Tales From Technical Support Content
This is regarding the story that was published way back in 2000.
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Is the slash forward or
backwards?
I was servicing serveral large hospital systems running Unix and Universe flavour of PICK.
Universe created flles for it's own use which started and ended with the ampersand (&) symbols. One day I had to
delete some files but needed root privilege. The operator on duty at the hospital would not give me the password but
said she would type the command herself if I gave it to her. This is in the late eighties when email and Internet
did not exist for most people so I agreed. The command in Unix was
rm -rm \&SAVEDFILES\&
I
directed her to type this as "rm space dash rm space backslash capital savedfiles backslash ampersand".
This
should deletes all files recursively and does not ask permisson (the -rm switches). The backslahes allowed the
typeing of SPECIAL characters (the & characters) in Unix as normal characters.
Instead she typed
rs
-rm /&SAVEDEILES/&
Now remember she is logged in as root so what she just told Unix to do is to delete ALL
file from root (\) recursivly (-rm) in the background (&).
She says 'I get an error that the path was not
found'. This is in response to the SAVEDFILES/. I ask her to read exactly what she had typed back to me. She says
"Just a sec, the phones ringing".
After a minute she comes back and says "That was admitting, they cannot
admit anyone and some other people called to say that they cannot log in."
She read me what she typed and
It sounded OK. I told her I would call her back. After I hung up and startd thinking about it, it suddenly dawned on
me what she had done. It took them 4 days to get back up and running.
Thanks to: William Main
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I find it surprising that the operator followed the instructions correctly. When you say 'slash' it leans
forward and means '/' if you say 'back-slash' it leans backward and means '\'. No offense Bill, but I been a unix
hack myself and this is the way I was taught. :)
I overheard the following conversation from my tech support neighbor.
Hello Tech Support
Pause while
customers relays that her pc won't turn on
The tech has the customer check all power cables switches monitor
everything and is getting just a bit frazzled when finally asks when the problem began?
The customer explains it
started when the power went out
Exasperated Tech And is the power back on?
Customer No
I work for a large printer & scanner company as first line tech support for a few years.
1 day i took a
call from a customer who had brough a mid range scanner with film lid.
Me - thank you for calling the
************ techincal support help line bah bah how may i help
CU - This *&%@ing scanner wont work and i
want a replacement here in the next four hours
me -(oh god another screamer) okay sir I need to go though
some fault finding before we send any replacements
CU - I'm not doing that I AM A NETWORK SYSTEM ADMIN ON
£60k a year. (him shouting this early in the call was not a good sign)
me - sir without fault finding we
cannot process your request for a replacement
anyway to cover the next 5 minutes I talk him round to doing
fault finding
His scanner wasn't talking to the software and not showing up in system devices. I asked him to
checked the cables which he replied "I'm not that stupid" so i asked him how many cable there were at the back "2"
he said. So I asked him if one was the kettle power cable and one was a small cable running from the film lid to the
scanner "yes" he replies
"where is the USB cable to connect the scanner to the computer" I asked very nicely
(thank god video phones aren't common place)
Moral of the story - The bigger the paycheck the easier it is
to forget the little things.
I used to support (among other things) Mac OSX (10.4 in this instance) and all twelve of you who have tried to
change the settings in this OS know that it uses a padlock system to determine if you have access to make changes or
not. Unlocked and you are free to make changes, locked and you must click on it to authenticate. Well I had
overheard a fellow tech near trying to ask someone on the line if the padlock was set to locked or unlocked. Then
lucky for him, the guys phone dies and he is off the hook. However, to my detriment, out of a gigantic number of
potential phones that could have rung (there were at least 80 people in our building on the phones and we were just
one of at least six call centers), my phone rings with the same guy! I get him to the point where we need to make
the changes and this exchange follows.
Me (M)
Idiot (I)
M- Do you see the orange padlock in
the bottom right corner of the screen?
I- No
M- Do you see a padlock anywhere?
I- No.
M- Tell me what you see on your screen
I- Well in the bottom right I see an orange blob with an
upside down "U" above it, but no padlock...
M- Are both sides of the upside down "U" touching the blob, or
just one?
I- Just one
M- Then your padlock is unlocked
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The man was
80 years old, so I can give him slack for not knowing computer terms but MY GOD! I am sure that the lock was
invented before 80 years ago. I couldnt help him any damn way, the issue was with his ISP!
The history channel had a story about the history of the telephone (it dates back to 1876 or so). About 40 minutes
into the story, they started talking about 911 service that started around 1968. Right before the break, the
narrator says: "Originally the phone companies called the service 'nine-eleven' but quickly changed to
'nine-one-one' after several people got flustered looking for the 'eleven' dial position (1968 - Dial phones more
prevalent).
