A ticket came in... - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware / Software Crap > A ticket came in...

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

haljordan posted:

One of our new clients doesn't comprehend the fact that all they have to do is hit 'Reply' to the email they get from our help desk software. Instead, they send a new email with a one line response, so I get 20 new tickets created in the span of 5 minutes.

One of my most prized users is a older guy around 50, who's quite obviously an ex-hippie. He doesn't understand how email works even after working in the organization doing the same job for 10+ years..

One day he called me up about a minor color/font problem he was having in outlook/word.. Easy enough, I head down to his office to see what is going on.. He wants to figure out how to stop the clipboard from remembering fonts and colors etc when you copy-paste between documents, emails, etc.. Okay seems normal enough.

He open up the word document in question: It's a 40-page document with every email correspondence between himself and computer support copy-pasted in order, with comments so he can keep the conversation threads in order (since he didn't cut and paste every message, and has no idea how to read from the bottom of a message.)

..After heading back to my office I check this guy's mailbox sizeand personal user area... Sure enough, he's got less than 5 MEGS of email, and his personal storage area is nothing but one folder, with more folders inside.. Named after every person he's ever had an email conversation with, each folder containing a single Word document, often scores or hundreds of pages long. He's been dutifully copy-pasting the email addresses, subjects, and message bodies of around 10 years' worth of email, then deleting each email message.

Our mailbox quota starts at 3 gigs, and our policy is "if they ask for bigger, give it to them."

coyo7e fucked around with this message at Apr 30, 2009 around 22:57

# ¿ Apr 30, 2009 22:55

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# ¿ May 26, 2013 09:34

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

XarsonX posted:

That is probably the highest corporate limit I have ever heard. Up until recently our limit was 20 megs. Now it has increased more than ten fold... to 250. Its due to the amount of employees I know, I'm just saying Ive never heard of 3 gig.
People sure get pissy at me when they run out of space.

I work at a nonprofit research center, which was started (and is wholly is funded) by pretty warm-and-fuzzy-ex-hippie scientists who write and submit research grants and then use the phat check from the government to hire someone to budget that check, hire people, manage the employees and project, pay the rent, buy equipment, etc. So we have scientists who've got 5-10 gigs of emails spamming a decade, and my boss's boss tells him to kowtow to the scientists and do whatever they want for any reason. It's retarded but it's not my responsibility, that's another guy's job here.

These scientists are people who hire secretaries so they can do awesomely efficient poo poo like email the secretary, to email us asking to fix said scientist's laptop while they're in Norway because they need it for a presentation in the morning... After the scientist had been ignoring the dutiful weekly reminders (and addt'l reminders when i saw them in the hallway) to have IT give their machine a once-over before they went overseas again, for a month and a half.

My favorite are the personally-addressed emails to me. At 4am on a Saturday. To call a hotel in the UK from my home phone and help the person get their laptop connected to the hotel's wifi.. I

pretty hard when I saw that email on Monday morning, and sent my polite form-letter response for these situations, "Sorry, I'm hourly. I only check email when I'm on the clock so please be sure to send requests to the help box in the future!"

# ¿ May 1, 2009 16:40

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Casao posted:

Why couldn't I get tickets like this?
Best one I ever got:
"HEY GUYS,"
That was the total text of the ticket.

We have one user who literally does nothing but read and attend to the email of a scientist, she's essentially his personal secretary but all she really does is read his email for him and then tell him what he actually needs to care about, often replying as him since he's too cool to use anything but a blackberry, but won't actually type on it.. You'd think that she'd understand that the basic format of an email message is like a memo: subject, followed by message body..

Here's a copy paste of the subject of her last email message, which was sent directly to every member of anything computer-related in our organization, rather than the help ticket system:

quote:

I have been here since 7am this morning and its now almost 2pm, and was wondering if there was a problem? I have not received any outside email since this morning - is something wrong?

... Above a pristine, blank white email message.

I've done everything from explaining how email works, how we respond to tickets, how we need to be able to audit our work orders and user requests etc.. She sends in requests like thisfor herself (and for her boss) frequently. But she ALSO and often sends out company-wide emails which are beautifully formatted, include stuff like tables and images and hyperlinks and backgrounds... So apparently it's not that she's not able to send an email like a normal human.. She just doesn't' give a gently caress about IT, at all.

Doc Faustus posted:

There's something about science people that makes them include every detail about the equipment they use, despite none of the IT people knowing what it is, nor caring.

Oh god, it's so true, so true!

coyo7e fucked around with this message at May 1, 2009 around 21:13

# ¿ May 1, 2009 21:04

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Cyberdud posted:

This is always fun, also it's fun when something breaks and no one tells us and after 2 weeks, a boss passes by and sees it and yells "WHY IS "IT" NOT HELPING YOU???" and we look like idiots.
But my soul is not crushed yet

I have a "bi-lingual" department (aka, the majority can't hold a conversation for more than 20 seconds in english, unless you can also speak spanish,) at my work, and they're famous for being utterly retarded and unable to follow even basic instructions due to the language barrier.. After fixing a printer 10 times over the course of several months (and never hearing about the problem until days or weeks after it had poo poo itself,) I finally lost my patience, went to google translate, and wrote out a "please email support@blachblah.org immediately if this printer does not work."

Tickets began coming through from them in a timely manner (if they were still broken English, at least we know there was a problem and who thought there was a problem, so we could investigate the general vicinity,) and I was finally able to track down the issue to a failing hard drive in the machine, fixed their wing's main printer, and was way stoked to have finally found a system which worked somewhat satisfactorily.

... Then my supervisor called me in for a sit-down meeting with the bilingual group's supervisor: since all their employees are "bilingual" she was offended that I'd put English+Spanish support signs near all of their equipment.

