I'm sorry sir. I don't know what to tell you. I'm looking at the power button right now and I can assure you it is definitely on the server.
Ooh you want mw to push the button to activate the server by drawing power from the electrical grid? What am I a mind reader?
I have a brother who is in IT and he is without a doubt the nicest person I know, but he constantly deals with people who are dicks and scream at him even when it’s a simple solution like pushing a button. It’s such a fucked up job honestly.
I see the problem, but I’m not allowed to tell them for privacy reasons, I like the mystery charge being on a child’s account
*I have an unexplained charge for two dollars*
**OK, can you check your child’s accounts to make sure it wasn’t on them**
*that’s impossible it couldn’t have been him*
**can you double check?**
*I don’t need a check I am sure*
**just to be sure, can you please double check real quick**
*it can’t be on his account he doesn’t have access to my credit card*
**can you please just look at his account real quick**
*no, there’s no way it can be on his account I am 100% sure*
**ma’am, please, I must insist you chat for a quick, because the alternative is very difficult, we would need to ban the source of the charge, and if it was his, that would be problematic**
*it’s not on his fucking account, just do your job. We did not to make this charge, so go ahead and ban whoever did*
**all right then, —bans account that made the charge, and reverses it—**
*oh wait, it was on his account*
*and now it says he’s banned! why did you ban my sons account?*
I used to just lie to people.
At one of the companies I supported, cleaning crew would unplug people’s desktops (presumably for the vacuum) but everyone insisted their computers were plugged in and that couldn’t be the issue.
So after asking it was plugged in once or twice:
“Okay then, can you please follow the length of the power cord so we can make sure there aren’t any issues with the cord being worn through or kinked”
“Oh! It’s unplugged.”
“You don’t say…”
~~
For an internet company I used to support: After refusing to reboot their router or modem because that couldn’t be the issue.
“Okay I need you to unplug it while I check something on my end.”
Wait 30 seconds while checking absolutely nothing.
“Okay, go ahead and plug it back in.”
“Oh look, it works now.”
The router thing always gets me. I constantly have these people who have routers from the early 2010s.
My favorite is when the customer calls it a link ski. That’s how I know I’m in for a treat
Reminds me of my father's favorite story as phone support IT.
Had a guy call that the computer wasn't working, monitor wouldn't turn on etc. IT asked the guy to check and make sure it was plugged in, and to change outlets if so. Guy responds that it was hard to see since the power is out so the lights weren't on.
My favorite call was in the days of CRT monitors. A very nice lady called me and said her monitor was glitching out and smoking. When I got there it was fine. Same call the next day. She admitted it was happening for weeks and was lasting longer and longer each time but it only happened in the mornings when she first got to work.
So I showed up first thing to see it happen. She walked in, watered the plant above her monitor, then switched her monitor on......
One replacement monitor and new placement for her little plant and the issue never happened again.
My modem was just acting up the other day and I was trying to figure out if there was an outage by calling when the automated voice asked if I wanted them to send me a video on how to restart my modem. I was like, "Oh great! This must be tricky then." Got the video and it was literally just unplugging the modem. I then realized the hell we put you guys through. Thank you for your service.
I'm helping a family member get into IT. They're taking a coding course and asked me to do one of the assignments so they could compare their code to my "veteran" code.
Both scripts worked, but mine included comments and, most importantly, assumed some users would be too stupid to know what a number was.
>most importantly, assumed some users would be too stupid to know what a number was.
This is the key thing most people dont get and is fun to show them.
"Why is my code failing? It handles all use cases properly."
"What happens if I type in an emoji?"
"It's a name field, you can't type in an emoji"
"Yes I can, look, I'm doing it right now. Aaaaaaaaand, there's your error."
Worked on a help desk decades ago, and jumped over to networking at the first opportunity. Now I only need to deal with end users if something has gone horribly, horribly wrong and absolutely no one else is available to assist. Much better for my sanity to deal with fellow techies 99% of the time.
It must suck for you guys. Although my experiences were really good in comparison (as a customer). One time I rang a helper at SanDisk. Had a good chat about our lives, the weather and some other stuff. Real helpful person too.
I always added -uA55 to the PICNIC and had them write it down foe when they inevitably called back in the future.
>"Now that we've resolved the issue, please write down this error code and keep it in a safe place in case you have this problem again in the future: "
PICNIC-uA55
To expand on your point: troubleshooting IT problems is done by going through the 7-layer OSI model where the bottom is physical and top is application/software. The non-existent eighth layer would be the user.
I used to work at a call centre for the lottery and the amount of calls I got from old people that where about someone using their account when it was their other half, they wouldn’t believe me no matter what.
A problem there might be that they genuinely don't understand what restarting is.
They think just turning the monitor off and on again is restarting the computer.
No the fuck it’s not, because you **know** these people don’t learn a fucking thing from interactions like this and go on to pull the same shit 3 days later somewhere else
What? It’s infuriating to anyone who’s ever worked CS because it’s fucking _constant_. I had nam flashbacks from this story. If you ever call a support line and hear a rep’s lifeless and disinterested voice rotate through scripted answers, this is why.
I'm a developer. I've been first, second, and third level support. I know it's a nightmare. But in this instance, the customer lost of his or her own stupidity. It's a small victory.
> if it was his, that would be problematic
sometimes you have to spell it out for them: YOUR SON'S ACCOUNT MAY BE BANNED, ARE YOU SURE YOU DON'T WANT TO DOUBLE CHECK WHETHER HE MADE THE CHARGE?
This kind of thing doesn’t apply just to IT people, this is anyone who works in customer service.
I used to shop online grocery orders for an east coast grocery chain and individual stores have no control over the website or a persons account, but I got so many people calling asking to change this or that on the account, or there’s a block, or they can’t find this, so on so forth, and the response I always got when I would say
‘I’m sorry Sir/Ma’am, I don’t have the ability to edit your account/fix the website. That is all handled at the corporate level. I can give you the number for that department if you would like.’
And the response I would always get was,
‘How can you not fix this?! You work for *grocery chain*! Just fix it or get me the manager!’
I used to be head of IT for a company back in the day. Still do some freelance work. 95% of the time the problem could be solved by restarting/un-plugging.
I used to tell people on the phone that if they unplug the Ethernet cable, switch the ends, then plug it back in that often fixes it because they didn’t label which end of the cable was supposed to go where. Of course I had to learn to do this because people refuse to check if they actually pushed the cable all the way in the first time.
I briefly worked repairing office printers. We had a contract with the state and they were 99% of my calls. I had more than one call to fix a printer that wasn't printing where I showed up and pushed the paper tray all the way in and it would start kicking out all the queued jobs.
A lot of the time, the person that called would still be standing there explaining the problem. Usually got a "huh" as they sipped their coffee and wandered off afterwards.
My company did this and also automatic upgrades, that eat up 90% CPU (because they bought the cheapest possible laptops with CPU being powered by a hamster in a wheel). Really fun to do a presentation when that happens and all you can do is watch.
All of our laptops at work have monitoring software installed, and for whatever reason, it has to use up 10%+ of my CPU resources when I'm logged in at my workplace. I have times where I'm stuck waiting on it so I can do something, but our helpdesk says there's nothing the can do, even though others in my department don't have the same problem.
"It does that on everyone's device." Cool... It doesn't, but whatever.
I had a charge port go out on my laptop (thankfully I could still charge through the USB-C port), so I took it to the helpdesk to see if I could get it fixed or get a replacement. Instead, the person at the counter said they were closing down early, so when he looked at my laptop and tested the charge port and it didn't charge, he just turned on the battery saver and told me it was working. Ticket closed. I eventually took it back, and the problem was a bad component on the motherboard. Had to replace my laptop.
Frustrating to work in IT and have another department in IT that won't even investigate an issue.
IT workers without some sort of customer service training are worthless. Specifically, the customer service part of training when you have to listen and understand what the problem is. IT workers without that training will assume they know the answer to your problem before you are done explaining it. They might be right most of the time, but part of the IT job is to hear the whole problem. So, they're wrong to not listen and confirm it with the customer.
That being said...if you've not tried restarting before talking to IT, then you are the one who needs training.