So, take heart. Even before we had personal computers, we had ID10T consumers. It seems that
the "common sense" part of the skill set is being bred out of the human race.
Fast forward to about 10
years ago: A friend of mine had a mother that mentioned needing the 'eleven' position on the phone. In that case the
breeding was complete.
I received this email from a customer.
SEND ME A PHONE SO I CAN TALK TO A LIVE PERSON.
I am a contractor for the US Military. With all of the deployments around the world, we are hiring anyone who has
seen an electron and has a clearance.
We got this new hire of 38 yrs of age. He recently quit his job at a
major Airlines company as a support tech on helicopters.
The week he arrived at our field site, we were in
the middle of a software upgrade on a major processor box in a military aircraft.
We were extremely busy
and gave him a step by step instruction sheet to upload the software in the Processor box. (The instruction sheet
was written for the military so it was foolproof.)
A few hours later we checked on him.
He was
still trying to figure out the first step.
1.) Copy contents of CD to the desktop. (CD contained a file
called : install.bat and a folder called 4.X.X.X. update.)
2.) Connect ethernet cable from laptop to Processor
box J4.
3.) Double-click install.bat on desktop.
4.) When install window shows Update installed
successfully. Type x to exit program. (Process takes approx 15 mins.)
He kept double clicking the
install.bat on the cd.
I asked him why he didn t copy the contents of the CD to the desktop like the
instructions had mentioned.
He said Where does it tell me how to do that?
I showed him. (Moving
the cursor to the CD window, I did a Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, moved the cursor to the desktop and clicked. Typed Ctrl-V to
paste.)
He threw down the paper and said Where the heck does it say that hocus pocus stuff!
I said
Or you can do this: Dragged the folder and .bat with my mouse from the CD to the desktop ..or highlighted the item,
right mouse click, select copy ..or highlight and go to the top and select copy, etc . Basically showed him 4 ways
to do this.
He screamed at us something like You guys are just trying to make me feel stupid because Im the
new guy! Ha HA! Very funny ..I don t think HR will think its too funny . As he walks off the flightline.
Apparently
the only thing he knows how to do on computers is to check his email and how to do his timecard. He has a cheat
sheet in his wallet for that.
OMG! A tech for helicopters for a major airline? Maybe a coffee maker tech?
Needless to say he didn t last very long with us.
I have worked for several ISPs that were based on Linux servers and I could TAIL the RADIUS server logs to watch for
authentication problems. If the password is rejected, the one that was used will show up in plaintext, and I can
usually watch the same person trying different passwords until they finally get on.
Whenever a particular
pattern occurred, I would look up the customer by username and have a ticket opened onscreen for their inevitable
call 30 seconds later. The call always started the same way:
"Yes, hello, I am unable to log in today, are
your 'servers' down again?"
My reply was always the same:
"Hello %customername%, your CAPSLOCK
light is on. Press that key to turn it off, and you will be able to log on this time.
"Well, look at that.
It *is* on! How did you know that? Come to think of it, how did you know my name before I told you!?"
"I'm
just good at my job. Is there anything else I can do for you today?"
Now, i'll let you readers finish
laughing before you read the next part. I swear to gosh, one person actually asked me:
"Should I hold down
SHIFT while typing my password this time, since CAPSLOCK is off now?"
"Definetly not. Have a nice day".
I work as a Tech Support Rep for a large Cable TV/Internet/VoIP company.
Sub (subscriber) calls in. Has
been down legit for about 6 hours. Its his first call.
S: Penny pinching subscriber
M: Me, your humble,
yet loveable, cable company tech rep
(After fixing his connection problem)
M: Is there anything
else I can help you with today? (The script from hell)
S: Yeah, I want a credit for not having the connection
for all this time.
M: Certainly sir, I just need a few moments to process this.
(insert sound of me figuring
out how much how much credit for 6 hours, then processing it)
M: Your credit is processed, and will appear on
your next bill.
S: How much was it?
M: 29 cents.
S: WHAT?! I PAY YOU PEOPLE A HUNDRED BUCKS A MONTH, AND
YOU CREDIT ME 29 CENTS!
M: Sir, you have our Triple play package. You pay 33.34 for TV, 33.33 for internet, and
33.33 for phone. Only the internet was down. So I can only justify a credit for that. And dividing your monthly bill
by 30 days, then 24 hours per day, and multiplying by 6 for the number of hours you were down, comes out to 28.2
cents. I rounded up to 29.
S: I WANT YOUR SUPERVISOR RIGHT NOW!
M: Certainly sir, please hold.
My
super didn't give him another cent. She always backs us to the hilt. That's why we adore her.
