What’s more frustrating than trying to help someone who knows nothing about technology. If you know that pain, read on for Reddit's worst tech support disasters.

1. White Knight Moment

I spent five years doing IT consulting in a rural town about an hour from Portland, OR. I'd periodically involve myself in the more interesting and complex cases we'd see from our walk-in customers. One day we had a woman come in. She caught my eye because she was in her late 30s or early 40s, and actually quite attractive.

She had short, platinum blonde hair and bright red lips, and was dressed and styled like she was transplanted right out of a 1950s era magazine ad. One of our bench techs greets her and starts talking to her. Right out of the gate I can tell this is going to go badly.

She is panicked and, by the sound of it, tin-foil hat levels of crazy. Well, there goes any desire I had to flirt with her and maybe see if I could buy her a drink. I listen in on the conversation anyways, because it's at least a change of pace from the monotony of my day-to-day.

After a few minutes of her going on about how her husband is spying on her through all manner of devices, my bench tech looks back at me with a can-you-please-come-help-me-and-make-her-go-away look on his face.

I oblige, as I appreciated that the front-line guys respected me enough to ask for my help on these things. I walked up front, introduced myself as the supervisor, and told her that since her issue was so unique and serious, it'd probably be best if our more senior staff handled it. Now that I was seeing her up close, I could tell that under her classy outfit and Marilyn Monroe-esque makeup was a deeply distraught woman.

Her eyes looked baggy and tired. Like she had been up too late crying. Obviously, at this point I'm just playing along. This isn't my first rodeo, and generally what happens is the client claims some individual or agency is monitoring their computer. We tell them our hourly rate for forensics, and suddenly the men in black suits watching them aren't that big of a deal anymore.

Now, to be fair, we actually did specialize in computer forensics and data recovery, working extensively with the local department and a handful of firms on a number of cases where they needed expert help. We even had a guy on staff full-time who wore that hat most days.

The local officers were pretty small-time and farmed out at least some of their computer-related work to us on contract. In the cases where people did want to pay, we would do our due diligence, and prepare a professional report of our findings accordingly. We would meet with attorneys and testify in court, as necessary.

Generally it was fairly benign stuff like gathering chat logs and browser history for a divorce proceeding where one spouse accused the other of cheating or something similar, and wanted evidence to back that up. Back to the client at hand. She insists her husband is monitoring her every move, tracking her vehicle, monitoring her computer, and recording her in her own home. Here's where it gets interesting.

She claims that she knows all of this because he has told her about it. In fact, he has gone so far as to threaten her life if she tries to tamper with any of it. She says she has tried to apply for a protective order against him, but ostensibly without some sort of evidence of his behavior, nobody would take her seriously.

I give her the crazy litmus test and tell her that in order to gather evidence discreetly, we would need two of our senior consultants to investigate. $300 an hour, four-hour minimum. She pulls out her wallet. Well darn, she's serious. We agree to start with her vehicle to check for signs of the GPS tracker.

She says she is parked several blocks away so her husband won't know she came to a computer store (we were in a downtown area surrounded by retail stores). I grab my tool bag and holler at one of my colleagues to join me. The lady, myself, my colleague, and BOTH of our now intensely curious bench techs (all of us in matching company polos) follow this lady down the street to her car.

What a motley crew we must have been. We get to her minivan and begin our process of looking for this GPS device. Now, because of the way GPS trackers work, there really aren't that many places they can really be mounted that are both effective and discreet. We spend some time looking around the undercarriage, rocker panels, and even bits of the interior.

Nothing. Just as I'm starting to lose faith that this may not be quite as exciting as I had perhaps hoped, I make the big discovery. I find the thing. It was tiny, not much bigger than a flash drive, and mounted behind the front grill. But there was something odd.

It wasn't an active device. This device did not provide real-time tracking, rather it used some internal memory and a couple AAA batteries to log GPS data for days at a time. At some point, when the van was not in use, the guy would grab the GPS device, upload the data to his laptop, maybe swap batteries, then remount it to the car.

Good god, this lady was very much indeed Paranoid And Rightfully So. Now that we've established that she isn't insane but that she actually is being tracked by her husband, the tone amongst our team became drastically more serious. Obviously, something sinister is going on, and we aren't sure what, but by the sound of things this lady really is fearful for her life.

