I am trying again to post the main section of the Rules of Tech Support, this time with no links. Hopefully the mods see fit to not remove this post. The Rules are meant to be part serious, part humor, but about tech support. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Rules of Tech Support

Rule 1 - Users lie.

Rule 1A - It may not be malicious or willful, but Rule 1 is always in effect.

Rule 1B - Users assume you don't know they are lying.

Rule 1C - Users continue to lie as a result.

Rule 1D - When caught in a lie, users get angry.

Rule 1E - Users lie even when they aren't users.

Rule 1F - If they are not lying, then they are wrong.

Rule 1G: Accept that you will eventually have to lie to get the user to do what you need them to do.

Rule 2 - Explain everything as simply as possible.

Rule 2A - There is no language simple enough to make a user understand anything.

Rule 2B - Emojis are NEVER an answer.

Rule 3 - User caused problems are caused by tech support.

Rule 3A - As it's your fault, they don't want to be billed.

Rule 3B - All issues are user issues. If there are no users, no issues get reported, no tickets get created. Ergo, it must be users who are responsible.

Rule 4 - If it doesn't work, it is your fault.

Rule 4A - If it does, you had nothing to do with it.

Rule 5 - If you take the time to visit the user's desk, the problem will magically have fixed itself.

Rule 5A - Or the solution is bound to be really simple.

Rule 5B - Or the user left the office moments after entering the ticket, and won't be back for days. How long is uncertain as these users never use their calendar.

Rule 5C - Or when they do, they won't have shared it with you or they entered an all-day event as taking an hour.

Rule 5D - The problem will be solved by doing something you already asked them to but they said it didn't work.

Rule 6 - All users consider their situation to be more important than others, even if they know you are helping someone else.

Rule 6A - All users want VIP treatment.

Rule 6B - But they don't ever want to pay for VIP treatment.

Rule 7 - It doesn't matter how much time the user claims something will take. See Rule 1.

Rule 8 - Users never read error messages, if they read anything at all.

Rule 8A - If a user reads an alert or error message, they don't know what to do even if they can only do one thing.

Rule 8B - The more advanced degree a user has, the less likely they are to read anything.

Rule 8C - They will give the wrong error message.

Rule 8D - If a user receives an error, when asked what it says, the user will reply: "I don't know, just an error. I closed it."

Rule 8E - "Isn't it YOUR JOB to know that?"

Rule 8F - Users will not read you the entire error code or message or will read everything else.

Rule 8G - If the user reads you the error message in its entirety, it will be irrelevant to the issue.

Rule 9 - Expect any and all jargon and technical terms (such as wireless) to be misunderstood.

Rule 9A - Expect everything to be misinterpreted.

Rule 9B - All jargon is the same to users.

Rule 9C - All jargon will be used incorrectly.

Rule 10 - About half of tech support is solving issues that are only partially related to what is supposed to be fixed.

Rule 11 - No system is idiot-proof enough to best all users.

Rule 11A - If you haven't found a user able to best your system, it's because they haven't found you yet.

Rule 11B - Nature will take as a challenge any attempt to create an idiot-proof system.

Rule 12 - There is nothing so stupid that no one will do.

Rule 12A - Stupid questions do exist.

Rule 12B - There is no such thing as a stupid question, just stupid people. Asking a stupid question identifies a stupid user and therefore the question itself is not stupid.

Rule 13 - Never believe a user who claims that there is nothing that needs to be saved. See Rule W10 and Rule W10A.

Rule 14 - Sometimes you need to trick users in order to get the job done.

Rule 14A - Sometimes you have to make people, not just users, terrified to get them to do what they are supposed to.

Rule 15 - Users care more about things working than in how you pulled it off.

Rule 16 - A user's appreciation for your work is inversely proportional to how difficult it was.

Rule 17 - If you have an accent, then you will be perceived to be in a foreign country.

Rule 18 - Never trust a user.

Rule 18A - Everyone is a user. Even you.

Rule 19 - The most intelligent person you know will be defeated by a mere computer.

Rule 19A - Even if it's you.

Rule 20 - The quickest way to find out who is responsible for something is to do the scream test. Remove that something and see who complains.

Rule 20A - If nobody screamed instantly, users may wait until it has been long enough that the thing has been thrown away and can't be recovered any more. Then you will learn that said thing was critical for some task that absolutely has to be done right now, just like every X years.

Rule 21 - Never underestimate the power of the end user to complicate things.

Rule 22 - If it looks different, then it's broken.

Rule 23 - Never give a user options.

Rule 24 - When you receive a ticket and call the user immediately they definitely won't be at their desk.

Rule 24A - If you email them they will already be on vacation.

Rule 24B - The less time that they're in the office, the more urgent their issue is.

Rule 25 - Watch out for Finagle's Law which states that 'Anything that can go wrong, will — at the worst possible moment.'

Rule 26 - Always have a small list of phrases to get users to do what you are trying to get them to do.

Rule 26A - Only share these with other techs.

Rule 27 - Don't let people know you are a tech. They are likely to ask for free tech support.

Rule 27A - Never, EVER, give out personal contact information.

Rule 28 - Sometimes, you will be the one who is wrong.

Rule 29 - Expect equipment to be placed in bad locations.

Rule 30 - It's always the printer|DNS|server|browser|connection. It's never the printer|DNS|server|browser|connection.

Rule 30A - It's always the printer. Printers are evil.

Rule 30B - Printers are evil because of users.

Rule 30C - If a document fails to print, users will keep trying just to make sure it prints.

Rule 30D - The true importance of the documents they are trying to print will be inversely proportional to the fit they are throwing.

Rule 30E - Users will mash buttons and go through random menus and do random actions until errors go away or the printer is messed up. See also Rule W84.

Rule 30F - Did you check DNS? Check again.

Rule 31 - All user provided information must be verified.

Rule 32 - If you are a female tech, users will ask to speak to a man.

Rule 32A - You will be the only one who can actually help the user even though they will not believe a girl really knows anything.

Rule 32B - You actually know twice as much as the male techs but get only half the respect.

Rule 32C - Guys will pay more attention to your looks/voice than your mind.

Rule 32D - You'll get tons of calls from men (especially if you are attractive) who will even disconnect stuff to get you to go to them.

Rule 32DD - Women will cause IT problems to keep you away from men.

Rule 33 - Just because it worked yesterday does not mean that it will today.

Rule 33A - Just because it didn't work yesterday does not mean that it won't today.

Rule 33B - Things only work when you are paying attention to them.

Rule 34 - Never refer to this Rule by its name.

Rule 35 - Updates will be both solutions and banes, usually at the same time.

Rule 36 - Sometimes, you have to nuke everything.

Rule 37 - Focus on getting things working, then on getting them done right.

Rule 37A - By hook or by crook.

Rule 37B - When things are working right, leave them alone.

Rule 37C - If something starts working, even if you KNOW what you just did shouldn't have fixed it, raise your hands in the air unthreatening-like and slowly back out of the room.

Rule 37D - You only think it's working. The real cause will wait a while and then break everything in a spectacular fashion a few months down the line. Luckily, by then it's usually no longer your problem.

Rule 37E - It will still be your problem.

Rule 38 - There's always a relevant xkcd.

Rule 38A - If you can't find a relevant xkcd, it's because you haven't looked hard enough.

Rule 38B - If there is no relevant xkcd, there is always a relevant Dilbert strip.

Rule 38C - If there is no relevant xkcd or Dilbert strip, there's a relevant entry in The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries.

Rule 38D - If you can't find a relevant xkcd, Dilbert, or Maxim, your problem does not exist.

Rule 39 - You and your work will never be appreciated since if you did your job right, none of these problems would have happened.

Rule 40 - All IT urban legends are true.

Rule 41 - If it takes TFTS to turn you paranoid, you likely haven't been in tech support for very long.

Rule 41A - You aren't paranoid. They really are out to get you.

Rule 42 - You already know the answer.

Rule 43 - Every tech is also a user.

Rule 44 - Never make changes before going on vacation.

Rule 45 - The more you specialize, the less you will remember about basic desktop functions.

Rule 46 - No technical person reads all of the rules. They will act like they know them until the place catches fire, then complain about incomplete documentation.

Rule 46A - Especially if it was the documentation that went up in flames first.

Rule 47 - Don't help anyone who is not paying you in some way as they won't take your advice seriously.

Rule 48 - Vendors will tell you that you need to upgrade to the newest version in order to fix things. If you are on the latest version, they will tell you to wait till the next version.

Rule 48A - If the problem remains reproducible on the latest version, they may tell you to downgrade. Even if you just upgraded per Rule 48.

Rule 48B - It's not a bug, it's an undocumented feature.

Rule 49 - Never assume anyone else is smarter than you.

Rule 49A - Never assume you are smarter than anyone else.

Rule 49B - A user's intelligence will always be precisely what is needed for maximum damage.

Rule 50 - Scheduled updates won't.

Rule 50A - Anything scheduled will break things, especially if you are not available.

Rule 51 - Drivers will drive you bonkers, if you can even find them. Even if you can find them they may not be compatible.

Rule 51A - Drivers are the real threat, not hardware.

Rule 51B - Drivers using hardware [heavy machinery] are also a real threat. Backhoes/diggers have a magnetic attraction to fiber optics and the drivers have an innate ability to find optical fiber.

Rule 52 - No is the answer for every request as long as it's plausible.

Rule 53 - Treat your job like a role playing game.

Rule 54 - Don't run stuff that you are not supposed to unless Rule 37 and Rule 37A apply.

Rule 55 - The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries are always applicable.

Rule 55A - Sometimes the applicability of the Maxims is not immediately obvious.

Rule 56 - Get to know the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Rule 57 - You might want to consider starting the day with coffee or tea and ending with whiskey or scotch or bourbon or beer...

Rule 58 - Vendors might not follow standards.

Rule 59 - You might find people who support you. Reciprocate.

