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KillHour
Oct 28, 2007


EvilMuppet posted:

Been at my new job for a week. Why would a company lie about what sort of duties a job will entail? I applies for a level 1 and 2 role not a level 0 callcenter tardbargelar job, gently caress you.

Back to the recruiters I guess.

Did they offer you a call center salary? If so, then why did you take the job?

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CommanderApaul
Aug 30, 2003

It's amazing their hands can support such awesome.
I'm the only person on my helpdesk who has any Mac experience (we're a 100% PC organization), and it seems like our phone queue system knows this.

Got a call from one of the charge RNs at the central hospital yesterday, who immediately handed me off to a patient visitor. First bad sign, there's is absolutely nothing that a visitor could have that we support.

Family is in from LA to visit dad in the hospital, they bought an iPad2 at the Apple Store and had it setup in the store, and they're trying to get Gmail setup in Mail on the iPad so they can keep in touch with dad.

I have an iPhone, and I immediately know what their problem is. The Mail app can't poll Gmail for messages on our public wireless network. I brought it up in a side conversation with one of our Network Services guys one day and I can't remember what the reason was, but when you try to get Gmail through Mail, it throws a connection error of some sort. I think it has something to do with SSL, but I dunno.

Since we're not busy and I'm just running my evening batch files, I explained this to the lady and told her that the only way to access Gmail on the public wifi is to access gmail.com through Safari. She *really* doesn't like that idea, says her father won't understand how to do that, and proceeds to demand (not ask) that I give her the password to one of the secured wireless networks or get her setup with another email service that does work.

So I politely tell her that we don't provide any support for user hardware on the public wifi, it's up to the users to know how to use their device, and that the best advice I can give her is to set gmail.com as a bookmark and set it to remember the username and password on login, and I got hung up on.

I won for lovely phonecall of the day, and I logged the ticket under the RN who called me and handed off the phone and forwarded it to our manager. She apparently got an earful, I got an attaboy from the boss for being polite and trying to help even though I didn't have to.

Later that night I got the head MD from one of the physician office satellites that just bought an iPhone and MBP and needed help configuring both of them for our email (forwarded standard configuration email to user). He was the first call I had in over an hour and I was the backup helpdesk person (and we don't keep metrics on 2nd/3rd shift), so I hung on the phone and walked him through disabling the autocorrect on his phone and where to find Boot Camp Assistant to get Windows installed so he can use our EMR/IDX system until we go to EPIC next year. This was my lesson in why you don't provide for support for things you don't have to, because he called back into the phone queue two more times that night and asked for me specifically to help him with other stuff. :suicide:

EvilMuppet
Jul 29, 2006


Good night catte thread, give them all many patts. I'm sorry,

KillHour posted:

Did they offer you a call center salary? If so, then why did you take the job?

No, that makes it even weirder. The pay is appropriate for lvl 1/2 helpdesk not lvl 0/.5.

rolleyes
Nov 16, 2006

Sometimes you have to roll the hard... two?

coyo7e posted:

Also, mead is pretty awful.

This will not stand. Mead is awesome.

Lum
Aug 13, 2003

So we now have an admin person to take customer calls, and log tickets, yay!

Just got one.

User got an email error notification. The error message is: "The following problems have been detected with the ShittyApp server:"

Which was then assigned to someone who doesn't deal with ShittyApp and wasn't in the office yesterday.

So in the end I had to call back the end user and get the rest of the error message and was a day behind in doing so.

Yay! things are much better now we have this admin person.


Edit: Also the ticket priority was set to "System is inoperable", when in fact it was working fine and the error was just the monitoring process complaining about a leftover file from a previous bit of work.

evobatman
Jul 30, 2006

it means nothing, but says everything!
Pillbug
Today a user handed in a defective laptop battery.

I gave her a new one without troubleshooting and told her in a nice way to GTFO. I put the battery in a laptop, noticed the 0% charge, let it charge, and ran some HD video to test it.

I expect to see her back in a couple of hours when the one I gave her becomes defective too.

GnarlyCharlie4u
Sep 23, 2007

I have an unhealthy obsession with motorcycles.

Proof
Hooray windows updates!

A user is having a panic attack because his "laptop just won't turn on."
I go check it out and as I walk up he hard restarts.
"ok..." I think, "maybe it's just been stuck in the boot cycle forever"

About 30 seconds into the next boot cycle he hard restarts again and says, "Man see that it's just takin' flippin' FOREVER! It won't do anything! This is the 4th time I've done this and it just isn't working. You can't even get into it to see what's wrong."
:ohdear: "Well... why don't you get a cup of coffee or something while I figure this out?"