Cyberdud posted:

Printers are my favorite too. People on site call saying their printer has a paperjam.
"There's no paperjam, i'm telling you, send a tech"
"Sir, we aren't gonna send someone to go take out a piece of paper"

After opening up a high-end Okidata printer to find that someone (someone with a PhD!) had torn up the fuser with a kitchen fork trying to get a jammed piece of paper out (Okidatas are prone to jamming when you use too much color coverage,) for the 3rd or fourth time, we do send someone out.. At least for the expensive printers. At our other locations there are certain "horse sense" employees whio we will call and ask to check the feed, etc, now.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at May 4, 2009 around 19:11

# ¿ May 4, 2009 19:06

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Dick Trauma posted:

EDIT: One of our database people just came into my office saying she really needed my help. So I got up to follow her back to her office and she held out a bottle of White-Out: she needed help opening it.

One of our career accounting ladies constantly drops into my office to ask for help - she's been here forever and since I've been here since I was knee-high to a grasshopper (and because she reminds me of my grandmother, who's a very dangerous woman to cross,) she drops in for troubleshooting from time to time, and I don't mind.

coyo7e, would you mind giving me some help in my office? I'm in a bit of a pickle..

Sure thing Mary, what's the problem this time? You home listing not printing right again on your realtor's website?

holds out jar of pickles

# ¿ May 4, 2009 21:34

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Ryokurin posted:

I feel your pain on the other part however. I had to deal with a lady who couldn't grasp the idea that every call logs a ticket, and and the closing of a call ticket isn't the same as closing her original ticket. I think even the boss had to eventually just say "what part of every call made to the helpdesk generates a ticket do you not understand?" It was something stupid like her sound not working too, and in the middle of a major event. Sorry, making sure the people who make us money is more important than a secretary trying to hear something off of youtube.

I had a prizewinner related to this, do one to me recently.. She's complaining about how slow her computer is so I wander by eventually to check it out (and to tell her to tell here cheapass boss to buy some new equipment) and she points to her screen "see look, it's slow right now I can't do my work!" ... To top things off she's one of the "bi-lingual" exmployees, which means she's running on Forrest Gump-level horsepower upstairs, and can't really speak english too well.

... So I sit down at her machine rq, and notice that she's got iTunes open and streaming music, so I close it. Then I notice Windows Media Player on the taskbar, streaming music but muted.. I shut it off, and then notice MusicMatch Jukebox on her taskbar, streaming and muted... And Realplayer, again still streaming+muted, and some other program I can't even remember, also doing the same!

She apparently had found out that she could play radio on the interwebs, so she asked her coworker what program to use, and she installed it.. Then she asked another coworker, and followed their recommendation as well.. You see where this is going.

So I start uninstalling programs left and right, and start in on the old "misuse of network resources + unauthorized software on work computers" spiel, when she stops me:

But, how can I listen to my music if you take those away?

That's not my concern, streaming music programs should not be no your computer, they slow down your machine and your coworkers' work as well.

Then how do I play music when I am working?

I don't care, go bring in a radio.

But I do not own a radio!

*reaches into pocket, pulls out iPod Nano* "Look, I bought an iPod and use headphones on my office's computer because every time I try to play music, I get complaints and have to turn it back down! I do not care if you're too cheap to go to the dollar store and buy an AM/FM radio, but I do believe that we should remove your ability to install applications so your computer doesn't mysteriously slow down again and generate more help requests."

*stops whinging*

devmd01 posted:

Subject: OKI PRINTER
Description: ONE OF MY LAZER PRINTERS AT REGISTER 2 STARTING SMOKING YESTERDAY AND IS NOW IN OPERABLE.
In operable what? It's in operable condition? Ok great thanks for letting us know! Seriously though, this is about the fifth Okidata B4600 we've had give up the ghost since we started rolling them out to locations two months ago.

FYI, the fusers in Okidata printers are very prone to gumming up and jamming when printing high coverage jobs. This is generally accompanied by the smell of scorching paper and/or melting plastic, and eventual smoke.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at May 5, 2009 around 23:21

# ¿ May 5, 2009 23:11

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

devmd01 posted:

Come to think of it, from what I recall the printers that are doing this are in the regions we deployed before we started enabling toner save on the printers. Thanks for the heads up, I'll make sure the field techs for those areas double check the settings as they hit each location.

We ended up scrap-heaping all of our Okidatas, because they were simply too expensive to repair, and too much hassle to repair yourself.. There's a little plastic hook that holds down teh transfer belt, and it's prone to snapping.. To replace this hook (which can be seen and reached easily,) you have to disassemble the entire printer, which takes an entire day without previous experience.. The toner and parts were way more expensive and they were really messy to switch drums/toner, and our users really only need 1 high-quality color printer, and we locked that one in the graphics guy's office and locked down the permissions.

It was either scrap the printers, or institute a policy for them that the users wouldn't have accepted. We decided that education was not a viable option for our extra-self-entitled userbase.

# ¿ May 6, 2009 15:50

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

psylent posted:

I just got this email from someone who works at a company I left 11 months ago:
- Everything. You're doing everything wrong.

I very rarely use my gmail account to send test messages to accounts on our domain to see if things are coming through, and a month and a half or so ago I cc'd a user to prove that outside emails from gmail were working.. Fast-forward to last week, after I had taken a week vacation.. And I find this email.

pushy rear end posted:

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 3:55 PM, Diana xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.org> wrote:

I got this email you sent last month, but people from outside have sent me emails and I am just now starting to receive them. We are getting a grant out and I�m expecting things from outside xxxx. Could you check and see if my emails are backed up from this morning.

Thanks.

My reply:

quote:

Replies to my personal, non-XXXX email address may not be attended to until I notice them, which may take weeks as this is my personal email address and is only used for my personal business. As I am neither a salaried or on-call employee, all requests will then be promptly deleted in the order they are received.

