Tales from the Help Desk

Its story time... As IT people we have all had experiences with end users, co workers, and being around people that are nuts.... Lets share some stories.

When I was on the desk there was a customer that called in every day saying his laptop would not turn on. I asked if it was plugged in and he said no. He would then call the next morning and make the same ticket. This went on for a week until I went to his office and found out as he left for the day he unplugged the power cord from the dock and that caused the PC to die overnight. I had to put a sign on his desk that said "do not unplug computer"

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joemc3

I was doing a password reset in Oracle for a Chef at the hospital over the phone. I gave him the generic password and he wasn't able to type it in correctly. After 10 minutes I told him to use something from the menu as his password so he can remember it and do it correctly. We ended up picking hamburger as the password. He was still unable to type in hamburger. I finally remoted in and typed in the word hamburger2......

Trucido

A colleague was working from home when her laptop monitor went blank. The power light was blinking orange and wouldn't turn on. I advised her to hold the power button to ensure it was turned off, take the power cord out, and then remove the battery. So on and so forth for 10 minutes or so. The whole time she was saying she was doing all of this. Turns out she didnt have a power cord plugged into the laptop in first place.

I asked her "Why didn't you say you had no power cord plugged in when I asked if we removed the power cord?"

She didn't realize that a "wireless" laptop needed the power cord.

ITSpectre

There was a user that called into the desk one time that wanted to know the status of her ticket. I told her the status and then she said "can you change the status of that to a sev1?" I said "right now the incident is not minor as in "we arent going to look at it" it is minor bc you are not A VIP...

The ticket description was "Email cannot receive messages inbox full"

Trucido

I had one guy say, "I'm missing all of my emails." So I remote out, open Outlook, click on the expand arrow next to Inbox and he yells, "OH MY GOD THERE THEY ARE, YOU'RE A GENIUS." and I thought to myself, "I wish I could say the same for you."

ITSpectre

Trucido wrote: »

I had one guy say, "I'm missing all of my emails." So I remote out, open Outlook, click on the expand arrow next to Inbox and he yells, "OH MY GOD THERE THEY ARE, YOU'RE A GENIUS." and I thought to myself, "I wish I could say the same for you."

Hilarious!

Trucido

ITSpectre wrote: »

Hilarious!

Yeah its bad, most colleagues I work with don't even know what the Start Menu is.
"You know, the little circle at the bottom left."
/facepalm

ITSpectre

I had a colleague I worked with who unplugged the monitor to turn the PC off....

dhay13

Trucido wrote: »

I had one guy say, "I'm missing all of my emails." So I remote out, open Outlook, click on the expand arrow next to Inbox and he yells, "OH MY GOD THERE THEY ARE, YOU'RE A GENIUS." and I thought to myself, "I wish I could say the same for you."

Had the same thing happen to me

tedjames

Do you ever say, "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

tpatt100

I used to get calls years ago asking "Is something wrong with Microsoft?"

"Uh no?"

"My internet isn't working"

Trucido

So we use a program that can be used in mainframe or a web based version, and they require you to unlock/reset them in the version being used (or it may not work properly)

"I can't get into (Program) its saying im locked"
Are you getting into (program) via mainframe or the webpage?
"I ... I don't know."
Does it have a black background or does it have https:// at the top?
"ummm..."
"Yeah it's got the http stuff."
Okay so you're in the website version. Let me log in and unlock you, one moment.

The sad thing is these people I am dealing with are being paid $40/hr + and I am here making $16/hr.

Bokeh

Not quite IT related. When I was overseas, I was working on a PC doing some virus removal. One of the avionics techs comes in the office looking for his boss. After every flight, there's a post flight write up on what's wrong or could be wrong with the jet. Seems a very young LT wrote "radio no longer works in the OFF position."

Now, this is the guy who has hundreds of thousands of dollars in flight training, and is responsible for dropping nukes if necessary ...... Just ponder that thought.

Bluehoo

I had a lady call and say she couldn't hear the audio from her headphones when watching a training video. She was panicing because it was mandatory with an approaching deadline. Her headphones had a volume control that was turned all the way down.

VinnyCisco

Many years ago..

On the phone with lady. Didn't know how to log in. Told her to push CTRL ALT DELETE. Everytime she did it, it wouldn't work. But by listening to her keystrokes over the phone, I can tell she was hitting the keys one at a time.

Ok.

So then I tell her , "No, you have to hold them down" She says ok.

So -- now silence -- and then she asks, "I can't type my name in?" I asked why. She says "I can't let go of the keys and type at the same time"

tedjames

If you haven't already seen it, you should watch The IT Crowd.

jamesleecoleman

www.thewebsiteisdown.com

You all might enjoy this

Jamm1n

Our help desk has moved to India... its a joke.

Mr.Network

One time when I was working in helpdesk I got a call from one of the lawyer in the company who was trying to fax top secret wage information to the CEO of the company, she said she have tried several times but the CEO didn't receive nothing. I arrived and asked her to repeat it so I can see what she is doing wrong. I saw that she was sending the fax to wrong number, or to the service support/call center (another building) where everyone can see it and i told her that. She was so mad and blamed me for this, she called my boss and complained over what I "did". At the end of the day I met my boss, and we laughed together over this.
some people......

