down to check them out. He walked into their brand new, ice cold computer room. Noticing that the room had, like most computer rooms, flourescent lighting, he pointed to a bank of dimmer switches on the wall.
"What are those for?" he asked.
"Oh, they control all the outlets in this room," was the reply.
The tech walked over and spun them all to "max". Problem solved.
Second Story:
Another customer who said our "crap" computers were crashing. I personally flew down to to visit them to see what was going on. As we were discussing the situation, the lights dimmed for a few seconds, came back up, then flashed bright, then went back to normal.
"What was that?" I asked.
"Oh, there's a auto crusher across the street. When the turn on the magnet we get a little brown out, and when they turn it off the lights go up for a moment."
"I here see you opted not to by the uninteruptable power supply, and have not even installed a surge suppressor," I noted. "Do you think that the fact your power is unreliable might have something to do with your problems?"
UPS == End of Story.
Third Story:
Which is not to say our computers weren't crap. Most weren't installed in computer rooms, they were installed in offices, which was kind of a new thing at the time.
We certainly did have a number of strange reset problems, especially in the winter. Then one day we get a technical bulletin entitled, "Static discharge from pantyhose implicated in unexplained system resets." The recommendation: secretaries doing word processing and data entry should stop wearing pantyhose. Now, most of our customers were New England CPAs, and standards for business attire in New England at the time were formal. The secretaries were NOT going to where slacks or skirts without pantyhose.
So one of the techs comes up with a solution. "Hey, isn't fabric softener supposed to stop static cling?" So, the recommendation goes out: avoid pantyhose, but if you must where them, spray Downy brand fabric softener on them several times a day. Naturally, they all opt to go into the ladies room every couple of hours and spray their legs with Downy.
Another problem solved.
My favorite, because of the user's attitude (Score:5, Funny)
I pick up the line while at the same time checking the database for his information. At the very second I find out that he has been set up for on-line access I get an earfull about how "you guys" are fucking everything up and nothing works. "Total fuckups who can't do anything right. This worked before but then you changed something and now nothing fucking works you ass-hole."
Yep, he is swearing. A lot. This goes on with every sentence and he accuses me personally of screwing it up with some mysterious changes to the web site. Never mind that the site had never been updated since the vendor logon was implimented, I was not the one to make those changes.
I sigh, take the abuse, and lead him through the logon "process". "Yes, I have the fucking right page." "I know my fucking ID number." The ID number was four digits long and I checked that he was using the right one. "My fucking password is my last name, goddamnit!" I look that up in the database (nice security, huh?) and that is true. On my machine I log in just fine and he is still complaining that it isn't "fucking working".
I check the web logs. Bad password. He is connecting fine but typing in the wrong password. I try to find some way polite way to ask if he knows his own last name. He does. It was Johnson. OK. I keep having him try the user ID and password. I lead him through the numbers one at a time, although I could see from the web logs that he was getting that right. I finally lead him, letter by letter, through the spelling of his own last name (not case-sensitve). That worked.
"What the fuck did you change! Well
His heartfelt thanks fills me with warming joy to this very day.
Three stories from me and my colleagues (Score:5, Funny)
Case 2: Woman calls up, with a external CD burner (it's a firewire drive). I hear the words "doesn't show up", "cable didn't fit" and "pliers" and I cringed. Of course, she didn't have any firewire ports on her computer, but she did have USB ports...well, at least she used to have USB ports, before Mr. Pliers got involved. The cable "fit", but I wonder why the drive didn't work?
Case 3: Man calls up, irate that his computer reboots everytime he goes to burn some files. After calming him down a bit, we attempt to troubleshoot it. Sure enough, every time we instruct him to click on the "Record" button (in the software, there's a button that says "Record", his computer immediately reboots. We try everything. We even turn off the auto-reboot feature in XP (so that it would, hopefully, blue screen), but that doesn't change a thing. Lucky for us, the man's brother was nearby, as my colleague heard him in the background. What was heard was, "[customer's name], what are you doing, you stupid [some expletive]? Why are you pressing the reset button on the computer?" Why he thought that was the "record" button, I'll never know...maybe I don't want to.
My first Win95 Call (Score:4, Funny)
"Solitaire is dealing me the wrong cards."
The mute button was my friend that day.
Scroll bars... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, she scrolled to the right, and couldn't figure out how to go left. 30-year old woman, reporter, uses computers daily. Mmmkay.
One week ago, I send her a /. story that relates to a piece she's producing. She tells me that she can't read it because the text goes off the bottom of the screen and ends in the middle of a sentence.
sigh.
Got a million of 'em.... (Score:5, Interesting)
"There's something wrong with the network."
"Okay, what's going on?"