Thanks.

The reason she used my personal email? Because my work email (which also shouldn't have requests sent to it directly,) had an out of office message stating "I am on vacation from 4/20 to 4/25, please send any work-related requests to the support box as per proper procedure." After she'd sent me three emails in the same day to my work email, she got frustrated and started sending them to my personal email as well.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at May 6, 2009 around 20:45

# ¿ May 6, 2009 19:40

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Alex007 posted:

"No I can't fix this right now it's a group policy and you don't have admin rights so I can't even walk you though hacking it manually in the registry."
His answer ? "Okay I'll drop my laptop on your desk first hour tomorrow morning" and hangs up.

This is why there is a lock on the office door of every IT person in my organization, although we told admin that it was to reduce the chances of laptops etc being stolen. I haven't had a laptop on my chair/desk waiting for me at 830am ever since..

Midelne posted:

User hears that our parent company's policy is to delete emails in the Inbox that are older than thirty days. Panics. Comes up with her own solution.

And you wonder why users store years' worth of email in their recycle bin?

Yaos posted:

There's also:
Me- "Log out of your account"
User - "Okay, I'm shutting down the computer"
Me - "You don't need to shut down, you can just log out."
User - "Okay, I'm shutting down the computer."
They always do a shut down too, not restart.

These are best when they also helpfully shut down the modem, which shuts down the phones several hundred miles away.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at May 7, 2009 around 19:04

# ¿ May 7, 2009 18:50

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Casao posted:

Edit:
Oh god, another one:
"Once assigned to this ticket, please contact me for confirmation and details."

The only person who's even remotely computer-competent in our "ESL" department is this complete nutjob with a degree in like, data analysis.. Since he's a white guy who speaks english as a primary language and since he's the go-to guy when people in his department have to ask for help debugging their scripts and poo poo, he's become their IT guru due to his own inflated sense of self-importance.

Now when we get a ticket from this department, this guy get's CC'd as well, he will then drop EVERYTHING he's supposed to be doing for his JOB in order to pepper the IT department with a mixture of forwarded emails with huge CC lists, and help tickets which read like haiku as he "brainstorms with IT" aloud, and always always ALWAYS are CC'd to his boss (who thinks his poo poo smells sweet for some unknown reason,) with a line at the bottom saying "make sure to CC me with any updates."

The last time this guy got into the mix to help, I'd been handed a laptop which wouldn't turn on.. Dead battery, tough call, right? I reply within minutes and quote the price of a replacement battery in order to facilitate the repair.. Somehow the person who'd given me the laptop went to talk to disphit for his opinion, and dipshit went to the department supervisor's office and talked to her for an HOUR, telling her "if we buy a battery and the IT department is wrong and it wasn't the battery that was bad then we'll have lost that

and still haev a broken laptop!"

Then he convinced her to buy a new laptop - awesome because their department is CRITICALLY under-equipped and they're too cheap to buy more equipment or even upgrade - so I got the request right before I elft on Friday, so I spent a while ptuting together an email detailing machine specs, finding a reasonable rpice, timeline, etc. I come back on Monday, to a reply along the lines of "Oh, well I didn't realize it was going to cost money, I guess you can scrap that."

...Three days later, dipshit finally gives us "the all clear" to "try buying a batetry for that laptop and see if it works, if we have to."

The battery? I went to Batteries Plus, bought a replacement battery, and was back in 20 minutes. The laptop works fine... Batteries Plus also has an excellent return policy.

Dipshit literally caused a battery replacement to take 6 days to accomplish (they'd told me repeatedly how pressed for time they were since the machine needed to be in the field immediately) simply because he wanted to be part of the support process. He also didn't do his own job for most of those several days, there aer scores of emails to prove it.

# ¿ May 19, 2009 19:07

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Lord Commissar posted:

I got a call from a customer who told me "I'm still having performance issues."

I had to stop myself from laughing.

The only proper response would be to offer him affordable natural enhancement.

Mr. Glass posted:

I've never really understood why you would block specific sites like Facebook or Myspace.

So you didn't go to college, study malware/security, or is your workplace jsut full of really, really entitled users?

I'm in the third category, which is the only reason we won't block social networking sites.. But yeah, I've even walked in on my boss to him quickly minimizing a Scrabulous game with someone in another department.. We also can't implement a closed-windows-only policy because the users don't like not being able to open their windows all year around (literally!), so instead the utility bills go through the roof and nobody gives a poo poo, they just lay off my coworkers.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at May 22, 2009 around 22:11

# ¿ May 22, 2009 22:06

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Griz posted:

someone was channeling George today

Make sure that they know they can makening the register takening a total of how many No Sales and Voids the register has been havening each shift?

# ¿ May 22, 2009 22:44

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Tony Montana posted:

A key point is how much you're worth to your firm. How much they pay you, what benefits and other nice things. See you're never going to have a senior guy on 80k a year with a phone and car as part of his package loving around with desktops.

Tell that to my boss, and the never-ending stream of people dropping into his office to ask him what kind of home laptop they should buy.

AlexDeGruven posted:

This is another symptom of IT work. Once you do something for someone once. You own it. Forever.

This is more true than even experienced IT people understand.. The last IT Manager who my boss replaced, is still on IM (he got a job in Singapore), international speed-dial, and email.. Because he never bothered to document a loving thing or tell anybody what he was doing!

Chris Knight posted:

Uncompressed embedded graphics, I'd bet/

I would not put it past someone to insert a video clip into an Excel file, after some of the poo poo I've seen..

Doc Faustus posted:

For the first time ever, Dell warranty support managed to piss me off. ... But, with some calls, I have to put myself at the mercy of their diagnostic tools.
What the gently caress, Dell? Why you gotta play me like that?