Turn it on, let it boot, takes about a minute and then the win7 SP1 starts (or finishes) installing.

Sigh...

*Edit*

SWEET BABY JESUS IT'S SPREADING!
Another user yells at me from across the office, "can youuuuuuuuuuu come look at this?!?!"

Apparently it also was updating and the previously mentioned user told her to hard restart.

Now she's complaining about having to wait for the chkdsk ("chick desk" in her words) to do it's thing.

brc64
Mar 21, 2008

I wear my sunglasses at night.

GnarlyCharlie4u posted:

chkdsk ("chick desk" in her words)

This is great.

"A ticket came in... to the chick desk :quagmire:"

Salt Fish
Sep 11, 2003

Cybernetic Crumb

evobatman posted:

Today a user handed in a defective laptop battery.

I gave her a new one without troubleshooting and told her in a nice way to GTFO. I put the battery in a laptop, noticed the 0% charge, let it charge, and ran some HD video to test it.

I expect to see her back in a couple of hours when the one I gave her becomes defective too.

We had a bunch of 6500s that wouldn't charge the battery but would run off the adapter. Maybe her laptop is just janked.

BOOTY-ADE
Aug 30, 2006

BIG KOOL TELLIN' Y'ALL TO KEEP IT TIGHT

evobatman posted:

Today a user handed in a defective laptop battery.

I gave her a new one without troubleshooting and told her in a nice way to GTFO. I put the battery in a laptop, noticed the 0% charge, let it charge, and ran some HD video to test it.

I expect to see her back in a couple of hours when the one I gave her becomes defective too.

Bad power brick? Brick not connected or plugged in? I've had this happen a couple times, either when someone has their dock plugged in, or using an AC adapter directly to the laptop, and they kick the power brick. Sucks because most power bricks have the AC cord that disconnects from the brick, and if it's not fully unplugged, it still appears to have a connection.

Still, she should be getting a "low battery/plug into AC power" prompt before the battery dies...

coyo7e
Aug 23, 2007

by zen death robot

evobatman posted:

Today a user handed in a defective laptop battery.

I gave her a new one without troubleshooting and told her in a nice way to GTFO. I put the battery in a laptop, noticed the 0% charge, let it charge, and ran some HD video to test it.

I expect to see her back in a couple of hours when the one I gave her becomes defective too.
Bravo, you totally ignored the likely scenario that the AC Adapter port got jacked, or something similar. Pat yourself on the back when she comes back with another defective battery and you have to lie to not look stupid.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

coyo7e posted:

Bravo, you totally ignored the likely scenario that the AC Adapter port got jacked, or something similar. Pat yourself on the back when she comes back with another defective battery and you have to lie to not look stupid.

Yes, I read and comprehended that post, too.

angrytech
Jun 26, 2009

coyo7e posted:

Bravo, you totally ignored the likely scenario that the AC Adapter port got jacked, or something similar. Pat yourself on the back when she comes back with another defective battery and you have to lie to not look stupid.

I think the implication of his post is that he realized his mistake.

couldcareless
Feb 8, 2009

Spheal used Swagger!
I wish there was a way I could reward nice people publicly so that all those bitter assholes in the office see how much better IT treats you when you're not a cranky prick.

Kyrosiris
May 24, 2006

You try to be happy when everyone is summoning you everywhere to "be their friend".



couldcareless posted:

I wish there was a way I could reward nice people publicly so that all those bitter assholes in the office see how much better IT treats you when you're not a cranky prick.

It wouldn't change anything, they'd just claim favoritism and try to get you canned.

Count Thrashula
Jun 1, 2003

Peak Performance.

Buglord
:bang: "Hey this is QPZIL"
:corsair: "Hi, how do I log into X?"
:bang: "Just use your normal login and password."
:corsair: "Is that a password I make up?"
:bang: "No it's... it's your user name and password, the same one you use every day."
:corsair: "Do I need to make a new password?"
:bang: "No it... you know how you log on to your computer every morning?"
:corsair: "Oh so I just put in my normal user name and password?"
:bang: "...yes."

Sigh.

grnberet2b
Aug 12, 2008

QPZIL posted:

:bang: "Hey this is QPZIL"
:corsair: "Hi, how do I log into X?"
:bang: "Just use your normal login and password."
:corsair: "Is that a password I make up?"
:bang: "No it's... it's your user name and password, the same one you use every day."
:corsair: "Do I need to make a new password?"
:bang: "No it... you know how you log on to your computer every morning?"
:corsair: "Oh so I just put in my normal user name and password?"
:bang: "...yes."