Rule 60 - When a user activates the Swedish Fish rule, they get preferential treatment.

Rule 61 - Like the military says, never volunteer.

Rule 62 - Some bugs are Heisenbugs; they can only occur if they are not being observed. Users do not count as observers.

Rule 63 - Something will be needed right after you get rid of it.

Rule 63A - Once you replace it, you will no longer need it.

Rule 63B - You will buy something and then find out that what you currently have already has what you needed.

Rule 64 - User managed projects will always fail.

Rule 64A - And they will blame you.

Rule 65 - You will complain about something and then realize that you are the one that is guilty.

Rule 66 - You will find yourself putting out fire after fire without any chance to document anything.

Rule 66A - Then get blamed for not documenting everything.

Rule 67 - Try using metaphors and analogies in addition to or instead of technical terms.

Rule 68 - The higher rank an employee is, the more problems you will have with them.

Rule 69 - Refer to Rule 34.

Rule 70 - Anything that will show up as a link should be a link.

Rule 71 - Never take actions that assume a system is a certain way.

Rule 71A - Especially if not assuming makes little or no difference to the troubleshooting process.

Rule 71B - And never if the incorrect assumption will be recognizable to the user.

Rule 72 - Always give users the least amount of access/permissions that you can realistically get away with.

Rule 73 - It's always Dave or Steve or Kevin. Unless it's a Karen.

Rule 74 - Try to phrase things in a way that helps users save face.

Rule 75 - Maintenance, and sometimes coworkers or users, will unplug things and plug them back in wrong or not at all.

Rule 75A - If anything goes wrong they won't tell anyone. You will get to handle the "website down!" or "the internet stopped working!" tickets.

Rule 76 - Only have the minimal required equipment needed for users.

Rule 77 - Your company will be in a very old very shoddy building.

Rule 78 - If someone is acting odd, it might be a social engineering attack. Verify everything.

Rule 78A - VIPs within the company that actually do have the power to have you fired at whim will be the most angered by attempts to verify and will be the hardest to verify.

Rule 78B - Social engineering attackers know Rule 78A.

Rule 79 - Users think they can connect to anywhere from anywhere.

Rule 80 - If this port is taken, port 443 will be as well.

Rule 81 - Most of your job is figuring out what users are talking about.

Rule 81N6 - The GoogleBing awaits.

Rule 82 - Temporary solutions aren't.

Rule 83 - Every company has a Production environment and a Testing environment. If you're lucky, they are separate environments.

Rule 84 - Users already have a certificate of proficiency in computering.

Rule 85 - Always let someone know that you are there to fix a problem.

Rule 86 - You might encounter a user who is nice, doesn't need everything explained, takes you seriously, reads you complete error messages, and does what you tell them to do with no drama. neigh Seriously, they do exist.

Rule 87 - Users who always demand the latest hardware never work in a position that requires the latest hardware.

Rule 88 - Sometimes you need a user to fix your problem.

Rule 88A - Only a user will find the real problem.

Rule 89 - You will be expected to be your own tech support.

Rule 90 - You will have to support software older than you are.

Rule 91 - The OSI model has layer 8 (user) and layer 9 (management).

Rule 92 - It's always a bad sign if someone is happy to see you.

Rule 93 - "Only one thing" never is.

Rule 94 - Hypothetical questions aren't.

Rule 95 - Every mail from the helpdesk or system administration will be too much to handle if it is longer than two lines.

Rule 96 - Business will demand more experience for their job postings than exists.

Rule 97 - Always keep copies of drivers you download.

Rule 98 - Don't ask users if something is on the screen. Have them read the screen.

Rule 99 - A fix will only work until you fall asleep.

Rule 100 - A theme, especially a system theme, will make it difficult to read anything.

Rule 101 - Urgent isn't.

Rule 102 - Someday you will forget to use the mute button. Double mute.

Rule 404 - You will never find it.

Rule 404A - If a page is not found, then the entire site|Internet is down.

Rule 404B - Online manuals will disappear without warning. Download a copy for yourself.

Rule 600613 - Used to go to websites instead of going directly.

The school district I work for does IP address updates for schools every so often for staff members can print wireless. 1 ticket I had today. Staff memberhad a printer and it was giving him a static IP of .156 but it should have been .53 IP if DHCP was enabled. But thats not the only issue. First thing I check is the cable and ensure all the pairs are in agreement with T568B standard and what do you know... it was not. 1 end of the cable had White Brown/Brown next to the White Orange/Orange wires and the other end was perfectly fine lol. So I switch the cable out and all is good...nope.

The printer is a Brother 5450 Printer. Some old school basic printer with no display Interface 😂🤷‍♂️. Somehow the Staff member printed out the Network Setup sheet. The printer was pulling Static IP. So I knew what I had to do. But it would have been the first time I've done it out in the field. I'm plugged in hardwired. I change my Network adapter settings from DHCP to Static. Set the IP to .155 to get on some network as the printer. And from then I was able to punch in the printers IP to get to the web interface and change the boot method from Static to DHCP and all it good. But idk. Felt good to handle that on my own. Thought I'd share. Maybe someone can learn the way I did

This took place in the early 2000’s, after the Y2K panic had become a memory. Not that Y2K has any bearing on this story, it just sets the timeframe.

I was working my first true IT gig as an IT Coordinator/entire IT and AV department of a public school system at the time. I loved the job and 99.9% of the people that worked there. There was a teacher there that absolutely loved technology and I really liked her (as a friend). She had a passion to inspire her students and saw technology as a way to help. Unfortunately, technology didn't like her back, but in truth, technology may have had its reasons.

My first major tech support request from her was when Windows (98) stopped working for her. When I went to troubleshoot she let me know things had been fine, then the computer stopped working. The only thing she had done was delete all the files that had not been modified in a while, just to free up room. Things that ended with .dll and .sys were just taking up space. SMH. After explaining why that was a bad idea, rescuing her documents, and using Ghost to reload the machine, we were back in business. That event, however, was a catalyst for technology’s revenge.

A few months later, after upgrading a lab in the library, this teacher asked for six of the replaced computers for her room so she could set up a few research stations for her students. Great! I love to see tech being used so I agree. I spend some time cleaning fans, reloading, scrapping memory from other units to make these machines fly (for early 2000’s anyway). I bring them to the room, run new network drops myself because each room only had 2, I get budget approval to have our maintenance guy get new power run, etc. All is great and when everything is in place I go over the new setups with her. The Principal and Superintendent are both happy to see old tech getting repurposed and are touting this initiative. I am golden. For about 4 days.

About a week after this is all up and running I get an email that 3 of the 6 PC’s are dead. I go, and sure enough 3 of the power supplies died. WTF?? I checked, and 2 of the 3 were on a different new circuit, but were paired with the 2 of the 3 that didn't die. The 3rd that died was on an old circuit that was the same one her teaching desktop was on. I hang my head and quickly grab power supplies from some of the scrapped units and replace them. All back up and running again!

After a couple of months of peace, the Technology Gremlins decided to rear their heads again. This time the onboard network adapters started failing. I can not recall if it was 3 or 4, but within the space of 2 weeks we had failures of many of them. I ordered some network adapter cards, installed them, then we were back up and running.

Some funding became available, and I, not having learned my lesson, suggested an InFocus projector for her room might be well used. Our head of maintenance designed a custom mount for our ceiling (not dropped) and we got a projector in there. It lasted 3 weeks before it overheated and had a literal meltdown. The case melted and deformed like it had been in an oven. We sent it back under warranty and they (unofficially) said they had never seen anything like it. They replaced it and the replacement was working until the day I left. I heard it died the next week.

When we started the rollout of laser printers to replace the inkjet ones, I held off her room as long as I could. It was not long enough. We put in an HP LJ 1012 series in the room in late spring. She loved it and it seemed to like her, no jams, old HP reliable. June comes and the school shuts down. Then August (hot and humid in the northeast) rolls around and teachers come back in and start prepping for the start of school. High heat laser transfer roller and humid paper equals steam for the first few prints. Or, in this case, the perception of fire, yanking the plug, throwing the machine on the floor, and hitting it with the fire extinguisher. RIP LJ1012.

Our first venture into laptops was a mobile laptop cart and a wifi access point they would plug in when the cart was brought into the classroom. I knew the writing was on the wall. Despite major troubleshooting and time invested, the laptops only had about a 50% success rate in her room. Everywhere else was closer to 95%. We just gave up trying them in there after a few goes. It was self preservation on both our parts.

She left the district a short while later, the new teacher in her room did not care as much for technology, and I left soon after that. I still don't know why that room seemed to be cursed as far as technology went. I just know it was.

I still think of that time fondly, and the teacher that had the room that technology went to die in. We still talk on FB occasionally. Technology still fears her.

We have a very high maintenance client, with a very entitled user base. Their boss is completely bi-polar and you have no idea which one you are going to get, it could be the one who defends us and screams "my staff are f*****g idiots who can't read instructions" or it could be "My staff aren't paid to fix I.T. issues and go through troubleshooting - you F*****g fix it!!"

So today I had a rather snarky ticket come in, about recent new users in a branch office being unable to get the company apps on their iPhones. They were blatantly blaming the documentation that I wrote and frequently update, as the last batch of users have all had problems.

The person sending the ticket cc'd in the boss, and delightfully included all the errors they were getting on the phones.

The errors in outlook all showed "device not registered" which means all the users skipped the intune enrolment. The very well documented and detailed enrolment instructions, with a big all bold, red and caps heading of "DO NOT SKIP THIS PART, APPLICATIONS WILL FAIL TO LOG IN".

What the person who logged the ticket did, was word a very moody email, proclaim they have been doing everything correctly and the documentation is bad, and then send proof that they in fact had not, and that they had skipped the sections.

Today, their boss is very much in the "my staff are idiots!" mood.

This is the second part of a (long delayed) series. My sincere apology for the delay.

