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Journal buffer-overflowed's Journal: Tales from the Helpdesk 13

Journal by buffer-overflowed

1. My job is to fix your internet settings, not answer questions about porn, help you uninstall miscellaneous programs, or babysit your kids.

2. This is not my job, I'm covering. 4 hours left to go.

3. I hate having to have people hold their hands in front of their monitor and telling them that left is on the side with the hand that looks like an L. Yes, I've done this, 4 times in the 16 hours of work in fact. I've also had to explain the difference between this concept of "left" and "right" and that there are two mousebuttons, which each do different things. Don't get me started on explaining double click.

4. If I say click the start button in the bottom left hand corner of your screen. This is a clear and simple instruction. It should not take you more than a second to locate the bottom right hand corner of the screen. When I say an option is 3 up from the bottom or 3 down from the top I mean that. It's a simple frame of reference, being "computer illiterate" is not an excuse. Similarly if I am walking you through something, I am giving clear, idiot proof directions.

5. I know jack about fixing a car, but when I go to a mechanic I don't say I'm "car illiterate." Why? Because that would be frickin' assinine. I don't know how to fix my car and that's obviously why I'm taking it to him, it goes without saying.

6. Be in the same room as your computer when you call, if you are yelling instructions whisper down the lane style to another person, I'm going to hang up on you.

7. It's called a monitor, it is not a "TV-thingy." Similarly, when I say screen I do not mean that thing you put in your bong, the thing in your window, nor any other physical screens. I will call it the "TV-thingy" once and then explain it is called a monitor, once.

8. The problem is not on our end. The problem exists between the keyboard and the chair.

9. Do you have a small child in the house?

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Tales from the Helpdesk More

Tales from the Helpdesk

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  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Is that you immediately assume the problem is on my end and that I don't know what I'm talking about. I get so frustrated when I call in about a problem on the ISP side of the world but they insist it is my problem and I need to reboot. I went to fscking grad school to know enough to just reboot as test item #4.

    For more on my problem with Verizon (no longer my ISP) read my old JE ... crap, I guess I never posted that. I should dig out that diatribe and post it. Long story short - it took a week of dail
    • I'm in a different position than typical help desk tech as I'm an admin type covering the help desk. IE: I can log on to the terminal servers and the radius logs.

      So yes, I know for sure it's on their end or on ours. 99.99% of the time it's on theirs.

      If we're having a problem, our employees know.

      This is dialup, btw.

      DSL is a bit of a different beast. However I love talking to knowledgable people, the problem is there are tons of people out there that claim to be knowledgable and aren't, so we default t
      • Our problem came in that Verizon was relying too heavily on the (basically a line test) the end-to-end ping. All that did was ping to our modem but didn't cross any major network devices like routers or bridges.

        We would call in, have to read them all of our freaking IP setup (which never changed and took forever since they had to read from a script and refused to just forward our call to someone with two brain cells) then they would open a ticket for some magic person to check out, this person would do th
  • I'm a smart mofo. I went to colledge, got a BS, put two different flavors of Linux on my powermac, program communications software for work, and was generally cluefull.

    Back when I was on dialup, I did make a service call once. And I swore up and down that this couldn't be my problem. It ended up being SUCH a fucking obvious msitake on my part (login name was blank, or password, or something obvious), that I FABRICATED a setting mistake on the modem initialization string. Yeah. I saved face, but one
  • Yes, Mr. Programmer, mileage equipment is different that hourly equipment.

    Yes, I know that airplanes and boats cover miles, but they are measured in hours not miles.

    Yes, I know generators don't drive, but they are hourly too, just trust me on this, okay?

    No, systems equipment is neither hourly nor mileage and it has nothing to do with a penguin . . .
    • Umm, I'm ashamed to admit I have absolutely no earthly clue what you're talking about Guy.

      I'm guessing you're either talking about leasing or something military? Without a context, I'm really rather clueless. Oh and I'm not at my most intelligent right now, either. :-P
      • Just stuff that is common to anything in Logistics, not necessarily military.

        Funny thing is that on occasion we get programmers in that think they run the show, no matter how much the other programmers tell them that they don't. In our group the Functionals decide what we want done with the data and the Technicals are supposed to impliment it.

        Another funny thing, whenever we have a problem with a program the Technicals immediatly say it is a data problem and it is like pulling teeth trying to show them t
  • Had a user need her password changed. Used to be our standard was to set it to the day of the week (system automatically makes you change it on first login). Changed it, repeatedly, and the user still could not get logged in. Had to dispatch a desktop tech, who asked to watch over the user's shoulder during login.

    Desktop tech had to exact mighty control over his laughter reflex when explaining that "Windsday" is not a day of the week.... ;-)

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