I have a rule of thumb: If the Dell Business-Level Warranty Rep doesn't do what I ask them within 5 minutes of getting them on the phone (and I'm not on hold while they input data into their shoddy slow database), then I simply hang up immediately and call back. Always works, always!

No Ap�, I will not "hold down the power button for exactly 5 minutes, I will be on the line with you while you hold it down to release the ectoplasm from the reverse gigafluxor," it was just a dead battery and I've already given the machine to a coworker to double-check my diagnosis already, I'm not calling the business support line because I'm a random douchebag in a trailer park!

coyo7e fucked around with this message at May 27, 2009 around 23:21

# ¿ May 27, 2009 23:04

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Hi coyo7e, this is M----- and I'm at home witht he new laptop you said was ready for me last week?

Oh hi M-----, yeah I transferred your 70G of pictures and documents and settings to your new machine, licensed all the software under your own profile to be extra safe, got your VPN stuff set up, software packages installed, etc. I remember I told you last wednesday it was ready and to come in and go over it with me to make sure you're satisfied. What's still missing?

Well I'm at home and I'm trying to get files off the network through the VPN, but it says something about not being able to work! (at this point she's obviously agitated)

Ahh, that's a real pain (but you pay the checks for 1/3 of our employees!) so lets start off, are you connected to the wireless at your house?

No..

Oh, that's simple then, double-click the wireless icon by the clock, it's just like your old laptop. Then click the name of your home network and hit connect.

That doesn't work! It still doesn't do anything!

Well, are you sure you aren't connected to a neighbor's wireless? What's the name of your wireless network at home?

I don't loving know goddamnit aren't you going to help me I have had this computer for a week now and it hasn't worked at all and I've got to leave for a conference in New York tomorrow-

Whoa there M----, lets take a breath and get this set up *looks at clock, 15 minutes till I go home* - well it looks like there's plenty of time for you to come in (since you live only a few miles outside of town) and I'll hang around after my shift if you can make it in quickl-

I NEED THIS THING TO WORK NOW COME OUT AND FIX MY LAPTOP TONIGHT!!

M------, I'm an hourly - not salaried like the other (on-call) IT guys - employee, and as part of my job description I do not do house calls (on top of that I haven't owned a car in years), however I'd be happy to stay here for another hour or so so you can come back in and I can go over how to use your laptop again - which I recall I strongly suggested you do in the email(s) I sent you a week ago- so we can make sure everything's working. How long do you think I should stay after work before I can expect you?

*click*

Delicious Sci Fi posted:

I came in today to three new feeback form emails from out website from some woman in Wisconsin who is really pissed at us for not answering our phone, returning her calls and for not helping her resolve her problem with a product.

The thing is we only have clients in NC and her employer (required field in the feeback form) is some small business in Appleton. The problem she has is for a product we don't even sell or have ever sold. I googled the product to see if we somehow come up in the results and we don't nor do any of the results have a similar URL to ours. I have no idea how she found us and why she assumes we can help her.

Because I will bet you

that, somewhere in their office, is a lone post-it with "COMPUTER HELP GUYS: http://www.yoursitehere.com/support" and nobody actually knows who the gently caress is on the other end of the line, or what you are there for. Usually it's a phone number, but I've lost count of the post-its with my boss' direct extension stuck to the wall in interns' offices at my work..

Edit: Despite "I haven't owned a care in years" being a great line, it's a typo.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at May 28, 2009 around 23:02

# ¿ May 28, 2009 22:55

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

^^^ "I'm sorry, but you aren't paying us, that's not our product, how the hell did you find this number, and who are you?"

gently caress YOU I WANNA TALK TO YOUR BOSS RIGHT NOW YOU JERK!

# ¿ May 29, 2009 15:43

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

UserNotFound posted:

Yesterday, 3pm:
someone requests I install Office 2007 on "her laptop". I clearly did put Office 2007 on it when it was brand new a month ago, so I check the SCCM server, and clearly it is installed still.

3:30PM
She insists that it's not, and puts "her laptop" in my office, claiming it needs to be done by 5.

4:30PM
I finish what I'm working on, get "her laptop" out of the bag, and what do my eyes behold? A laptop that's not hers! I figured it was just missing the shortcuts on the desktop or something, and it would be a 10 second fix. But clearly "her laptop" just means whichever laptop she had hidden away from us that never got updated to office 2007.

5:02PM
I hand "her laptop" to her on the way out of the office, and go have a couple of pints of beer.

7:30PM

"MY LAPTOP"!!!!!
gently caress off, you can't just claim things as your own and expect me to know the difference between was is yours and what you just happen to have in your hands!!!!!

Also, there's no password, have a good night!!

I've had a strong temptation before, to just ghost people's personal laptops when they try and sneak them into my work orders and ask me to install SPSS and adobe pro and office and photoshop etc on it. It's never been anyone unimportant enough to get away with it, but one of these days I'm gonna be wearing the biggest poo poo-eating grin and a smarmy "oops my bad" face when someone calls me because they are no longer able to log into their personal laptop after I installed work software on it.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at Jun 4, 2009 around 01:07

# ¿ Jun 4, 2009 00:57

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

angelfoodcakez posted:

and then nothing. wtf.

This is the scary part, because as soon as he received an email lnoger than 15 words, his brain shut down and the "oh, it must be fixed!" light came on in his head.

He'll have you on the floor in a month demanding to know why you didn't follow through.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2009 20:25

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Factor Mystic posted:

I just want to say that I am astounded, astounded at the sheer number of posts with terrible grammar, spelling, and punctuation. How do these people do their jobs? Do they do that with external clients?

One of the guys yesterday was annoyed at someone's choice of font and color but didn't think he had enough seniority to tell the person to not use them, so...