She has entrusted us to gather evidence and help her get a protective order against him, which is something I think all of us took quite seriously. We show her the tracker and she breaks down into tears because it's the first evidence she has physically seen. We take photos of it, and carefully install it back where it belongs. I sort of assumed that a GPS tracker on your freaking car would be proof enough for a judge to issue at least a temporary protective order, but she seemed insistent that she would need more evidence to make it stick.

Our next moves have to be conducted very deliberately. She claims that her home is bugged, and so is her computer. We will need to go onsite to investigate accordingly, but it will have to be at a time when both her husband isn't home and when we will be able to quickly create a report for her, leaving her enough time to get a protective order before the day's end.

We couldn't chance him coming home later, reviewing whatever it was he was recording, and finding out that she had taken action to have him investigated. It wasn't going to be for at least a week before there was a time that was just right. We made arrangements with her back at the office and I offered to walk her back to her car.

She accepted, and on the way she confided in me many of the personal details of her life and her obviously horrible relationship with her husband. In the interest of protecting her privacy I'll simply say that it sounded like she finally figured out how manipulative he was, and when she said she wanted out he wasn't about to let that happen.

I asked her again if she really was afraid for her life. Her reply broke my heart. The sincerity of her "yes" was both scary and hard for me to hear. I asked her if she had thought about getting any protection like a weapon, and she said she had, but that he would notice the large sum of money needed to purchase one missing from their joint account.

As the gravity of the situation weighed on me, I offered to let her borrow one of mine. She was awestruck, but I assured her that it was completely okay. At the time, I had several, and I couldn't think of a more appropriate situation for someone to have one. My car was parked close by, and we walked over to it.

I tried to gather some idea of her familiarity with them as the thought of giving one to more or less a complete stranger, especially one that might not know what to do with it, was unsettling to me. It sounded like she had at least a basic understanding of their function. In my mind the pros of her having at least some means to protect herself outweighed the cons, so I moved forward.

We went over the basics of how to use it safely. She was crying, and frankly at this point I pretty much was, too. I gave her my cell phone number and told her to call me if she needed someone to talk to. We hugged for a while before parting ways. It wasn't a romantic hug or anything, it was that kind of hug that's exchanged when someone needs to be held.

Like, when your best friend tells you his mom passed or something. She needed the comfort of knowing that she wasn't alone, that at least one person took her seriously, and I'd like to think that I gave her some hope that things would be okay. The next week was tense as we prepared for our investigation.

My co-workers and I spent considerable time discussing and researching ways to triage her computer to look for evidence, as well as how to approach the search of the house. When the day finally came, we arrived onsite at the specified time armed with our forensics tools, flashlights, laptops...anything we might need.

I set to work immediately on her computers (a home desktop and a personal laptop) while two of my colleagues began their search of the house. I removed the drives from her PCs and I made a clone of both drives. Once cloned, I put the PCs back the way they were and began mounting the cloned volumes and investigating. At first, nothing. Then, I found it. 

It was hiding in plain sight, and it was a tag registered to SpectorSoft Corporation. Guess what they sell? Yup. Surveillance software. The PC was running something called SpectorPro, which was capable of monitoring all of the users’ activities, browsing history, keylogging, even sending remote screen captures to a mobile phone or email based on target keywords. It was the full nine yards for monitoring.

I screen capped everything for my logs, shut the system down, and swapped the clones for the original disks to put everything back the way it was. Not too long after, our other two guys found some evidence of their own. Two separate (and frankly, rather rudimentary) cameras hidden in the master bedroom.

One in the closet in a shoebox, one in the smoke detector in the ceiling. All things considered, they were pretty low tech. The contents of the memory cards would have had to be moved off at least once a day, and the battery probably changed at least as often. We didn't touch anything. Lots of photographs were taken.

We went back to the office and compiled all of the evidence into a document for her, and I passed the disk images onto our forensics guy for further evaluation. I met with the client later that day to present her the report so she could furnish it to the court. The gratitude she had for us was absolutely immeasurable. We didn't charge her for our services.

Getting to play a role in stopping her sick husband from engaging in whatever it is he was doing was payment enough. I'd like to tell you that I know how this story ends. I'd like to say that the guy was put away forever, and my supreme IT prowess and white-knightery wooed her into my arms and we lived happily ever after. But frankly, I don't really know what happened. But there was one development.

What I can tell you is that about a week after we gave her our report, I met her for coffee at a place across the street. She looked visibly better. Her puffy, tired eyes were gone, replaced instead by ones that seemed to glisten with warmth. Her skin was radiant and beautiful. She was smiling, for the first time I'd seen. An immense weight had been lifted off of her, and it showed.

