Claims made by non IT centric folks?

TheShadow

Slowhand wrote: »

I don't know if knocking on IT people in a thread full of IT people venting about bad experiences is particularly diplomatic, but I do understand your underlying point that every industry has professionals and users, and there will always be users who annoy the professionals.


Well, maybe you can write us all an explanation in LaTeX and we will get it.

It was all I could do not to take him to task for more than just a little lack of tact. You however offer an excellent start, and hopefully finish. +1 Slowhand.

Extra credit for frequency response curves +/- 10 % over standard temperature, humidity and vibration in his LaTeX document.

mikedisd2

TheShadow wrote: »

Extra credit for frequency response curves +/- 10 % over standard temperature, humidity and vibration in his LaTeX document.

Now that's funny. And I didn't go to University either.

erpadmin

This one is hot off the press...like I mean right now.

First of all, this person wasn't rude or mean; she sounded very polite and was really pleasant sweetheart. Having said all that though....

User calls main office, and secretary routes the call to me rather than help desk. (That's fine, I told she could always do that.) User has a netbook through one of the big cellular carriers and cannot get to the Internet with firefox, or chrome but can get into the Internet with Internet Explorer, but real slow. I, of course, don't believe her because users lie [not their fault...they just do...]. I talk her through going to the command prompt ("did a black box pop up?") and spell out ipconfig for her. She then states "everything says media disconnected...."

I tell her that she will want to contact her cellular provider. She was in disbelief that she couldn't get on the net. I tell her the facts don't lie...there can be no way you could be connected to any network currently, but your cellular provider should be able to talk you through connecting. She was just frustrated that she couldn't check her grades from her netbook, but there was nothing I could personally do for this young woman over the phone.

Mind you I have a bunch of these stories...but figured I'd give you this one while it was still fresh out the oven.

chopsticks

erpadmin wrote: »

but can get into the Internet with Internet Explorer, but real slow

Interesting event ... and that's probably an IE cache that's at work for her .. hehe ..

Reseven

Just before Christmas, I had a call where a guy wanted to replace his hard drive with a faster one. I asked why and he told me that his download speeds were slow and not as fast as his new internet connection was...

He was so sure he was right. That was a fun and enlightening 20 minute call.

Devilsbane

Reseven wrote: »

I had a call where a guy wanted to replace his hard drive with a faster one. I asked why and he told me that his download speeds were slow

This literally made me laugh out loud.

alan2308

Devilsbane wrote: »

What bugs me is when non technical users invent their own descriptions of problems. And then one uses it so they all overhear it and start using it. Then when they tell me whats going on, I have no idea what their invented word means.

So you know my inlaws?

arwes

Devilsbane wrote: »

What bugs me is when non technical users invent their own descriptions of problems. And then one uses it so they all overhear it and start using it. Then when they tell me whats going on, I have no idea what their invented word means.

I hear ya. My Baton Rouge office uses a terminal server to work, and when we had bandwidth problems this one user would say the screen is "pasting". I eventually understood what she was trying to get at and I said "oh, so it's lagging". She says yeah! Well some months later, "lagging" didn't stay in her vernacular, but "pasting" did and it caught on with the rest of them too.

erpadmin

chopsticks wrote: »

Interesting event ... and that's probably an IE cache that's at work for her .. hehe ..

Exactly. I thought I typed that, but it was a busy morning.

bertieb

Many years ago I was working for an ISP and covering the helpdesk for a few hours who had all been to the same kebab shop the day before and ended up with food poisoning (thats a story in itself....). Anyways, I had a guy ring in - completely nuts, swearing, shouting, wanting to speak to his account manager etc - complaining that the company's website we were hosting for him was down. After a few simple checks, it all looked fine and I knew we had sufficient monitoring in place so began to suspect a client issue.