Sigh.

:corsair: "It says expired."

kitten emergency
Jan 13, 2008

get meow this wack-ass crystal prison

grnberet2b posted:

:corsair: "It says expired."

Speaking of, apparently some of the certificates for our OCS server expired, so there's like 20 tickets open of people saying "IT SAYS IT ISN'T TRUSTED WHAT DO I DOOOO"

chrisf
Feb 29, 2008

coyo7e posted:

Bravo, you totally ignored the likely scenario that the AC Adapter port got jacked, or something similar. Pat yourself on the back when she comes back with another defective battery and you have to lie to not look stupid.

I dunno, the impression I got from the story was that the user in question has the idea that laptop batteries are infinite sources of power and don't need to be charged at all.

evobatman
Jul 30, 2006

it means nothing, but says everything!
Pillbug

coyo7e posted:

Bravo, you totally ignored the likely scenario that the AC Adapter port got jacked, or something similar. Pat yourself on the back when she comes back with another defective battery and you have to lie to not look stupid.

I stand by my assessment :colbert:

The laptop was an E6400. I know some claim to have had issues with them, but our batches have been good. No issues beyond harddrive failures and users filling them with sands or liquids. Also, this is a user who I literally - in the correct sense of that word - do not trust to understand the concept of batteries, AC adapters and electricity.

Edit: The poster above me is correct. And I do not worry about looking stupid, I have worked in sales and communications and can twist ANYTHING. Now, not looking like an rear end in a top hat is more of a challenge.

Spudalicious
Dec 24, 2003

I <3 Alton Brown.
Today is a total shitfuck of a day, for our organization we typically have three people on helpdesk with two sysadmins around doing various things.

Two of our techs are taking care of medical emergencies and one sysadmin is out to a conference. I'm alone on the helpdesk, with two meetings I am supposed to set up and monitor video teleconferencing for (our users are clueless when it comes to anything). I just had one of our top scientists call in from the field with a dead dell laptop (Caps lock light flashing - dead memory according to service manual). I finished an hour phone call of walking him through reseating the memory and testing each one individually while taking care of our premier problem user who was super pissed that his password expired without him being notified.

So anyway, I have this disassembled laptop in front of me with a phone to my ear and this guy is saying how upsetting it is that he wasn't notified of his password expiring and how he doesn't understand why it doesn't work blah blah blah. CANT HE SEE I'M ON THE PHONE AND SOLOING THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION!!!!

poo poo I have to go a meeting. AHHHHH :negative:

couldcareless
Feb 8, 2009

Spheal used Swagger!

Spudalicious posted:

Today is a total shitfuck of a day, for our organization we typically have three people on helpdesk with two sysadmins around doing various things.

Two of our techs are taking care of medical emergencies and one sysadmin is out to a conference. I'm alone on the helpdesk, with two meetings I am supposed to set up and monitor video teleconferencing for (our users are clueless when it comes to anything). I just had one of our top scientists call in from the field with a dead dell laptop (Caps lock light flashing - dead memory according to service manual). I finished an hour phone call of walking him through reseating the memory and testing each one individually while taking care of our premier problem user who was super pissed that his password expired without him being notified.

So anyway, I have this disassembled laptop in front of me with a phone to my ear and this guy is saying how upsetting it is that he wasn't notified of his password expiring and how he doesn't understand why it doesn't work blah blah blah. CANT HE SEE I'M ON THE PHONE AND SOLOING THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION!!!!

poo poo I have to go a meeting. AHHHHH :negative:

I would lock his account and go to the meeting. Let him stew in it for awhile.

Dead Cow
Nov 4, 2009

Passion makes the world go round.
Love just makes it a safer place.

ColumnarPad posted:

How much effort does it take to setup a phone that you leave them without one for a month? I'm not knocking you, I'm asking seriously. We use Cisco phones with Unity and Call Manager and it takes just a few minutes to setup a phone and deploy to a user's workstation. I can't recall any situation that would warrant a user to be without a phone for more than a few hours.

Next to none. Locate the port on the floor, go downstairs, plug into empty port on patch panel, go into admin console, assign extension and station to port.