"Well, the machine was all like, bam! bam bam! and that surprised me. Then I tried making it go again. That didn't work, 'cos it just sat there going ghh-ghh-ghh-ghh!"
"What?"
"It's a machine gun sound. Now it's just sitting there, all like, what the fuck?"
"Okay, what does that mean?"
"I said, first the machine was all--"
"Never mind. What were you doing when this happened?"
"I was running a test."
"And then what happened?"
"I started getting NFS errors."
"Aha. What kind of NFS errors?"
"You know, like, the file wasn't there."
"Okay. Then what happened?"
"The machine gun sound. Weren't you listening?"
----------------
"I'm heading out of town next week, and I'm going to need the notebook."
"Okay, when do you need it?"
"Oh, some time next week."
"I can do that. What do you need on it?"
"Foobleymatic 2.5, BarfTastic XP, and Crunchometer 2."
"Okay, that sounds good. How's Tuesday sound for you?"
"Today's Friday, right?"
"Yep. Why?"
"Well, I'm actually heading out of town on Monday."
"Aha. When on Monday?"
"Early."
"Early as in, you won't have time to come in here and pick up the laptop, right?"
"Right."
"I see. So really, then, you need it today, don't you?"
"Yeah, I guess I do."
"I see. Well, thanks for telling me."
"Hey, no problem!"
----------------
"Have we thought about wireless access here?"
"I'm agin it. It's too easy to sniff traffic and there are lots of data ports here."
"Well, has anyone ever sniffed traffic?"
"Absolutely. A guy got convicted in the US for sniffing credit card numbers from a Home Depot. They were using encryption. The FBI recently demonstrated how to crack encryption in about four minutes using off-the-shelf software. It's not hard."
"Well, I don't think we have that many secrets."
"...Email? Our source code? Budgets?"
"Well, I'm only thinking of this as a way of getting the printer closer to my office."
"What, you don't print any secrets?"
"No."
"You've just picked up your printing, right? Look at what you have in your hand: email, budget requests. Programmers print out code all the time. Should we open the window and throw it all into the streets?"
"Well..."
"We have shredders for a reason."
"Well, maybe I should just get a printer and put it by my desk."
----------------
Yesterday:
A: Ever since I moved to Linux, I can't print these PDFs any more. I think it's a font problem, just like B had. Have you fixed that yet?
Me: No, but I don't know that you're having a font problem. There are, like, four programs involved in printing that, and each one of them is different now.
A: No, I think it's a font problem. I hate OpenOffice.
B: Fonts are screwed up in Debian. This never happens to me on my Fedora Core machine at home.
Today:
Me: Well, I printed out seventeen pages from two different machines in eight different ways using the printer on the floor above me, and as you can see the crucial difference is the version of Acrobat Reader used to print them. It's not a font problem. Those big black bars? It's a bug in the latest version of Acrobat Reader.
A: Oh.
Me: Yep, the PDFs generated by OpenOffice were fine. Now, I'm reluctant to install an older version of Acrobat because of security pr--
B (sitting right next to A all this time): Oh, you don't have that problem if you use this PDF reader over here.
A: What?
Me: What?
B: Yep, just use the Gnome PDF reader and it prints just fine.
A: Why didn't you tell me yesterday?
B: You said it was a problem with OpenOffice, not PDFs.
A:
Least favourite (Score:4, Insightful)
Girl from HR with large chest walks in to department and says "I'm sorry to bother you guys but I really need to get these out!" Talking about her newest pamphlet.
Look you immature arseholes, this is why women hate dealing with IT departments. Why the fuck do you have to compare a perfectly reasonable request to complete and utter idiocy just because the woman happens to have <GASP> boobies!
Yes, I get the double entendre. How fucking hilarious. Obviously the woman needs to be ridiculed for her stupidity. It's not as if "get these out" is an extremely common phrase heard through offices every day, is it?
I'm a bloke and articles like this make me embarrassed to work in the IT field because, quite frankly, the reputation it has as being full of fuckwits with no social skills and a fear of women is well-deserved. Grow the fuck up and stop making the rest of us look like dickheads.
Re:Least favourite (Score:5, Funny)
Best Tech Support Experence Ever! (Score:5, Funny)
When I first started working at a local computer store in the "lab" we got one irate lady whose son had really destroyed Windows 95. She had something against my boss, and kept making a big stink about the computer being defective and demanding that we build her a brand new machine, and claiming that I didn't know what I was talking about. She eventually cornered the sales manager and yelled at him for an hour or so, and as soon as she left the store I got called into his office.
The sales manager was upset of course, and started chewing me out, but after about 5 mins he asked me what I had to say about it all.
"There's a difference between bending over backwards for the customer and bending over forwards."
He turned beet red, pointed at the door and I left. I never heard another word about the incident.