On a related note, one of our grants recently was brainstorming, and an employee got her supervisor all excited about putting their entire grant on MySpace (note: everything we deal is high-level health and penal data covering research subjects - to the point where we can lose our job if we say hi to a subject outside of the building, so obviously, lets just have all of them friend up a central MySpace account..} so they could stay in contact with them.. Guess which yellow-font-loving employee is also a MySpace addict?

Edit: It's a lot harder to read that mustard-yellow color on-screen, before it was converted to jpeg.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at Jun 11, 2009 around 17:15

# ¿ Jun 11, 2009 17:08

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

quote:

PNG stuff

I don't tend to use PNGs online because waffleimages always gets pissy about file size, whereas jpeg keeps colors fairly true for my purposes (generally I'm more concerned about color loss and only want it for short-term use) and I never need to worry about file size that way. If I had an image that wasn't destined to be thrown away when I finally empty out my "My Pictures" folder, I might use PNG.

ab0z posted:

But I like to print all my emails so I can read them over coffee!

Yesterday, someone emailed in asking about a printer problem - she's been our "green booster" lately, and her signature said "Think green! Do you really need to print this email out? Think of the trees and the cost of toner!"

...She was trying to print out a stack of personal emails.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at Jun 11, 2009 around 19:33

# ¿ Jun 11, 2009 19:26

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Arsten posted:

I had a purge ticket for a user, one time, that resulted in finding 160GB of child porn. (Circa 2004/5?) The systems all had quotas. The systems all booted to Network then HDD. The systems all had cable locks to prevent access to the insidey parts.

He jimmied a lock in a non-noticable way, and reset the BIOS to boot to a LiveCD to download porn to the NTFS disk as "Administrator" so that the quota system wouldn't alert us.

We found out after he left and we went to repo his system and found the cable jimmied and a LiveCD running Ubuntu (4?) with KDE that was rigged to look like Windows in the bay. And the BIOS was now booting Floppy/CD/HDD (which, truthfully, is a deduction. Maybe he got the system with a jimmied lock cable and the BIOS was already reset )

tl;dr: People will do ANYTHING for their "personal data".

Holy poo poo, that is one dedicated at-work-pedo.

River Raid posted:

"I'm pretty sure she just hit the laptop with a hammer to try and get a new one for free."

Dude I work with actually threatened a Sony rep that he was going to drop a 3500 dollar laptop onto the concrete out front of the building, and asked her how high off the ground he should drop it from before it would be covered.

...It had a defective HD, which died within the first 6 months after purchase. Since the extended contract only covers everything past the first 12 months, and the INITITIAL contract only covered "accidental damage," the dumb bitch wouldn't/couldn't just send a replacement drive. After several calls to unhelpful reps all doing the same song and dance, he started threatening to shatter the entire laptop and declare it "accidental damage," she changed her mind and sent out a hard drive.

I listened to the entire conversation because I'd been in his office to bullshit with him, and I hung around because it was funny to see the shades of red that he was turning while on the phone.

algo posted:

I always though a reality TV show centered around admins would be great fare for the nerds who watch g4tv or similar.

"SAP is down. Batten down the hatches, it is going to be a long night."

I have doubts that anybody who'd watch G4TV could even understand a show like that, unless it had a laugh track and lots of electric shock gags.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at Jun 16, 2009 around 18:52

# ¿ Jun 16, 2009 18:27

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Doc Faustus posted:

Just got this gem of a ticket in:

Great job, guy!

edit: Doesn't Windows require a domain admin password to drop a machine from the domain? Does it just ignore that requirement if you're not actually connected to the network the domain controls?

Yeah, a scientist at my organization went to Europe for some conference a month ago, and one of her colleagues "is a computer whiz" so he helpfully removed her computer from the domain...

... Half an hour before she had to give a presentation which involved using her laptop to run a powerpoint on her laptop.

Happy_Misanthrope posted:

"Greg so and so in sales doesn't have an email address, I can't find it on the system."

Me: "Greg who?"

User: "The new guy in sales."

Me: "How new? When did he start?"

User: "Today."

I can trump this..

= no-authority peon

"Hi, can you add Margret X to our grant's email list? Her address is margretblah@yahoo.com"

No problem, she's been added.

"She's still not receiving emails! You screwed everything up ARGH!"

Nope, she's right there.

"Well Margaret is here today and she's not receiving emails YARGH!"

.... Okay, I think I found the problem, try now.
*fast-forward two weeks*

"Hi again, Margaret is STILL having problems, she can't log in to her computer (even using the default password everyone gets, we tried that!) and hasn't been able to do so since she started with us two weeks ago.

(wth!? how do you let something like this slip for two weeks?!) Uhh, is this person an employee?

Yes, we hired her two weeks ago, remember when I sent the email asking you to make her account?

Err, you don't have the authority to request accounts.

WELL YOU SAID YOU MADE HER AN ACCOUNT FOR ME WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM!?!

...Followed with three hours of people in their department ccing the support box with accusations of us being incompetent, until I finally forwarded the (misspelled name included) original request, which said "add her yahoo account to our group's email list."

On top of it all, the supervisor wants her to have an internal email address, despite telling his peon exactly the opposite two weeks ago.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at Jun 23, 2009 around 22:10

# ¿ Jun 23, 2009 21:17

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Powdered Toast Man posted:

I'm continually amazed by the number of people who act incredulous when I tell them that no, your warranty does not cover the cracked screen on your laptop that you stepped on. Or the broken screen hinge. Or the cracked case. Or the pin that you somehow ripped out of the AC adapter cable, which I can't even fathom after looking at one of them closely.

Sony's third-party extended warranties only cover past the first 12 months.

Sony's manufacturer warranty only covers accidental damage.

Sony's manufacturer warranty does not cover defective hardware, only damaged hardware.