She told me that she was temporarily living with her mom and dad, that a restraining order was in place on her estranged husband, and that she was finally filing for divorce. She told me that for the first time in a very long time she felt safe, and that she felt happy.

In the parking lot, she hugged me, both of us teary-eyed, and we parted ways. For me, it proved to be one of the most emotionally rewarding experiences of my career.

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2. An Analog Solution

I'm not IT, I just happen to be one of the few in our office who knows his way around the computer, so I often get asked for help. Usually it's just “My MSWord doesn't work” or something, but this one really stuck with me.

Co-Worker: Help me, I have to complete this doc in 20 minutes but I can't type anything

Me: What is it?

Co-Worker: Whenever I hit a button, Word just starts putting infinite spaces between letters

Me: Huh.

I go up to her computer. I notice at once that something is off. I look her in the eye, and without breaking eye contact, I move her phone away from the space button on her keyboard. She asks me never to speak of it again. 10 minutes later the whole office knows about it, of course.

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3. Oh, Vladimir

When I started working for my current company, there was a customer who was already infamous. He was one of those people who was known only by his first name. Everyone knew exactly who you were talking about when you said you'd had to take a call from Vladimir.

They tried to protect me, as the newbie, from Vladimir as long as possible, but one day when I'd been at the company for maybe six months it just couldn't be avoided. No one else was available but me, and he was in a royal fury. The operator called me up, apologized to me (even she knew who he was) and told me that she had no one else to take him.

I reluctantly agreed to take the call. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this is the exchange the operator had with him immediately before she passed him to me.

Operator: I'm going to pass you to our newest tech.

Vladimir: (shouts) I don't want somebody new! I want somebody who knows something!

Operator: (shouts back) She knows a lot, Vladimir!! (slams down receiver, passing him to me)

Vladimir's a fairly intelligent guy, but he gets frustrated super quick, and has a very hot temper. I swear, sometimes when he calls us he doesn't want his issue to be fixed, he just wants to let us know the torment our product is putting him through.

He calls us to be a martyr on the line and shout at us about how terrible the product is. And my first call with him was one of those. Luckily, the operator was right. I knew a lot. I had picked up on our products super quick, and the issue he called me about was a piece of cake. The hard part was getting him to shut up long enough to tell him the solution to his issue.

I managed to calm him down and fix his problem. But this backfired on me, hugely. Not long after that I had become his favorite tech. It had very quickly gone from, "I don't want to talk to her!!!" to, "Get me her! Nobody else can solve my problems, nobody!!"

I learned to read his moods like a medium reading tea leaves. Sometimes it was best to meet his fire with the cool exterior of a nurse at a mental hospital explaining why we don't hit other patients, and other times I could only get his attention by spitting flames back in his face.

Other techs could always tell when I was talking to Vladimir because they'd hear a one-sided conversation that went something like this:

Me: Vladimir. Pause. Vladimir. Pause. Vladimir. Pause. Vladimir. Pause. VLADIMIR!! Pause. You know I'm trying to help you, right? Do you want me to get this working for you, or not? Pause. Okay, then let me explain what's happening here...

Many times in my career I've compared what I do to the TV show House. Tech support is a lot like diagnosing a patient. I frequently tell my techs, "Customers lie," (playing on House's "Patients lie") and every time I say it I'm thinking of Vladimir. This is why I swear sometimes he'd call up just to try to prove to me that our product is bad, because he'd frequently lie to me about what did and didn't work.

He'd tell me whatever would mean he needed to be in a panicked state, up against a deadline that he could not possibly meet, all because our products suck. One time he called me up with an issue where I knew exactly what it was. I'd just solved it for another customer the day before. We were on a remote meeting and I could see his screen.

Vladimir: I tried everything and nothing works!

Me: Oh, I know what this is. You need to do .

Vladimir: I told you! I tried that and it didn't work!

Me: (thinks) That's impossible, it has to work when you do that.

Me: What exactly did you do?

Vladimir: I did and it didn't work! Nothing works! I told you!

Me: Can you do it again so I can see the steps you took?

Vladimir: I TOLD YOU I DID IT AND IT DIDN'T WORK!

Me: Vladimir, calm down. Can you do it one more time? Do it for me?

Vladimir: (calmer) Fine. I'll do it again for you. See, I do this, and I click here, and I don't see—Oh, it's working this time! You're the best! I always know when I call you up that you'll fix it for me!