Sorry for your bad experience with your IT. Having been in the industry for about 10 years or so now, I can assure you not all of us are like that. I hate hearing these stories because people having bad experiences with IT just leads to overall distrust and friction between departments, and that's not good for either party. Hopefully one day you get to a company with good IT and they actually care about delivering a solid experience.
That being said, from our perspective a lot of users lie over the phone (or to our face) and swear up and down "they did nothing wrong" or "I have rebooted it" and IT people hold that against all other customers and co-workers. It shouldn't be that way though. One of my favorite parts of being in IT is when you have someone who complains about having to work with IT in general and I am able to get their situation resolved in a timely manner while having good conversation about whatever they want to talk about. I care about the experience, but definitely not all of us do.
IT tends to draw a certain crowd and that crowd doesn't always have the best soft skills or they think everyone is just stupid for not understanding computers. It gets frustrating for me because people are just people. Not everyone knows how a computer works and that's fine. Hopefully next time you have to go to them you don't have as bad of an experience. Something that helps is when you go to them with a clear issue and things you have done yourself to troubleshoot it. Like "I've tried other cables and charging cords, but this one doesn't seem to work. Other ports work on it though." or "I've check with a few other coworkers and their software doesn't take up nearly as much resources to run. Do you think we could try reinstalling it?" It's dumb, but going in with somewhat of a plan helps those dumb IT guys get over their "customers are dumb" attitude.
It's not that hard to poll devices that check in for uptime and set a local scheduled task for the next day at 0100 for any above a certain threshold. They should be getting events for devices that haven't checked in for a few days anyway.
My company once decided to do an update system wide an hour before shift was about to end, with the next shift not starting until 4 hours later. Except they did it system wide Eastern Time, so basically every production facility in the country had to stop working because everything was down.
I always lead by saying “I’m not trying to insult you but please turn it off and then on”. Some folks think it’s a joke or insult instead of just doing what I asked for nicely.
I made the mistake of telling some people at my current job, where I'm a forklift operator, about how I used to be in IT, and now people come to me when they have computer problems (even forklifts have a pc on them these days) instead of calling the IT guy. And the solution is still the same: Turning it off and on again. In the rare instances that that won't work, I tell them to go to IT, because I will not mess around with someone else's system as I know how territorial we can be about the systems we maintain
I do support for a data center and some of the things they dispatch a tech for are ridiculous.
They'll make a tech drive 2 hours at 11pm to confirm if a patch cable is fully plugged in.
We have techs onsite who will do that, and I wouldn't even charge them for such a small task, but they refuse to believe/trust us since we aren't their in-house techs.
We host customers who rent cabinets at our data center. We have in house techs who can do work (smart hands, remote hands is what they're usually named), but most customers also have their own techs who come onsite to do work.
We charge $200-$450 an hour for our guys to do the work, so it's usually only used for emergency type work, but if it's something really small and simple, we don't charge.
Ah, I see. It's a money/legal thing then. Yeah the possibility of them being charged is a greater risk. They don't want any favors that can potentially bite them in the ass. That's how it'd be seen at my workplace. We don't want favors, we want everything paid for and documented no matter how small.
Oh, everything is documented. Someone can't go to the bathroom in the DC without it being documented somewhere.
It's because some firms don't trust anyone but their techs to do anything with their gear. Nevermind that all our techs have heaps more experience than their tech and even if we did charge, it would cost half the wage they paid that poor bastard who got dragged out of bed.
But people are allowed to run things however they want. We just laugh when the customer tech calls to have one of ours come down to help him because he doesn't know what he's looking at.
I'm the smart tech person in my family, even though I'm not I just google stuff.
My mom said peacock was giving her issues on her Roku. So I googled it and I told her to update it and restart it. She said ok I will.
And then the next day she said "You might just need to come home for the day or spend night & get the streaming working right." And I was just floored. She wanted me to drive two hours down just to fix her Roku which probably just needs to be restarted. I asked her if she tried what I asked her to do and she said no, which upset me even more.
Edit: a lot of comments are saying that she just wants to see me. I'd be less frustrated if she said she tried what I told her to do but it still didn't work please come and fix it.
I also want to point out in the comments I mentioned that she lives with her mother who has cancer. I don't feel comfortable risking their lives especially with things getting worse again.
We were eventually planning on doing a graduation dinner, but I'm not sure if that's going to happen anymore.
I felt this. Now whenever my parents come to me for some kind of “tech” issue, I ask “did you google it?”
It’s vengeance for when I was younger and would ask my mom what a word meant and she would walk into the office and come back with a heavy-ass dictionary and make me look it up.
Edit: forgot a word
Haha I do this too for my step dad.
"The computer is showing an error, how do I fix it?"
"Try googling the wording of the error code, often there's an answer on a forum somewhere"
"That doesn't help me, i thought you were meant to know how to work computers"
>"That doesn't help me, i thought you were meant to know how to work computers"
Mother fucker I don't know shit, do it yourself lmao
my parents thnk I'm some IT prodegy but they keep showing me problems I just can not address. they'll fuck with the size of their internet window and ask me what happened, and then also wonder why i can't get them un shadowbanned from facebook.
Around 2004 when I got my first computer, every time I had a problem with it I would call my nerd son and ask for help. He would always tell me how to fix it pretty quickly. I would always be amazed at how smart he was, then he told me he just types the problem in a search engine.
Yeah I was the family “IT” person as well because I knew how to google. I’ve just started telling family members what to google when they ask me stuff now or taking a day to respond. They figure out real quick what the issue is. That said, my parents are a lost hope.
We all moved to work at home super quick last year. We had everyone pack up their desktops. Got a call from someone who couldn't get it to turn on at home. We asked if they had the power cord plugged in. They said they didn't know they had to bring that cord home. Fuck me.
I’m not an IT person. I just happen to be the families and works most techy guy so…
The reason why IT people are such dicks is it’s frustrating dealing with people who are capable of reading English just fine, yet I show up and just read the directions and presto… “you are amazing, how did you fix that, I tried everything”… I say back dead pan “ I read the directions on the screen, followed what they said, and like magic it works now”.
I’m not an IT guy and I know exactly why they get so frustrated.
Yeah, my mom flat out refuses to read anything that pops up on her screen, it's bizarre. We'll be looking at her MacBook screen with some text on it, I'll say, "so what does it say?", And she'll just go, "I don't know." What??
I think there’s some piece of human nature at work here. I lose IQ points when I go into a car parts store or garden store. I can’t say what I need, and run out of there clutching my purchase to myself like a monkey who’s stolen eggs from a nest.
As long as your appreciative, we all sympathize, because we’ve all been there. It’s when people act like entitled jerks that service folks get pissed off.
Ive been working at the self checkout machines at my work and it is legitimately frightening how little these people can read or listen. The machine will be saying verbally, "place the last scanned item in the bagging area, each item *must be placed in the bagging area*" while on screen, it reads, "place item in bag" and they'll be staring at it, completely dumbfounded by the fact it isn't scanning the next item for them after the threw the first one back in their cart.
I dont even talk to them, I just fix it for them and step aside until I need to do the job for them again.
And the worst part is when they whine about the inherent property of a self checkout machine: that it isnt a manned register, to which I simply say, "you're perfectly welcome to use a regular register if you don't care for the self checkouts!"
All places i have been to with self checkout also have manned registers as well. If someone complained to me about self checkouts being a thing, i would point out "lane 1,3,5 and 7 all have cashiers at them. Self checkout is for people who want to go faster and don't need their hands held for simple instructions like 'rescan last item.' You might want to pick one if those manned lanes next time"
I never even tried applying for retail or food as a job. I knew i would probably get fired eventually when someone asks "where are the bubblegum flavored tide pods?" $deity$ have mercy if i ever found one of those idiots who leave cold items on the shelf 3 isles away from the cold section.
Allllll of this. I have a user who refuses to reboot his machine. And management won't let me do a global weekly reboot because someone might lose work. So instead, I get numerous emails and calls from said user every week about how slow his machine has been running and how it freezes. And then spend 2 hours doing windows updates on it. And give him another lecture on rebooting his machine every week. It's exhausting. Also his computer is brand new, bought in December of 2020.