...This culminated in us threatening to drop a 3500 dollar Vaio onto the concrete sidewalk outside while the support rep was on hold. It was pretty

, but after a long pause, the rep (who was on speakerphone since this was the fourth call about our defective hard drive replacement attempts, and a crowd had gathered) said "uhh... ummm.. err, please don't do anything sir, I need to go ask my supervisor a question."

... A week later, we got a replacement hard drive, with a big scary RETURN THE DEFECTIVE PART WITHIN ONE WEEK OR WE WILL CHARGE YOU $300+ FOR THIS REFURBISHED 120G HARD DRIVE!!!

# ¿ Jun 23, 2009 22:18

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Doc Faustus posted:

Went to do another computer replacement, and this is the terror that awaited me.

I'm lucky when I run into things like this, we are allowed to put a post-it on their computer that says "came by to do what you wanted but was unable to reach the computer/couldn't pull out your 300-lb desk, please call us back when you've done so THANKS!

scottch posted:

If it's an exec with an assistant, always, always, always talk to the assistant first. They won't be any more technically inclined--quite likely less so--but they will get poo poo done. That's not only the type of task they're paid to do, but they're almost universally great at following instructions well. And saying that you spoke to their assistant about the issue is as good as if you spoke to them, they won't even question it.

It's BETTER to speak to their assistant than talking to the person, because the dude won't even know wtf and can't argue with you, if you say you went over it all with his assistant. Plus, she'll nag him until he does whatever it is you need him to do before you can fix his issue.

demonachizer posted:

If your users are educated on the fact that data left locally on a machine is not IT's responsibility combined with an enforced domain policy to prevent local data (mapping common storage sites to the fileserver) then you really shouldn't ever be in a position where a user has to freak out about their important paper.

In a perfect world.

Realistically, a certain percentage of people are simply going to lose their poo poo at you when you tell them something is wrong, even - especially - when it's their own damned fault. Some people are simply the kind of personality who'd rather abuse someone else than get to problem-solving or letting someone else solve the problem as best as possible.

Levitate posted:

Then I have to dig through their registry to find Outlook's super hidden temporary folder and find their documents.

Before we switched over to XP, with it's super hidden Outlook temp folder, there were a couple of people who actually used that folder as a permanent document storage space.

Protip: the easiest way to get to the OLK* directory, is from another machine with View Hidden Files turned on. start->run-> \\machinename\c$\

It's way, way easier than trying to open it on the actual machine, in my experience.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2009 21:06

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Smoke posted:

It's worse when there's both a slider AND a key combination to enable/disable the wireless. I've driven out to a client just to flip the switch, after another tech from a store couldn't figure it out and kept hitting the key combo, of course with no results, then blamed it on drivers not being installed or defective hardware. And since we had supplied the laptop, we also had to fix it.

It's worse than the key combo takes you into their "Lenovo WirelessCare" or whateverthefuck utility, and you have to hit a key combo THEN use arrow keys to navigate some bullshit pointless menu to swap between LAN, WAN, and Bluetooth. Of course you'll be trying to tell someone on the phone to "Tap Fn and F8 twice" while it's got some screen you've enevr even heard of, up in front of them.

At my work, we've taken to a dab of superglue on the wifi slider for a couple of people who ALWAYS rub the switch to "Off". It was either that or break out smoe pliers and yank it off entirely.

Lum posted:

Anyway, the problem could be fixed if the manufacturers just added a big sticker in the palm rest area (they seem to like those anyway) pointing at it and saying "switch this on or wireless wont work"

Why would they put a sticker there when there'es no product placement or legal obligation?

gibbed posted:

Also hibernating.

To be fair, when thepower button defaults to sleep/hibernate, and when your OS puts you to hibernate whenever you hit the "Power" icon on your start menu...

Midelne posted:

I receive copies of all NDRs generated by our Exchange server so I can, ideally, track down and resolve issues before the user even gets around to notifying me of the problem. It makes for some impressed users most of the time, but I have no clue what on earth the user was attempting to do with this one and I'm afraid to ask.

Erm, I'd definitely ask super-super quickly, since the subject was "Password" and he was probably trying to send it to someone he shouldn't have. I'm a nice guy when it comes to that kind of thing.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at Jul 1, 2009 around 19:40

# ¿ Jul 1, 2009 19:30

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Doc Faustus posted:

Reminds me of this, for obvious reason: http://horribleville.com/d/20060121.html

Anyone else expecting a day of zero tickets? The University is closed tomorrow (I think), so it's a long holiday weekend...

They organized a "pre-4th of July Social Hour!" today, scones and coffee to be served on the walk outside as it's already 80+ degrees.

... There are only maybe 20 employees in both buildings total, gg hiring caterers.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2009 18:27

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Beary Mancrush posted:

Haha, sucker. I'm getting bbq and beer in 30 minutes.

Our IT kegger and Barbecue gets thrown in the building parking lot every summer, and we always have a major spread - I'm talking 2 or 3 times what other groups get to budget for (normally 250 dollar limit), now that everybody knows what to expect. I tried 4 months ago to get everybody organizedfor another one this year, but everybody's being a bitch about it, and frankly I'm too tired and broke and busy to put it together by myself.

The IT Department bbqs here are flat-out legendary, though. People getting hammered and going back to work, then spilling beer into printers and all kinds of crazy hijinx.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at Jul 2, 2009 around 18:33

# ¿ Jul 2, 2009 18:30

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Beary Mancrush posted:

Job assurance through alcohol-related mayhem. I see how you roll.

The old head it administrator got drunk on the year before I started, and sucked up a bunch of spilled magenta toner in front of someone's office door (back when they still tried to refill them instead of just shipping them out to have it done for us) with a vacuum that wasn't a level 5 whateverthehellthey'recalled filter. The dark brownish carpet is still visibly pink for quite a distance up and down that hallway. So is the ceiling.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2009 18:54

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

So yesterday my boss comes in and starts looking around my office at the random boxes, and I see what's coming a mile away: freebies for my least-favorite group. Confirmation when I asked him if that was why he wanted to take some workstations and he blushed and didn't reply.