A few years later, Vladimir's favorite support grunt (me) was promoted to manager. I was a working manager for a while, trying to manage my team and take calls at the same time, but that proved to not be very efficient, and after years of that I reduced the calls I directly took down to almost nothing. Vladimir was not pleased.

One day he was having a hissy fit and was demanding to speak to no one but me, even though he'd been told many times that I was now a manager and didn't take direct calls. This particular day I was in and out of meetings about another customer who was legitimately having serious issues, and I couldn't make time for Vladimir.

There were times when the operator literally couldn't find me because I was bouncing between conference rooms and upper management offices. At one point the operator came and found me physically. She was crying. She told me about how upset Vladimir was, and how he was demanding to speak to me and wouldn't let her pass him to anyone else on the team, and she didn't know what to do.

I was livid. I still didn't have time to call him back because that other customer's issue was far from over and there were political ramifications I had to juggle, but I knew just what to do. I took a few minutes to write Vladimir a scathing email. I told him that it was not the operator's fault that I wasn't available, shouting at her wouldn't make me come to the phone any faster, and that he was sabotaging his own attempts to get a solution by refusing to speak with the available qualified techs who were happy to help him with his issue.

I made sure he knew the operator's name, and that he'd made her cry. Then I went back to trying to keep my other customer from hemorrhaging blood. Not long after I sent that email, the operator found me again, and told me that this had happened...

Operator: Thank you for calling, how may I direct your call?

Vladimir: Is this ?

Operator: (recognizes his voice, tenses up) Yes, it is.

Vladimir: This is Vladimir. I just wanted to apologize. I did not mean to yell at you. That was completely unacceptable of me.

Operator: Wow... t-thank you! That means a lot to me. Pause. Do you want to talk to tech support?

Vladimir: No, thanks, I just called to apologize. Have a nice day. Click.

That was one of my proudest moments as a manager, making Vladimir call back just to apologize.

He still calls us up every once in a while. I haven't talked to him in years. He's found another favorite, but every once in a while he still tells her about the way I used to do things, and tells her to go ask me for answers. He still lies to her. Sometimes she comes to me and says:

Tech: Vladimir says the last time this happened you told him to do this.

Me: I absolutely did not.

Tech: I figured.

And sometimes I still hear from someone else's cube...

Vladimir... Vladimir... VLADIMIR! Listen to me!...

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4. Trust Me

I'm not tech support, but am tech support for my family.

Grandpa: My computer won't work and I keep getting this error message.

Me: I'll have a look at it for you.

Does a Google Search of error message

Me: You have some virus software. I'll install Malwarebytes and remove it for you.

Grandpa: I don't want you installing anything on my computer.

Me: But this will help.

Grandpa: No, I don't trust you, I'll take it to Best Buy.

Me: They're not IT, they're salesmen.

Grandpa: You don't know what you're talking about.

Surprise, surprise, it was never fixed, more malware was downloaded and now it won’t even boot up. He still won't let me wipe and reinstall.

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5. Going Above And Beyond

Pro tip: You don’t do any work on Friday in IT. If it goes wrong, you’ll be there all weekend fixing it. So, in the spirit of being careful, Friday afternoon drinks were a tradition. 4 pm Friday was happy hour, and the responsibility for arranging the drinks fell to me. No big deal right? Except that this was the day that I finally got an unlimited account with the local drinks store that would be billed to the company automatically. I wasn’t going to waste it.

I did not waste it. Our small 10-person company got rip-roaringly tipsy. There were cans stacked to the ceiling. Chips had fallen liberally to the floor. Someone couldn’t find a bin and filed a chicken wing in the file cabinet, under “C”, for chicken. It was one of /those/ sessions where everyone is just a total mess.

Around 9 pm, after five solid hours of partying, we broke off and headed into the night. I wandered down to a nearby bar and watched some bands play for an hour, downed another pitcher, and smiled to myself that the week had ended. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. The next event made my stomach churn.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I ran outside, tripping up the stairs as I went, managed to steady myself against a signpost, and answered. It was the CEO. The primary and secondary route servers were down. I stood frozen in time for an instant, the same way a deer looks at the headlights of an oncoming car, and then asked him to repeat himself.

CEO: YES BOTH THE ROUTE SERVERS ARE DOWN THE ENTIRE STATE IS OFFLINE GET IN THERE NOW FIX IT DO WHATEVER IT TAKES

I cannot stress enough that these two servers were the most important thing our company had. They, in and of themselves, were the primary thing around which our business existed, and all other things were secondary to them. My state was by far the biggest, with some of the biggest content providers in the country attached.

