Tales From Technical Support Content
While not exactly a TechTale, it does illustrate the meaning of cause and effect. Feel free to use in any capacity
desired to explain to those who need help.
Scene: a teenager "pre-geek" who is feeding the pet dog some
nice hot food (early in the morning).
Me: Just put down the hot dish of food for the wonderful pooch (RIP
"Fats").
Dog: Sniffs at food and discovers that it is too hot to eat, but is of course hungry.
Dog: Barks at
food. (Why not? he isn't happy, and wants to express his anger).
Dog: Again sniffs food and discovers that it is
a bit cooler.
Me: Isn't that interesting. Barking at food does cool it down (of course, waiting patiently does
as well!).
This is very interesting to me, as every time I set out the food for the nice pooch to eat, and
it is hotter than what is confortable to eat, he continues to BARK AT THE FOOD to cool it down. It continued for
quite some time (years?).
So: Next time you have a customer that insists that they KNOW the answer to the
problem (that actually has nothing to do with the task at hand), remind them that "Yes, and my dog's barking at hot
dog food will cool it down".
I do Tier 2 wireless network support for a major ISP. The security offered on our gateways is either 64-bit or
128-bit WEP encryption. This will require either a 10-character OR 26-character hex string to be entered into the
wireless mgmnt prog on the client pc.
When the gateway is reset to default settings, as the Tier 1 techs
love to do, it creates a 128-bit hex string of 26 zeroes.
A quick fix to the connectivity issue is to get
the customer to enter 26 zeroes. So many started typing, then paused to ask "Is that the number zero or the letter
zero?" I have tried explaining that "zero" is a number, not a letter. One lady replied "You're wrong. My keyboard
has 3!" She was referring to the zero above the keys, the "O" (oh) key, and the zero on the k/b's keypad to her
right.
Kinda reminds me of the old SNL Celebrity Jeopardy episodes. LOL
I'm not a tech, I qualified as an Information Engineer but I spend my working days as a specialist buyer but I know
my way around a system.
I used to work for a largish firm that ran an very aging unix which ran a invoice
entry system rather than order entry which despite being steam driven worked fine up until the existing system admin
retired and to cut costs rather than hire a new system admin they promoted the head of "data entry" i.e. one of the
3 girls that entered the invoices.
I went abroad on business for 3 weeks and came back to chaos as the
entering of invoices was totally backloged so my department couldnt see what had been sold so couldnt re-order and
my team are being told to run manual stock count ordering on 15,000 product lines in 3 warehouses.
After
quite a few telephone conversations it transpired that every Wednesday the server would crash out and the system
admin would be off that day because she had worked Saturday.
Knowing about computer systems I knew that
computers dont crash every Wednesday without fail, so I went looking, it didnt take me long to find the program that
shut the network down at 11:03am every Wednesday installed by the new system adminstrator.....why? Because when she
got promoted instead of turning her pay package into a salary like the rest of the managers she was paid by the
hour, but if you got called in on your day off you got paid for the whole day at double time even if you just turned
out to reboot a server .....then she got overtime on the Saturday playing catchup...what makes it worse was the two
directors that owned the company were too tech dumb to understand that their business was being crippled by a staff
memeber creating her own overtime.
The best part is 3 years after I left the company I ran into one of the
directors at a trade show who I sarcastically asked if his computer still crashed on a Wednesday morning.....to get
told "oh yes.....and the system admin still cant figure out why"........
Managing a nationwide WAN helpdesk, I have to deal with people from all over the country and their quirks. This one
floored me and left me laughing on the floor for almost 10 minutes, subjected to the stares of my peers.
We
have several hundred remote offices for a very large insurance company. At the larger offices we have install
Network Applicances as servers for storage and application support. Our proactive monitoring software will only
indicate a problem if the device failes a ping. It won't tell us of process inside the server have failed. So when
users call to complain their applications weren't working we started checking the server remotely. The server pinged
no problem. But when we tried to access the Netbios shares or the web interface we got no responce. So time for a
theraputic reboot which happens occationaly.
We call the office contact, who has a long history with the
helpdesk. (She is the type that gives those in the northeast a bad reputation. But I know most are very good people.
We all keep hoping she earns a Darwin Award someday.) We politely ask her to find the server, that is mounted in the
same rack as the router, switch and other communications equipment. She is familiar with teh rack and begins looking
for the device, which has its name clear marked in big letters on the front.