... So today first thing in the morning, I get a request "Please immediately revoke access from the following 5 (mostly long-term, all highly placed,) employees from our grant, and from the network."

This was followed in the next paragraph with "Please create accounts for the following 12 people who will be summer interns."

I have some malicious thoughts and ask:

"So, X grant fired all their employees and replaced them with interns?

"uh... Ummm.."

"... I'm exactly right, aren't I."

".. You didn't hear it from me."

There is no way they'll be able to finish either of their current projects, they wasted all of their budget on dozens of copies of Rosetta Stone (you know, in case the other 200 employees gave a poo poo to learn Spanish just to talk to lame-rear end incompetent grant's employees, since they can only speak Spanish,) and $3,000+ Vaios every 9 months for their managers, while their employees have no training, no equipment, and no English-speaking skills.

...Knowing them, they'll probably say that the fact they're the only grant in 30+ years who's been unable to manage their budget (and they hosed it up for TWO budgets at the same time!) it was due to latent racism.

I saw one of their employees who got laid off, she caught me in the hall carrying some poo poo, and she was curious why she couldn't log in to her computer.

"I saw a ticket with your name come in this morning, maybe you should check with your supervisor.."

Where I grew up, they had a saying for stuff like this, "poo poo rolls downhill."

coyo7e fucked around with this message at Jul 2, 2009 around 22:14

# ¿ Jul 2, 2009 22:10

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

I walk into my office at 8:24 this morning, literally hadn't even set down my man-purse before my phone buzzes - it's the anorexic, overcaffeinated scientist who's been drinking espresso since 630 but hasn't bothered to turn on her computer after the 4-day weekend, until just now! A stream of hyperactive gibberish barely makes it through my headphones while I look at her logs and stuff rq, then I have this conversation with her:

quote:

"If the virus scan is the issue, is there a way it could be set to run at a different time? I really can�t afford to sit around and wait for it to be done."
"Usually it does run at a different time, Thursday around 4:00 PM. You were out of the office last Tuesday so the computer was off at the time, so the virus scan ran when you turned it on this morning."
"Will it only run when my computer is on?"

Serfer posted:

I started a new job 2 weeks ago (after 4 months of unemployment), and while it's a good job, we get some ridiculous tickets.

One ticket appeared to be an office move. However, when I went over to see the user, he had already moved, he just submitted a ticket to have his network switch plugged in. As in, to the wall. There was nothing to hook up to it. He just needed an IT guy to plug in a power adapter.

Another was a request for a map of our floor, including names of where everyone sits. HR provides a new one every month, but he wanted us to send it to him, instead of asking the people who actually do it.

Someone sent a contract to our help desk, and asked us to review it, to make sure it was ok. Keep in mind, he have corporate council, and he's about 50 feet from the person who sent it in.

All three of the above came from the same user. He's going to be a problem, I can tell.

A lot of places require you to contact IT before moving your PC, however this tends to end up with "move it myself and email IT do do it for me, while I'm doing it."

If he had to change to a different network jack in his office, there is a good chance that in his previous experience he's run into trouble hitting jacks that were "cold" during his other office rearranging escapades, so he anticipated the need for someone to heat up the jack in a wiring closet.

What's your trouble ticket system? At my work it's "support@domain.blah" so we often get random requests and autocomplete accidents from outlook messages. While asking for proofreading is pretty odd, depending on your ticket system it could have been an accident. And our IT does do the maps, too. We have a better idea of where most people physically are located than almost anyone else in the organization, between having the maps and keeping users linked to workstations+locations in our equipment database, which links to the maps..

And personally I think you're sloppy as poo poo for not following up on that U{S question, it sounds liek they almost definitely didn't get a phonecall, but one of those "tracking receipt" trojans that've been all the rage for the lat 6-9 months.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at Jul 6, 2009 around 17:56

# ¿ Jul 6, 2009 17:27

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Number 169 posted:

You edited your post but didn't notice the typo?

I hosed up my left hand rather badly playing football this weekend, it's swollen like a balloon and two fingers are pretty zombified. I'm lucky to be able to type with that hand at all. If I fix 70% of typos I'm good to go, it's not like I'm writing it in all-yellow or something that actually makes it tough to communicate.

Edit: see, no typos.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at Jul 7, 2009 around 15:03

# ¿ Jul 7, 2009 15:00

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Midelne posted:

One of our sites just spent around $3,700 on an HP9050dn that spent its first day of operation (7/2) registering a paper jam every third or fourth page. Not the crumpled-paper kind of jam, just the everything-stopped-for-no-visible-reason kind of jam. No work on Friday, no response from the vendor on Monday, finally get in yesterday so I can work with HP's technical support.

Is he using cheap recycled paper or something? A couple years ago we switched to a cheap brand of paper and it caused a retarded amount of jams, we ended up dumping most of the paper ooff on another org rather than using it.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2009 15:34

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Midelne posted:

Nah, first thing I tried was paper from multiple other sources that were printing successfully. It's standard copy paper.

The new jam gave me a much more specific error message than the others (13.20.00 JAM IN DUPLEXER) and did not resolve no matter what I did, so they're overnighting me a new duplexer. Problem will most likely be resolved by that, unless it's a problem with a sensor somewhere else, in which case they'll most likely be sending me other parts too. Good times.

And you're absolutely positive that there's no leftover bits of paper or junk left in the duplexer?

BTW< this site rocks, it's saved us thousands of dollars in printer technician bills: http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/forums/laser/28628

# ¿ Jul 9, 2009 17:01

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

mllaneza posted:

I've had lots of nasty jams turn out to be just a bit of paper blocking a sensor. Try a can of air ALL throughout the unit. Go at it like you're trying to freeze the thing.