It's more politics than anything. Accounting is the worst when it comes to timelines. We're supposed to be given 3 days notice for new hires, and supposed to be informed immediately when someone leaves. They do neither of these things, and I literally had 3 accounting people come and go before the paperwork for any of them hit my desk. Also, it eats up my available extensions because managers have a hard on for not letting me terminate extensions after people leave and I've less than 50 free and it's making me nervous.

I like the suggestion that I just put a stand alone phone over there. No one uses the phone client anyway.

Moey
Oct 22, 2010

I LIKE TO MOVE IT

coyo7e posted:

Don't you have BES? Or am I misunderstanding, I don't touch our BES at all and someone else takes care of it, I just renew the license and CALs.

We currently have a BESx. I was the one who had set it up and has the lovely job of supporting it. When it works, it seems to work. When it decides to vomit on me, it does that very well. gently caress phones randomly having reconciliation issues. I worked with Rim support for a few days on one issue, and they couldn't even seem to figure it out. I gave up, the user wouldn't allow a wipe of the phone (his names are on my paychecks), so he just said gently caress it. Randomly a month later, it started working properly again.

gently caress BES.

Spudalicious
Dec 24, 2003

I <3 Alton Brown.

couldcareless posted:

I would lock his account and go to the meeting. Let him stew in it for awhile.

Well given the extreme amount of poo poo this guy is capable of bringing down on my head it's best not to make him any angrier. This is the fellow (and I'm sure you all have them somewhere at work) who will come in to the helpdesk, explain to everyone there that the situation is unacceptable for whatever reason, then turn around and leave with a slamming of the door while someone attempts to explain why things are the way they are. He also is one of two Mac users we have (out of ~200), who has absolutely no reason to be on a mac except that he likes them better. Of course we have nobody who is really that good on Mac (I have about a year of unix-only experience from a previous position so I'm pretty much the best person around for them, and I suck horribly) so when he comes in bitching about parallels not working all of us immediately are like "well then switch to a PC you fuckface!"

Instead I opened ADUC and just let him set his password there since I was on the phone and didn't feel like trying to explain that our system doesn't notify Mac users that their AD passwords are going to expire for whatever reason.

God tomorrow cannot come soon enough.

feld
Feb 11, 2008

Out of nowhere its.....

Feldman

This customer just printed two emails out... wrote on them with a pen... scanned them... converted to PDF... and emailed them back in to us.

:suicide:

AlexDeGruven
Jun 29, 2007

Watch me pull my dongle out of this tiny box


So, my previous rant toward HR (I believe it went something like "gently caress HR, gently caress THEM SO HARD!!!!!" or so) may have been a bit misplaced.

Yes, there is a stupid policy for our internal HR only that all promotion offers are limited to 10% of base salary. This, of course, is total bullshit. But...

I had a meeting with my boss on Monday. After this year's salary program, which takes effect next month and shows up on the check in September, he's putting me in for a promotion from Associate to Intermediate. This will come with the requisite <=10% bump. Additionally he's going to put in an "Equity appeal request", which basically says "He's making X. As an intermediate, he should be within 10% of the seniors, which he's not. Fix it.".

This winter's going to be fun. I might actually be able to make it to both CES AND E3 next year.

So really, my rant should have been against the hiring manager who simply threw out my counter and wouldn't fight with HR for me.

adaz
Mar 7, 2009

Moey posted:

We currently have a BESx. I was the one who had set it up and has the lovely job of supporting it. When it works, it seems to work. When it decides to vomit on me, it does that very well. gently caress phones randomly having reconciliation issues. I worked with Rim support for a few days on one issue, and they couldn't even seem to figure it out. I gave up, the user wouldn't allow a wipe of the phone (his names are on my paychecks), so he just said gently caress it. Randomly a month later, it started working properly again.

gently caress BES.

It has been awhile since i've worked with a BES (two years or so) but a lot of the really retarded problems it has is because of the fact by default it uses sql express, or whatever MS is calling it nowadays, that is poo poo and breaks constantly. If you migrate its database - there are instructions how to do this online - and point it to a proper SQL server it works roughly 100000% better

equation groupie
Feb 7, 2004

debased and dread pilled
The on-site project manager wanted me to create an empty wiki page for him, so he and other employees could fill it in later.

I started to explain how he could create the page, but he interrupted me with, "but I want YOU to create the page!".

Being asked to do stuff like this just makes me mad. It's something so trivial that I feel it's demeaning for it to be delegated. It would take you just as long to edit the page after I create it as it would to just create it yourself. gently caress.