And this was the first full network outage we’d ever had. And it was my problem. And I’d consumed enough drinks that my blood could have been used as a fire accelerant. I yelled…something, and ran off in the direction of work. It was only when I bumped into the glass front doors before they opened that I started to realize how far gone I was.

When the elevator arrived at my floor, and I bumped into both sides of the hallway before making it to the door, I knew I was in trouble. That hallway was only 20 feet long. But it didn’t matter. My wallet hit the card reader. I’d made it.

Habit’s a funny thing. You get so used to the noises, clicks, beeps and responses that you realize something’s wrong in an instant. Something had gone wrong in this instant. There was no response from the card reader. An error, surely? Interference, something new in my wallet? I dug the card out, throwing my wallet on the ground, and badged it on its own.

Nothing. Not an “Access Denied” six beeps, or a “Card Format Unrecognized” five beeps. Nothing. The lights were on, but no one was home. A few feet away, the keypad for the alarm was lit up like a headlight convention. All the lights were on, the screen totally blacked out. No beeps for keypresses. Just…nothing.

The blood drained from my face. The route servers were inside, suffering some unknown fate, our customers probably getting more furious by the minute, and I could not open the door. AGAIN. No, sod it. I wasn’t taking any more of this security system’s issues. I was getting into this datacentre, security system be darned.

You all know what I’d tried before, and I knew as well, so I didn’t bother trying again. My tools, once again, were behind the locked door, and then the light went on over my head. I can’t…go through the door…I can’t…go AROUND the door…I can’t go…UNDER it…but can I go OVER it!? This is the logic of an in-his-cups engineer: Try all the dimensions!

There was a chair that we left outside for people working outside, so in my infinite wisdom, I dragged the chair over to the wall and lifted a ceiling tile. I then hoisted myself up into the ceiling. This did not work as well as I’d hoped because I was not very strong. I kicked and pushed off the wall, scrambling to push myself up onto what I now realized was a very thin wall.

For those not familiar with a suspended ceiling, metal rods are drilled into the concrete block above, and a grid pattern hangs below it. Inside those grids are weak, light tiles basically made of a combination of cardboard and plaster. Looking at the predicament I’d gotten myself into, it became apparent that the only things that were going to support my weight up here were the tie-rods into the concrete.

So I’d hold onto the rods with my hands, and lying prone in the ceiling, then distribute the rest of my weight along the horizontal connectors. I’d drop down onto the file cabinet at the far end of the room, about 15 feet away. This plan was flawless. And it worked…for about six of the required 15 feet, upon which point my hands slipped and I fell through the centre of the ceiling tile, towards the floor below.

By some insane miracle, I landed mostly on my feet, scrambling ungracefully to regain balance, coughing up ceiling tile dust and God knows what else. Probably asbestos. When the coughing stopped, I ran over to the security panel, pulled the power, and plugged it back in. It beeped a single happy POST beep and hummed to life, making normal sounds instead of the endless buzzing it had been making before.

My access restored, I quickly found the problem: A circuit breaker had tripped, and due to a wiring error on the part of an electrician at some point, both route servers had been wired into the same circuit. With a dustpan and brush, I set about cleaning up the nightmare my dramatic entrance had caused.

It was not a small mess—ceiling tiles are about five feet by two feet, and this one had exploded. It took about an hour. After finally sweeping up all the mess, putting the ceiling tile I’d broken to get up there back together, and replacing the one I’d broken getting down, I walked my butt out the door, feeling smug that no one would be the wiser for my ceiling entrance, and I’d have a grand story to tell. Or so I thought.

Monday morning rolled around and I was the last one in. My co-worker Aaron stared at me. Aaron: What the heck did you do to my desk?
Me: Wha?

I walked into the office and stared in horror. I don’t know what the heck I’d cleaned up but it looked like someone had hit a bag of flour with a baseball bat. It was everywhere. How gone was I? What did I spend an hour cleaning? And how in almighty did I diagnose an electrical circuit being mis-wired and split with no electrician tools of any kind? I have no idea.

But what I did know was how to break in. So I documented the procedure and added it to the Tech Support Wiki.

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6. That Took A Turn

This one is two weeks in the making. I was instructed to reduce spending in IT by a certain amount before the end of the year. The company as a whole needed to cut 3 million in spending by end of fiscal year because reasons. I was specifically handed a list of "potentials” (AKA potential people) as a recommendation to cut (AKA fire).