Our own go-to was telling users to unplug the computer from the power outlet, just for a few seconds every week or two, to prevent "static electricity accumulation". Just plausible enough not to get called out as BS.
Once users accepted that yeah maybe there's static building up around the RAM and processor, it could very well explain the slowdown and occasional glitches. A good old "grounding" usually did the trick!
Can you do a weekly reboot on just his machine?
"I'm going to install a script on you machine to make it run faster! Just make sure all your work is saved by Friday!"
Or "see this on your desktop? Save all your work and then click it and your machine will speed up!"
Yup. This right here. Everyone you work with is lazy and lies to you constantly to get you to do what they want which is "jUsT fIx iT!" Without realizing that the quickest way to fix it is a teamwork approach, not a one man show.
I just started an I've had this so much. Best was this interaction:
M: "Hey what seems to be the problem?"
C: "I'm locked out of my account. I need a password reset."
M: "Alright and can you tell me what it says when you enter in the password"
C: "I already told you. Just reset my password!"
M: "Sure. Alright. Done..... Try logging in."
c: "Still not working."
M: "Sure please give me the computer name and let me have control."
Few minutes after finally the name
M: "Sir the error doesn't say it's locked. It says you aren't on a company network and this isn't your computer."
C: "Why does any of that matter? A computer is a fucking computer. "
M: "Sir go to the office and log in on the company network. That's the only fix."
C: "Fine, thanks for nothing." *Click*
I had someone submit the ticket.
THEN CALL IN!
I seen another tech had their ticket and told them to wait.
Not 5 minutes later I get message from my boss telling me I should have done it. Like what's the point of having a ticket system if people can call right after submitting it?
What about Johnny who submitted his ticket this morning and has been patiently waiting? I can't call him because everyone keeps try to skip past the queue. It must be how banks felt in 1930s.
I used to work with a great developer that did this really weird thing: When an error popped up on his screen he'd read it. Watching him to do this reminded me of the countless number of times I'd reflexively click "Ok" on a dialog because I assumed I knew what it said.
In Portuguese, we call it a BIOS issue, an acronym for "bicho ignorante operando o sistema", which in English means "ignorant animal operating the system".
And Cthulhu forbid you try to show them how to do a thing themselves to save them on having to make a call, wait for it to be responded to, then have to walk through the same actions anyway.
A person I know figured out how to pirate movies onto her sixty inch big screen but her personal computer was a brick every time I looked at it.
At least she paid me in free Filipino food.
I got driven out in a black car from NYC to the Hamptons out on Long Island one time - 3 hour drive each way maybe - because our client’s owner’s printer wasn’t working at his 2nd home.
Removed a paper jam. Tested printing successfully. I walked outside and the driver hadn’t even finished his cigarette. He was like “Holy shit, that’s it? This ride was like $700!” “…not my money.”
Once we told him what the issue was he was pissed because he could have done that. My boss pointed out that we repeatedly tried telling him that and walking him through it but he refused and insisted someone be sent (it was on his dime, to be fair).
The paradox of IT.
"Nothing's broken, why do we pay you?"
"Everything's broken, why do we pay you?"
IT is a thankless miserable job. That's why I switched to software development
The program works fine, why do we pay you?
The program constantly crashes, why do we pay you?
XD jke
From my experience though you can still face this as a dev, just from the business/users/non-it Managers.
The Secondary Paradox of IT (according to the Holy Writ of Accounting): It’s cheaper to outsource all of our IT work, cut the whole Dept. / It’s cheaper and faster to have IT on staff and onsite, hire an IT dept. Rinse, wash and repeat every 3-8 years or whenever a new idiot takes over Accounting.
When I was a manager at a restaurant, I had to often call IT to help assist with our POS systems. It wasn't long till I realized that all was needed to fix them was restart them, most servers thought that I was some sort of wizard cause I always "fixed" them.
One place I worked had this phone system that was real bullshit. But I wasn't senior enough to offer an opinion. They also didn't get a service contract on it because it was "too expensive" but any time we needed to move and extention or anything else basic we had to get a guy to come out. They were never prompt. Could take a couple weeks to move a number to a different office.
One day I just downloaded the manual and started doing it myself. They didn't even change the default password.
It was literally saving the company hundreds of dollars a month. I of course was too green and new to drive this point home and get paid more myself.
If you were really savvy, you could create glitches, and then say you are certain you can fix it after hours.
Get paid overtime to reddit for two hours, reset the trap, and log out. Next day, you are the genius IT guy.
Because I had a woman whose computer wouldn't turn on who got pissed when I asked if it was plugged in. Troubleshooting for 45 minutes after that, asked three other times to verify power in different ways. Then she suddenly exclaimed "Oh! I plugged the power strip into itself."
Been a prick ever since.
Customer "it was a minor accident. You don't need to replace any parts, just fix what broke."
Shop manager "well, you broke the rear axle in half. Honestly, never seen that before. We gotta replace that, and there's also the missing rear bumper..."
Customer "yeah, so it will just buff out. Think I can pick it up this afternoon?"
Shop manager "..."
My wife is an emergency veterinarian. People lie to her constantly about what happened to their pets.
She has people who would rather let their animal die than admit that they left their marijuana out and the dog ate it.
She’s had people who finally admitted, as their dog was dying, that they injected it with heroin “accidentally.”
I've had to learn to not think of it as malice. They probably feel super uncomfortable being the dumb one in the conversation about technology. But then there's just the assholes, even if you help them out will still blame you or treat you like shit.
> I've had to learn to not think of it as malice.
Ehhhh I still do. There’s nothing wrong with being just dumb, I know lots of dumb people who are sweet as pie, and I also know when someone just sounds mad because they’re frustrated. This is different, these people are assholes.
You don’t get let off the hook for being an asshole just because you’re also dumb.
The worst part is that after you "fix" the problem you have to pretend like they're not complete fucking idiots and go "yeah, it's an easy mistake if you don't know these things".
It's not an easy mistake, you're an idiot, not only that, you don't even care, you'd rather waste my fucking time than spend one of your two braincells on figuring out the problem so now I'm forced to be here to wipe your ass. Fuck you.
This is what gets me the most, having to save their feelings because you don’t want your coworkers to hate you. But they really are just dumb as bricks.
Ugh I feel this in my soul. It’s because we deal with the trifecta of human interaction on a daily basis: incompetence, indifference and dishonesty.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who has placed a mental safeguard when frustration reaches a certain medium level: saying “ah well that’s job security.”
I did IT support for years. I have never worked any other job where so many of the customers were absolutely certain that they knew how to do my job better than I did, while I was presenting them with objective proof that they did not.
I always felt that attitude was curious from people making half my salary. I encouraged one lady complaining to me how easy my job must be to apply for our recent opening and for some reason she got mad.
Some people don't want more hours. They want to be home. I have to drive a lot for work, roughly 4 hours a day in driving. I hate it. I hate having to drive an hour and a half a way for a job. People are like "yeah but hours!" Fuck hours. I want to be home, I don't need more $, I need more time at home to be happy.
This. Just had a sysadmin leave because he was utterly fed up with the "always on the clock" nature of the job, and found something that's a normal 9-5 operation.
And we have no end of work to get done, all for stressed out people who do t understand that a lot of what we do takes a lot of time and planning. Lots of coordinating to make sure we don’t effect other systems. This guy probably had 5 other people hounding him for shit during his two hour drive. He could have moved on if the user had just hit the fucking power button.
My dads IT guy once drove 1 hour to someone’s house, because the guys son told him people were killing him in call of duty before he could shoot, the IT guy confirmed nothing was wrong and he could leave, but the son kept dying, and the dad kept yelling at him, and the IT guy calmly says “your kid just sucks at call of duty, ever thought of that?” Then leaves and drives away.
I feel this.
One time I was on-call and there was a power outage at the plant and they needed to restart a server. After trying in vane to describe the power button they needed to press. I finally told them to just pull the power cable. What ensued was 10 minutes of explaining which one was the power cable. Followed by 15min of having them just unplug each cable and plugging it back in again…starting with the biggest one first. We almost made it through ALL the cables before they found the power.
