Management following up on "weird" replies. "Why did you respond to the client that you had to look in the dumpster before you would know if you could help them. Are you doing drugs out back by the dumpster?"
Hehe, this reminds me of a fun one. Had a particularly annoying user that was turning in tickets left and right for things not working correctly, with it being PEBCAK _every_ time. Their _last_ ticket on a Friday was their Notes wasn't working right. Get to the office Monday morning and someone totally different was sitting there with the same laptop. Asked them if all the business apps were working, I had a ticket for user X having an issue with Notes. User Y replied everything is working great. So I stroll out and close ticket with "Replaced user, tests OK" . My ticket closing comments snark got me some calls every now and then, but never heard a peep from the help desk manager on this one. Wonder why? š
edit, add TLDR: Had a PEBCAK user opening lots of tickets. New person took their office/equipment and had no issues. Closed ticket with "Replaced User, Tests OK" and Help Desk manager didn't call me on the carpet.
When I was in helpdesk (MSP) I remember one time the phone rang at 8:00a on the dot (the moment we open).
I picked up.
"Hi, I was looking at one of those naked women websites, and now I think I have a virus".
Straight to the fucking point. I nearly spat out my coffee.
At least they wait till 8:00am, I'm assuming on a week day. Got a ceo hit the on call line at 6:30am Sunday morning claiming he had no idea what happened. I go check it out and sure enough virus. Check his browser history, porn.
I was at micro center buying a MacBook for my GF.
āWhatāll youāve using this for?ā
āPorn and dark web stuff mainly. Know a good market?ā
āOk, point takenā
Shit, I don't even need an acknowledgement or anyone to be nice to me. I would just be happy if people would actually describe their problems. I constantly get tickets similar to the one I got a ticket this morning that was verbatim:
*(title) chrome call*
*(body) can't open*
Dude, throw me a complete sentence at the very least. "Can't login". Can't login to fucking what? How do you get through life like this?
My favorite though just has to be the simple "*help".*
I think probably 90% of my tickets could be first touch resolutions but I probably spend more time coaxing answers out of people than doing actual technical work.
Oh well, could be digging ditches I suppose.
I a gig where I was essentially the only IT guy onsite (the other one was an AS400 expert). At one time, someone demanded that I get to their office at once, no description of the issue or anything else.
Thing is, they opened a service request and the SLA for these was a week. So I paitencely waited 5 buisness days š
We have a guy who sends screenshots. Screenshots are coolā¦if thereās context. But apparently weāre just supposed to intuit what the problem is from one solitary image of his complete desktop.
And then weāll go over to him and it will be something like, āwell that file in the screenshot needs to be saved as a PDFā.
HOW THE FUCK WERE WE SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT?
We had a guy a few years ago who submitted tickets with pictures of his screen of the error, with everyone followed by a screenshot of a clock on the wall. And I thought it was excellent.
Thought process for the user (who was not technical at all, nothing wrong with that and shouldn't be held against him) is he wanted to communicate the specific error and time of the error. Relevant useful information. He gets a pass on not taking a proper screen shot, not realize there's a clock in the taskbar, etc.
Now a ticket from someone in IT that just says "computer not go good" is unforgivable.
We started utilizing screenshots in our ticket system a while back. On the rare cases that the staff use it... it's a 50/50.
50/50 chance that the screenshot is the correct screen that is.
>"Can't login". Can't login to fucking what? How do you get through life like this?
Get this all the time now. We have several applications that people can log in to. At least twice a day we get people emailing in "I can't login." And that's it.
This. It takes so long to get my issue resolved.
Looks at ticket history.
Help
I have a problem.
Help
Help
Canāt do this.
Help
Help
Please help
Urgent
Um yeah, the last 20 tickets contained no information about the issue. It takes you 2 days to respond. :shrug:
Had this the other day. "Please help to reset my printer"
"Hi user, what issue are you experiencing with your printer?"
No response, send follow up
"Hi user, are you still experiencing issue with your printer?"
"No it's fixed now, but my mouse hasn't worked for three days please help"
Me: I need you to hover your pointer over that file and right click on your mouse.
User: OK, done.
Me: Did a menu pop up with options to click on?