After 15 minutes of searching
the rack, its closet and also searching an auxilliary closet, she can't find it. Now remember we can ping the device
that has been installed for the past 3 years. And she has worked in that office for over 10 years.
She
suddenly states that the device was never installed, and asks in an irritated voice, if we are done. I ask her if
she is positive it was never installed, and she says she is positive. At this point I thank her for her assistance
and say goodbye. After hanging up I colapse on the floor laughing.
10 minutes later I compose myself and
share my story with coworkers who are stunned. Finally, about 1 hour later, the same person who was positive the
device was never installed called back to say she found the server mounted at the bottom of the rack we first
searched, and informed us she had rebooted it.
A lot of tales seem to focus on customers, friends, or general idiots who won't admit when they're wrong. But it's
not just in the help desk world.
A woman calls up a barber's shop, pleading that he see her
son, as some hack had cut his hair and ruined it so badly that he refused to go to school. The barber, being a nice
guy, agrees to use up his lunchtime to see the kid. So, the woman brings in the kid, and it's bad. There are white
patches of scalp showing.
"You did this didn't you. You cut his hair. No professional barber would do
this."
"No! I demand you fix this!"
"The only thing I can do with this is cut it extremely short."
"No! I don't want that! Fix it some other way!"
"That is the only way to fix it. I won't cut it
any other way because if I do, it will look bad, and when people ask who did it, he'll say me. You cut his hair in
the first place, I'm wasting my lunchtime arguing because you won't accept the opinion of a professional."
The
woman stormed out of the shop, dragging the kid behind her.
So you see... no matter what your
field of expertise, there will always be people who'll think they know best.
I work for the Police and have worked for two separate forces on the IS Servicedesk. A Police Worker called.....
ME: 'IS Sevicedesk, How can I help you?'
Police Worker: 'Hi I wonder if you can point me in the
right direction, the PC is saying press any key to continue. I have sat here for at least 15mins looking for the
'any' key and cannot find it on the keyboard, can you tell me where it is?'
As you can imagine I had to try
extremely hard not to laugh and professionally replied with
ME: 'No Sir there is not an 'any' key it
literally means press any key such as the space bar, enter, a number or a letter'
OK, I admit that I thought many of these stories were bogus.
I concede, even though my tale is from the
user's end.
I had filed a problem ticket that I couldn't access my email through a company Citrix server. I
could, however access my email through a regular PC on site. Since I'm normally off-site and accessing via Citrix,
it's usually useless.
So, I'm travelling to the main site, and have a real PC, so I'm checking the email.
The helpdesk guy had sent me an email (to the address I couldn't access) asking for more info.
I wonder
what he would have done if I hadn't happened to have been at their main site?
I used to work as a IT specialist at a manufacturing plant in the south. One day a user calls me and says "My
Microsoft isn't working, can you come and help?" (The entire plant uses only Microsoft products)So I asked the user
"Your Microsoft what?". She responded "You know! My Microsoft!!!". Needless to say, I took a personal day after that
call.
User emails me from a remote site.
Can you check the internet, it's not working for me..
Yes...she emailed it...and i did get it to my remote mail on a different server....
Replied yes,
it is working as you just used it for that email :)
I'm not a tech any more, but since the people I now work for found out that I can do computer stuff, I frequently
get asked to look into problems.
So an HP computer has a dead video card. Since this machine isn't under
warrenty and is hooked up to some sensitive equipment that can't really be taken offline for a long time, we decide
the simplest thing to do is to replace the card with an identical part rather than attempt an upgrade that isn't
really needed.
Its an older model, but I find some vendors online who have them. But the brass want me to try to
go through "Official Channels" which means a call to HP to see if I can get it from them.
After 20 minutes and
three transfers to different departments, I get a woman with a strong Indian accent who asks me stuff like "is this
video card thing for a computer" and "can you explain what you mean by AGP". Eventually I find out three facts from
her: 1. They sell many different kinds of video cards 2. They don't have the "AGP" brand, just video cards "for
computers" 3. Next time I am simply going to buy the part I need with my own budget, rather than go through all this
stuff at the request of the management.
Not a tech tale, but this one got to me. I was cc'd this from our sales rep:
Good Morning Rick:
Our
production department received a call from someone on the *th floor of ** street asking for a pick up. When they
were asked their name, the person became quite annoyed and asked why we needed his name and that he never needed to
do that with the old company.