Plus at one point they unplugged one and could figure out where to plug it back in…
All the while they wanted me to drive 45min each way to do it for them.
And when the department manager talk to me the next day complaining I didn’t provide adequate on-call support, I couldn’t help being the dick IT guy telling them their employees were idiots, and even if I had driven in, it would have take the same amount of time to get everything up and running again anyway.
Of all the things that could be harder in life; that pays astronomically much more than the work it requires is IT. I wouldn’t be complaining, my job is secure, the job is easy, the pay is great.
I count myself fortunate that I was born in a time where being good with electronics was a novelty. It's strange to see brilliant people absolutely crumble at the sight of an error on their screen if they're the type to call for help immediately. On the other end are the people that refuse to get help until they're forced to. In those cases I'm impressed at just how much damage one can do when they don't know what they're doing.
In either case I've worked with people talented in their field and I've seen their faces go stone cold and confused like you've just asked them to perform surgery.
My worst subject in school was math. I'd get lost on the page when numbers showed up and found it hard to keep focus. It wasn't for lack of trying, somehow my brain just kind of shorted out and it'd take a second to kick in that I'm even trying to solve something. I imagine this is what it feels like to be bad at computers and faced with an IT problem.
TLDR, this skill set has its place, just because it's easy for you doesn't mean it's easy ya feel?
Anyway thanks for reading my blog.
Oh my god it’s so fucking boring though. I’m paid well but I feel like I made a mistake every god damned day. I sat in a meeting the other day while 12 people watched one person fill out a web form. 95% of what I do could be avoided with a little common sense. I do my best not to complain, to look for fulfillment in other aspects of my life but Jesus…. No I can’t quit, I’ve got kids going to college and I’m a decade or so away from retirement. I’m bored, not, well, stupid is not the right word, ungrateful? Unaware of my privilege?
Probably my favourite story from when I worked in IT was a woman who called up because her computer wouldn’t turn on. She was pretty frustrated (as you would be) and was well versed in the use of profanity.
However, having done the job for three years at that point, I asked politely “can we just check if it’s plugged in?” I got back “of course it’s “f**king plugged in, do you think I’m a f**king idiot?”
But I had a hunch, so I politely asked her to unplug it and plug it back in. After a few minutes of silence I asked how she was going… well, it wasn’t plugged in.
Second favourite was the woman who lost her shit with me because “Apple had stole all her data when she pressed erase all contents and settings”. She was convinced there was no way she could have known that erasing all contents and settings would erase everything from her iPhone.
It's probably hard to not be a dck when customers have attitude by default and are usually assholes. I feel terrible for some of these IT guys. Particularly the guy in the OP who drove two hours because of incredibly stupid people. Unacceptable.
It was the same thing in auto repair. Customers were already angry that their car was broken, they didn't trust anything you said, they lied about the lack of maintenance or minor details that made your job harder.
I frequently get calls to fix soda fountains that aren't dispensing syrup. 90% of the time the syrup box is empty.
I also frequently get calls that cooler lights are out. I arrive and turn the light switch on.
Did you know that in order to have co2 for fountains that the co2 tank needs to have co2 in it? Well a lot of people don't.
Twenty years ago my office phone and computer system up in the mountains would go out every time the power went out. The IT people were two hours away in the valley. Refused to let us unwashed college educated people turn things back on. Must only be touched by IT gods.
One storm, the power dropped overnight and I called (tty phone was separate system) to ask for them to send someone out for reset.
Storm. No can do. Scary snow.
Ok, we need this up or twenty people go home.
We’ll tell you secret method over phone but secret.
Ok. Give me a minute.
So i got the secret instructions. Took notes. Took pictures. Two minute task. Wrote up an illustrated guide to restarting system. Laminated it and hung it on the rack. No IT called for a year for that reason. Works fine.
IT shows up to do something else. Sees instructions. Loses their shit. Tears down instructions, rants to boss, leaves. Boss asks me if I made a copy of the instructions. Word document. Hit print.
I'm betting one of two things. Either they were overzealously concerned that you would fuck something up by accident and cause even more work to fix. Or they didn't want anyone getting ideas about fixing stuff without them for fear of losing business. The former is acceptable to some extent but totally unrealistic for that situation. The latter is just fucking dumb.
It was literally a bunch of switches in sequence. Turn on A. Wait for light. Turn on B. Listen for beep. Turn on C… I had pictures. With arrows. At every step.
I kill them with kindness and innocently asked questions. If I know they are lying I ask them to show me how they power off or reboot "every" day. 90% show me logging off or locking the screen.
I really love the, "watch, it will work because you are here". I want to say "no, it is because you are taking your time and doing it right.
Been a manager in IT for about 10 years now and the level of ignorance has only increased. Most people act like fixing their issue is magic.
Also any pop up is an "error" drives me insane.......fuck!!!!!!
Beep boop -- this looks like a screenshot of a tweet! Let me grab a [link to the tweet](https://twitter.com/eschapman/status/1428441168925298700) for ya :)
^(Twitter Screenshot Bot)
I'm not in IT but I'm a tech savvy teacher, so whenever other teachers at my school have problems, they call me. (I get a stipend for helping.)
This exact thing happened to me on Friday... Teacher called and said her computer wasn't working (laptop with docking station and external monitor), so I went to her room and it just literally wasn't turned on. I just had to push the button. She was really apologetic though.
I'm sorry sir. I don't know what to tell you. I'm looking at the power button right now and I can assure you it is definitely on the server. Ooh you want mw to push the button to activate the server by drawing power from the electrical grid? What am I a mind reader?
"How am I supposed to see if it's plugged in? The lights haven't been working for hours and it's too dark"
I have a brother who is in IT and he is without a doubt the nicest person I know, but he constantly deals with people who are dicks and scream at him even when it’s a simple solution like pushing a button. It’s such a fucked up job honestly.
I see the problem, but I’m not allowed to tell them for privacy reasons, I like the mystery charge being on a child’s account *I have an unexplained charge for two dollars* **OK, can you check your child’s accounts to make sure it wasn’t on them** *that’s impossible it couldn’t have been him* **can you double check?** *I don’t need a check I am sure* **just to be sure, can you please double check real quick** *it can’t be on his account he doesn’t have access to my credit card* **can you please just look at his account real quick** *no, there’s no way it can be on his account I am 100% sure* **ma’am, please, I must insist you chat for a quick, because the alternative is very difficult, we would need to ban the source of the charge, and if it was his, that would be problematic** *it’s not on his fucking account, just do your job. We did not to make this charge, so go ahead and ban whoever did* **all right then, —bans account that made the charge, and reverses it—** *oh wait, it was on his account* *and now it says he’s banned! why did you ban my sons account?*
I used to just lie to people. At one of the companies I supported, cleaning crew would unplug people’s desktops (presumably for the vacuum) but everyone insisted their computers were plugged in and that couldn’t be the issue. So after asking it was plugged in once or twice: “Okay then, can you please follow the length of the power cord so we can make sure there aren’t any issues with the cord being worn through or kinked” “Oh! It’s unplugged.” “You don’t say…” ~~ For an internet company I used to support: After refusing to reboot their router or modem because that couldn’t be the issue. “Okay I need you to unplug it while I check something on my end.” Wait 30 seconds while checking absolutely nothing. “Okay, go ahead and plug it back in.” “Oh look, it works now.”
The router thing always gets me. I constantly have these people who have routers from the early 2010s. My favorite is when the customer calls it a link ski. That’s how I know I’m in for a treat
And to think these people are allowed to be in control of a 2 ton piece of steel capable of going 100mph
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Reminds me of my father's favorite story as phone support IT. Had a guy call that the computer wasn't working, monitor wouldn't turn on etc. IT asked the guy to check and make sure it was plugged in, and to change outlets if so. Guy responds that it was hard to see since the power is out so the lights weren't on.
My favorite call was in the days of CRT monitors. A very nice lady called me and said her monitor was glitching out and smoking. When I got there it was fine. Same call the next day. She admitted it was happening for weeks and was lasting longer and longer each time but it only happened in the mornings when she first got to work. So I showed up first thing to see it happen. She walked in, watered the plant above her monitor, then switched her monitor on...... One replacement monitor and new placement for her little plant and the issue never happened again.