Part 1

I’ve got a cybersecurity advisory role at the Insurance King, a big insurance broker that has drawn the ire of its state regulator. Reading the official order from the regulator, they’ve got to invest in governance and cybersecurity.

So a regulator’s annoyance is the reason I’m here.

From a consultant’s perspective, that’s both good and bad. I’ve got a big stick I can wave around if I need to threaten someone who doesn’t want to do something. But IK doesn’t actually care about security unless it generates something they can show to the regulator that they’re doing the right thing. Actual improvements to confidentiality, integrity or availability? No. Documentation to make the regulator go away? Yes.

This permeates the entire company. I don’t think anyone here actually cares about providing good service to customers or reduced costs, but are looking for something to show their managers that they’re working hard. Hard work isn’t something I’m afraid of, but it manifests differently here.

Growing up, a day of hard work went from serving fifty customers and a pocketful of cash the end of a shift at a restaurant to closed tickets on the help desk. As a junior consultant, it was hitting my numbers for billing. As a senior consultant, it was pride in shipped deliverables, signed contracts and a junior taking lead on a new engagement.

At Insurance King, it’s measured by full Outlook calendars. If you’re booked solid for the next two weeks, you’re doing it right. And there are lots of meetings. Things get discussed on other meetings that get recapped on the meeting I’m on. It’s a less fun Marvel Cinematic Universe.

I’ve been assigned two projects- helping close out identified vulnerabilities and assessing risks at the department level.

IK has decided to adorn the usual scan/remediate/retest vulnerability management cycle with clusters of meetings at every step. Right now, I’m on the Remediation Standup, listening to two project managers fumble technical details at each other:

PM1, reading from their slides:”The Tempe datacenter has four noncompliant servers. When will IT Ops remediate these?”

PM2:”We’re seeking approval to extend the Management Action Plan 120-20 to next quarter”

I haven’t figured out too much about how Insurance King operates, but I have noted that the ‘20’ in the plan means 2022. It’s 2023 now. This means that they’ve had an unpatched system and done everything but fixing it for three years. A quick skim of the plan tells me these Windows Server 2008 boxes are some kind of file storage for insurance agents to upload documents.

I flick the mute button on my headset.

me:”Why does it take two years to either upgrade or decommission four servers? That takes a day, tops”

PM2:”Uh, who is this?”

me:”I’m new here. I’m the new contractor in security risk, I don’t understand why you’ve let those unsupported systems out there for years. What are they doing that can’t be done on a compliant, hardened system?

A new voice makes itself known:”We don’t want to disrupt the business”

me:”But what’s the business doing with it? The management plan just says ‘server’. Is there someone in operations who might know what it’s for?”

PM2, affecting the voice of a tired fourth grade teacher explaining something to the slow kid for the third time:”We don’t have IT or operations on this call, unless they’re needed. I’ll invite you to the IT and Operations issues calls”

Oh,no, a L-shaped block just fell on my Outlook calendar. I instinctively click the up arrow to try to rotate it, but that doesn’t work here.

Meeting Tetris sucks. The call ends after more fumbling. I note an hour break before my next call. I get up and walk thorough the empty greige office. One in ten cubes has evidence of life. Paper calendars show faded March 2020 and a sharp looking barn with colorful hex signs. I’m not feeling in the groove here at Insurance King.

I make my way to an empty lunch room large enough to play some sports in. I fiddle with the Keurig knock-off coffee machine and make a cup. I’m so used to being alone in this building despite the Return To Office mandate that I’m surprised to see a middle aged man behind me waiting to use the coffee maker.

Awkward Small talk progresses into introductions. Hank is a director in IT Operations. We’re both trying to remember how to be social and it’s awkward. Hank is interested in security so there’s a topic that should be safe.

Hank:”You should look into a big security problem with our wireless network.”

me:”Oh? I’m interested”

Hank (quieter, as if someone else was listening):”The wireless network is available outside the building”

me:”That’s kinda expected, This building is a suburban office park, not a SCIF. The whole place is radiotransparent”

Hank:”No. If you set the access points to not broadcast the network name, it won’t go through walls”

Hank says this with such conviction that I’m wondering if that was just a feature flag I never noticed. No, this must be a joke. Hank’s fucking with me.

Hank is not fucking with me. He believes this, or has a bizarre sense of comedic timing. He strongly encourages me to look into this security measure.

I nod carefully and take my coffee back to my cube. I stare off into space and wait for my next call.

The next call, the Project Manager whispers while copying and pasting between two spreadsheets, while the seventeen people on the call occasionally disagree with her. Disagreement doesn’t seem to stop the copying and pasting.

This is the strangest ASMR stream ever. I’m being paid to come to an office and stare at a far far worse monitor than I have at home.

My confusion is interrupted by a 2x2 Tetris block of meetings drops in. Hank has added me to the Network Transformation Project.

If I keep this up, I will have an impressive solid block of meetings. If I do this right, I’ll be too busy to do any work at all.

I’m still puzzled about Hank’s beliefs that radio waves stop at windows.

To be continued…

This story has been unfolding for about 2 weeks now and is still ongoing.

Background: I have a client who owns his own small business. We manage 3 computers, emails for 3 employees, and 2 printers. This client is an incredibly nice guy, but he is possibly the most computer illiterate person I have ever dealt with.

First ticket: Our remote monitoring software alerted us a couple weeks ago that our client was running out of storage space on his laptop, so we shoot him an email to let him know. He says he can't clear any space and my boss ends up on the phone with him to discuss options. That call led to the client deciding to buy an external drive to migrate some less important data from the laptop to it. We agree to help him move the data once he has a drive.

Second ticket: Client informs us that the drive has arrived and my boss remotes into the computer to assist with migrating the data. About 30 minutes in and he is struggling to keep the drive connected. It would show up, then disconnect. Multiple USB ports tried and nothing is working. Boss informs him to try and get a replacement cable or different drive. Client agrees and will reach out once he has the new hardware.

Third Ticket: Client reaches out and says he has a new cable. I remote in this time and was able to get the drive connected and showed him how to copy the data. He is excited and says he will start copying data over later that day.

Fourth Ticket (Just an hour ago): Client says he is not sure all the data copied and doesn't want to delete it from his computer yet. I remote back in and go to check if all the data copied over. Drive starts disconnecting again. He swears he is using the new cable and does not know why this is happening. I ask the standard questions about if it is securely connected on both ends, is there anything pressing against the connections, etc. All clear.

I finally get a chance to look at the properties of the external drive and see it says 15TB total space... Red flag number 1. I ask where he got the drive. He says it was online but can't remember where. Red flag number 2. I then ask him how much he paid for it. He says it was about $150. Red flag number 3.

So I tell him that I think he has a fraudulent/defective drive and I cannot recommend continued use of the drive. I tell him that a 15TB SSD does exists, but it would not cost only $150 and that if he was able to get it to work and continued to try and copy data over, he would almost certainly lose data eventually.

I ended up sending him a link to a run of the mill 2TB drive and told him to just purchase that from a local office supply store.

Hopefully we can finally copy his data to the external drive in the fifth ticket...

So 1 thing about today is I finally realized what a POE box actually does. Seen it many times out in the field but never understood its purpose

I had an issue where a LAN switch went offline few days ago. I get on site to the MDF. There's 2 racks. I pull up Netstat. Ticket says the switch IP should be .11 as the last octet and the unlink was on port 7 on the 7k side. I trace out the fiber from the 7k and goes into a LAN switch but it's .6.....So I'm like huh that's weird. My boss looks into it. And he's like. There's a copper uplink connection on a 4850 switch. I'm like ok. I check out the other rack and I trace out the cable to a POE box and that's when things go interesting

I'm like POE. All my switches already have POE enabled. Why is this box here. With some help. I found there was a WAP on the roof of the building and it was pointing directly at another building to another WAP which in turn is where that .11 switch was. I'm like wow. First time I ever had to troubleshoot an issue like that. Cus I was searching that entire building for that switch lol

But anyway that switch is done. Damn thing tripped the breaker. That will get replaced but yeah crazy day.

Circa 1996-97 – Our shop used PC’s as thin clients connected to Novell servers. All applications, and data, resided on the server. Project Manager opened a ticket claiming her computer growled at her when she opened MS Word. That got the interest of the PC tech, The Notes administrator, and The Novell CNE and all three of us went to see this miracle.

When we got to her desk, she opened MS Word and her computer started a stuttering sound. The 3 techs were at a loss and opened and closed Word, Excel, and Power Point a couple of times to see what all was affected.

Then, one of the corporate system engineers, who worked out of our building, walked by, saw the gathering, and stopped to see what was going on. The PC tech opened MS Word, so he could hear the computer “growling”. The engineer frowned at it a couple seconds, then reached down and pushed a stack of paper, that was laying on the [Esc] key. Growling stopped.

That same engineer worked out of an oversized cubicle in the IT section. One time, the PC Tech was called to a programmer’s desk because the keyboard was acting weird. As he tested, he found that typing one key could put four or five characters on the screen. The engineer was coming back from a meeting and stopped to see what the problem was. The tech showed him by typing a key. The engineer immediately lifted one end of the keyboard and they watched as water poured out of the other end. Of course, the programmer denied spilling any water, despite the half bottle of water, with no cap, sitting beside the key board.

When troubleshooting problems at the user’s desk or cubicle – look at the desk. Most user problems really do exist between the chair and the keyboard.

My next door neighbor called me yesterday. He's an optometrist and was having troubles with one of his Retinal Cameras. I used to work as a tech for the company that sells this model, so it wasn't that unusual of a call.

The model he has is a bit old now and doesn't work on modern Windows, it only runs on Windows XP. He has an old Windows 7 machine that has an XP Mode VM running that then talks to the camera. The VM was not booting.

I played about with it for a while, but kept getting blocked by his old Win 7 machine that just wasn't playing nicely and also because I didn't have all my old installation media with me (who'd have thunk to pack a Windows XP cd?)

