Tales From Technical Support Content
I had an interesting story happened last week with a networked printer and a “hot-under-the-collar” accountant. We had sent a technician to her office to replace a toner cartridge – simple enough! Only problem is, this was a high traffic printer. Even as I was talking with her on the phone, I saw a non-stop flow of documents fly across the print queue so I knew she wasn’t kidding when she said it was high volume!
But… apparently nobody told anybody that the printer was going down for maintenance and so people would send jobs to the printer and they would queue up in the printer’s memory. This is one of those network printers that, if power is lost, it will save jobs in memory (the printers in question have hard drives) and then will offer to print them next time the printer is powered on.
She originally called to ask if we could restore the jobs. I looked at the print queue and the “held jobs” function on the printer and there was nothing. I told her this but, naturally, since all tech support people can magically pull print jobs out of thin air, that wasn’t good enough….
A – Accountant ; T – Me, the underappreciated tech.
T – I’m sorry, Mam, I don’t see any jobs in either the queue or printer, so I’m sorry but the jobs will need to be reprinted. We can’t restore them.
A – When the tech was here, he told me you guys could remote in and restore them!
T – I just tried that, and unfortunately there are no jobs to restore.
A – What are you talking about we sent a bunch of jobs over while the printer was down? The tech told us that you guys can restore them up to 3 hours after the printer is turned back on (Note: I have no idea where they got the ‘3 hours’ thing from…thin air, I guess).
T – I realize that, but unfortunately they are gone, someone must have deleted them.
….She begrudgingly ended the call. I forgot to mention one thing which is that I was responding to a “self-service” ticket that she had opened through our company intranet – so I was calling her instead of the other way around... Big mistake because now she has my phone number, name, and email address. So, she emails me directly, CC’ing my manager. Message reads:
“Dear <Tech> or <Manager>: I am writing to address my upmost DISASTIFACTION with your department. You sent a tech out here who deliberately deleted my jobs and <Tech> refused to help me restore them! The tech says they’re on the hard drive, so need them restored IMMEDIATELY!!!”
So, being the good customer service guy that I am (haha!), I gave her the benefit of the doubt, called one of our in-house (printer company name) guys, told him the story and asked “honestly, did I miss something here?”
He remoted into the printer and saw the same thing that I saw – no held jobs. He also confirmed that, once those jobs are deleted they are gone forever. No “magic undelete” or anything. So, I call her back to deliver the news and this is her reply:
A – Okay, I KNOW because YOU’VE TOLD ME ALREADY that you can’t restore the jobs. What I want to know is why does (printer manufacturer) think they can send techs out here and just delete our company’s PROPERTY! By deleting our print jobs, they are ‘destroying company property’ and I need to know who is responsible for this because we lost a lot of work because of this! I need to know WHO IS GOING TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for this!
M – (completely baffled….)
Knowing when I’m beaten, I ended up passing the issue on to a supervisor to address. Normally I consider myself a tech with “people” skills (more like “politician” skills…you know…”white washing” situations to make them more understandable, or at least to make people go away) so I typically like to handle issues like this myself. But….this time…it was clear she was out for blood…..
She changed her story from what she told me originally -- now she claims that she saw the “restore held jobs?” message on the screen, but the tech apparently hit “do not restore” without asking her. Furthermore, they had not saved copies of the documents in question and weren’t even sure what still needed to be printed!
My supervisor agreed that I handled the situation well but that obviously she wasn’t going to rest until her witch hunt resulted in someone being slapped, beaten, fired, or worse! (worse?)
My supervisor said he would forward the complaint to (printer manufacturer) for review, I told him the best thing to do would be to “educate” the entire accounting department that “saving” and “printing” work are not the same thing! If you want to keep your work, save now, save often!
This story took place around 2001. I was in end-user-support that days.
One day a secretary called and complained, that here system was DEAD. So after all the opening-question were answered with "don´t know" or "well, eeeeehm the system is DEAD?!" I decided to talk the little walk to her nad have a look for myself.
However, her office was way off so it took me 5min to get there.
As I entered the room she said: "Now everything is working fine". So I looked for my self about power-saving-settings, screen saver, cables etc but everything seemed fine. I told her to call me if it happens again and enjoyed the long way back to my office.