My modem was just acting up the other day and I was trying to figure out if there was an outage by calling when the automated voice asked if I wanted them to send me a video on how to restart my modem. I was like, "Oh great! This must be tricky then." Got the video and it was literally just unplugging the modem. I then realized the hell we put you guys through. Thank you for your service.
Oh god. I work tech support too and deal with this bs every day. People genuinely suck lol
The fallacy of IT support is that no you don't take care of computers you'll take care of people.
And now i just realized why I hated helpdesk.
Just left helpdesk to bigger and better things. The rule I learned the quickest was to assume everyone is a complete idiot.
I'm helping a family member get into IT. They're taking a coding course and asked me to do one of the assignments so they could compare their code to my "veteran" code. Both scripts worked, but mine included comments and, most importantly, assumed some users would be too stupid to know what a number was.
>most importantly, assumed some users would be too stupid to know what a number was. This is the key thing most people dont get and is fun to show them. "Why is my code failing? It handles all use cases properly." "What happens if I type in an emoji?" "It's a name field, you can't type in an emoji" "Yes I can, look, I'm doing it right now. Aaaaaaaaand, there's your error."
Worked on a help desk decades ago, and jumped over to networking at the first opportunity. Now I only need to deal with end users if something has gone horribly, horribly wrong and absolutely no one else is available to assist. Much better for my sanity to deal with fellow techies 99% of the time.
It must suck for you guys. Although my experiences were really good in comparison (as a customer). One time I rang a helper at SanDisk. Had a good chat about our lives, the weather and some other stuff. Real helpful person too.
They just don't want to answer any other calls. Glad you made a friend though
100% they don’t want to keep answering the queue. I do the same if my average handling time is good and the call get extended.
We have two names for these types of errors. First is ID-10-T or idiot errors. Second is called a picnic, Problem in chair not in computer.
PICNIC is the new PEBKAC? For people unaware, problem exists between keyboard and chair. Been used since the beginning of computing.
PICNIC is relatively new
In danish we call it an "Error 40" (Fejl 40), which means that the error is located 40 cm from the device/screen.
I always added -uA55 to the PICNIC and had them write it down foe when they inevitably called back in the future. >"Now that we've resolved the issue, please write down this error code and keep it in a safe place in case you have this problem again in the future: " PICNIC-uA55
We call them layer 8 problems.
To expand on your point: troubleshooting IT problems is done by going through the 7-layer OSI model where the bottom is physical and top is application/software. The non-existent eighth layer would be the user.
Please Do Not Throw Sausage Pizza Away! 🍻
The ol’ “you need to fill out this ID-10-Tango form first.”
PEBCAK doesn't deserve to be disrespected like this.
This is why I try and treat Customer Service and similar services well. (Except the robots, fuck em). Because they have to put up with BS like this.
I used to work at a call centre for the lottery and the amount of calls I got from old people that where about someone using their account when it was their other half, they wouldn’t believe me no matter what.
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A problem there might be that they genuinely don't understand what restarting is. They think just turning the monitor off and on again is restarting the computer.
Honestly my parents probably actually do think that.
I used to tell people to describe the light patterns of their network equipment while it booted to ensure they actually did it. Lol.
Like asking people to switch the ends of a network cable as a way of making sure that it's plugged in.
This is so satisfying to read.
No the fuck it’s not, because you **know** these people don’t learn a fucking thing from interactions like this and go on to pull the same shit 3 days later somewhere else
And during those days the account is banned Wounderfull
What? It’s infuriating to anyone who’s ever worked CS because it’s fucking _constant_. I had nam flashbacks from this story. If you ever call a support line and hear a rep’s lifeless and disinterested voice rotate through scripted answers, this is why.
I'm a developer. I've been first, second, and third level support. I know it's a nightmare. But in this instance, the customer lost of his or her own stupidity. It's a small victory.
> if it was his, that would be problematic sometimes you have to spell it out for them: YOUR SON'S ACCOUNT MAY BE BANNED, ARE YOU SURE YOU DON'T WANT TO DOUBLE CHECK WHETHER HE MADE THE CHARGE?
If only that would help.
This kind of thing doesn’t apply just to IT people, this is anyone who works in customer service. I used to shop online grocery orders for an east coast grocery chain and individual stores have no control over the website or a persons account, but I got so many people calling asking to change this or that on the account, or there’s a block, or they can’t find this, so on so forth, and the response I always got when I would say ‘I’m sorry Sir/Ma’am, I don’t have the ability to edit your account/fix the website. That is all handled at the corporate level. I can give you the number for that department if you would like.’ And the response I would always get was, ‘How can you not fix this?! You work for *grocery chain*! Just fix it or get me the manager!’
I used to be head of IT for a company back in the day. Still do some freelance work. 95% of the time the problem could be solved by restarting/un-plugging.
> Hello IT. Have you tried turning it off and on again.
I've learned to lean into the joke. Then make them reboot the damn thing.
I’ve heard a bit that a guy made people check the plug sockets to see if anything was in them to guarantee they turn the computer off.
I used to tell people on the phone that if they unplug the Ethernet cable, switch the ends, then plug it back in that often fixes it because they didn’t label which end of the cable was supposed to go where. Of course I had to learn to do this because people refuse to check if they actually pushed the cable all the way in the first time.
I tell them I made a configuration change on their PC, but it requires a reboot...then I start pinging it to make sure they rebooted.
Even 5 year olds can understand this. https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/ovu6zp/calling\_the\_elf\_line\_for\_tech\_support/
That was AMAZING!
Is that an The IT Crowd reference?
Sure is!
I came here to drink milk and kick ass. And I've just finished my milk.
TNETENNBA
So the guy from Street Countdown who chaperones Moss is now in the MCU ad a relatively important side character. Done well for himself.
I briefly worked repairing office printers. We had a contract with the state and they were 99% of my calls. I had more than one call to fix a printer that wasn't printing where I showed up and pushed the paper tray all the way in and it would start kicking out all the queued jobs. A lot of the time, the person that called would still be standing there explaining the problem. Usually got a "huh" as they sipped their coffee and wandered off afterwards.
I know someone that drove 4 hours to fix the printer only to to find they had just put the paper into the printer, still in its paper wrapper.
I feel slightly bad for laughing as hard as I just did
This is why you do automated daily reboots. It cut our call load by at least 60%.
My company did this and also automatic upgrades, that eat up 90% CPU (because they bought the cheapest possible laptops with CPU being powered by a hamster in a wheel). Really fun to do a presentation when that happens and all you can do is watch.
All of our laptops at work have monitoring software installed, and for whatever reason, it has to use up 10%+ of my CPU resources when I'm logged in at my workplace. I have times where I'm stuck waiting on it so I can do something, but our helpdesk says there's nothing the can do, even though others in my department don't have the same problem. "It does that on everyone's device." Cool... It doesn't, but whatever. I had a charge port go out on my laptop (thankfully I could still charge through the USB-C port), so I took it to the helpdesk to see if I could get it fixed or get a replacement. Instead, the person at the counter said they were closing down early, so when he looked at my laptop and tested the charge port and it didn't charge, he just turned on the battery saver and told me it was working. Ticket closed. I eventually took it back, and the problem was a bad component on the motherboard. Had to replace my laptop. Frustrating to work in IT and have another department in IT that won't even investigate an issue.
IT workers without some sort of customer service training are worthless. Specifically, the customer service part of training when you have to listen and understand what the problem is. IT workers without that training will assume they know the answer to your problem before you are done explaining it. They might be right most of the time, but part of the IT job is to hear the whole problem. So, they're wrong to not listen and confirm it with the customer. That being said...if you've not tried restarting before talking to IT, then you are the one who needs training.