That link I posted had an interesting idea in it, it was suggested to use a piece of heavy-gauge paper or a manilla envelope and shove it through the paper feed, to push out any detritus. I'm gonna try that in the future because some of those angles are tough to see through.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2009 17:56

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Beary Mancrush posted:

You know they're talking about AC adaptors and the powerstrip all that stuff plugs into is going to be zip-tied into a bundle of useless old ac adaptors.

Oh god

some obsessive-compulsive rear end who was part of my IT Department before I started here, had a thing for zip-ties. Every 4 inches. Forking them out, carefully doubling over the cables to take in slack. We have a Coder room (coders are psych data entry monkeys, who have to carefully watch an interview and record facial expressions, interaction types, dialogue, etc, down to the second) full of older PCs and A/V equipment for playing back recorded sessions. I dread going into that room because I almost always loving cut myself trying to cut away a dozen zip-ties to do anything at all.

_{I should carry a dike instead of a pocket knife and box-cutter.}

# ¿ Jul 14, 2009 18:29

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

Arsten posted:

Go to your local hardware store and get a tiny pair of wire cutters. It will save your soul one day, as you won't bleed out on a Sunday morning while you're trying to reroute an obsessive compulsive person's wiring setup.

Don't you know what dikes are?

# ¿ Jul 14, 2009 19:16

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

You could have read my post, where I said "gee I wish I had this other tool instead of these on me" and inferred what a dike was from the context, instead of posting something dumb, then making an even worse post in response to my jibe about a pretty drat common tool when working with the kind of thing we all do in this thread. Then making even worse posts after that. Now you've got me doing it.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2009 05:59

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

"This printer we installed Friday? Why was it moved out of the power strip?"

" "Well it didn't really fit in the spot I liked it in my office, and the cord wasn't long enough. It's been giving me weird error messages since Monday morning."

*hour or two later* "Umm, remember that HUGE lightning storm on Sunday, that knocked out stop lights and power all over town? I'm pretty sure it got hit by lightning."

"Well I just bought this printer and it's already not working, you need to fix it!"

"You know how people will sometimes talk about something being struck by lightning? That means it has been struck by lightning. Since it wasn't in a power strip, this is pretty likely to be the case."

"Well I know you fix the big printers when they make funny noises and run out of toner, why can't you fix this Staples Special? It cost a 40th of the big ones!"

"Exactly"

Oh well, I'm surprised only one idiot had something get fried by that storm.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2009 17:12

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

mas posted:

Ticket from a lady that routinely asks long insane question that don't actually mean anything. This is one of her more "clear" ones.

I'll see your lawyer and raise with a "problem juveniles" caseworker who works for us on the coast:

quote:

To: Head of IT Purchasing
Subject: RE: Internet access

wwww, WHEN YOU HAVE A FEW SPARE MOMENTS I NEED YOU TO TAKE OVER MY COMPUTER AGAIN...I DON'T HAVE MY DESKTOP ICONS THAT YOU PUT BACK FOR ME...THE COMPUTER SHOWS zzzz'S INSTEAD OF MINE....SO WHEN YOU HAVE A MOMENT PLEASE CALL ME...541-xxx-xxx EXT 18 THANK YOU IN ADVANCE...yyyy

From: Head of IT Purchasing
To: COMPUTER SUPPORT
Subject: FW: Internet access

Can one of you guys see what she needs? I'm sure zzzz forgot to log out again, yyyy is good at sitting down but not realizing she didn't actually log in..

To: yyyy
Subject: FW: Internet access

Hi yyyy, please shut off your computer completely and turn it back on, and tell us if this crops up again. If it doesn't we'll be on it right away.

It would be extremely helpful if you could provide us with the number on top of that particular computer as well, if rebooting doesn't work.

Sent: two days later
To: COMPUTER SUPPORT
Subject: RE: Internet access

Whoops...my computer # is 1234 I don't want to cause anybody any trouble...I can work with it this way...I just wondered if anybody had a spare moment...please don't worry about it if not...Thank you again...yyyy

The ellipses alone - what the gently caress is this woman's problem?!

The worst part is that we all know what happens when you say "well it's really no trouble, if you're simply too busy don't worry about it..."

coyo7e fucked around with this message at Jul 15, 2009 around 20:24

# ¿ Jul 15, 2009 20:21

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

coyo7e posted:

I'll see your lawyer and raise with a "problem juveniles" caseworker who works for us on the coast:
The ellipses alone - what the gently caress is this woman's problem?!

The worst part is that we all know what happens when you say "well it's really no trouble, if you're simply too busy don't worry about it..."

So because I'm a nice guy and I do actually follow up tickets like this instead of spitefully closing them, I emailed this woman back:

quote:

From: COMPUTER SUPPORT
To: xxxx
Subject: RE: Internet access

So, did rebooting fix it or not? Your email does not mention this.

quote:

No it didn't...it still has all of yyyy's desktop info...I don't want to be any trouble so it's not a problem to work with it this way...All I have to do is just search a bit more...so if you are bored...as by all means I'm sure you are way to busy, but in the off chance that you are not...and have a chance to fix it GREAT!!...I'm fine with it either way....thank you for all your kindness....xxxx

This woman is batshit. I'm afraid to call her and talk over the phone - it'd just be a series of really really passive statements, and long uncomfortable silences.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2009 19:49

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# ¿ May 26, 2013 09:34

coyo7e: Aug 23, 2007

kensei posted:

If I didn't know better, I would swear that you worked with my mother in law. This is exactly how she asked me to come over and fix her lack of sound on her computer. (The speakers were unplugged...)

Does she work/live in Newport? This is one of the prizewinners who works with DOC over on the coast.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at Jul 16, 2009 around 20:04

# ¿ Jul 16, 2009 20:01

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