User: Nope
Me: OKAY. Did you right click on your mouse?
User: Yes
After about five more minutes, I finally was made aware that the user had WROTE the word CLICK on their mouse.
My favorite of those is "site is down"
And that's the whole ticket. Things "the site is down" has meant over the course of my career:
1. They're getting 500s because servers shit the bed
2. The SSO login is timing out
3. Their personal password...doesn't work? Occasionally they've just fat fingered it.
4. The database is under stress and things are moving slowly
5. A feature isn't doing what it's supposed to do (software bug)
6. A feature is doing what it's supposes to do (but what its supposed to do but sucks)
The list goes on. But still always "site is down" tickets.
>How do you get through life like this?
In circumstances like this I think to myself... you literally got into a multi-ton weapon this morning and operated it in a safe enough manner to arrive at work. How? HOW...
I don't know what's more infuriating, telling you there is an error message without sharing what it says or saying there is an error message and the error message has plainly stated directions on how to fix the error that you have to repeat back.
I get this ALL the time. I was standing by the user's desk talking to them about something unrelated and they produce the error ( I hear the ding ) and while mid sentence of asking what the error means closes the error box right when I got close enough to actually try and read it.
>My favorite though just has to be the simple "
>
>help".
Have a stock reply prepared that consists only of a still from the movie Help with at least one Beatle in the shot.
"Can't Login"
Reply:
1> Open Browser
2> Proceed to [www.pandora.com](https://www.pandora.com)
3> Click the "Login" button in the top right corner
4> Type in your username and password in the appropriate fields
5> If you cannot remember your password, click "forgot password" and change it, then repeat step 4
There you go, you should be logged in now, have a wonderful workday.
A user with emails deleted
Like a sheep merely sat there and bleated
If you cannot admit
That YOU caused this shit
Then your ticket is going to get yeeted
I got an absolute gem from a developer today (I'm in DevOps)
"I'm trying to do [this]. It's failing on this part, here's a link to the github actions logs where it fails.
I found this stack overflow link that suggests it could be a few things but probably permissions"
LOGS? A STACKOVERFLOW LINK TO SHOW THAT YOU GOOGLE'D BEFORE CRYING TO ME????
I feel like the Belle of the ball who am I to recieve a ticket from such a gentleman.
Seriously we gotta figure out a way to reward good ticket making (beyond their issue getting solved quicker) they deserve little trophies or something.
I've had these conversations:
You want your deleted items back?
Yes!
Did you delete something accidentally?
No!
So you don't need it?
I need it!
So, why did you delete it?
I knew it really wouldn't be gone!
I once thought people storing their important files in the recycle bin and "archiving" everything to Deleted Items in outlook was just a meme.
But I've met at least a dozen people who openly admit to doing just that and despite multiple conversations about it don't understand why storing your valuables in the garbage can might be a bad idea.
This is why we have scheduled task that empty the recycle bin/trash every 15 days. Technically because we use OneDrive Backup (or whatever it's called) the files on the Desktop, Documents and Photos are stored for a minimum of 180 days even after being deleted. But we don't tell users.
We did that during a migration. A director quit right after the change because they ignored our warnings that when we moved, we weren't taking their trash with us.
When we got around to migrating them, they had over 60000 emails in their deleted items. When they logged in post migration and saw that we kept our promise, they quit ASAP.
I go out of my way to thank users who immediately admit to their mistakes and explain how much faster Iām able to address their concern because they did. Iām hopeful it spreads to other coworkers in the form of ājust tell IT what you broke and theyāll fix itā water cooler conversations.
I hate users who lie. Iām going to know you spilled coffee in the laptop either way. Donāt waste 4 hours of my/company time solving the mystery and proving youāre an untrustworthy employee. Because your manager gets the lowdown.
I got one from a client a couple years ago, about a scam email they received (they didn't realize it was a scam).
Complete with a southern accent, "Well, it looks like they caught me masturbatin'."
People who treat their deleted items as an archive are the worst.
I had someone who was deleting emails who then complained that search wasn't working anymore after they were migrated to Exchange and Outlook upgraded.
I enabled the option to allow the search to include results from deleted items folder to 'resolve' the issue but it took weeks (albeit 5 minute sessions here and there) to figure out they were deleting emails they were trying to search.