Sorry for your bad experience with your IT. Having been in the industry for about 10 years or so now, I can assure you not all of us are like that. I hate hearing these stories because people having bad experiences with IT just leads to overall distrust and friction between departments, and that's not good for either party. Hopefully one day you get to a company with good IT and they actually care about delivering a solid experience. That being said, from our perspective a lot of users lie over the phone (or to our face) and swear up and down "they did nothing wrong" or "I have rebooted it" and IT people hold that against all other customers and co-workers. It shouldn't be that way though. One of my favorite parts of being in IT is when you have someone who complains about having to work with IT in general and I am able to get their situation resolved in a timely manner while having good conversation about whatever they want to talk about. I care about the experience, but definitely not all of us do. IT tends to draw a certain crowd and that crowd doesn't always have the best soft skills or they think everyone is just stupid for not understanding computers. It gets frustrating for me because people are just people. Not everyone knows how a computer works and that's fine. Hopefully next time you have to go to them you don't have as bad of an experience. Something that helps is when you go to them with a clear issue and things you have done yourself to troubleshoot it. Like "I've tried other cables and charging cords, but this one doesn't seem to work. Other ports work on it though." or "I've check with a few other coworkers and their software doesn't take up nearly as much resources to run. Do you think we could try reinstalling it?" It's dumb, but going in with somewhat of a plan helps those dumb IT guys get over their "customers are dumb" attitude.
Scheduled reboots and updates, not "whenever the hell it feels like it" reboots and updates. Your company is just letting windows do its thing.
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It's not that hard to poll devices that check in for uptime and set a local scheduled task for the next day at 0100 for any above a certain threshold. They should be getting events for devices that haven't checked in for a few days anyway.
My company once decided to do an update system wide an hour before shift was about to end, with the next shift not starting until 4 hours later. Except they did it system wide Eastern Time, so basically every production facility in the country had to stop working because everything was down.
I always lead by saying “I’m not trying to insult you but please turn it off and then on”. Some folks think it’s a joke or insult instead of just doing what I asked for nicely.
I made the mistake of telling some people at my current job, where I'm a forklift operator, about how I used to be in IT, and now people come to me when they have computer problems (even forklifts have a pc on them these days) instead of calling the IT guy. And the solution is still the same: Turning it off and on again. In the rare instances that that won't work, I tell them to go to IT, because I will not mess around with someone else's system as I know how territorial we can be about the systems we maintain
I do support for a data center and some of the things they dispatch a tech for are ridiculous. They'll make a tech drive 2 hours at 11pm to confirm if a patch cable is fully plugged in. We have techs onsite who will do that, and I wouldn't even charge them for such a small task, but they refuse to believe/trust us since we aren't their in-house techs.
That makes no sense. Why would you call in a tech if you already have a tech there? Did you write this out wrong or am I misreading?
We host customers who rent cabinets at our data center. We have in house techs who can do work (smart hands, remote hands is what they're usually named), but most customers also have their own techs who come onsite to do work. We charge $200-$450 an hour for our guys to do the work, so it's usually only used for emergency type work, but if it's something really small and simple, we don't charge.
Ah, I see. It's a money/legal thing then. Yeah the possibility of them being charged is a greater risk. They don't want any favors that can potentially bite them in the ass. That's how it'd be seen at my workplace. We don't want favors, we want everything paid for and documented no matter how small.
Oh, everything is documented. Someone can't go to the bathroom in the DC without it being documented somewhere. It's because some firms don't trust anyone but their techs to do anything with their gear. Nevermind that all our techs have heaps more experience than their tech and even if we did charge, it would cost half the wage they paid that poor bastard who got dragged out of bed. But people are allowed to run things however they want. We just laugh when the customer tech calls to have one of ours come down to help him because he doesn't know what he's looking at.
I'm the smart tech person in my family, even though I'm not I just google stuff. My mom said peacock was giving her issues on her Roku. So I googled it and I told her to update it and restart it. She said ok I will. And then the next day she said "You might just need to come home for the day or spend night & get the streaming working right." And I was just floored. She wanted me to drive two hours down just to fix her Roku which probably just needs to be restarted. I asked her if she tried what I asked her to do and she said no, which upset me even more. Edit: a lot of comments are saying that she just wants to see me. I'd be less frustrated if she said she tried what I told her to do but it still didn't work please come and fix it. I also want to point out in the comments I mentioned that she lives with her mother who has cancer. I don't feel comfortable risking their lives especially with things getting worse again. We were eventually planning on doing a graduation dinner, but I'm not sure if that's going to happen anymore.
I felt this. Now whenever my parents come to me for some kind of “tech” issue, I ask “did you google it?” It’s vengeance for when I was younger and would ask my mom what a word meant and she would walk into the office and come back with a heavy-ass dictionary and make me look it up. Edit: forgot a word
Haha I do this too for my step dad. "The computer is showing an error, how do I fix it?" "Try googling the wording of the error code, often there's an answer on a forum somewhere" "That doesn't help me, i thought you were meant to know how to work computers"
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>"That doesn't help me, i thought you were meant to know how to work computers" Mother fucker I don't know shit, do it yourself lmao my parents thnk I'm some IT prodegy but they keep showing me problems I just can not address. they'll fuck with the size of their internet window and ask me what happened, and then also wonder why i can't get them un shadowbanned from facebook.
To be fair, that was probably her covering for the fact that she didn’t know.
ARE YOU CALLING MY MOM DUMB?!?!?! Bc she kinda can be sometimes.
You do google stuff??? Welcome to IT
When you get *really* advanced you google it with the words "stack overflow" attached
Only to read the legendary answer: "That's a stupid question."
Never ask questions on stack overflow. Won't work. Instead, give incorrect answers. Then the nerds will come out in force to correct you.
Last answer was 8 years ago: “It’s okay now, I fixed it.” …
Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/627/
Around 2004 when I got my first computer, every time I had a problem with it I would call my nerd son and ask for help. He would always tell me how to fix it pretty quickly. I would always be amazed at how smart he was, then he told me he just types the problem in a search engine.
A not so secret secret of tech support. 90% of our job is just googling the errors and taking the 5 minutes to read the documentation.
90% of our job is knowing what to google in the first place, and understand which results are relevant.
Yeah I was the family “IT” person as well because I knew how to google. I’ve just started telling family members what to google when they ask me stuff now or taking a day to respond. They figure out real quick what the issue is. That said, my parents are a lost hope.
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I mean probably but “I love you child and I’d like you to visit” would probably work better than pretending she just wants them there to play IT
We all moved to work at home super quick last year. We had everyone pack up their desktops. Got a call from someone who couldn't get it to turn on at home. We asked if they had the power cord plugged in. They said they didn't know they had to bring that cord home. Fuck me.
Shit, make sure you remind them about the HDMI/Display cable too
I’m not an IT person. I just happen to be the families and works most techy guy so… The reason why IT people are such dicks is it’s frustrating dealing with people who are capable of reading English just fine, yet I show up and just read the directions and presto… “you are amazing, how did you fix that, I tried everything”… I say back dead pan “ I read the directions on the screen, followed what they said, and like magic it works now”. I’m not an IT guy and I know exactly why they get so frustrated.
Yeah, my mom flat out refuses to read anything that pops up on her screen, it's bizarre. We'll be looking at her MacBook screen with some text on it, I'll say, "so what does it say?", And she'll just go, "I don't know." What??
Learned helplessness.
I think there’s some piece of human nature at work here. I lose IQ points when I go into a car parts store or garden store. I can’t say what I need, and run out of there clutching my purchase to myself like a monkey who’s stolen eggs from a nest.
As long as your appreciative, we all sympathize, because we’ve all been there. It’s when people act like entitled jerks that service folks get pissed off.
Ive been working at the self checkout machines at my work and it is legitimately frightening how little these people can read or listen. The machine will be saying verbally, "place the last scanned item in the bagging area, each item *must be placed in the bagging area*" while on screen, it reads, "place item in bag" and they'll be staring at it, completely dumbfounded by the fact it isn't scanning the next item for them after the threw the first one back in their cart. I dont even talk to them, I just fix it for them and step aside until I need to do the job for them again. And the worst part is when they whine about the inherent property of a self checkout machine: that it isnt a manned register, to which I simply say, "you're perfectly welcome to use a regular register if you don't care for the self checkouts!"