After a brief discussion we found out that he couldn't actually hit ANY websites from his office apart from the BBC (obviously a cached copy), and he nor his secretary could send or receive email. After a few minutes of 'frank discussions' he was still adamant that because he could get to the BBC website his side was fine when he stops me in my tracks and says something along the lines of 'Hold on, we've had a Cable and Wireless engineer in all morning working on moving our connection up to the 6th floor and he wants to ask me a question!' and sticks me on hold for a couple of minutes.......

After realising that the C&W engineer was likely to be working on moving his internet connection, once the guy reappeared I said 'OK, perhaps you should pass me to your Internal IT guys or you should call C&W support if they provide your internet connection....'

and before I could finish my full sentence he responds.........

'Oooooh, I'd best not disturb him just yet, he's still up to his eyeballs in cabling!'

I literally laughed out loud, and explained to him why he couldn't hit any websites, or send email and once the engineer was done moving his internet connection it would be sorted.

To be fair to the guy, once it clicked (which it did rather quickly), he apologised profusely, thanked me for my efforts, education and phone manners and sent a nice email to my boss as well! I was laughing at that one all through Winter 1999.

erpadmin

bertieb wrote: »

Many years ago I was working for an ISP and covering the helpdesk for a few hours who had all been to the same kebab shop the day before and ended up with food poisoning (thats a story in itself....). Anyways, I had a guy ring in - completely nuts, swearing, shouting, wanting to speak to his account manager etc - complaining that the company's website we were hosting for him was down. After a few simple checks, it all looked fine and I knew we had sufficient monitoring in place so began to suspect a client issue.

Oooooh...you just reminded me of the ONE day I had worked a corporate help desk, and one of my favorite stories....

The day was September 12th, 2001. Our office was directly across the World Trade Center on the Jersey side of the Hudson (Jersey City, NJ). [Our office--Hudson River--Twin Towers]. Because our help desk lived on average 40-50 minutes away via car, not a one of them showed up to the office the day after 9/11. Myself, one other fellow and our manager showed up though. The first hour they had us working the phones for regular customers (many folks did not show up that day). After being b-slapped over the phone by regular customers, I went to my boss telling him I don't want to do this anymore because I am afraid I will tell something the wrong thing. He asked if I could do regular help desk instead for the whole day. I told him I had no problem with that.

Now a little backstory, one of our branch offices was on Broad St...about a couple of blocks away from what became Ground Zero a day before. The building itself survived the tragedy and the network team was there to move the servers and network gear to the other Jersey shop before it would eventually move over to the main office we worked out of.

About 5 minutes after I get situated, the phone rings:

Me) Hello, this is bullcrap help desk, how may I help you?

Clueless moron [CM]) Uhhh, yeah, I'm trying to use such and such application [note: this application connected to one of the Broad St. servers] but it's down. How long will it be down for?

Me) Yes, we have been told by the Networking team that it would be down the entire day and it should be up tomorrow.

CM) WTF?! How is this possible?!

Me) The reason it will be down is because they are moving those servers back to NJ. Those servers were a couple of blocks away from the Twin Towers.

CM) OH MY GOD!!! How can this happen? This is just a normal business day...

It was at that point that I cut him off and got real cute:

Me), Sir, do me a favor, and look outside the eastern part of the building. Tell me again that this is a normal business day.

[silence]

CM) Oh man, look I'm so sorry.

Me) Listen, Networking is working on this as I speak to you and it will be up tomorrow morning. Is there anything else I can do for you?

CM) No, that's it....thanks and sorry.


Aside from the JOAT job I had previous to this gig, this was the only time I worked Help Desk. I did desktop support at this time.

Paperlantern

Well its gonna be hard to follow a Ground Zero story on the helpdesk flavor of a story, but I'll try.

This was mid 2000 sometime, working for a Dial Up ISP call center.

Me: Thank you for calling this ISP, may I have your ISP login ID or e mail address please?

User: Yes it's blah blah

Me: And how may I help you?

User: Yes I can't seem to connect up.

At this point im on auto pilot as the routine kicks in

Me: Yes what OS do you have? Windows? Mac?

User: Windows

Me: 95? 98? NT?

