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I've heard a LOT of funny stuff in all the years I've been working.
The funny thing is that I've only really OFFICIALLY done support for
only 2 years but I end up supporting people anyway. Here are
a few of the funny or FUCKING STUPID things users have put me through.
Joke go BAD when you piss off tech support
At one company a secretary interrupted my lunch to ask me to look at her
monitor. The power light was on both the monitor and computer but
NOT a blip on the screen. I loaded a replacement monitor and video
card as it was a bit of a walk. When I got there it was exactly
like she had said. I then took off her glare guard and a piece of
black paper fell out. It was a joke played by the rest of the crew
in her department.
Space the final frontier
I had a 20 minute argument that ended with when you find it let me know.
The issue the user insisted that the space bar was NOT the space bar
because it did not have the word SPACE written on it. I also had a
conversation about the ANY key with this guy.
Why not use it if you've paid for it?
I've had numerous users call me to ask to support various programs that
I have little or no contact with. Which is pretty annoying but
when the call and they have free or paid for tech support from the
company who made the stuff I shake my head.
The Ghost in the Machine
One user swore that something was up with his computer that someone
had hacked into it. While I hadn't done anything to them and we
were behind a firewall I thought it was pretty dubious that anyone had
hacked into their computer. Words such as Afghanistan and
terrorist were frequently seen in the ghost typing lending an air of
paranoia to the whole thing. After a LOT of calls and
searching the internet instead of improving my solitaire score, I found
the solution. Office XP has speech recognition embedded in it.
For some reason it would switch on EVERY time the user restarted their
computer. The microphone on the front of the monitor would pick up
ambient sounds and try to type them. A TV tuned to the Fox News
channel was usually on in the room so the words in the broadcast would
be picked up by the microphone and then entered into the Office
application running.
Space Cadet
A user complained about a lack of hard drive space. While I told
him he had a LOT of space on the network to store his data and it would
be backed up he insisted he HAD to have a larger hard drive. (This
was back when 3 Gigs was a HUGE drive). I kept telling him to
clean up his machine but he complained to his boss and then the shit
flowed down. I then ordered the drive and took his computer to
move the data to the new drive. The old drive had only 10% data
and applications and the other 90% was games. I made sure that I
forwarded the contents to my boss and his.
Computers need to sweat sometimes
Day 1 - VP of the company enters the computer room and turns up the
thermostat saying we're wasting money and we don't need it cold in here.
Day 2 - Server crashes due to heat. Thermostat reset to
appropriate levels.
Day 3 - VP raises temperature again this time agitated that HIS money is
being spent on being chilly.
Day 4 - Server goes down AGAIN board actually has melted chips. VP
calls up to ask WTF is going on. I calmly explained that the
temperature was too warm and I had the replacement and was getting the
server up as we spoke. Thermostat reset.
Day 5 - Someone raises temperature. I place a SIGN next to the
thermostat. Thermostat reset.
Day 6 - Someone raises temperature. I place a SIGN ON the
thermostat. Thermostat reset.
Day 7 - Someone raises temperature. I DUCT TAPE the the
thermostat. Thermostat reset.
Day 8 - Tape is REMOVED and someone raises temperature.
We don't need that file
My replacement at a job that I left called to ask me what to do because
he deleted the global address list from Microsoft Mail (pre dates
exchange) because the VP of the company didn't want people
emailing each other between branches. I asked do you have a backup
of the file? He said no. Well you then just deleted
everyone's email account and you'll have to recreate them all by hand.
We
don't need no stinking backup
This replacement had the backup system fail and did not replace it for
several weeks. He then had several drives in a RAID fail till
there was no mirroring at ALL. Then in preparation for a weekend
power outage simply shut off the servers (did not shut down he cut
power) Monday morning came and he showed up at 8am and the servers
didn't come up. He blamed the vendor for faulty parts.
Although when recovered the logs showed a months of failed backups and 2
weeks of a failed RAID system.
My code is PERFECT I have no erors
I had a developer (well he called himself one) who was complaining that
his code wasn't working and it was something I had done. I asked
what the error message was. He said there was none. I then
ran his code on my machine and received an error message which was
EXTREMELY detailed and helpful. I then went to his machine and ran
the same code without an error message. I then checked and he had
turned error messages off 'because they were annoying' This
incident spanned 3 days, involved 3 managers, a client, a VP and a
partner in the company because I wasn't helpful.
I'm an engineer but operating a phone is a bit much
A call from the engineering department for support with a broken modem.
I head over and everyone is at lunch. I then fire up the
application that used the modem. It dials and does everything it's
supposed to. I double and triple check everything's ok. I
leave and they come back from lunch and call me saying it's still not
working and they've helped me out by removing the modem and mixing a few
of the jumpers around. I go over replace everything they've
removed and check the modem WITH them there and everything is ok.
Then then tell me that they want to call up this BBS in California.
I explain they have to talk to their VP to have a request made to allow
long distance calls on that line. They say we don't want to do
that because that's not what is wrong. The MODEM is broken.
Finally when the had the line changed the modem WORKED fine.
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