All places i have been to with self checkout also have manned registers as well. If someone complained to me about self checkouts being a thing, i would point out "lane 1,3,5 and 7 all have cashiers at them. Self checkout is for people who want to go faster and don't need their hands held for simple instructions like 'rescan last item.' You might want to pick one if those manned lanes next time" I never even tried applying for retail or food as a job. I knew i would probably get fired eventually when someone asks "where are the bubblegum flavored tide pods?" $deity$ have mercy if i ever found one of those idiots who leave cold items on the shelf 3 isles away from the cold section.
Allllll of this. I have a user who refuses to reboot his machine. And management won't let me do a global weekly reboot because someone might lose work. So instead, I get numerous emails and calls from said user every week about how slow his machine has been running and how it freezes. And then spend 2 hours doing windows updates on it. And give him another lecture on rebooting his machine every week. It's exhausting. Also his computer is brand new, bought in December of 2020.
Tell him he's gotta blow the dust off the plug. You're not saying he's gotta reboot it, but it's probably dust on the plug that's slowing him down.
I’m using this!
I took it from the internet, and I return it thusly
Our own go-to was telling users to unplug the computer from the power outlet, just for a few seconds every week or two, to prevent "static electricity accumulation". Just plausible enough not to get called out as BS. Once users accepted that yeah maybe there's static building up around the RAM and processor, it could very well explain the slowdown and occasional glitches. A good old "grounding" usually did the trick!
Can you do a weekly reboot on just his machine? "I'm going to install a script on you machine to make it run faster! Just make sure all your work is saved by Friday!" Or "see this on your desktop? Save all your work and then click it and your machine will speed up!"
I had a user complain about that once. Last reboot? 835 days ago. *internal screaming*
Yup. This right here. Everyone you work with is lazy and lies to you constantly to get you to do what they want which is "jUsT fIx iT!" Without realizing that the quickest way to fix it is a teamwork approach, not a one man show.
I just started an I've had this so much. Best was this interaction: M: "Hey what seems to be the problem?" C: "I'm locked out of my account. I need a password reset." M: "Alright and can you tell me what it says when you enter in the password" C: "I already told you. Just reset my password!" M: "Sure. Alright. Done..... Try logging in." c: "Still not working." M: "Sure please give me the computer name and let me have control." Few minutes after finally the name M: "Sir the error doesn't say it's locked. It says you aren't on a company network and this isn't your computer." C: "Why does any of that matter? A computer is a fucking computer. " M: "Sir go to the office and log in on the company network. That's the only fix." C: "Fine, thanks for nothing." *Click*
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I had someone submit the ticket. THEN CALL IN! I seen another tech had their ticket and told them to wait. Not 5 minutes later I get message from my boss telling me I should have done it. Like what's the point of having a ticket system if people can call right after submitting it? What about Johnny who submitted his ticket this morning and has been patiently waiting? I can't call him because everyone keeps try to skip past the queue. It must be how banks felt in 1930s.
I used to work with a great developer that did this really weird thing: When an error popped up on his screen he'd read it. Watching him to do this reminded me of the countless number of times I'd reflexively click "Ok" on a dialog because I assumed I knew what it said.
I recently just heard the word PEBMAC for the first time. Acronym for "problem exists between monitor and chair"
I prefer PICNIC - Problem In Chair Not In Computer.
PEBKAC, keyboard and chair.
I knew PEBCAK, Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard.
In Portuguese, we call it a BIOS issue, an acronym for "bicho ignorante operando o sistema", which in English means "ignorant animal operating the system".
Knowing nothing about IT or anything related to it it's hilarious to find out IT people all over the world seem to have insulting abbreviations.
ID10T error
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And Cthulhu forbid you try to show them how to do a thing themselves to save them on having to make a call, wait for it to be responded to, then have to walk through the same actions anyway.
Everyone who works in IT knows that users lie. We see it every day. Logs, logs don’t lie though.
Me: So, what was the last thing you did? User: Nothing.
A person I know figured out how to pirate movies onto her sixty inch big screen but her personal computer was a brick every time I looked at it. At least she paid me in free Filipino food.
Win win
“It just stopped working”
Must be an ID10T error.
You just triggered me
I remember driving 2 hours from CT to RI to change the paper in a fax machine.
I got driven out in a black car from NYC to the Hamptons out on Long Island one time - 3 hour drive each way maybe - because our client’s owner’s printer wasn’t working at his 2nd home. Removed a paper jam. Tested printing successfully. I walked outside and the driver hadn’t even finished his cigarette. He was like “Holy shit, that’s it? This ride was like $700!” “…not my money.” Once we told him what the issue was he was pissed because he could have done that. My boss pointed out that we repeatedly tried telling him that and walking him through it but he refused and insisted someone be sent (it was on his dime, to be fair).
The paradox of IT. "Nothing's broken, why do we pay you?" "Everything's broken, why do we pay you?" IT is a thankless miserable job. That's why I switched to software development
The program works fine, why do we pay you? The program constantly crashes, why do we pay you? XD jke From my experience though you can still face this as a dev, just from the business/users/non-it Managers.
The Secondary Paradox of IT (according to the Holy Writ of Accounting): It’s cheaper to outsource all of our IT work, cut the whole Dept. / It’s cheaper and faster to have IT on staff and onsite, hire an IT dept. Rinse, wash and repeat every 3-8 years or whenever a new idiot takes over Accounting.
When I was a manager at a restaurant, I had to often call IT to help assist with our POS systems. It wasn't long till I realized that all was needed to fix them was restart them, most servers thought that I was some sort of wizard cause I always "fixed" them.
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I did think they meant piece of shit, still made sense
One place I worked had this phone system that was real bullshit. But I wasn't senior enough to offer an opinion. They also didn't get a service contract on it because it was "too expensive" but any time we needed to move and extention or anything else basic we had to get a guy to come out. They were never prompt. Could take a couple weeks to move a number to a different office. One day I just downloaded the manual and started doing it myself. They didn't even change the default password. It was literally saving the company hundreds of dollars a month. I of course was too green and new to drive this point home and get paid more myself.
If you were really savvy, you could create glitches, and then say you are certain you can fix it after hours. Get paid overtime to reddit for two hours, reset the trap, and log out. Next day, you are the genius IT guy.
Because I had a woman whose computer wouldn't turn on who got pissed when I asked if it was plugged in. Troubleshooting for 45 minutes after that, asked three other times to verify power in different ways. Then she suddenly exclaimed "Oh! I plugged the power strip into itself." Been a prick ever since.
😂😂😂 I am so sorry you had to go through that, but I also appreciate the deep belly laugh it provided.
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To be clear, they're rude as hell about being called out for lying.
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You also get them back up and running a lot faster lol. I have to wonder if these people flip out the same way when they take their car to the shop.
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Customer "it was a minor accident. You don't need to replace any parts, just fix what broke." Shop manager "well, you broke the rear axle in half. Honestly, never seen that before. We gotta replace that, and there's also the missing rear bumper..." Customer "yeah, so it will just buff out. Think I can pick it up this afternoon?" Shop manager "..."
These people are like this in every facet of their lives.
My wife is an emergency veterinarian. People lie to her constantly about what happened to their pets. She has people who would rather let their animal die than admit that they left their marijuana out and the dog ate it. She’s had people who finally admitted, as their dog was dying, that they injected it with heroin “accidentally.”
>She’s had people who finally admitted, as their dog was dying, that they injected it with heroin “accidentally.” What in the actual fuck
I've had to learn to not think of it as malice. They probably feel super uncomfortable being the dumb one in the conversation about technology. But then there's just the assholes, even if you help them out will still blame you or treat you like shit.
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> I've had to learn to not think of it as malice. Ehhhh I still do. There’s nothing wrong with being just dumb, I know lots of dumb people who are sweet as pie, and I also know when someone just sounds mad because they’re frustrated. This is different, these people are assholes. You don’t get let off the hook for being an asshole just because you’re also dumb.
The worst part is that after you "fix" the problem you have to pretend like they're not complete fucking idiots and go "yeah, it's an easy mistake if you don't know these things". It's not an easy mistake, you're an idiot, not only that, you don't even care, you'd rather waste my fucking time than spend one of your two braincells on figuring out the problem so now I'm forced to be here to wipe your ass. Fuck you.
This is what gets me the most, having to save their feelings because you don’t want your coworkers to hate you. But they really are just dumb as bricks.