User: 98

Me: Okay, lets click on your start menu please

User: I dont have that

Me: No start menu? Are you sure you are using WIndows 98?

User: Yes of course, im sure I know my own computer.

Me: Okay maam i'm sorry, lets double click on your my computer icon then

User: WHere is that, I dont see that

Me: Should be right on your desktop, your main screen there

User: Nope, I dont see it.

Me: *thinks okay, maybe the icon AND the menu is hidden/autohide* Okay, can we press ctrl-esc on the keyboard maam?

User: control? I dont see that

Me: Maam are you sure you are using windows 98

At my second questioning she became instantly livid

User: YES OF COURSE IT'S WINDOWS 98! I TOLD YOU I KNOW WHAT MY COMPUTER IS RUNNING!

Me: Whoa maam, my apologies, i dont mean to insinuate you dont know anything about your computer, but given the fact you have been unable to follow any of my instructions, i just became skeptical, again my apologies, shall we continue? i have an idea where we can go from here

User: Okay, sure, yes of course, please continue

Me: Could you click on your apple menu for me?

User: Okay i'm there, now what?

Me: *facepalm*

The conversation went from there as i fixed her dialer on her MAC

Plantwiz

Paperlantern wrote: »

....Me: Could you click on your apple menu for me?

User: Okay i'm there, now what?

Me: *facepalm*

The conversation went from there as i fixed her dialer on her MAC

za3bour

Paperlantern wrote: »

Me: Could you click on your apple menu for me?

User: Okay i'm there, now what?

Me: *facepalm*

The conversation went from there as i fixed her dialer on her MAC

Man I salut you I would've shoted at this point what a weird Win 98 she has.

Psoasman

I spent 10 minutes trying to get a user to press the F-lock key on her keyboard and when she couldn't find it, even though she could find the number lock right below it. I had to drive 20 minutes to our other site to walk in and press the key for her.

The same user thought I was talking about a real mouse on her screen.

A supervisor asked me to download the internet to a CD and bring it to his computer and install it.

...I work at a casino...you can't make this stuff up

za3bour

Psoasman wrote: »

A supervisor asked me to download the internet to a CD and bring it to his computer and install it.

Man that would be on big fat CD

mickeycoronado

za3bour wrote: »

Man that would be on big fat CD

I'm not even sure all the **** URLs would fit on one.

Oh..is it in bad taste to say **** here? My bad. I think I've done it like three times already.

RobertKaucher

Psoasman wrote: »

I spent 10 minutes trying to get a user to press the F-lock key on her keyboard and when she couldn't find it, even though she could find the number lock right below it. I had to drive 20 minutes to our other site to walk in and press the key for her.

The same user thought I was talking about a real mouse on her screen.

Well, technically it is a cursor displayed on the screen. The mouse is a hardware component held in the hand and used to direct the cursor on the screen. And yes, I am an a-hole!

Paperlantern

Psoasman wrote: »

A supervisor asked me to download the internet to a CD and bring it to his computer and install it.

Actually that was a common saying at the same call center I got the other story from. Though the first time someone said

"Yeah I just downloaded the internet, but now it wont connect"

And i said, "well what would you need to connect for, you already have the whole thing sir"

I heard riotous laughter coming from my supervisor's pod, apparently i was being monitored at the time, and despite getting a high five, i still got written up, yeah i didnt do that again, lol

arwes

First internet support job I had (so glad to be away from that), we would support Macs & PCs but any non-standard things like WebTV or Sega Dreamcast systems, we would just give them their local dialup number and the DNS settings. Anything beyond that, they had to call the manufacturer. This is a story about a WebTV user.

Me> Customer service.
Her>Yeah I'm getting <generic dialup error> when trying to connect.

At this point, I pulled up the error number, and it looked to be a hardware issue.

Me> Ma'am, have you tried powering the unit off and on?
Her> Yes, but I'll try it again.

Still nothing.

Me> Ok ma'am, let's check your settings.

