Tales From Technical Support Content
I was the sole tech support contact for a large landscape nursery having over 900 end users in the headquarters state (Michigan), as well as end users in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Louisiana. One morning, I received a call from a remote Michigan office that the end user's keyboard was not working. Easy enough. I grabbed a replacement keyboard and drove out to the remote office to install it. When I arrived, I was greeted with news that 2 more keyboards went over in the time between getting off the phone and arriving at the end user's office. I told the user that I would get the other replacement keyboards by the end of the afternoon. Curious as to why his keyboards were failing so rapidly, I asked the first basic troubleshooting question, "Do you notice a pattern, before the keyboards fail?" Looking sheepish, the end user said, "Yeah. They seem to fail after I clean them." I asked what his method of cleaning the keyboards consisted of. His answer left me struggling to conceal my laughter. "I fill a bucket with bleach water, put the keyboard in the bucket and scrub." I asked if he was joking. His reply was, "No, why? Am I not supposed to do that?" Laughter could no longer be held back... I lost it to the point to where I had to sit down, tears rolling down my cheeks. Suffice it to say that, after this service call, I never again received a call from this remote office with keyboard complaints.
Early days in a new job at a call center - keyboard essential equipment to let me work on the computer while on the phone.
I brought in a tall iced cola for the caffiene........it was humid in the area, so there was some condensation while I walked from car to building.
Just as I pulled out my keyboard tray and went to set my tall, icy drink down on the desk next to the monitor - a drop of water came off the glass and right between two keys on the keyboard....
The screen came up and started to scroll - without me touching the mouse or the keyboard. I tried drying it out with some paper napkins and tissue paper - but the scrolling continued. It took ages to manage to sign in so I could get to the internal tech support to bring me a different keyboard.
The moral of the story - wrap your tall icy drink in a PAPER TOWEL and put it down without letting it pass over the keyboard. Because Murphy's Law will make sure that any drips hit the keyboard.
I'm still a tech rookie; but with 1 year of support comes lots of user failure.
One day I was working my job, when I get a visit by a somewhat new employee.
He told he that he can't log in to our Software (which essentially is a UI for server access).
I ask him if he gets an error message; he answers that he does, something about "password is wrong blabla".
At this point I could have just reset his Password to default and be done with it, but decided to doubt his word and asked if the error message was not "Your evaluation version has expired"(this would mean the program has not been registered, it happens when a computer leaves the domain)
He then tells me that's exactly it.
I didn't question anymore and went to activate the license again.
Did you know that RS232 is a connection used to display the contents of your laptop on a TV?
According to Panasonic tech support, that's what it does!
I had just built a new home system, and--since Vista was new--decided to purchase that instead of XP.
WHile booting Vista, the screen takes much longer to show the splash screen than did XP, but I did not know that. Made the last connections and buttoned everything up, punched the power button, BIOS splash screen, then boot continues, then nothing. Shut everything down, re-seat the video card, fire eveything up again, black screen again. This continued for a couple more cycles until I ha happened to let it sit longer, then--FINALLY--Windows splash screen.
Back in the days of the 386, I bought a load of IBM PCs and XTs for 50 cents a system, reconditioned and sold them (this was back when a full system would run you a couple of grand.)
I always had several cases open, and somehow managed to upset my bucket of case screws on top of an open case. Forgot about it, until I needed to work on that motherboard. Watched the memory count up, and--just as it froze--looked down and saw screws covering the motherboard. Oops.
Funny thing is, it still worked after I dumped them out. IBM built solid equipment!
Me: You can buy some more RAM.
User: Do I download that?
Me: -----
User was surprised to learn that, yes, a laptop does have a battery and can operate independently of a power cord.
While in my boss's office, I noticed he still had his network card and dongle in his laptop. As these were needed by others, I removed them.
On the way out--I shouldn't have--I asked his secretary if she wanted to see her boss's dongle. Without missing a beat, she replied drily, "not really."