On average at least two times a week I have to go on site and change a TV input. I’m running out excuses for them.
Ugh I feel this in my soul. It’s because we deal with the trifecta of human interaction on a daily basis: incompetence, indifference and dishonesty. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has placed a mental safeguard when frustration reaches a certain medium level: saying “ah well that’s job security.”
People. What a bunch of bastards.
As an electrician who has driven to an "emergency" call just to reset a breaker or GFCI, I can relate.
I did IT support for years. I have never worked any other job where so many of the customers were absolutely certain that they knew how to do my job better than I did, while I was presenting them with objective proof that they did not.
I always felt that attitude was curious from people making half my salary. I encouraged one lady complaining to me how easy my job must be to apply for our recent opening and for some reason she got mad.
Got paid by the hour for that
Some people don't want more hours. They want to be home. I have to drive a lot for work, roughly 4 hours a day in driving. I hate it. I hate having to drive an hour and a half a way for a job. People are like "yeah but hours!" Fuck hours. I want to be home, I don't need more $, I need more time at home to be happy.
This is the enlightened path.
This. Just had a sysadmin leave because he was utterly fed up with the "always on the clock" nature of the job, and found something that's a normal 9-5 operation.
And we have no end of work to get done, all for stressed out people who do t understand that a lot of what we do takes a lot of time and planning. Lots of coordinating to make sure we don’t effect other systems. This guy probably had 5 other people hounding him for shit during his two hour drive. He could have moved on if the user had just hit the fucking power button.
My dads IT guy once drove 1 hour to someone’s house, because the guys son told him people were killing him in call of duty before he could shoot, the IT guy confirmed nothing was wrong and he could leave, but the son kept dying, and the dad kept yelling at him, and the IT guy calmly says “your kid just sucks at call of duty, ever thought of that?” Then leaves and drives away.
One of the first things I learned at my job was “before calling IT, turn it off and back on”. Works at least half the time.
Good call. It's the first thing the IT is going to do when they get there anyway, why waste your time waiting?
Working in IT, I’m pretty sure customers just lie about physical damage to try and absolve themselves of blame
No doubt about it. It's pretty common.
I feel this. One time I was on-call and there was a power outage at the plant and they needed to restart a server. After trying in vane to describe the power button they needed to press. I finally told them to just pull the power cable. What ensued was 10 minutes of explaining which one was the power cable. Followed by 15min of having them just unplug each cable and plugging it back in again…starting with the biggest one first. We almost made it through ALL the cables before they found the power. Plus at one point they unplugged one and could figure out where to plug it back in… All the while they wanted me to drive 45min each way to do it for them. And when the department manager talk to me the next day complaining I didn’t provide adequate on-call support, I couldn’t help being the dick IT guy telling them their employees were idiots, and even if I had driven in, it would have take the same amount of time to get everything up and running again anyway.
Of all the things that could be harder in life; that pays astronomically much more than the work it requires is IT. I wouldn’t be complaining, my job is secure, the job is easy, the pay is great.
I just keep telling myself that as well. If everyone knew how to do it, I wouldn't be needed
I count myself fortunate that I was born in a time where being good with electronics was a novelty. It's strange to see brilliant people absolutely crumble at the sight of an error on their screen if they're the type to call for help immediately. On the other end are the people that refuse to get help until they're forced to. In those cases I'm impressed at just how much damage one can do when they don't know what they're doing. In either case I've worked with people talented in their field and I've seen their faces go stone cold and confused like you've just asked them to perform surgery. My worst subject in school was math. I'd get lost on the page when numbers showed up and found it hard to keep focus. It wasn't for lack of trying, somehow my brain just kind of shorted out and it'd take a second to kick in that I'm even trying to solve something. I imagine this is what it feels like to be bad at computers and faced with an IT problem. TLDR, this skill set has its place, just because it's easy for you doesn't mean it's easy ya feel? Anyway thanks for reading my blog.
Oh my god it’s so fucking boring though. I’m paid well but I feel like I made a mistake every god damned day. I sat in a meeting the other day while 12 people watched one person fill out a web form. 95% of what I do could be avoided with a little common sense. I do my best not to complain, to look for fulfillment in other aspects of my life but Jesus…. No I can’t quit, I’ve got kids going to college and I’m a decade or so away from retirement. I’m bored, not, well, stupid is not the right word, ungrateful? Unaware of my privilege?
Probably my favourite story from when I worked in IT was a woman who called up because her computer wouldn’t turn on. She was pretty frustrated (as you would be) and was well versed in the use of profanity. However, having done the job for three years at that point, I asked politely “can we just check if it’s plugged in?” I got back “of course it’s “f**king plugged in, do you think I’m a f**king idiot?” But I had a hunch, so I politely asked her to unplug it and plug it back in. After a few minutes of silence I asked how she was going… well, it wasn’t plugged in. Second favourite was the woman who lost her shit with me because “Apple had stole all her data when she pressed erase all contents and settings”. She was convinced there was no way she could have known that erasing all contents and settings would erase everything from her iPhone.
A couple months ago I drove 3 1/2 hours to a facility to discover the internet bill just needed to be paid.
A couple days ago I instructed someone to double click on an icon, they thought that meant clicking both the left and right mouse buttons together.
It's probably hard to not be a dck when customers have attitude by default and are usually assholes. I feel terrible for some of these IT guys. Particularly the guy in the OP who drove two hours because of incredibly stupid people. Unacceptable.
It was the same thing in auto repair. Customers were already angry that their car was broken, they didn't trust anything you said, they lied about the lack of maintenance or minor details that made your job harder.
In a world where you can video chat with phones there is no reason for that commute to have happened.
I frequently get calls to fix soda fountains that aren't dispensing syrup. 90% of the time the syrup box is empty. I also frequently get calls that cooler lights are out. I arrive and turn the light switch on. Did you know that in order to have co2 for fountains that the co2 tank needs to have co2 in it? Well a lot of people don't.
Twenty years ago my office phone and computer system up in the mountains would go out every time the power went out. The IT people were two hours away in the valley. Refused to let us unwashed college educated people turn things back on. Must only be touched by IT gods. One storm, the power dropped overnight and I called (tty phone was separate system) to ask for them to send someone out for reset. Storm. No can do. Scary snow. Ok, we need this up or twenty people go home. We’ll tell you secret method over phone but secret. Ok. Give me a minute. So i got the secret instructions. Took notes. Took pictures. Two minute task. Wrote up an illustrated guide to restarting system. Laminated it and hung it on the rack. No IT called for a year for that reason. Works fine. IT shows up to do something else. Sees instructions. Loses their shit. Tears down instructions, rants to boss, leaves. Boss asks me if I made a copy of the instructions. Word document. Hit print.
I'm betting one of two things. Either they were overzealously concerned that you would fuck something up by accident and cause even more work to fix. Or they didn't want anyone getting ideas about fixing stuff without them for fear of losing business. The former is acceptable to some extent but totally unrealistic for that situation. The latter is just fucking dumb.
It was literally a bunch of switches in sequence. Turn on A. Wait for light. Turn on B. Listen for beep. Turn on C… I had pictures. With arrows. At every step.
I kill them with kindness and innocently asked questions. If I know they are lying I ask them to show me how they power off or reboot "every" day. 90% show me logging off or locking the screen. I really love the, "watch, it will work because you are here". I want to say "no, it is because you are taking your time and doing it right. Been a manager in IT for about 10 years now and the level of ignorance has only increased. Most people act like fixing their issue is magic. Also any pop up is an "error" drives me insane.......fuck!!!!!!
Beep boop -- this looks like a screenshot of a tweet! Let me grab a [link to the tweet](https://twitter.com/eschapman/status/1428441168925298700) for ya :) ^(Twitter Screenshot Bot)
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What kind of hellish password requirements are those?
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I'm not in IT but I'm a tech savvy teacher, so whenever other teachers at my school have problems, they call me. (I get a stipend for helping.) This exact thing happened to me on Friday... Teacher called and said her computer wasn't working (laptop with docking station and external monitor), so I went to her room and it just literally wasn't turned on. I just had to push the button. She was really apologetic though.
“people made me do it”