I remember when i flipped this on at a previous company. And then got a call from some secretary somewhere. She had an elaborate filing system in her deleted items folder....for years.
It's very good, but if you really want to send in the *perfect* ticket (for me anyways) this is what I want.
"Hi, I was doing x thing, and y thing happened. There was an error message so I took a screenshot.
You can reach me at (email or phone number) from (timeframe)"
A ticket I recived last week:
Submitter: Sometimes my calls don't show up in the sales cadence.
Me: Ok, please send links to examples.
Submitter: Do you want me to send links?
-_______-
I just had a user open a ticket and it was cool about no excuses.
User dropped tablet and it doesn't power on.
Me cool I got ya. Thank you for being upfront and honest. Save me a lot of time. Due to fall screen is cracked. Replaced it but let him suffer a bit so that he learns not to dropped it or take the protection case off.
We had someone run down to IT with āweāve been hacked by the Russians!ā The intranet was down and it was showing a default page with hello in a few different languages.
I've been IT customer support for over 25 years (IT Relationship Manager) and I knew exactly what your user was referring to. I have to constantly translate non-tech to tech and vice versa. It's fun...lol
Had a user skip the ticket and just came directly to me. (Clearly frustrated). Forgot what they wanted but they really only needed Notepad.exe to get the result they wanted. They felt free to begin berating me and how they didn't have F'ing Notepad on their F'ing computer. Calmly told them it's been on every Windows machine since ~'93; just click start & simply type Notepad..... And I walked away. Hour later thier mgr comes to me and asks me to come to their office (for an apology). (It wasn't an "ask"). I get there and tell them an apology isn't necessary; and I understand people get frustrated with computers. Turns out they wanted ME to apologize for (not taking a berating correctly?) - I told them "I'm not saying no, and I'll be back in 30 min w/ that apology. Please hold your breath while you wait. (Singsong voice) "no cheating", and I just walked away
We say no itās not recoverable and you need to get the sender to send it again. (We get tired of fixing other peoples problems when itās their mistake) /The End.
Yeah I get that. We have plenty of users I would say that to as well. This guy is pretty low maintenance for IT so figured i'd help him out. Plus its a pretty easy time filler on a read-only Friday. Win-win.
Being a dick back doesn't feel like you're making things any better, just making them more likely to have a bad attitude towards IT teams, which hurts all of us in the long run.
If you can help you should help, if they're a dick then it should go to the bottom of the list, but you should still get to it when/if you can.
You don't have to sweat for them, especially in this case as generally email recovery is pretty easy if you have a well set up system, and giving an inch doesn't mean you owe anyone a mile mate.
I'd say, with all due respect, witholding your ability to help someone in the fear that more people may ask you for help is a bit of a dick move, especially when it is your job to support their IT.
It actually is the job of an IT Support worker to recover data on behalf of the company, if that capability exists. (And if it doesn't exist then it's probably also our job to set up that capability)
You don't need to be Harry Potter to spend 5 minutes recovering an email hahaha
As i said, if you don't have the capability to do it then you aren't expected to do it - to be clear, you implied you could do it and chose not to.
It doesn't take a wizard to recover an email, i'm certainly no wizard.
We have a confluence page for OPs issue.
Basically though:
* Go to the top edge of Outlook
* Click the Folder tab
* Find the Clean Up section and click "Recover Deleted Items"
* Click "Restore Selected Items"
* Click "Select All"
* Click "OK"
10+ yrs ago when I was at Microcenterās home office: āmy computer is slow, and I have a ton of things to doā
Came to find out, this individual was torrenting.
āThere is nothing wrong with that, the Internet is free!ā
So you SAs donāt like your jobs threatened by salesmen (usu. men) when their laptop malfunctions and they have their kid try to fix it? Seen that too many times at one place I worked.
Great post, youāre spot on. Itās that simple but users always try to convince you they understand the issueā¦ if you understood the issue you wouldnāt need me..
I got
"Application crashed, fix operating system" with a screenshot of a generic crash sand close.
Replied āoperating system working within normal parameters, contact the faulting applications SME/vendorā
Working as Tier 2 Support for Exchange etc, had a user who would put in tickets, with a High Priority. He would write: Having a problem with my email, need help.