Getting there I was told, that she had called about 5min ago, that just as I left the room the system was DEAD once again.
So I got back to her, found nothing, left, ...
This repeated 3 times, and then I told her that I was going to replace her complete system. PC, screen, mouse, keyboard etc.
So she was leaning back in her chair, crossing her hands behind her head and prepared for a lazy afternoon without being able to work will muttering something about "...those techies..." as suddenly her system went DEAD
I told her to not move an inch and asked her if I could have a look beneath her desk. She answered "Well I´m not wearing a skirt today, so thats OK". As I walked around her desk and got down to the floor I could not believe what I was seeing:
The multiple socket power outlet was jammed into hatch on the floor, that was normally covering the power and network outlets under the floor and she used the only unused power outlet in that socket to stick her stiletto heel in!
She must be doing this for a very long time, because the plastic around that unused socket was broken and she was pushing it against the wires in the bottom of the multiple socket. And at some point one wire got loose and she created her very own power switch.
Two years later as I left the company I also said goodbye to the electricians, and that multiple socket was still hanging over there main desk as a warning to everybody ;-)
After a major, city-wide power loss, one of our phases was restored. We therefore had to run power cords across the floor to computers plugged into the unpowered outlets. When all phases were powered, several helpful souls, knowing I was the only onsite tech, suggested re-powering their own machines. I did, however, have to stop by a couple of users' desks, who had reported that they still had no power. Upon peering under the desks, I found that each had plugged the power strip nicely back into itself.
I was reading along on a community forum on computers.
Someone mentioned that they had changed from the Microsoft OS that their (Dell - but it doesn't really matter) computer had come with to Linux, that it (Liinux) wasn't working out for them, and they wanted to change back to the Microsoft OS. (Very important point here) BUT, the optical drive wasn't working so they needed to find out how to set up a USB flash drive to do the recovery to the original OS....
Very first person to respond told them to just throw the recovery disk in their optical drive, run it, type in the activation key, and "they'd be good to go"!
Second person suggested that they check eBay for a replacement optical drive *or* YouTube or Microsoft for instructions on how to set up a USB flash drive with the ISO to do the Microsoft Recovery (and included a URL to a YouTube video).
This one I’m tempted to say is a “mea culpa.” But I think it’s more of a “sometimes you gotta give an EU the benefit of the doubt...even if they sound completely crazy.
Background: Our corporate office has many people who have been with the company since the 80s, many of whom are still not very computer literate and DO NOT like change. We recently started making the shift from Windows XP to Windows 7. Most people are adapting to the change very well but.... others need a little “push” or “encouragement” to get them going....
Furthermore, every employee has a network folder assigned to them. Employees are told over and over to save important files ONLY to their network folder, not the local PC in case their PC fails or IT decides to muck things up by...say...installing a new operating system on it. Still, you get people who love to save stuff in the “My Documents” Folder... When we “upgrade” (reimage) their PCs with Win 7, we do not back up any local files. If they have stuff on the hard disk, it is lost forever...
So..... in comes my caller! (E = Employee / T = Tech (me, myself, and I)).
E - I got my new Windows 7 machine and now I can’t find My Documents?
T - Did you save them in your network folder or on the local machine?
E - I don’t know what you mean, and I don’t care about “network folders” or such, I just need my <bleep> documents!!!
...I explain the difference... which unfortunately took several attempts before he “got” it.
E - I don’t know what you’re talking about! I had an icon on my desktop that said “My Documents” and I saved all of my stuff there!
T - I’m sorry sir, but once the hard drive is erased those files are......
….. all of the sudden an idea popped in my head... just a weird chance....
T - Did you say, icon on your desktop? (Our XP computers didn’t show the My Documents icon on the desktop by default... and not very many people knew how to turn this on)
E - Yes I did! I could never find my files, so one of you people there in tech support set me up an icon on my desktop that said “My Documents!”
Remoted onto his computer, navigated to his network folder so that he could see it.
E - There’s all my files! You fixed it! Yay, thanks!
T - Nice! Now, just let me do one more “fix” to keep this from happening in the future...
Right click desktop, create shortcut, typed in path to his network folder... then renamed the shortcut to “My Documents”
E - Wow! This is just like I had it on my XP machine, thank you so much!
T - Don’t mention it! (Ever again.....)
Tales From Technical Support Index