How About 9/11 Morning Idiots? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How About 9/11 Morning Idiots? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How About 9/11 Morning Idiots? (Score:5, Interesting)
Me: "...do you know what's going on right now?"
Marketer: "No, I heard something was happening, what is it?"
Me: "Well, a couple airplanes just flew into the World Trade Center in New York."
Marketer: "Holy shit!" *click*
Most satisfying way to get off the line ever.
"The computer is frozen." (Score:5, Funny)
"Yes."
"OK, so it can't be completely frozen. Let's go over to the lab and I'll take a look."
footstep footstep footstep Well, it looks to be completely locked. I thought you said the mouse still moved?"
She grabs the mouse and swings it all over the desk, looking at me like, "SEE?"
"Look, if the computer ever locks up so hard that you can't move the mouse on the desk, RUN."
Re:"The computer is frozen." (Score:5, Funny)
So anyway, one of my dialup customers kept getting disconnected. It happened all the time, and was getting pretty frustrating for them. Being a really rural aarea, there was a lot of noise on the phone lines, and it was hard to explain this to people. So I'm about halfway through explaining repeater loops and line noise when I hear someone say, "Hello? Anne, is that you?"
"No, it's Jean, I'll be off in just a couple of minutes."
"Ok, thanks."
"Was that your daughter?"
"No, that was Diane from up the street. We're on a party line."
Chair-based authentication (Score:5, Funny)
Some years ago a colleague told me about the strangest support problem he had ever run into: one of their developers could only log in sitting down.
He had recently noticed that if he tried to log in in any other position (eg, still standing and just quickly checking his mail while walking past his desk), his password was always rejected. But as soon as he sat down, he had no problems getting in.
My colleague at first laughed it off, but it was demonstrated to be the case. He spent a long time looking into cabling problems with the keyboard or network, thinking that perhaps there was a loose connection that only worked reliably with the guy's foot on it or similar longshots. Nothing panned out, and they eventually gave up on it as not important enough to dig into further.
Finally, months later, the developer came back to him, doubled over in laughter, having figured out what the problem was. At some point in the process of cleaning his keyboard, he had reassembled it with a couple of keys juxtaposed. Which never cause him problems, because he touch-typed... when he was sitting in a normal position. When he was standing awkwardly, he looked at the keycaps, and typed his password wrong every time.
Incoming! (Score:5, Funny)
A guy came in with an ink-jet printer that was six months out of warranty, and purchased from one of our competitors.
He argued that it should be fixed by us for free. I said that unfortunately it was going to cost $x and we could not assist him with a free repair.
He paused for a couple of seconds, then he picked up the printer and threw it at me. I dodged and it hit the wall and more or less exploded. He then walked calmly out of the store and we never saw him again.
Re:Incoming! (Score:5, Funny)
(can I come pick up my spare printer parts?)
"Mysterious" DSL problem (Score:5, Interesting)
They have this strange situation with a DSL customer.
It was your basic off the web order
He calls in about 4 weeks later and reports his DSL has stopped working. We have him check the NID and he doesn't have any sync which means he's not even getting a signal from the Central Office. So we roll out a telco truck and they find that his cable was pulled from the DSLAM box and they just pop it back into his copper line.
A week later he calls in the same problem. We have him check his DSL at the NID again and no sync. We call the teclo company again and they send a truck out to the central office box and check the DSLAM, find it was disconnected again, and pop the cable back in again for the DSL.
Then it happens a again... They send out another truck... Fix it... A few days latter... It happens again... And they keep sending the trucks to fix it...
Finally after several weeks of this... The VP gets a call from the teclo... Who has the FBI on the phone asking us to stop fixing the DSL because its disconnecting their wiretap!
So the VP has a CS rep call the guy and politley explain that DSL isn't possible at his location and refunds his money.
Here's My personal favorite (Score:5, Insightful)
We had this customer who was irate that his new computer was acting up and it was new I built it myself. No reason for it to be acting so strange. He brought it in we checked it out seemed fine.
He comes back complaining again. We replace the entire PC. He leaves happy for 2 days. Then he comes back demanding a refund.
We tell him if there is something wrong with the PC we will make it right. Leave it with us and we'll throw everything we got at it. He does. His wife comes in an hr later. "Can I see my husbands computer for a minute, I just need to check one thing.?" Sure come on back. She presses Shift Ctrl ScrollLock or something similar & up pops this EVIL unnoticable Screengrabber. She quickly scans through the last 3 days worth of pics. Instant message from her teen daughter, Web surfing of her hubby 3 pics a second. Gobbling up space & cycles. If she doesn't check it daily & dump it fills the harddrive with 1280x1024x32 Pics. I explain to her it is unnecessary to grab so many, 1 every couple of minutes is more than sufficient. She asks me to promise I won't tell her husband. I promise she tips me 50 bucks and promises to bring me a bottle of wine (her Idea).