So I set up an FTP transfer of the VM files to my server and thought I'd just work on it at home. It took 3 hours to transfer, but it worked.

So then I went down the rabbit hole of how to open this thing. Virtubox didn't want a bar of them and Windows have removed the installer for their XP Mode VM. I eventually found a working copy of the installer, but surprise Surprise it only runs on Win 7.

So.... I used Virtubox to setup a Windows 7 machine. Then I installed the XP mode software. It all took my a while but eventually I had that set up. I copied over the VM files and launched. Same error, but at least I was back to square 1!

I found I had an old XP ISO so I loaded that into the virtual Virtual CD drive. I used to to run a repair on the Vm build and... SUCCESS! Or so I thought. XP now wanted to be activated. Oh god, can you still activate XP? Apparently you can! I dialed the toll free number and after only twenty minutes of typing in the longest activation code in the world I get the thing activated!

XP Boots, I hold my breath. Is this it? would it let me in? No activation page, good start. But then it asks for the username and password. I don't know no username and password! I called my neighbour, he doesn't know it either. Of course not, why would he?

I go back through my setup files and YES! I have the NT password changer ISO. I load that into the CD drive of the XP VM and restart. Menu, tiny tiny writing.. where are my glasses.. Admin account, kill Password, reset.... I'm in!!!

Now I just have to copy it all back and see if it works on their machine. Wish me luck!

A few years ago I was doing tech support in a school. A kid walked up to the helpdesk with his netbook and said "my assignment won't open. Can you help me?" I said sure and took a look at the file. It was a Word document, but wouldn't open. No problem, I'll just open the file in Notepad to see if the file was corrupted or a different format or whatever.

Right there in the header section, I see the letters "PNG". So I rename the document from "Assignment.doc" to "Assignment.png" and a picture shows up. It's the kid's name, drawn in MS Paint, obviously done using the shitty little touchpad on the Dell netbooks the school had purchased for students.

I spin the machine around to face him and said "I've found the problem. It wasn't a Word document, it was a drawing you did in Paint and tried to pass it off as your assignment that's due today". He looked mock confused and said "I didn't do that. Perhaps Word must have done it on its own?"

I said "mate, this is your name, written in your handwriting, using this very touchpad, done in paint. You can fool your teacher, but don't try and fool the tech guy. Here's your netbook, I suggest you go and do the assignment properly. I'll email your teacher to let them know what the outcome was"

I know kids will be kids, but I just had a good chuckle remembering this particular kid who tried to bullshit me and say Microsoft Word corrupted his assignment in a way that A) made it into a PNG instead of a Word document and B) managed to mimic his handwriting perfectly. This was a decade before AI even became a thing!

I run a small all inclusive computer repair business. This includes component level motherboard and appliance repair, all the way to network and security help. Just about everything. I was an electrical engineer apprentice before doing this so I'm able to do repairs many people aren't.

One day a customer walked in with a roughly 5-year-old Lenovo ThinkPad, with a mechanical hard drive and completely torn apart. The bottom cover was loose and even the CPU heat pipe was bent out of place, Wi-Fi cables pulled and ripped from the hinges, etc.

I figure this is really odd but you know, people have kids, and I've seen everything.

Customer: I don't have the password to this laptop but I really want to use it again, can you like factory reset it?

Me: Sure, That's not a big deal, It looks like the drive isn't encrypted so would you like me to just remove the password?

Customer: No, That's okay thank you You can just reset it.

Me: Okay, Is there any data on this that you specifically want to keep?

Customer: No, not really You can just delete everything if it's easier.

Okay, great. So I take this laptop upstairs and I noticed that it is running really slow, so I toss in a cheap SATA SSD that came out of another junked laptop and install a fresh copy of Windows. It grabs all the drivers from Windows update, I don't have to do anything. Perfect. Now I have his drive sitting next to his laptop, and while his laptop is a pile of junk it does boot up and work and the Wi-Fi connects. Which means he can browse the web with it. Great. Just for good measure I plug in his hard drive and browse to his user folder and Drop it onto the desktop of the new installation. So I call him back to let him know it's ready.

"Hey, your laptop's ready, I was able to move all of your files over to the desktop but you'll have to see what you want to keep and get rid of. Just wanted to make sure you still have access to them in case you change your mind about it"

"Oh no it's not mine, I found the laptop I don't need any of the files on it. Actually I don't really need it You can just keep it, I think I'll just buy another one anyway."

"Are you sure? I got it all ready to go for you and it's a pretty nice little machine, given the condition. You can still use it on a desk to browse the web."

"No man really keep it It's not mine I don't need it I found it anyway and I have no idea what's on it"

This is just weird to me. I've never had a customer ask me to fix a computer and then panic while telling me he doesn't want it anymore...

So I dig around in his user folder, and basically among a bunch of school files and word documents is a hidden folder called "adult oriented videos". Okay, now I'm thinking that I might find something very wrong and might have to report him.

Nope. It was internet links to a super common video HUB for enticing online videos, and a couple videos from a well-known actor downloaded through an online video downloader. Nothing to bat an eye at.

The way that he panicked over the phone when I told him I was able to successfully retrieve his data was something I had never seen before.

Edit: Those of you who work in the corporate IT side probably are thinking that these practices sound wrong. If you've only ever worked in corporate IT, then you understand how important it is to follow stringent procedures.

And then there are those of you who work on the customer facing side, dealing with walk-ins... And to all of you you guys get it. Most of the time, and I mean honest to God literally more than a half, customers who say they do not need their data ask if I was able to successfully back up anything for them, even if they said they don't want to pay to get it off, they will still ask if I was able to at least save their bookmarks or photos or whatever. If I don't, I met with a disappointed "oh fuck Well I guess that's fine but it really sucks that I had those family photos on there" etc. For those who work more on the corporate side, let me explain why:

Customers are stupid. It's very often that a customer says they don't need anything and it's okay if it gets wiped, and then they are upset when they're bookmarks are gone or are disappointed I wasn't able to save their data. Usually they just mean they don't want to spend billable hours on it. Also, more than 50% of the time, the customer ends up asking if I was able to retrieve their bookmarks, or at least their photos, or at least their TurboTax data. After the fact. I didn't even keep a copy on my own drive, I simply moved it over onto his own computer again. If he had explicitly asked me to delete everything in factory reset it so it's fresh, then I wouldn't have even bothered to copy the data. But he came to me specifically because he said he forgot the password which implies that he was using it for work and stuff. Also, asking if there's anything you need on it, and answering no, is different than coming in saying hey I would like you to delete the files on this please. He didn't even ask me to delete the files, really until I asked how important the data was to him. Most customers just answer Oh you can delete it regardless of how important it is. If you know you know.

Created from and contributed to by the users of /r/talesfromtechsupport

It's been a while since I have posted my Rules of Tech Support and there have been contributions. I have included links to prior posts to make it easier to get caught up on the history. I haven't settled on a post schedule. There are six sections; however, two are very short. I was thinking of posting one a week but that might be too frequent and I don't want to sour people on my posts. I'm going to post the main Rules tomorrow. They are meant to be part serious, part humor, so there are silly rules.

Users - The main section. Rules that cannot fit elsewhere are put here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/7ddtpq/rules_of_tech_support_with_credits/

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/7efnva/rules_of_tech_support_version_2/

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/7iqhnq/rules_of_tech_support_version_3/

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/81ce8r/rules_of_tech_support_version_4_or_032018/

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/mkud9j/rules_of_tech_support_20210405/

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/uyoqgd/rules_of_tech_support_20220526/

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/v03mse/rules_of_tech_support_20220528_revised_from/

Users Will - Rules that have "users will" in them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/v184sz/rules_of_tech_support_users_will_20220530/

Tech Only - Rules about dealing with other techs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/mnmtet/rules_of_tech_support_techs_20210409/

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/v41vaf/rules_of_tech_support_techs_20220503/

Management - Rules about dealing with manglement.

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/mpic2y/rules_of_tech_support_management/

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/v6ekdj/rules_of_tech_support_management_20220606/

Mantras - A tech version of meditations. Ommm...

Phrases - Questions and statements by and to tech support.

I am revamping the phrases section into two parts so that it now includes phrases that users say.

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/vccbqt/rules_of_tech_support_mantras_and_phrases_2022064/

The complete list, including credits, is at https://github.com/morriscox/Rules-of-Tech-Support

Short answer, it’s me! This happened today, let me tell you a short story…

Our company is currently undergoing migration from Google Workspace to M365, because half of the company either use Google or Microsoft. My boss want to use only 1 system.

I was doing migration of 1 phone because we use Google device policy and apperantly the only way to get rid of it is to reinstall the whole phone.

So I had one empty phone where I would transfer all the data and then factory reset the phone with Device Policy. After this, transfer all the data back to the original Android phone without device policy.

After I’ve wiped the original phone, I’ve also accidentally wiped the second phone where was all the data waiting to be transfered back.

So that means that I’ve lost all the phone data for the user and there was no backup. Photos, documents, contacts, messages, 2FAs, all gone. Whoooopsie! :D

I was asked by my boss if I can help with the migration and I said yes, even when my main role is web dev. I wanted to help the company, now I’m the biggest idiot in the IT department :)

The machine is a Stratus OCT 3000. It has a system unit with a Windows 2K Pro, P4, 512MB RAM and a 4GB DVDRW in the optical drive as added storage. This controls the main imaging apparatus. The issue was that the imaging software wouldn't open the UI because it fails to connect to it's database. First, I'd like to say that I'm a self taught technician, so there is no way I was fit to fix this machine from Carl Zeiss running proprietary software. Anyways, I decided to try a hand at it.