PJ_Sneakers

Domain name was name of the company.

Login was of course: company\username.

Manager could not log in because he could not spell the company name.

ElGato127

tedjames wrote: »

Do you ever say, "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

All the time

ElGato127

I read these and it's as if we all worked at the same helpdesk.

Chinook

Heh..I worked in support in the 90's when people were incredibly stupid. Here is a few for you

1. Sir, could you please close all your open windows. Guy puts down the phone and goes and shuts ALL the windows in his house. Kid you not

2. Sir, what do you see on your desktop? "Well, there is a computer, a coffee cup, my monitor, an ashtray...etc

3. Sir, "right click on your desktop". User WRITES "click" in pen on the desktop

4. "I been waiting 48 hours for the internet and it's still not here, I want my money back". Sir, click on the big blue E. "Hey, look, the internet is here".

5. Client returns computer which is covered in butter. The user didn't understand pressing the floppy eject button so they melted down button, used a turkey baster to squirt in butter into the floppy drive AND then pliers to remove it. Kid you not.

6. Sir, I notice you aren't using your internet connection, are you having some problems? Turns out the guy bought internet because he was told "he should have it". But he had no plan on ever using it and no computer

AND..the WINNER

OK sir, did you type in the DNS numbers like I told you? "Yes". OK, so what do you see in the monitor? "I don't have a monitor". OK sir, are you using your TV as the monitor? "No" OK, so what are you using for a monitor? "I didn't get a monitor, it costs another $300 dollars and I thought it was a rip off

YES. THE GUY HAD A COMPUTER WITH NO MONITOR AND WAS TRYING TO USE IT.

TechGromit

I have a few.

They had these Heavy duty IBM keyboard for the computer terminals and they would get nasty dirty, but the keys were removable, so this lady removed all her keys and reinstalled them in ABC order, instead of in a QWERTY format.

I flipped two keys on my bosses keyboard, I kept typing in his password and it wouldn't work, I'd reset it still wouldn't work, took him awhile to figure it out.

Had a user lose all of her customized form templates on her PC, after a PC's email upgrade, she didn't know how to use the network drive. Typical user, doesn't back up anything, but when the PC has problems, it's My fault because I touched it.

We had these kitchen printers in the restaurants to print up food orders at the food prep line. After the restaurants would close the cleaning crew would place the printers up on the shelf used to keep the food warm under the warming lights (and not turn them off) and hose down the food prep area to clean it. The next morning the top of the printers would be a melted pile of plastic goo. Once I could understand, but it happened a dozen times over several months. I'd have to pry off the lids and try to clean them up to get them working, then without lids, food get into them, they were disgusting after a few months.

NavyMooseCCNA

The more I deal with end users, the more convinced I am that employers need to administer pre-employment tests for intermediate Office skills and basic OS skills to all applicants. Those who do not pass, go no further in the hiring process. I've seen tests like these in my last job hunt and thought it was a great idea.

DatabaseHead

Director of infrastructure was having issues with his laptop. It was slow, something like that. I noticed there wasn't a wire in the back of the dock and that it was running wifi. After messing with the wifi I noticed it was on the visitor network not the secure LAN, then I found out he was VPN into the network through the visitor access, much much slower at the time. (This was 10 years ago). I spoke with him to correct the issue and he freaked out telling me I had no idea what I was doing, and how was he supposed to connect to the network DUH! I just left it alone and said you are right sir.

That day I knew IT support (help desk and desk top) was the lowest form of IT. I couldn't take it anymore and got a job in a warehouse reimaging servers and installing SQL Server. Ugh those days were junk!

john_miranda

Had a user freak out on me because Outlook had been "removed" from their computer. As you might have guessed, the shortcut had been deleted...said person was the IT architect for the company....

Modern Legacy

Had a user whose Lenovo was not displaying anything on the screen (bad screen + cable) but would show via external monitor. This person submitted the ticket just before going on vacation.....kind of a good thing since parts take awhile to come in.

Alas, parts come in, she's going to be gone a few days longer....as adamant as she was about getting her machine fixed in the beginning, it was a royal pain in the ass yesterday as I had to reschedule 4-5+ times with her to finally meet - this included sitting in my workspace for 15-30min at a time waiting for her to show up when she said she would. Finally, about 30 min before leave time, I had to get up from a massive meltdown due to Windows update in another building, and I had to use an alternate PXE server to fix that problem hence the repair utility was taking 30+ min to load, perfect time to stop by.....took about an hour to get the laptop fixed while the user kept going in and out of my workspace.

Finally get back to the other person, it's now 15 minutes past my usual leaving time, and with no approved overtime, and user rebooted the machine totally undoing all the work I just did, I slowly end up learning, after talking at great great length with the user about hard disk replacement as we soon found out she had 2 hard disks and one failed - that after mentioning to her 3 times that her machine was out of warranty she revealed she had a brand new drive tucked away in her workspace that we could use - if only that had been revealed hours before - that would have saved us a ton of time.

I guess the silver lining is I get to leave early on Friday.