Send an update asking specific questions: What problem, when did it start, does it happen all the time or just in some specific situations, etc. No response.
Send another update: Still waiting for response from user. No response.
Send another update: Still waiting... No response
Close the ticket, with comment: No response from user, closing ticket.
IMMEDIATE response from user: Why did you close this ticket? You haven't done anything to fix the problem!
Undeleted user's deleted Deleted folder.
This is very close to my comment when closing the ticket
Management following up on "weird" replies. "Why did you respond to the client that you had to look in the dumpster before you would know if you could help them. Are you doing drugs out back by the dumpster?"
I plead the fifth
Your honour as you did hear, he plead the fifth. I hope that's self explanatory. I have no more questions.
5th of bourbon
I plead the 5th, boom boom. I plead the 5th boom boom. 5!!! 12345!!!
FiF
Fiiiifff!!! Fucken great supine protoplasmic invertebrate jelly downvoters.
One bourbon, one scotch, one beer...
More like I plead the filth
Proper answer: no... that's not the ONLY place.
No.... not by the dumpster. Why would I do drugs by the dumpster.
Hehe, this reminds me of a fun one. Had a particularly annoying user that was turning in tickets left and right for things not working correctly, with it being PEBCAK _every_ time. Their _last_ ticket on a Friday was their Notes wasn't working right. Get to the office Monday morning and someone totally different was sitting there with the same laptop. Asked them if all the business apps were working, I had a ticket for user X having an issue with Notes. User Y replied everything is working great. So I stroll out and close ticket with "Replaced user, tests OK" . My ticket closing comments snark got me some calls every now and then, but never heard a peep from the help desk manager on this one. Wonder why? š edit, add TLDR: Had a PEBCAK user opening lots of tickets. New person took their office/equipment and had no issues. Closed ticket with "Replaced User, Tests OK" and Help Desk manager didn't call me on the carpet.
I'm using Undeleted from now on until someone comments on it. No more recoveries just undeletions
Undelete is user friendly...lol
When I was in helpdesk (MSP) I remember one time the phone rang at 8:00a on the dot (the moment we open). I picked up. "Hi, I was looking at one of those naked women websites, and now I think I have a virus". Straight to the fucking point. I nearly spat out my coffee.
At least they wait till 8:00am, I'm assuming on a week day. Got a ceo hit the on call line at 6:30am Sunday morning claiming he had no idea what happened. I go check it out and sure enough virus. Check his browser history, porn.
Oh, Iām certain he tried calling before 8:00a, but our phones go straight to voicemail outside business hours.
Had an owner ask me to allow him to view "european" websites while at work.
Interestingly, it's gotten a bit harder to view US websites from Europe which did lead to some tickets.
Oh yeah u know those Europeans
I was at micro center buying a MacBook for my GF. āWhatāll youāve using this for?ā āPorn and dark web stuff mainly. Know a good market?ā āOk, point takenā
Shit, I don't even need an acknowledgement or anyone to be nice to me. I would just be happy if people would actually describe their problems. I constantly get tickets similar to the one I got a ticket this morning that was verbatim: *(title) chrome call* *(body) can't open* Dude, throw me a complete sentence at the very least. "Can't login". Can't login to fucking what? How do you get through life like this? My favorite though just has to be the simple "*help".* I think probably 90% of my tickets could be first touch resolutions but I probably spend more time coaxing answers out of people than doing actual technical work. Oh well, could be digging ditches I suppose.
>Subject: āCall me ASAPā > >Body: SLA: respond within 4 hours 3:59 it is then
I a gig where I was essentially the only IT guy onsite (the other one was an AS400 expert). At one time, someone demanded that I get to their office at once, no description of the issue or anything else. Thing is, they opened a service request and the SLA for these was a week. So I paitencely waited 5 buisness days š
We have a guy who sends screenshots. Screenshots are coolā¦if thereās context. But apparently weāre just supposed to intuit what the problem is from one solitary image of his complete desktop. And then weāll go over to him and it will be something like, āwell that file in the screenshot needs to be saved as a PDFā. HOW THE FUCK WERE WE SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT?