The hospital had called like 7 or so database specialists since Carl Zeiss told them they quit support for the machine in 2008. I arrive and everyone is on their laptops researching and reading the manual. I take the captain's seat and start exploring. I then find myself in control panel and spot Interbase Manager. Opening it shows that there are 0 servers running and 0 databases. Apparently the other guys didn't get to it before because they dropped everything to focus on my explorational progress. We figured out it runs on SQL. I don't know SQL so they immediately start copying the various schemas we found. We all leave that night without any progress but the hospital staff say that I've made the most progress since they started bringing in technicians. I spend days researching and I find out: Carl Zeiss weren't helpful, there were no such issues online so I had to resort to contacting various IT personell from hospitals that had similar equipment. Even companies that sold them but none were familiar with the matter or could help.

I then resort to looking for the company that made Interbase but they had rebranded twice. They happen to support the Interbase version 7.1 that we have but they wouldn't assist us since the machine is outdated. I said to hell with it, I'll try creating a new database because I always wanted to explore the IBConsole program I saw a few weeks back when I was there. I created a new server and database but couldn't populate the domain, tables etc, tabs although IB Manager recognized the database but the imaging software still wouldn't load the database. The hospital later called me saying Carl Zeiss sent someone all the way there to fix it and that I should also go. I then find him scrolling though company troubleshooting manuals for the machine which weren't of any help because they implied we reboot the machine. I proceed to tell him of my progress. Stunned by what I did, he saw the only option now was to reinstall the imaging software which he had a copy of. It still wouldn't load the database until after I created a new server and database from a database file I spotted in a folder named backup in the DVDRW. I'm not sure if reinstalling the imaging software helped but I'm glad we met with the guy because he expressed his respects and took my number and that made me happy.

TLDR: A noob and an obsolete Stratus OCT imaging device that failed to load UI because of an error loading database but I finally fixed it by creating a new SQL database using a tool for an outdated database management program.

Only made 1 post here before, but seeing as I've gathered enough small to perhaps medium stories to tell figured I'd drop this little memorable one.

​

To start, our Helpdesk uses a shared inbox for a TON of things. Network alerts, veeam backup success/failures, ERP system generated emails from customers/vendors etc. (These go to us because the folks on the other end decided to reply to a no-reply address, so it gets routed to us to then route to our BI/BIS team(s) for them to send to the right branch of our company.) Basically the inbox can get pretty messy. Now...we put a bunch of rules in place to route thing into better organized folders so it's way more clean than it's ever been, however, one issue remained. Our ticketing system is linked to a ZYX@DOMAIN.COM address, so it'll create a ticket right away, put into the Q and then sends an email to the support inbox. This address is posted several+ times in training material and on onboarding emails that get sent upon someones hire. We also send a 6 month reminders on best ways to contact the helpdesk. Call or email. both of these are stressed (several+ times again) in said emails. To some degree, it can be boring reading an email that amounts to a few paragraphs of information. Now it's not written like a book obviously, but I digress, not everyone reads these things. We've also set an out of office message as well saying to email ZYX@DOMAIN.COM or to call the $helpdeskPhonenumber/extension. I realize not everyone can read things in a corporate environment, as this whole story would never have happened if they could. This is more evident when the same folks don't pass phishing test's and repeatedly fail back to back to back (so on so forth)...that's a story for another time perhaps.

​

Now, nothing prevents users from emailing the shared inbox directly, we'll call it... ABC@DOMAIN.COM
But it becomes an issue when it gets high volume, not everyones issue gets looked at and more often than not we just ignore it because we've told the entire company multiple times to 2 best ways to contact the HelpDesk. My story begins now...

It wasn't a super busy day, but we were sorting through some Alerts that didn't route properly (New rule wasn't working. I love Outlook.) This was also after we set the out of office message too, again advertising the correct methods of contacting us. A (l)user sends a request directly to the shared inbox with an "urgent issue" with something regarding an issue within our ERP system. I send the typiocal follow-up that I have saved as a template (Due to the amount of times I've had to do this to get ppl trained like good end users and follow the best practices, it made sense to have it 2 clicks away) to email ZYX@DOMAIN.COM for the fastest response and to have a ticket created and placed into the Q. She promptly did, and within 5 minutes I had the information I needed and routed it off to our BI/BIS/Programming Team.

Job done, what's the rest of the story you might ask? No less than 10 minutes later she emails ABC@DOMAIN.COM again with a random issue that's not significant. Did I not just tell you to always email ZYX@DOMAIN.COM no less than 10 minutes ago? Well since the Out of office message states "This inbox is not monitored actively" I complied with that particular logic. I read her email, and I definitely didn't see the email.

​

The next day she called in and inquired about it. I played dumb (I've learned this well from dealing with (l)users long enough now. and most of them who don't know any better won't question me. Those who do however know me quite well...I can't do this with, they know my capabilities as a technician lol) Do you have a ticket number? No? Well who took the request? You're not sure, okay okay. Well, did you email ZYX@DOMAIN.COM? crickets. Yup, can't be ignorant if we caught you. I did end up helping her and really driving home the point of using the right methods in the process. Real quick fix too, actually would have taken less than a minute had she chosen to call the previous day lol.

​

To date, she's one of the best ticket emailers we have now. And provides more than enough info in most cases for us to either solve it in less than 10 minutes or route it to BI/BIS/Programming in less than 5 minutes upon ticket creation.

This is the first time I’ve actually posted something on here, sorry if it’s not quite in keeping with what people post here :)

For context, I go to school in the UK and I’ve helped my teachers with technology many times over the years. This story takes place in a physics lesson:

I’m sitting in class and notice the projector is making a very yellow picture, and I ask the teacher if he has any idea why, and he says that he has already asked IT for a new bulb. Suddenly, I feel a sense of déjà vu, I have “fixed” this before.

When I was much younger and still in Infant school (look it up), a teacher had a projector producing a blue tinted picture, but I had noticed that the menus of the projector looked suspiciously normal, I proceeded to push the VGA connector fully in and Surprise! The projector wasn’t broken!

Back in the present, I push the VGA connector back fully in to the rear of the PC and another projector is fixed.

The moral of this story: Always tighten up your VGA connectors, folks.

TLDR: It was (kind of) DNS

Lets first go back two weeks. We get a email reminder to pay for our main website. Alright cool, we forward it to the finance department so they can pay it.

Now back to the present.

Around 1PM we get an email from a vendor that they lost connection to a server they monitor on our network. Ok, we look into that but cant see much.

30 minutes later someone else cannot send emails to gmail adresses (it returned "This mail has been blocked because the sender is unauthenticated"). Ok weird, we look into it but cant see whats going on. Around this time also people are suddenly unable to connect via VPN.

Then a few phones using an emergency calling app (for elderly citizens, we support healthcare workers) lose connection to the server. We check the phones, and cannot fix it. 30 minutes later EVERY PHONE lost connection to the app. Now it's a pretty big deal, suddenly no emergency calls come in so people might literally die.

We scramble a rag tag team of tech support superstars trying everything. Nothing has been changed. We call our MSP who is also unable to see the culprit. Is the firewall blocking something it shouldnt? Nah. Is it the russian hackers coming for us? Fortunately not.

We check the DNS, and see some error that it cannot connect to the domain or something similar. Oh god.. its always DNS! But how do we fix the DNS?

We then find out our domain has been disabled..

I then remember this email from two weeks back and think "Fuck, did they forget to pay the bill?" We manage to pay the bill (which was like $10...) and within 10 minutes its all back up.

Cut to the next day: It was not the finance department who did not pay the bill, but the hosting site apparently has no record that we paid it..

Moral of the story: Always check DNS first.. I think we all learned a lot about crisis situations..

To make sense of this story, I have to give an unfortunately long amount of backstory.

A few months ago we replaced one of our FedEx label printers because it was printing faded labels constantly over multiple boxes of labels. Everything was too light, it was basically unreadable. These are Zebra ZM400s, which are solid printers but they're old as hell (the ones we're using have been in use since at least 2010). On my recommendation, we bought two updated versions of the same printer (we have two print stations so I figured it'd be smarter to just go ahead and replace both), and I installed one of them at the station where the failing printer was. There were some minor issues, but everything got sorted out and was working fine.

A couple weeks ago the new printer started doing the same thing the old one was doing. The woman who is technically my boss has been on my ass to fix it, so today I finally gave in and followed her solution which was to replace the printer because "obviously the new one you made us buy is broken so we should just send it back."

It should be noted that my boss is the company's accountant. Just an FYI.

It should also be noted that while the warehouse guys were cleaning out some old equipment in the warehouse, they found an old label printer like the one we had before that was still new in the box.

My boss has been trying to get me to use it ever since.

So this morning I configured the replacement printer to get it ready to swap in. Everything worked fine, labels were dark and crisp and easily readable. I was testing it at a different station, so after I tested it I moved it over to the station where it needed to be.

Did a test print and the labels looked exactly the same as they did on the "broken" printer, faded and unreadable.

Swapped out the labels. Everything looked great again. Turns out the box of labels was bad. (Important note: these are direct thermal printers, so really the only part of the equation that should be a failure point is the labels. I already knew that, but nobody would listen to me until I proved it. It's almost like they think I don't know how what I'm talking about...)

Anyway, so I email my boss and let her know. This is word for word what I sent her:

The printer wasn't the problem. It was the box of labels. Switched out the printer and had the exact same issue. Switched out the labels and everything was fine. It's not a problem with the printer, so I would keep the new one we've already unboxed since it's working fine and send the one we haven't opened yet back.

This is the exact response I get back:

Good to know. Curious, did this help to make the order numbers more legible?

No... No, it didn't. I'm just telling you the problem is fixed for the fucking hell of it.

I am a manager of a support center. Today I got a complaint from a client. In a very curt email, the owner of two stores tells me that my staff is intentionally confusing his staff, and intentionally making our product difficult to use, so they get annoyed, stop calling, and "Give you all free money."

In our system, we can identify callers by four things. The name of the business, the City the business is in, the clients store number (if applicable), and then our own internal number, (which our best clients thankfully write down somewhere. If this fails, we can fall back on their address or other info to track them down. And herein lies the problem.

In this case, the client owns two storefronts in the same city.