Our procedure is always to ask the name of the person requesting the pick up,
especially if there are several people that send out within the same department. Would it be possible for you to
send an interoffice E-mail explaining this is just standard procedure so we know we have the correct name assigned
to the order?
Thanks for your help!
This just happened today. I was online with my Bank (located in America) and was attempting to get my online banking
up again. It seems that while it was running before, I had entered the wrong password too many times, so I needed to
get "re-authorized". For this to happen, I needed a pin code (mailed to me) and an ATM card. Well a few weeks ago I
got the PIN code mailed to me, but the ATM card that I have I've never used (they want to have you "activate" it,
which I never did). Needless to say it didn't go well, so the call ended. The last thing said by the droid from the
bank (located in America) was is there anything else... I had been "invited" to take the survey, so I asked
"transfer me to the survey". Nice. I was then greeted by "enter your 5 digit ACD number" (or some such). Sounds
wierd. I entered some random 5 digit number, and was greeted with "no such...". Again I entered some other 5 digit
number. Bingo! that one worked. The voice (automated) said "now transfer the call". But I was already transfered.
Apparently this was to be entered by the droid who "helped" me. I proceded to give a VERY poor review to some poor
soul whose ACD number I had entered. They had all sorts of places to rate things on a 1-10 scale. Most rated "2" or
less :-). When I got a chance to record my thoughts, I told them that I had entered the ACD ident number for the
survey, and not to take this too personally. Now I know why most of my banking is done with the nice StageCoach bank
not the Bank (located in America).
Names altered (not very well) to protect the guilty/innocent.
We have a bunch of Dell PCs and I had some users bug me one day for a VGA cable as someone had "pinched" their old
one and replaced it with a dud DVI cable. When I had installed this PC I had left it running DVI and had kept the
VGA cable as a spare so I gave them that as I didn't have time to look at the problem myself at that stage (and I
tried unsuccesfully to convince them that it always had the DVI cable and that I had just given them the VGA cable
that was supposedly "pinched").
Anyway, they got it to work properly with the VGA cable (to my surprise)
and so later I went out and tried to put the DVI one back on, but it wouldn't work. After a bit of stuffing around
and swapping parts from an identical PC, I found that the video card had partially died and that only the VGA output
worked.
I rang Dell support (and spent about 15 minutes trying to convince them that it was a desktop...
Their response "Well, our system says that it must be a laptop". I kept explaining how big and bulky it was, and
that it had a separate screen and keyboard and they *eventually* accepted this). They agreed to replace the video
card, and I got them to agree to just send the card as we need to go through annoying procedures to have visitors on
site. A couple of days later I get a call from a Dell technician who was having trouble getting past security after
turning up unannounced, so I go and escort him to the PC in question. Just as he is about to open the case, his
mobile phone rings and he answers it. After a minute or two I get bored and decide to open the PC up and change the
card myself. The technician sees this and hands me the new card while continuing his phone conversation. Shortly
after I had re-assembled the PC and tested it, the Dell guy finishes his call, gets me to sign the bit of paper
saying that he's fixed it (after having not even physically touched the PC himself), and I escort him back past
security.
I then go back to the office and tell one of the guys that the PC has now been fixed (different
guy to the person who originally complained about the VGA cable), and his response was. "I thought we'd have
problems getting that PC fixed after the roof leaked and it got submerged" (which, I found out afterwards, was
exactly the time when the DVI output ceased to function.)
I was employed as a first-tier technical support for a now defunct ISP some years back. Having dealt with (I
thought) every possible form of ignorance and stupidity imaginable, I was taken completely off guard by the
following call one day...
Me: Yes Ma'am..how may I help you today?
Caller: I can't get on the
internet...
Me: Ok, lets start with the basics...can you talkto me and still attempt to log onto our
network?
Caller: I can try...
now...at this point I am thinking of all manner of issues that could be
where to start, but before I can ask another question, the caller disconnects...I get the caller patched back
through to me when she calls back...
Me: Seems you got disconnected there, so sorry about that...
Caller:
Yeah, my neighbor's cordless phone wont reach to my house very well..
(I'm already starting to wonder)
Me: Why do you need your neighbor's phone?
Caller: Oh..my electricity got shut off, so I asked to borrow
their phone.
There are times and places for the kind of outburst I had, but at work usually is the place.
Larry
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