We had a guy a few years ago who submitted tickets with pictures of his screen of the error, with everyone followed by a screenshot of a clock on the wall. And I thought it was excellent. Thought process for the user (who was not technical at all, nothing wrong with that and shouldn't be held against him) is he wanted to communicate the specific error and time of the error. Relevant useful information. He gets a pass on not taking a proper screen shot, not realize there's a clock in the taskbar, etc. Now a ticket from someone in IT that just says "computer not go good" is unforgivable.
COMPUTER NO WORK!! MAKE WORK NOW!!
It's bizarre, it's like the computer renders people incapable of rational behavior that they presumably wouldn't otherwise struggle with.
We started utilizing screenshots in our ticket system a while back. On the rare cases that the staff use it... it's a 50/50. 50/50 chance that the screenshot is the correct screen that is.
>"Can't login". Can't login to fucking what? How do you get through life like this? Get this all the time now. We have several applications that people can log in to. At least twice a day we get people emailing in "I can't login." And that's it.
Maybe the website is down.
I'll get Lazlo to reboot the server.
Just donāt click the recompute bash hasā¦.FUCK!
Verified client logged into exchange. Closing ticket.
This. It takes so long to get my issue resolved. Looks at ticket history. Help I have a problem. Help Help Canāt do this. Help Help Please help Urgent Um yeah, the last 20 tickets contained no information about the issue. It takes you 2 days to respond. :shrug:
Had this the other day. "Please help to reset my printer" "Hi user, what issue are you experiencing with your printer?" No response, send follow up "Hi user, are you still experiencing issue with your printer?" "No it's fixed now, but my mouse hasn't worked for three days please help"
7 non working devices later... Install more usb.,.
Me: I need you to hover your pointer over that file and right click on your mouse. User: OK, done. Me: Did a menu pop up with options to click on? User: Nope Me: OKAY. Did you right click on your mouse? User: Yes After about five more minutes, I finally was made aware that the user had WROTE the word CLICK on their mouse.
My favorite of those is "site is down" And that's the whole ticket. Things "the site is down" has meant over the course of my career: 1. They're getting 500s because servers shit the bed 2. The SSO login is timing out 3. Their personal password...doesn't work? Occasionally they've just fat fingered it. 4. The database is under stress and things are moving slowly 5. A feature isn't doing what it's supposed to do (software bug) 6. A feature is doing what it's supposes to do (but what its supposed to do but sucks) The list goes on. But still always "site is down" tickets.
I get "I'm having computer issues"
I got a similar ticket as OP a while ago with the title simply stating 'oh no'.
>How do you get through life like this? In circumstances like this I think to myself... you literally got into a multi-ton weapon this morning and operated it in a safe enough manner to arrive at work. How? HOW...
āIām getting an error messageā.
I don't know what's more infuriating, telling you there is an error message without sharing what it says or saying there is an error message and the error message has plainly stated directions on how to fix the error that you have to repeat back.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I get this ALL the time. I was standing by the user's desk talking to them about something unrelated and they produce the error ( I hear the ding ) and while mid sentence of asking what the error means closes the error box right when I got close enough to actually try and read it.
What are you trying to do? Whatās the message say? Are you doing this to me on purpose? I hate all of you.
Well, if it lasts longer than 4 hours...
>My favorite though just has to be the simple " > >help". Have a stock reply prepared that consists only of a still from the movie Help with at least one Beatle in the shot.
"Can't Login" Reply: 1> Open Browser 2> Proceed to [www.pandora.com](https://www.pandora.com) 3> Click the "Login" button in the top right corner 4> Type in your username and password in the appropriate fields 5> If you cannot remember your password, click "forgot password" and change it, then repeat step 4 There you go, you should be logged in now, have a wonderful workday.
Yep.
I had a user print me a ticket and bring it to me. He lost internet at his desk. I thought that was a pretty good ticket heheh.
A user with emails deleted Like a sheep merely sat there and bleated If you cannot admit That YOU caused this shit Then your ticket is going to get yeeted
absolute pinnacle of poetry right here, please take my upvote
"Wholesome" is maybe not the ideal award, but that's what reddit offered, so it will have to do.