This is the same guy who wanted me to download content from FTP (using credentials that only he had, until he assigned me this task) and check it in to SVN for him. When I started to explain how to do it, he just interrupted me with "Well, it'd be a lot easier if you would just do it."

He's a developer for our website and uses SVN and FTP every day.

gently caress this guy, he makes me so mad.

coyo7e
Aug 23, 2007

by zen death robot
Today I spent half an hour in a chat window, talking to Neo. I have serious doubts about his powers, though.


http://pastebin.com/RNyTjG36

Maggot Monster
Nov 27, 2003

vlack posted:

This is the same guy who wanted me to download content from FTP (using credentials that only he had, until he assigned me this task) and check it in to SVN for him. When I started to explain how to do it, he just interrupted me with "Well, it'd be a lot easier if you would just do it."

Just reply "Easier for you, maybe." and nothing else each time he makes a request like this, gently caress that guy, never give them an inch or help them a single time or they will try to make you their unwilling assistant. Just say no!

notwithoutmyanus
Mar 17, 2009

coyo7e posted:

Today I spent half an hour in a chat window, talking to Neo. I have serious doubts about his powers, though.


http://pastebin.com/RNyTjG36

Dell Neo is the one that took the blue pill.

Icesler
Jul 7, 2005
Just got this little gem.

Ticket says: "Unable to send e-mail...please fix ASAP!!!"

Oh! I see there is a screenshot of the error she is receiving. How thoughtful.


http://i.imgur.com/yicu9.jpg

She took a screenshot, printed it out, made a copy for her records, scanned it to PDF and attached it to the ticket.
:psyduck:

Kyrosiris
May 24, 2006

You try to be happy when everyone is summoning you everywhere to "be their friend".



coyo7e posted:

Today I spent half an hour in a chat window, talking to Neo. I have serious doubts about his powers, though.


http://pastebin.com/RNyTjG36

quote:

coyo7e I have serious doubts about your ability to control the Matrix, though

CLKsmb_Neo_188644 I understand.

I'm dying over here. :lol:

Icesler posted:

She took a screenshot, printed it out, made a copy for her records, scanned it to PDF and attached it to the ticket.
:psyduck:

Look at it this way - at full size, it is readable.

Moey
Oct 22, 2010

I LIKE TO MOVE IT

coyo7e posted:

Today I spent half an hour in a chat window, talking to Neo. I have serious doubts about his powers, though.


http://pastebin.com/RNyTjG36

I got a good laugh out of this. I wish I could work some kind of after hour tech support like that and just have fun with people.

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

notwithoutmyanus posted:

Dell Neo is the one that took the blue pill.

I will be doing the needful on this reality, sir.

coyo7e
Aug 23, 2007

by zen death robot

Volmarias posted:

I will be doing the needful on this reality, sir.
Ironically after all that, I just received an automated email a few minutes ago that does indeed say that they'll have an on-site tech contact me in 1-2 business days to fix the issue. v:shobon:v

Maybe he was Neo.

Thank you for clarifying.

Rohaq
Aug 11, 2006

Icesler posted:

Our IT Director called him up and explained that we only replace laptops on a 3 year basis and/or broken and out of warranty.

douche bag goes to CFO and tells him "IT refuses to support our business process's. They have not been responsive to any issues and no one understands what they do all day."
Other people don't need 'to understand what IT does all day'. That's the job of the IT management staff, then their superiors judge whether the IT department is being run smoothly by the management in place. Even then, these superiors don't need to understand how it's done, just that it is being done.

I don't need to know everything the guys in the kitchen catering staff do, or how they do it. That's up to their superiors. I don't need to understand how it's done, because that's not my job. Whilst their work does affect me in the fact that they perform a service for the staff, so long as they're providing an acceptable level of service.

The problem in IT is that staff often have bizarre ideas as to what an acceptable level if service is, and I can't see that changing any time soon :(

Powerful Two-Hander
Mar 10, 2004

Mods please change my name to "Tooter Skeleton" TIA.


Today I got a message from one of our India team of "yeah so it's raining a lot here and loads of people couldn't make it in and I have no idea how to support this app, can you advise?". Got to hand it to them, the city gets bombed and it's the loving rain that causes problems.

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Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

Powerful Two-Hander posted:

Today I got a message from one of our India team of "yeah so it's raining a lot here and loads of people couldn't make it in and I have no idea how to support this app, can you advise?". Got to hand it to them, the city gets bombed and it's the loving rain that causes problems.

You can drive around a bombshell, you can't drive around a city turned lake.