Everything sounded fine in the settings.

Me> Well, I'm limited in the amount of support I can provide for WebTV systems. It sounds like this may be a hardware issue, so I really suggest you contact the manufacturer for help. The number I have for them is 1-800-GO WEBTV.
Her> OK, well thanks for trying anyway. I'll give them a call.

~5 minutes pass and the phone rings...

Me> Customer service.
Her> I don't know who you think you are doing that to me. Do you think that's funny? I'm going to have your job (lol). I demand to speak to your manager right now!!

I'm in a state of shock at the moment.

Me> Ma'am, please calm down! What's going on? I don't understand why you're so angry!
Her> You sent me to a phone *** line [censor filter caught that, but it's an adult chat line. She then proceeds to tell me what all it said, which made it even funnier].

So I placed her on hold, so I could try to piece this together. I knew that being one of our customers, she probably wasn't all that bright to begin with. I called 1 800 GO WEBTV, and after one or two rings I got their automated menu. So I verified that part. Then, I had to think like one of my customers. I looked at the words GO WEBTV and tried to figure out where she could've gone wrong. It clicked. I called 1 800 G0 (yeah that's a zero) WEBTV, and I got it. I had reached the hottest chat line in America, 1 800 (lady part).

Me> Ma'am, I found out what you did. You used a zero instead of an 'O' in 'GO'.
Her> No I did not! Put me on the phone with your supervisor right now, or I'm cancelling my service!!

At this point I went to the operations manager's office, and explained what she did. Even got a laugh out of dialing the incorrect number. So I let her speak with him. End result? She got a free month of service for being a moron. /facepalm

Edit: Haha, that number still works. All I heard was heavy breathing and something about "secret ecstasy" and then I hung up lol.

billyr

I've told this one before on another thread but though it was worth resurecting:

Whilst serving in the military I had a call one day asking if we could receive a secret message via fax. I informed the originator that as the fax lines were unclassified this would not be possible.
I then explained the correct procedure, which was to double envelope the message with the inner envelope clearly marked Secret and the outer envelope with no markings except the recipients name. This should then be sent by secure courier.

Twenty minutes later the fax machine kicked into action and a sheet of paper with the outline of an envelope was delivered to my desk!

Still gives me a chuckle.

erpadmin

Paperlantern wrote: »

I heard riotous laughter coming from my supervisor's pod, apparently i was being monitored at the time, and despite getting a high five, i still got written up, yeah i didnt do that again, lol

Your supervisor definitely exhibited DBagerry at its finest....lmao.

The worse I would have done was an unofficial verbal...especially if from what it sounded like you were just being facetious, as opposed to sarcastic and rude.

Paperlantern

The monitoring system there, if I remember correctly, also recorded at the same time. And part fo the agreement was that people FROM the ISP that we were contracted through had access to these files any time they wished. i think he wrote me up becuase while a low possibility of anyone finding that recording, IF they did, and somehow found that the agent was not written up for that comment, HE could get in trouble, so it was more of a cover HIS ass than anything. Personally I dont think he woulda wrote me up, especially after the high five, if not for those other variables.

erpadmin

Paperlantern wrote: »

The monitoring system there, if I remember correctly, also recorded at the same time. And part fo the agreement was that people FROM the ISP that we were contracted through had access to these files any time they wished. i think he wrote me up becuase while a low possibility of anyone finding that recording, IF they did, and somehow found that the agent was not written up for that comment, HE could get in trouble, so it was more of a cover HIS ass than anything. Personally I dont think he woulda wrote me up, especially after the high five, if not for those other variables.

Now that makes perfect sense...as someone who subscribes to the CYA principle, I will have to retract my earlier statement.

Paperlantern

erpadmin wrote: »

Now that makes perfect sense...as someone who subscribes to the CYA principle, I will have to retract my earlier statement.