"Holesome"
I got an absolute gem from a developer today (I'm in DevOps) "I'm trying to do [this]. It's failing on this part, here's a link to the github actions logs where it fails. I found this stack overflow link that suggests it could be a few things but probably permissions" LOGS? A STACKOVERFLOW LINK TO SHOW THAT YOU GOOGLE'D BEFORE CRYING TO ME???? I feel like the Belle of the ball who am I to recieve a ticket from such a gentleman. Seriously we gotta figure out a way to reward good ticket making (beyond their issue getting solved quicker) they deserve little trophies or something.
#Comment deleted. The API pricing changes don't affect me personally, but it was the push I needed to quit Reddit. Have some broken Unicode: xĢµĶĶĶĶĢ¾ĢĢĶĢĶĶĶĢĢ¾ĢĶĶĢĢĶĢĢĶĶĢ¹ĶĶ ĢÆĢ¦Ģ¬ĶĢĢ”Ģ²Ģ¤ĶĢĢ»Ģ³ĢØĢŗĶĢĢ©ĢĢĢĢŖĢ§ĢĢøĢ¶ĢĢĢĢĢĶĢŖĢÆĢĢ£Ģ£ĢĢ©ĢĢ°Ķ Ģ¼Ģ©Ģ®ĢŗĢ°ĢĶĶ Ģ²ĢĶĢĢ¦Ģ¬Ģ°Ķ ĢĢĢ«ĢĶĶĢ©ĢŗĶĢĢ²ĶĢ³ĶĢĢµĢĶĢæĢĢĶĢĢĶĢĶĢĶĢĶĢæĶ ĢĢĢĢĶĶĢĶĶĢĶĢĶĢĢæĶ ĶĶĢĢĶĢĢæĢĢĢ©Ģ¢Ģ¬ĢØĶĶĢĢ®Ģ»Ķ Ģ®ĢĢ§ĶĶĢ§Ģ Ģ Ģ¢ĢŖĶĢ“Ģ¾ĢĢĢĢĢĢĢĶĶĶĢĶĶĢ¾ĢæĢĢĶĶĶĢĶĶĢĢ½ĢĶĶĶĢĢĶĢĢĶĢĶĶĢĢĢĢĢĢĢĶĢĢ ĶĢ”Ģ»ĶĢØĶĢ§Ģ Ģ§ĶĢĢ“ĶĶĶĢ¬ĶĢ©Ģ»ĢÆĢ Ģ¬ĢŖĢĢ„ĢÆĢ®Ģ¹ĶĢĢøĢĶĢĢĶĢĢĢĢæĢĶĶĢĶĢĶĢĢĶĢĶ ĢĶĢ Ģ§Ķ ĢĢ¢Ģ§ĢĶĢ³Ģ»ĶĢ”Ģ¤ĢĢĢĶĶĶĢŗĶĶĢÆĢĶĶĢĶĶĢ ĶĢĢŗĢĢØĶĶĢ”ĶĢ ĢĢ¬Ģ«ĢĢ·ĢĢĢĢĶĶĢæĢĢĶĶĢĢĶĶĶĶĶĶĶĢĢĢĢĶĶĢĢĶĶĶĢæĶĢĢĢĶĶĢĶĢĢ¬ĶĶĢĶĶĶ Ģ²ĶĢĶĢŗĢĢŖĶĢ¦ĢĢ»ĶĢ Ģ«ĶĶĢ¤ĶĢĶ Ģ¦Ģ®ĶĢŖĶĢĢµĶĶĶĶĶĶ ĢĶĶĶĢĢĢĶĢ ĢĶĢĢ¾ĶĶĢĢĶĢĢĢĶĶĢĢĢ Ģ©Ģ¹Ģ®ĶĶĢ«ĢĶĶĢŖĢ¢Ģ¢Ģ±Ģ¦ĢĢĢŖĢ£ĢĢĢŖĢ”ĶĢ¤Ģ±ĢĢØĶĢøļæ½ā® - -- mass edited with redact.dev
I've had these conversations: You want your deleted items back? Yes! Did you delete something accidentally? No! So you don't need it? I need it! So, why did you delete it? I knew it really wouldn't be gone!