They each have a unique store number chosen by the client, in this case, 1246, and 1249. So, in our system, the locations are listed as:

BusinessName - Springfield - 1246 - ID123456
and
BusinessName - Springfield - 1249 - ID123457

Since both locations were boarded at the same time, their internal numbers are consecutive.

When we did the initial product installation, The owner gave us remote access to both locations and insisted on doing them simultaneously, both the staff of both locations could be present for training, before they opened for business that day. He insisted that we have two teams do the installation at the same time, and one trainer do the training for everyone on one big call together.

This led to our initial problem. The owner gave us the wrong information on each store. It turns out that the numbers are reversed. We thought we were in location 1246, but it was 1249, and likewise the tech installing 1249, was really in 1246.

The employees move freely between locations as they are needed, with only management being truly fixed in place. So this was not caught for a day or so after training.

The codes were quickly reversed and all was well.

However, We run into the same issue every time they call.

"Tech Support this is OP Speaking. Can I have your store name and number?"
"Yes, this is Manager with BusinessName!"
"Great, and is this location 1246, or 1249?"
"We are the one in Springfield!"
"Yes, There are two locations in Springfield. Could I get your address?"
"Oh yeah! There is two. Its the downtown one." (Note: Both of them are the downtown one.)
"Ok, could you tell me the street number of your address?"
"I'm not sure, but we are suite 100." (Again, both are Suite 100 in their respective buildings.)

This game continues on every time, as we try everything from device serial numbers to who the manager is on site, to all sorts of things. Inevitably the caller gets frustrated and just keeps saying the words BusinessName and Springfield over and over as if it will somehow help tell them apart.

We have even had times where we have trained a manager to know the location's unique internal ID number, only for them to then use it at the other store on a day they are working over there.

Its not every time. Sometimes you get someone who remembers. Or is at least patient enough to give us info to tell them apart.

If we are lucky and they are calling from the business' land line, we can use that, but most folks use their personal phones.

However, the owner continues to insist that this is our fault somehow, and that he will not train the staff to say anything different than BusinessName and Springfield.

I'm not IT, one of the hats I wear is just cursing at computers until they do what I want.

Anyway, many moons ago, I was working at a veterinary practice. They newly integrated xray software integrated with our practice management software (pms) per the vender; integration being the xray software saved the images as 4-5 mb bitmaps, and from our pms we'd import the images to the patient record. Oh these vendors and their "integration". My toaster integrated with me refrigerator as well.

The pms had an upgrade. Many parts rewritten (badly) in Java, one of those being the imaging module. Old images in the system worked fine, but new images would be converted into jpg2000 and copied to sub directory, information and link added in the database. Or more often, the program would crash, unable to load large images.

Well, hobby wise I futz with programming. Had an old copy of Borland c++ builder. Had years back hacked that database (easy enough, the reception manual had info on how to start isqlc, passwords, an sql command to clear a table for when things failed - great stuff for hacking databases that no one read). So I tossed together a simple program that would import these images, and unlike what the actual professionals wrote, worked without crashing.

Works well for me. Works well for Tina. Works well for Scotty. Doesn't work for Candy. Keeps failing to import for Candy. So she asks for help - which is to say, she told me the program was broken.

​

I walk her through: start the program, open the desired images, select the proper patient, click the import button, works fine.

​

Well, she disagrees with me about the workflow. She says, it opened the images so they were imported.

​

Sorry. Gotta hit the import button after opening everything, so you can make sure everything is correct. Won't import until you hit that last button.

Nope. She insists the program isn't working properly, it's bugged, and is supposed to work how she says, it shows the images so they must be imported already

​

I tell her, Hey, I wrote this program, I think I know how it should work!

​

Nope, she insists it's bugged.

Eventually I tell her, It doesn't work when you do it your way, it works fine when I do it my way, so I don't know what else to tell you, and walked away.

​

First tech job, first post here.

Recently, our agency decided that we didn't like the personal Network Drives people use on their computers (Referred to more commonly as just "H" Drives for us) and decided we should have them move it all to One Drive, since we already use Teams and Outlook after all.

So, slowly over the course of a month this great Onedrive Migration (moving folders from H drive to OneDrive, that's it) has taken place, with no shortage of confusion due to the verbiage of each agency we support usually making it sound more complex then it is, with 4 different PDFS describing the process being used in a 2 day, 4 step process. It's not uncommon to remote in, do it for a user, and hear a "Wait, that's it?"

So, we have a user today call in wanting to get clarification. That's good, he isn't just asking me to do it, he wants to understand the process. Sure, I remote in and start waxing poetically about IT work and stop dead in my tracks when moving some files since I realize a horrifying truth.

This man's H drive, a network drive with a max allotment of 800 GBs, is listed as being 9 TBs of data. The max amount of space the Onedrive has allotted is 1 TB. Hell, it shouldn't be possibly to divvy up 9TBs across this entire computer without hitting max in all of them.

Ignoring the fact that it's past the limit for that drive and computer entirely, I'm wracking my brain trying to think of how someone comes up with 9TB of anything for a job without being in a data management role. The user is a instructor for security personnel, even if he had saved every PowerPoint, every video, every pdf for his work it shouldn't total to that.

It's assigned to T2 now, with me keeping the ticket number on hand so I can check it later. My current working theory is that during the OneDrive migration which includes granting permission to accounts and the system taking desktop and documents folder content into the OneDrive that something went wrong with those folders placed in the H Drive that caused them to either be inflated to a insane file size for each item, as I recall individual word documents being listed in the GBs when browsing.

At the very least, the user seemed as mystified and curious as I was.

Edit: T2 Resolution notes: "Customer was assisted with their general inquiries." Very helpful.

Asking the text directly, they believe that it was a windows space error and that it was incorrectly displaying the files sizes as larger then they were.

I was a hot-headed young IT tech in my early 20's, working for a high tech defense electronics contractor.

Brilliant engineers and PHD's all around us!

But we had some doozies too.

Help ticket: "Keyboard is not working."
So I go and visit Abe to check out his keyboard.

The first thing I noticed is that he obviously eats a sesame bagel over his keyboard, every day. It's nearly filled to the top of the chassis with seeds.
(And there's a half eaten sesame seed bagel sitting on his desk. My powers of deduction were staggering back then! )

The next thing I notice is that the beige keycaps on the keyboard are all dark, very dark gray.

I reluctantly sit down to test the keyboard and my fingers make that cccsshht sound as I lift them off the sticky keys.
I stand up and tell Abe, "I'm not working on this any further until you clean your keyboard." and walk away.

A short while later, I get back to my office. My boss' phone rings.
"Oh, Hi Abe. New keyboard? Sure I'll have one sent right ov...."
I interrupt my boss, "No! Abe just needs to dump out the sesame seeds and clean the thing!"
My boss looks at my like I'm nuts, and gets off the phone with Abe.
I explain the situation and my typically idiot boss actually agreed with me.

And now I'm in my mid-50's and I'm still a hot headed IT kid.

Don't lie to IT. We'll know. Every, freaking, time.

Note: Edited one time in total to correct for a few minor spelling/grammar errors

Yet another story from my volunteer job… This is the story of the time when one person’s over-the-top sense of what is acceptable in the workplace and what isn’t caused a company-wide shift in Information Technology policy.

The background: I have been doing customer service/tech support work on a volunteer basis for 10 plus years and on occasion before the pandemic hit, we’d give tours of our call center to schools and other interested parties.  This story surrounds one such tour group.  Before we get into the meat of it, you the reader would probably benefit from a little knowledge of our policy surrounding employee desktop wallpapers as it becomes important later.  Prior to this incident, the policy was really simple: So long as the image is not to a reasonable person generally considered offensive, employees were free to express themselves with whatever background image they like.  The more detailed version of what this policy said is: Employees are free to express themselves via their desktop background so long as the image would not according to a reasonable person be considered offensive, shocking, or distasteful (examples of acceptable types of images include but are not limited to: cars, beach or other scenery, family, pets, school logos, etc.). Strictly prohibited images include but are in no way limited to political or religious messages, photos where the subject(s) are not fully clothed (no underwear, swimsuit, topless, or bikini shots (applies equally to all genders and identities)), images depicting acts of violence, etc. Images which should be used with caution are pictures of persons other than self, pictures of minor children other than one’s own or those one is responsible for the care of, or pictures of houses (either one’s own or that of another).”  As you can see; pretty standard stuff for a casual office setting but apparently not “squeaky clean” like one person seems to think it needs to be.

The Incident:

We had a high school tour group coming in one day and that was all fine and good, and it went well.  Shortly before the end of the tour, one of the chaperones accompanying the group happens to notice my colleague’s desktop with a picture of him fully clothed (white T-shirt, jeans, and shoes) working on his car which was up on blocks.  Apparently according to this woman, a person working on his car is to be considered so offensive that it warranted a complaint to the CEO (we’ll just call her “K” for this story) several hours after she and her group left.  She calls K. up in a rage ranting and raving that “You shouldn’t allow your employees to have that kind of filth up on their screens where anyone can just walk by and see it” and similar.  After a lot of clarifying questions as the woman wasn’t being very clear as to what kind of “filth” she was referring to or who’s screen the supposed filth was on, where in the building, etc., K did track down the colleague in question and ask him to show her the background he had at the time.  Upon looking at it, K writes this individual back and says in no uncertain terms “after reviewing the image in question, it does meat company guidelines for acceptable background images.”  This person still wasn’t having it so after meeting with all the department heads, employees from all departments, several IT folks, etc. and the whole group not finding anything offensive in the slightest about the wallpaper in question; K sent down an order that “the Information Technology department develop a standard background that everyone internally can agree on along with appropriate procedures and forms to allow for medical exemptions to the rule.  Once the image, forms, and procedures are developed; the standard wallpaper should be deployed to all employee workstations joined to the domain via Microsoft Group Policy and such Group Policy should not allow the end-user to change the wallpaper in any way.  The resultant Group Policy should “follow” the employee no matter where he/she/they log on.  Further, any employee with a signed doctor’s note stating they need to have an exception to the wallpaper should be placed in a separate Organizational Unit which is exempt from the desktop wallpaper policy.  Such a doctor’s note only needs to state “I (Doctor’s name) am treating (Employee) and am familiar with their current medical status and they need to be allowed to change their desktop wallpaper”; such doctor’s note does not need to specify the exact medical condition(s) which need the wallpaper change request.  Finally, employee-owned devices should be joined to the domain and employees shall be mandated to use their corporate login on employee-owned devices while on site.”