Yeah, i couldnt blame him either, but knowing he appreciated the comment helped soften the blow. LOL

motogpman

What irritates me is when someone messes up their system, for the umpteenth time, and still the first thing out of their mouth is, " I don't know how it happened, it was like that when I turned it on." Those are the ones who I point out logs, cookies, installed software.... The same ones who call and complain all the time that their company provided equipment is crap, but let their whole family use their work laptop for crap like Pokerstars.net, P2P, ****, and gaming. You know, the types that all of a sudden expect you to drop everything you are working on for them. In a large global company with a SMALL IT group, it's enough to smack them up side the head and ask them if they feel guilty for getting paid so much for being stupid!

Here's one, and this is typical every day here and it drives the rest of the IT department insane.

Riverbed device. Picture this....

It's summer time in Texas ( August!! ). I am rewiring a 60 year old manufacturing building in the country with Cat 6 and RG6 for new cell repeaters and LAN hardware (existing was regular Cat5). Being the motivated employee that I am, I decided to do this myself since the company wouldn't budget to get a contractor in to do it. I am all about making improvements for the employees, most of them think they are under appreciated and this place needs so much work it isn't even funny.

So, here I am in a lift bucket, 25+ feet off the ground, sweating my a$$ off. Snakes, spiders, dead animals, insulation..yep, I am finding everything above each false ceiling tile as I run the cable. This has been going on for a week now ( large facility). I happen to look down and see our N.E. walking towards the server room with, you guessed it, the Riverbed box.

He decided that he was going to install this thing to speed up our "network." Intersite traffic was slow, for several reasons, but he wouldn't listen to us about why and that his "box" wasn't going to improve anything. So, I see him, smile, and get back to work. About 15 minutes later, he comes over to the bucket, calls me down, and asks me to come look at something. I am pissed at this point, I figure he messed something up ( typical ), and I am no mood to fix his problem.

We go to the server room, he picks up the 2 cat6 cables, and asks me to plug them in for him!!!!!!! WTF! HE has the damn wiring diagram right there too, from the vendor! I looked at him, told him he was the NE, that this was his "project" and went back to wiring the building. It was all I could do to not cuss him out. He spent another 30 minutes in there doing what I don't know.

I can handle brain dead end users, but when it is a highly paid IT "professional" with over 20+ years in the field...... it's beyond insanity. This type of situation has been going on for 3+ years now! Pray for us, please, for the love of GOD! LOL.

myedjo24

I don't know where the technology gap happens, but I had this Colonel I used to work for who could not do anything on his computer other than check his email and use excel. He would always have me come and assist when he needed to have me copy something in a word document and put it in excel. Even though I would show him how to do so, he would always be like hey I forgot blah blah.

This other Colonel in the same command would always accidentally unplug his phone with his foot. He would call up angry that his phone in his office isn't working, and I would walk over there and always see that it was unplugged. I pointed it out once to him, but still would occasionally get a call from him saying his phone isn't working. I think basic troubleshooting skills escape certain people.

it_consultant

motogpman wrote: »

What irritates me is when someone messes up their system, for the umpteenth time, and still the first thing out of their mouth is, " I don't know how it happened, it was like that when I turned it on." Those are the ones who I point out logs, cookies, installed software.... The same ones who call and complain all the time that their company provided equipment is crap, but let their whole family use their work laptop for crap like Pokerstars.net, P2P, ****, and gaming. You know, the types that all of a sudden expect you to drop everything you are working on for them. In a large global company with a SMALL IT group, it's enough to smack them up side the head and ask them if they feel guilty for getting paid so much for being stupid!

Here's one, and this is typical every day here and it drives the rest of the IT department insane.

Riverbed device. Picture this....

It's summer time in Texas ( August!! ). I am rewiring a 60 year old manufacturing building in the country with Cat 6 and RG6 for new cell repeaters and LAN hardware (existing was regular Cat5). Being the motivated employee that I am, I decided to do this myself since the company wouldn't budget to get a contractor in to do it. I am all about making improvements for the employees, most of them think they are under appreciated and this place needs so much work it isn't even funny.