Later that same day.
The owner (who has dealt with the husband only on more than one occassion since the sale.) checks in with me to see if I found the problem. I calmly explain the situation, and the promise. He asked me "Did she make you promise not to tell me?"
Obviously I can not and did not make that promise.
"Well then, I never promised her shit. But I did promise her husband I would find out what was up & fix it." Cue him Dialing.
Later that same day, Hubby comes in pays us for all our service (3 hrs on site. 3 trips to the shop) and tips me 50 bucks.
Still Later
She comes in like a rocket right passed the counter into the bench area Slams down a shiny bottle of wine & says thanks a fuckin lot.
My boss says thank you come again.
The husband still shops there service & purchase.
Moral of the story: If you are gonna spy on your kids do it with your loved one.
Opened the wine on my wedding day. Wife loved it.
I heard a bloodcurdling scream from the next room. (Score:5, Funny)
Apocraphal Sendmail tale (Score:5, Interesting)
A tech gets a call from Professor Anders in the statistics department. Anders says that the members of his department are only able to send email 500 miles. The tech gets a strange look on his face, then starts asking questions about the situation. After a lengthy phone discussion, he decides that the fellow who has called him is truly not making this up. After all, this is the statistics department, and they're not prone to pulling figures out of the air.
So, the tech goes over to the statistics department and checks out their server. It's a simple old SPARC running Solaris. He sends out some email to a friend in California. Sure enough, it bounces. He sends an email to a friend in Florida, and it goes through fine. The tech scratches his head.
He asks Anders is anything has changed on this SPARC server recently. Turns out that, yes, the server was recently updated to a newer version of Solaris (Version numbers lost to the fog of history). So the tech takes a look at the server and finds that, despite the newer OS, the older version of SendMail is still on the machine. Anders nods and says that, after the update, they downgraded SendMail to an older, more stable version. Ahah! The tech opened the config file, and sure enough, he found the problem.
The new version of SendMail had created a new Config file. This file had some new format for the "Timeout" entry. When the old version was placed onto the system, it tried to read the new config file, but couldn't interpret it correctly. Thus, it set the "Timeout" to "0." How far can electronic information travel away from the server before the CPU can count to 0? 500 miles.
Mr E called (Score:5, Funny)
E "Is your dad there?"
D "No, he'a at work."
E "Well I needed his help with a computer problem. Maybe you can help."
Mr E. goes on to describe the problem to my little girl who he knows is eleven.
D "Did you try rebooting?"
E "No. I'll try that. Hey, it works. Thanks sweety."
Re:LOL! Pretty funny stories (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:LOL! Pretty funny stories (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe he just never encountered some pathetic loser who would actually call up his ISP and spend hours requesting a new IP address just to avoid an IP block due to being an asshat on slashdot. Perhaps he assumed that, if you're calling tech support, that something was actually *wrong* with your service. I'll forgive his ignorance in this case.
Anyway, I got my new IP address after escalating it to his manager. And here I am! Yay!
Yeah, we're all better for it.
Re:LOL! Pretty funny stories (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:LOL! Pretty funny stories (Score:5, Insightful)
You should have heard this guy! Impatient. Demanding. They went ballistic and started calling me a retard for asking. So sorry, sir. By your command, sir. They pay me $5/hr to serve your every whim, sir. The best part is the reason for wanting the switch: their IP apparently got banned from some on-line forum. Yeah, right. The phrase "Not our problem" comes to mind. It would be like calling the phone company expecting to get a new number because yours got blocked by some other customer for harassing phone calls.
But, they are a paying customer, and the customer is always right, so, I told them that kind of abuse wasn't necessary, and once they calmed down, I guess they called my manager and got what they wanted in the end. Good for them. I just wish they weren't so rude about it. It's not the end of the world if they can't post to an on-line forum for a couple of days.
Sheesh, they do not pay enough for the kind of verbal abuse people sometimes have to put up with in tech support.
Re:LOL! Pretty funny stories (Score:4, Funny)
I had a cable modem, probably close to 10 years ago when they were very new, and phoned to ask about how I could get a static IP address (I think Rogers cable in Canada may have been offering them for a few $ a month extra or something like that).
Anyway, after a confusing conversation I was told that I was probably best to just go the the nearest Radio Shack and see if I could pick up a static IP address there.
Re:Mice (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cable TV support (Score:5, Informative)
Broadcast has channels 2-13 on VHF and channles 14 and up on UHF. This is because TV does not own the entire spectrum. In between channels 13 and 14 you will find a couple of HAM bands, military aircraft radio, public service bands, business bands, FRS and FMRS radio, government bands, etc.
Cable does not have this restriction, so 14 begins just after 13.