Of all the choices, the logo to a company-wide favorite show (the Italian-animated show “Winx Club”) was chosen.  Initially it was mandated that it be the 1024x768 Winx Club logo with a transparent background that the employee could put any color of their choice behind it but that didn’t go over well as some people really have no sense of what colors clash.  So I was asked by the IT department head to create a PhotoShop file with the logo on a solid white background and the words “Winx Corporate Desktop 2.3” in black text in the upper-left and the lower-right of the image.  I did this and it got rolled out.  Way too many employees complained that the solid white was too hard on their eyes and thus I was asked yet again to modify it to solid black background and white text and update the text to “Winx Corporate Desktop 2.3.x” and thus the mandatory corporate desktop wallpaper was born.  No one since then (internally or externally) has ever complained about it.

This isn’t mine or any colleague’s first experience with a mandatory “corporate desktop” wallpaper as most of us went to schools where to prevent students from putting up inappropriate pictures on their desktop, all the student workstations were set to some variation of either the school colors or the school logo.  Most if not all of the mandatory school wallpapers or company wallpapers (such as AT&T) I personally loved and wish I could get for rotation on my laptop or cell phone (I’ve had a few of the school ones but those are since lost to time several HDD/Flashdrives ago sadly)

One might be asking “If the image wasn’t offensive and was within the guidelines, why didn’t K just tell the upset person to just go pound sand and buzz off?”; well the answer to that is simple, K didn’t want to have to spend hours by phone or email defending each employee’s choices in desktop wallpaper (even if it did clearly fall within the guidelines) so rather than defend a moving target, she thought it would be easier for all of us if we just create something standard that way if anyone complains it’s really easy to explain away as “that’s just the logo of a software tool we use” (which is a half-truth because our intranet portal is called “WinxPortal Social Intranet Platform” which is just a rebadged vBulletin with a Winx Club logo in the upper-right.

Both myself and K are well aware that someone might take issue with Winx Club the show for any number of reasons… but since the show was targeted at children to pre-teens (U.S. TV rating TV-Y7 at the most) its content wouldn’t generally be considered offensive and anyone who has issue with the concepts of teamwork, friendship, acceptance, and finding oneself we really don’t know how to respond.

The Aftermath:

Since the corporate desktop has been deployed, no complaints have been filed, and several people have asked me for a copy of the background for their personal computers at home and so K along with IT have given me permission to release the final PNGs and the PSDs as 1) The Winx Club logo is available online since it’s a cartoon that aired on TV in the early 2000s for anyone to re-create the corporate desktop look, 2) the only modifications we’ve done to it are so simple that anyone with even basic photoshop skills can make it at home and get the exact same result, and 3) We’re proud of our company-wide fandom of this show.  So if you really go looking for it you can find the original file or the PSDs to make it your own.  If possible I’ll link it below for you to download.

Here’s a link to the final image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RcL0ZCK3yQcfRkgRIDti5mzjFLZ0iynj/view?usp=sharing

Here’s a link to the folder with everything one would need to make their own version (not including PhotoShop obviously) and there are a few bonuses in the folder including an alternate version featuring a “gold” Winx Club logo and two different versions featuring an American Flag for our celebration of Independence Day since we’re U.S. Based: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19gVkqRW-cAWX025tqwOAisQqH2WiUGG3?usp=sharing

Regarding the medical exception rule, I’ve asked IT before writing this story if anyone has even taken advantage of the medical exception and at least according to the department head, no one has taken advantage of it since she’s been there and some of the older people in that department say they’ve only seen it once and the person who needed it never abused it considering it’s a loophole so huge you could drive a tank through it.

Hope someone got a smile from this story of one person being over the top and our company’s response using Group Policy.

This'll be short medium, apparently, as there's not really that much to it.

I worked with a guy. Let's call him Steve. One day Steve asked me if I'd be interested in doing out of hours paid tech support for his dad. I said sure, as I've done it before and it was good beer money at my rate of $50 AUD an hour. One night I meet Steve at his parents' place and he introduces me to his dad, Bob. Bob is a really nice guy but doesn't know much about computers.

Bob is a big history buff and loves to research World War 1 & 2 soldiers and also his own family tree. He'd been hitting up those "find a grave" sites and had downloaded files scattered everywhere. He wanted those cleaned up and some hard-drive space reclaimed because it was running out.

So I do those things, and before I leave he asks if I can quickly log in to a site he's been to before and find a grave of a soldier he was related to. No problems, so I ask which site, and he instructs me to open The Word Document he's got sitting on his desktop, so I do.

This is the Word document from hell. It's literally several hundred pages long and contains EVERYTHING. Usernames and passwords for various sites, email addresses and contact details for friends, family, businesses, acquaintances and so on, receipts from war records he's purchased online, emails he's sent and received to various people, instructions on how to use <software>, instructions on how to change the channel on his TV. EVERYTHING.

I stared at this document, the scrollbar getting smaller and smaller as Word opened the document. Bob then says to me "the link is about a third of the way down. Keep scrolling..", so I start scrolling. Eventually he says "stop, go back a bit" and I go back about a dozen pages. We find the website and I click on the link. We then go back into the document and he says "alright, now scroll up", so I do. About half way back up to the top he says "stop!" and we scroll around until we find the username and password. We're navigating this document the way a country boy gives driving directions ("now keep going until you see a red barn with 3 cows in the field. Turn left there, then keep going. You'll get to a place that sells chicken feed, so go past there. After that is an old run down place with a white fence. Turn right there, and you'll see it after you pass five silos")

We log in, he buys the record he wants, then asks me to copy & paste the confirmation page into the document. We scroll down further into The Word Document until we find a chunk of document dedicated to receipts. We paste the confirmation somewhere in the middle, and then I download the record as a PDF and put it into a folder (which was properly named and organized, which was surprising)

I did about 2-3 more tech support sessions with him, and each time we delved into The Word Document and I scrolled through what felt like a hundred years of this guy's computer interactions.

After that, I tricked a coworker into taking on the job. "Hey Juan, you want to make some money doing tech support for Steve's dad?" "Yeah sure!"

Juan came to me a few weeks later and just said "what the FUCK is up with that Word document? I just laughed.

This happened yesterday to me.

On Monday, my wife took our baby to the doctor's to get her round of vaccines which, understandably, made our baby very grumpy. I think I got 30mins at a time of sleep Monday night.

Tuesday morning I was scheduled to meet my boss at a client's office for several tasks: installing more RAM to the front counter PC, upgrading a 128GB drive to 500GB, and migrating their QuickBooks from the desktop to online so the owner can work from home.

Me, being sleep deprived, was only thinking about the QuickBooks migration because it never goes smoothly and I did not know all the ins and outs of how they were setup already on the desktop version. I get about 10 minutes from home and realize I need to turn around for my wallet. Get home, pick that up and text my boss I'll be running late.

I get to the office and my boss had already gotten to the front desk computer. I walk in and realize I left the RAM on my desk, right next to where I just picked up my wallet. I was annoyed with myself but since I have all the other tasks, my boss said I can just pick it up when I head back home for lunch.

Instead of working on that computer, I go to the one for the hard drive replacement. I look in my bag and my USB-SATA cable isn't there. I go to my car and can't find it either. I also left it on my desk at home from a clone job I did on Saturday...

My boss just starts laughing and I am already wanting to take lunch and have a beer. Thankfully, my boss understands I'm not getting a ton of sleep and isn't too mad.

Luckily, the installed drive is an NVMe so the internal drive bay is open for the SSD we are installing so I was still able to clone the drive without the cable. I also was able to go get the RAM from home during a break and get it installed without a hitch.

Rest of the day was pretty much uneventful as the QuickBooks migration went, mostly, smoothly. (Except trying to get the owner to send me the text codes from Intuit but that's a whole nother problem).

TL;DR: No sleep = no working brain.

This happened many years ago and over a period of two months. A new guy started in the accounting department. I shall call him Kevin.

Kevin kept his browser bookmarks in a Word document and would copy and paste links to and from this document. I showed him how to make bookmarks in Edge, but he would forget how, the moment he closed the browser. The Word doc method worked well enough, so I just left him alone.

Our staff intranet is set as the default startpage in Edge, so it opens when you open the browser. But, when Kevin wanted to access the intranet, he would open Edge, completely ignore the page that just opened and then copy and paste the intranet link from his Word doc into a new tab. He would often have two intranet tabs open, whenever he called me over. By some miracle, he never typed Google into the Google search field.

All desks have a universal docking station where monitors and other accessories are plugged in, so you only need to plug a single cable into your computer. For some reason, Kevin would unplug the mouse and keyboard receivers from the dock, before he went home. Then he would call me the next day, because his mouse and keyboard weren't working. I explained multiple times that he didn't need to unplug them, but he kept doing it. I got tired of this, so I waited for him to leave his desk and plugged the receivers into the back of one of his monitors, where he couldn't see them. I have no idea why he kept unplugging them, but he stopped when he could no longer see them.