So, here I am in a lift bucket, 25+ feet off the ground, sweating my a$$ off. Snakes, spiders, dead animals, insulation..yep, I am finding everything above each false ceiling tile as I run the cable. This has been going on for a week now ( large facility). I happen to look down and see our N.E. walking towards the server room with, you guessed it, the Riverbed box.

He decided that he was going to install this thing to speed up our "network." Intersite traffic was slow, for several reasons, but he wouldn't listen to us about why and that his "box" wasn't going to improve anything. So, I see him, smile, and get back to work. About 15 minutes later, he comes over to the bucket, calls me down, and asks me to come look at something. I am pissed at this point, I figure he messed something up ( typical ), and I am no mood to fix his problem.

We go to the server room, he picks up the 2 cat6 cables, and asks me to plug them in for him!!!!!!! WTF! HE has the damn wiring diagram right there too, from the vendor! I looked at him, told him he was the NE, that this was his "project" and went back to wiring the building. It was all I could do to not cuss him out. He spent another 30 minutes in there doing what I don't know.

I can handle brain dead end users, but when it is a highly paid IT "professional" with over 20+ years in the field...... it's beyond insanity. This type of situation has been going on for 3+ years now! Pray for us, please, for the love of GOD! LOL.

How did he just come up with a Riverbed device? I have used their steelhead devices in enterprise and they are far from cheap. Beyond that though, it did an outstanding job of speeding up the point to point connections between the main office and all the remote offices which were on a combination of MPLS and old school point to point T1s.

If he had a riverbed in his hand it didn't end up there on accident, its not something you just pick up on best buy.

RobertKaucher

it_consultant wrote: »

How did he just come up with a Riverbed device? I have used their steelhead devices in enterprise and they are far from cheap. Beyond that though, it did an outstanding job of speeding up the point to point connections between the main office and all the remote offices which were on a combination of MPLS and old school point to point T1s.

If he had a riverbed in his hand it didn't end up there on accident, its not something you just pick up on best buy.

Same for us. Link between our office and New Zealand was terrible before the RB.

I think his comment was more that the RB was bought when the rest of the network team knew there were other issues with the link that needed to be resolved first. If your sh*t is old, poorly maintained, and improperly designed you don't just throw money at it. You need to first make sure that link is running as fast as it can on its own and then decide if money needs to be spent on an appliance like that. The NE seemed, from the story, to have already come to his own consclusion based on marketing and just decided to blow a wad of cash from the budget on something he understood so well he could not even hook it up.

motogpman

Robert is right. It wasn't the the device wasn't going to fix the issue, the problem is that our WAN bandwidth (1.5 mb), infrastructure hardware, cabling, and PC's need to be upgraded before a device like that is installed. Most of the stuff was WAY past it's intended service life at the time, which is why I was starting at the site level to make improvements first. He fought to get them, even thought the rest of us had protested, but he was able to get one anyways. Our p2p utilization is normally aroung 80+ %. I think upping the bandwidth, at a cost of a few hundred $'s is more cost effective, but my suggestion fell on deaf ears.

As Robert stated, blowing money on equipment/software that wasn't needed is part of the issue. He can't even set up a wifi connection, has caused more outages/problems and then wont confess. I could go on and on about things he purchased, was supposed to test, and then implement. The problem is he never finishes and then **** it on the IT staff to resolve. We are still paying for stuff that isn't even running..... Dedicated video conferencing VPN line and EXPENSIVE equipment ( $35k), that we are still paying support and active line for, and it's been used 3 or 4 times in a year and a half. It is now gathering dust in the server room.

Everything he touches turns to &*&!*. Also, he spent time with the vendor on how to install the RB, had a diagram in his hand, he couldn't even plug the thing in his own. He had to call me down out of a bucket in 100+ degree heat/humidity to plug in 2 wires. He's way over his head in his position, pay, and knowledge base. Being friends with the former VP that hired him had it's perks apparently. Even our end users avoid him at all costs.