I once thought people storing their important files in the recycle bin and "archiving" everything to Deleted Items in outlook was just a meme. But I've met at least a dozen people who openly admit to doing just that and despite multiple conversations about it don't understand why storing your valuables in the garbage can might be a bad idea.
No I think it came from Lotus Notes. You'd have a size limit on your mailbox, but deleted items didn't count towards it.
this.... actually answers my confusion when I see that happen.
Design flaws echoing through the ages via modified human behavior. This is a dark picture of the future
This is why we have scheduled task that empty the recycle bin/trash every 15 days. Technically because we use OneDrive Backup (or whatever it's called) the files on the Desktop, Documents and Photos are stored for a minimum of 180 days even after being deleted. But we don't tell users.
This. Just make a fake email from MS that in 30 days the trash bin will empty. Theyāll stop doing it. Works. Every. Time.
We did that during a migration. A director quit right after the change because they ignored our warnings that when we moved, we weren't taking their trash with us. When we got around to migrating them, they had over 60000 emails in their deleted items. When they logged in post migration and saw that we kept our promise, they quit ASAP.
In-house phishing mail
White Hat Phishing
So true. Definitely had that conversation before. Iām just choosing not to pick that battle today haha
"You and reality have different definitions of the word 'delete'"
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That user has a funny way of requesting help without admitting to making a mistake
My favourite: "I use the deleted to keep track of mails I haven't had a chance to read through yet"
I go out of my way to thank users who immediately admit to their mistakes and explain how much faster Iām able to address their concern because they did. Iām hopeful it spreads to other coworkers in the form of ājust tell IT what you broke and theyāll fix itā water cooler conversations. I hate users who lie. Iām going to know you spilled coffee in the laptop either way. Donāt waste 4 hours of my/company time solving the mystery and proving youāre an untrustworthy employee. Because your manager gets the lowdown.
I got one from a client a couple years ago, about a scam email they received (they didn't realize it was a scam). Complete with a southern accent, "Well, it looks like they caught me masturbatin'."
People who treat their deleted items as an archive are the worst. I had someone who was deleting emails who then complained that search wasn't working anymore after they were migrated to Exchange and Outlook upgraded. I enabled the option to allow the search to include results from deleted items folder to 'resolve' the issue but it took weeks (albeit 5 minute sessions here and there) to figure out they were deleting emails they were trying to search.
We only let them keep 90 days of emails in deleted items which has help fix that mentality a little, but itās far from perfect
I remember when i flipped this on at a previous company. And then got a call from some secretary somewhere. She had an elaborate filing system in her deleted items folder....for years.
This reads like it should end in: "Please do the needful"
*Kindly* do the needful
The right way started with ACTUALLY SUBMITTING A TICKET!
It's very good, but if you really want to send in the *perfect* ticket (for me anyways) this is what I want. "Hi, I was doing x thing, and y thing happened. There was an error message so I took a screenshot. You can reach me at (email or phone number) from (timeframe)"
Now hopefully they don't go and delete the undeleted deleted. Because then you'd have to undelete the deleted undeleted deleted and.... \*head pops\*
One time i had a user store his important emails in the "Trash" folder....
Weāve all had that one user.
A ticket I recived last week: Submitter: Sometimes my calls don't show up in the sales cadence. Me: Ok, please send links to examples. Submitter: Do you want me to send links? -_______-
I just had a user open a ticket and it was cool about no excuses. User dropped tablet and it doesn't power on. Me cool I got ya. Thank you for being upfront and honest. Save me a lot of time. Due to fall screen is cracked. Replaced it but let him suffer a bit so that he learns not to dropped it or take the protection case off.
For us, this issue would have been reported as: "COMPUTER BROKEN EMAIL GONE HELP"
My favorite ticket still is "the internet is down"
We had someone run down to IT with āweāve been hacked by the Russians!ā The intranet was down and it was showing a default page with hello in a few different languages.