Kevin needed some accounting software to do his job but would always forget how to open it. I tried pinning the icon to the taskbar and showing him how to click on it, but he would call me the next day, because he couldn't find the icon. So, I came up with a cunning plan. He had no problem opening his Word doc on the desktop, so I took a screenshot of the taskbar, added a red arrow that pointed to the icon and inserted the screenshot at the top of his Word doc. That solved the problem. Until a few days later. He had somehow managed to pin another icon to the taskbar. He had pinned it to the far right of all the other icons, so they were all still in the same spot in the screenshot and the red arrow was still pointing to the same place. But, you see, now the taskbar had one extra icon on it and therefore it didn't look like the one in the screenshot, so now he was afraid to click anything. I just updated the screenshot.

He tried working from home but could not figure out how to connect to his wifi. He brought a note to work with the wifi name and password, and I manually added it to his computer, so that it would connect automatically when he got home. But of course, he also had to connect to the company VPN. We gave him a very detailed guide with pictures and stayed on the phone with him the whole time, but it was hopeless. He just gave up on working from home.

These were the things that stood out, but Kevin called almost every day about other, minor things. He was actually a really nice guy. He was always friendly, and he really did try hard to learn. He wasn't challenged in any way and seemed very intelligent, when you spoke to him. He was just completely useless, when it came to computers.

After two months of this, Kevin came to the IT office to deliver his computer. He thanked me for all the help and said that he was going to pursue different opportunities elsewhere. I have no idea if he quit or was fired, but I do hope things went well for him.

I worked as an IT assistant intern for a boss in a small tech company in London. I mostly did small maintenance tasks, moved stuff around and helped around the office (the basic intern stuff).

The adventure begins when my boss, who is ironically helpless with computers, claims his mouse right click has stopped working. I go to his office and troubleshoot that he has somehow managed to disable it. Okay, no problem, happens to the best of us.

Next day he tells me that his email has stopped working on his phone and has to be fixed asap before a business trip. He refuses to give me the phone as it is "sensitive information", and just tell him what to do. Its worth mentioning I have no clue what the phone is, what email he uses or anything. After gruesome troubleshooting (is internet working, are you logged in, blabla) that leads nowhere, he gets tired and orders me to call his phone operator and fix it.

I explain politely, that his phone operator has absolutely nothing to do with his email (at least in 99% of cases) and that wont be any help.

Now boss starts yelling, orders me to take a phone and call the support line. He even watches me to get started, so fine. Lets do this theater. I ring up his service provider and after a 30min queue start explaining the issue. There is a long pause, they ask me to put boss on phone to explain.

I realize they are probably laughing back there. I bring the phone to the boss, who refuses to take it and wants me to handle the issue. I try again, telling my bosses name etc and what contract he has, making sure in case there is some strange business deal of an email service from the phone service.

They respond that Im not allowed to know, because I am not my boss and it must be him personally. I hang up, and as my workday is over, leave a note for the boss to call them and do his thing. I am still 100 % certain that the problem is something of a "restart phone" nature, but whatever.

Tomorrow comes, boss is asking if email is fixed. I explain I left a note, which he saw but ignored. I tell him there is nothing I can do, if I cannot see his phone and find out what the issue is. He still refuses, and eventually leaves on his business trip.

A week later, his email still not working, he comes with a face of defeat and gives me the phone. He had no email the whole trip, which caused a lot of problems and he is now hopeless.

I take the phone, see that he has an absolute ancient version of the OS, which stopped supporting the gmail app as he refused to update anything. Takes me 5 minutes to update, everything works.

And a other day boss comes to me, furious, saying that an important project is missing some marketing files (video footage), and I absolutely need to find them for him, because he cant handle computers.

No problem, I start digging around in a mountain of dated hard drives and find that said files do not exist anywhere. I say that I have no clue about those, as it is dated before I even worked there. I contact the marketing team, who actually have the files inside video editing peojects.

Now here it is important to know, that when you have complex video multicam footage with a lot of audio, meant for an ad, one does not simply "give them" to the bossman. They are synced and organized inside the editing software over weeks, and the raw material itself is an insane task to go through (thats why films have editors btw) and not possible to watch with synced audio. I explain to the boss that you cant have the files, because quite frankly, you probably cant use an editing software to look at them, and the marketing team knows what they are doing.

No. Boss needs these videos immediately. He needs to see the footage and pick best parts.

I go back and forth with the marketing team, they send me the footage, which I can open on a computer and organize (sync audio etc.) in an editing software for boss to see. They could not send the actual editing projects because of some bureucracy and technical reasons I dont remember anymore.

But of course boss doesnt know how to use said editing software. So I end up spending a day gathering the footage and organizing it in a simple way to watch inside the software project timeline. This timeline was specifically made for him, only containing footage after another, like a complex playlist.

The boss wants privacy in watching, and somehow manages to play stuff on his own. He writes down times (showing on the video player) and makes notes like this is good, this is best etc.

And then I get yelled at, because apparently his notes and timecodes make absolutely no sense to the marketing team.

Background: I’m “support” at a real estate developer where I was hired to be the Database Admin/Business Intelligence Analyst but I’m the only one in the department during business hours and I’m the only one keeping the department afloat. You know, typical IT position lol. This story is about a corporate employee for one of our residential properties.

Anyways, last week I had this call:

User(site property manger): the gate at property A is stuck open

Me: let me confirm that it’s not the access control system and then I will need you to call the fence/gate company

User: why would I spend money on something that is clearly an IT issue?

I physically drive to the site and ensure the functionality of the access control system

Me: I can tell you with 100% confidence that is not the access control system and is mechanically gate related, making it not an IT issue. This out of the scope of IT, please contact the gate company.

User: they’ll just tell me the same thing they did last time.

Me: well, I’m not sure what to tell you. I went to the site personally and ensured the functionality of the access control system. Did you have anyone physically on site to check the gate control board? It typically has diagnostic codes that can be resolved with a simple google search.

User: No. Why would I do that? IT needs to fix this issue.

Me: While I was on property, I checked the board. It has a mechanical diagnostic code that needs to be addressed by the gate company, not IT. A simple google search told me what the issue was and that it was NOT an IT issue. This is out of scope for IT and moving forward, IT will not be responding to these requests until the diagnostic code has been confirmed and addressed.

User: IT NEEDS TO FIX THIS. NOW. I WILL BE CONTACTING MY VP AND YOUR MANAGER!!!

Me: Okay, my manager will tell you the exact same thing I just did, when he arrives at the office for the day. You are welcome to speak to him then.

User calls back 45 minutes later: the fence company determined that it was the issue related to the diagnostic code listed on the board.

Me: Like I said, this is not an IT issue and IT will no longer be responding to these requests until after a technician from property management determined the diagnostic code. Please remember, just because it has an electronic board does not make it IT. We are not maintenance technicians or gate repair technicians.

Wow it’s almost like I said it at the beginning. Just for a bit more context with this user: they once asked me if a battery back up would affect the way a sliding door rolls on the tracks, called me because a conference phone wasn’t working because it was plugged into a different computer, and told me that they couldn’t connect to the wireless display adapter when the TV was on the wrong input. I can understand when people are just computer illiterate, it happens, but the lack of common sense from a 32 year old who has worked with computers their whole career is just astounding.

I'm family tech support, in that I've always been tech-inclined and am the only one who knows how to Google, so that makes me it. I swear, this sounds like Abbott and Costello, but it actually happened.

Quite a few years ago, once the family started growing and expanding and moving to different countries, my grandmother decided she needed a decent computer to stay in touch with everyone. I travelled a few hours to see her, and together we want and bought a PC that did all she wanted and could be upgraded in the future.

About a year or so later she was complaining that her computer was slow, so I tried troubleshooting over the phone before I had to drive over to fix what needed fixing. I wanted to check how much hard drive space she had, if that was why she was running slow. The conversation went like this:

"I need you to click on 'My Computer'"

"How can I click on your computer if you're all the way over there?"

"No, grandma, not my computer, your computer. On your computer I need you to click on 'My Computer'"

"But my computer is slow, can I use my computer to click on your computer?"

After about 2-3 more rounds of this I realized that I was gonna have to take the trip over to her and planned it for that weekend. The problem was a million browser extensions and toolbars that were sucking all her computer power. I uninstalled all of them, and this became an almost annual ritual. Now my grandmother, mother and father all have TeamViewer, and I still get asked to fix things on the computer/phone/television whenever I come visit.

Howdy all,

I'm in the middle of transferring jobs at my company from operations to IT support, the down side of this is that EVERYONE I work with has my personal number.

Today I got a phone call from a member of the sales team, he is an older gentleman and I think you would get a chuckle out of this SM= salesman

Me: hello!

SM: I heard you're on the it support team now!

Me: Not quite yet but in a couple of weeks i...

SM: cutting me off "good cuz i cant log on"

Me: okay what are you trying to log on to

SM: angerly says "the point of sales system, what else would I log on to"

Me: "okay what happens when you try to log on"

SM still angry: "a box pops up"

Me: what does this box say?

SM more angry: It doesn't matter just fix it!

Me: i gotta know what the box says to help you, you know how computers are.

SM said and i quote: "some thing something error try again."

Me: okay is there a blue bar at the top of your screen that says..

SM cutting me off again: I don't know i'm not a tech support guy just fix it!.

Me: okay i'm gonna have to pass you off to one of my coworkers as I dont have the tools to help you can you submit an ticket with IT?

SM: wow there goes the rest of my day! Im telling IT Manager you cant do your job! Click

Side note the IT manager has been assigning me tickets to asses my ability so he can advocate for pay increases and assign a work flow pattern I can do and figuring out who in the team can help train me best.

SM then submitted a ticket that just said "can't log on" IT manager assigns the ticket to me.

Me texting IT manager: "SM already called me about this, he cant log on to the POS system and is incredibly resistant to reading or describing the screen, we are going to need someone to remote in to fix it and i don't have that permission set yet"

My boss: Ah! That explains the random angry email I got that just said my team sucks and is inept. Please pass him off to x employee, ill work on getting you that permission set!

X employee then took care of him in 30 seconds. The error box said something along the lines of "connection dropped please log on again" All he had to do was press the x on the blue bar and log on again.

​

Edited to fix formatting errors