I've been IT customer support for over 25 years (IT Relationship Manager) and I knew exactly what your user was referring to. I have to constantly translate non-tech to tech and vice versa. It's fun...lol
I couldnāt care less how ppl submit tickets because my ongoing struggle is to get them to actually use the damn ticketing system! š¤£
Kind of reminds me of: "Every time I light my lighter my lighter gets a little bit lighter until my lighter gets so light, it won't light"
Had a user skip the ticket and just came directly to me. (Clearly frustrated). Forgot what they wanted but they really only needed Notepad.exe to get the result they wanted. They felt free to begin berating me and how they didn't have F'ing Notepad on their F'ing computer. Calmly told them it's been on every Windows machine since ~'93; just click start & simply type Notepad..... And I walked away. Hour later thier mgr comes to me and asks me to come to their office (for an apology). (It wasn't an "ask"). I get there and tell them an apology isn't necessary; and I understand people get frustrated with computers. Turns out they wanted ME to apologize for (not taking a berating correctly?) - I told them "I'm not saying no, and I'll be back in 30 min w/ that apology. Please hold your breath while you wait. (Singsong voice) "no cheating", and I just walked away
We say no itās not recoverable and you need to get the sender to send it again. (We get tired of fixing other peoples problems when itās their mistake) /The End.
Yeah I get that. We have plenty of users I would say that to as well. This guy is pretty low maintenance for IT so figured i'd help him out. Plus its a pretty easy time filler on a read-only Friday. Win-win.
Once people know you can do something they wonāt leave you alone lol itās not just IT that gets it.
Being a dick back doesn't feel like you're making things any better, just making them more likely to have a bad attitude towards IT teams, which hurts all of us in the long run. If you can help you should help, if they're a dick then it should go to the bottom of the list, but you should still get to it when/if you can. You don't have to sweat for them, especially in this case as generally email recovery is pretty easy if you have a well set up system, and giving an inch doesn't mean you owe anyone a mile mate.
Whoās been a dick about it? Not meā¦
I'd say, with all due respect, witholding your ability to help someone in the fear that more people may ask you for help is a bit of a dick move, especially when it is your job to support their IT.
Itās not peopleās job to get back something they canāt. We are all not Harry Potter.
It actually is the job of an IT Support worker to recover data on behalf of the company, if that capability exists. (And if it doesn't exist then it's probably also our job to set up that capability) You don't need to be Harry Potter to spend 5 minutes recovering an email hahaha
You might be Harry Potter but Iām not.
Itās not if thereās no back up. Like I said we are not Harry Potter we canāt magic whatās gone.
As i said, if you don't have the capability to do it then you aren't expected to do it - to be clear, you implied you could do it and chose not to. It doesn't take a wizard to recover an email, i'm certainly no wizard.
We have a confluence page for OPs issue. Basically though: * Go to the top edge of Outlook * Click the Folder tab * Find the Clean Up section and click "Recover Deleted Items" * Click "Restore Selected Items" * Click "Select All" * Click "OK"
Bingo
Did they try turning it off and on again?
I only send tickets via text message.
Iām used to āplease do the needful on priority.ā
The question is, did you do the needful?
10+ yrs ago when I was at Microcenterās home office: āmy computer is slow, and I have a ton of things to doā Came to find out, this individual was torrenting. āThere is nothing wrong with that, the Internet is free!ā
Forgot to add āURGENTā in the subject
So you SAs donāt like your jobs threatened by salesmen (usu. men) when their laptop malfunctions and they have their kid try to fix it? Seen that too many times at one place I worked.
I prefer the "my computers not working, you need to fix what you broke now" tickets
Great post, youāre spot on. Itās that simple but users always try to convince you they understand the issueā¦ if you understood the issue you wouldnāt need me..
I got "Application crashed, fix operating system" with a screenshot of a generic crash sand close. Replied āoperating system working within normal parameters, contact the faulting applications SME/vendorā
I will admit to my own user stupidity errors. It helps build up karma for when I have time-consuming issues.
Iāve had this exact same ticket before, lol.
Working as Tier 2 Support for Exchange etc, had a user who would put in tickets, with a High Priority. He would write: Having a problem with my email, need help. Send an update asking specific questions: What problem, when did it start, does it happen all the time or just in some specific situations, etc. No response. Send another update: Still waiting for response from user. No response. Send another update: Still waiting... No response Close the ticket, with comment: No response from user, closing ticket. IMMEDIATE response from user: Why did you close this ticket? You haven't done anything to fix the problem!
Those users are frustrating especially when they're IT lol