First thing I did was collect all of those people. Then I gave them two lists. The number of phone line accounts vs the number of employees, and the number of fax accounts that are inactive. For two weeks those men and women worked hard. They found over 12k phone accounts, that cost 22.95 each, that belong to old users but were still active.

We did the audit on the fax system by determining who has not received or sent a fax in six months. We found over 37k accounts inactive. Of those, 9k had never logged in, 12k were old users and nearly everyone else had set up their e-fax and never used it. The rest were people who rarely faxed as a backup. They wanted their accounts to stay.

So far we were at a little under 1 million a month being spent on useless things. But I wasn’t done yet. I started to go through Vendor programs looking for similar instances. Today came with the promise of a company-wide supervisor meeting. I was about to blow their minds.

CEO: I am very glad all of you are here. As you know, the end of fiscal year is approaching and we must trim the fat, so to speak, for year-end financials and the IRS.

He goes on like this for 20 minutes and then has everyone go around the table. We aren’t supposed to say things like. "We terminated X number of users". Instead we say things like, "We reduced salary cost by X percent”.

Accounting: Our department was able to reduce financial responsibility, in particular salary, by 12 percent, saving the company 80k a year.

CEO: OK very good. Marketing?

Marketing: We reduced financial responsibility by 45 percent. However, only one percent of that was salary. The rest was from programs we had used in the past but had stopped using. We were still paying for them, though.

Me: Which programs were those so I can mark them down?

In her response, she mentioned the stock program I had removed. The one we were paying for in IT. Not marketing. I let it slide.

Me: If anyone else has terminated a program, let me know please and I will take care of anything that needs to be taken care of on my end.

Two more departments tried to claim credit for my auditing work. When it finally came to my time, though, things really took off.

CEO: Well, we are just about out of time IT, I am sorry bu...

Me: I am sorry to interrupt but there is information in my report which is not only vital to this meeting, but will have major implications on everyone in this room and the company.

CEO: Ok. Proceed.

Me: As supervisor over the IT support area I have increased the salary responsibility by 20 percent as a way to save money.

HE: Come again?

Me: Using the list of suggested layoffs from HR, I gathered those exact people for a team to audit all cost-incurring systems that are utilized by the IT department.

Accounting: How does more employees save—

Me: interrupting him Using this audit, we have determined that there are over 100k accounts belonging to various programs, services, and paid software. These accounts either belonged to termed employees, people who did not even know they had the account, people who did not use the accounts ever, or people who simply changed computer systems.

CEO: So what does all of this mean?

Me: It creates the immediate savings of 2.3 million.

CEO: Whistles. 2.3 million. That is what I like to hear.

Me:  A month.

Yes, I dramatically revealed that 2.3 million was not annual, it was monthly.

CEO: So let me get this straight. We all here as a company have been wasting 24 million a year on things no one used, terminated employees, and discarded programs?

Me: Yes. And now it’s fixed.

CEO: Why was this allowed to happen?

ME: Your predecessor created this storm and we, as a company, inherited it. I never had the urge to look into these issues as they are not directly IT-related issues. I just refuse to fire my guys for no reason other than to save money. No IT employees are lost in this. In fact, we gained two. These two are part of a team in charge of all vendor accounts. They will approve, deny, create, change, and manage all vendor accounts. Look at it this way. Now we have an extra 24 million to spend on expansion of the company.

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7. Locked Out

I work an out-of-hours service desk that provides general IT support to a few different businesses when their normal IT people have gone home. These businesses are often hundreds of miles away and my access to their internal systems is usually anywhere from extremely limited to nonexistent.

This is a gem of a call that I received and typical of the level of stupidity we have to deal with.

Me: Service De—

Caller: I can't get into the building, open the door!

Me: I'm sorry, you're calling the IT emergency line, I can't open a door for you I'm based very far away.

Caller: SO YOU CAN'T HELP ME! WHY CAN'T YOU HELP ME?

Me: Ma'am, this is an IT emergency line for reporting major system failure or general out-of-hours IT support, as I've said I'm not based on site so can't open a door for you. This was (I say the building address), correct?

Caller: YES!

Me: Okay, well, it closes at 9 pm, it's now 11:30 pm. That'll be why it's locked.

Caller: BUT I'M HOSTING AN IMPORTANT CONFERENCE CALL IN A MEETING ROOM!

Me: Have you arranged this with management?

Caller: NO!

Me: We'll Ma'am if there's no prior arrangement with management, the building will have been locked down by security as normal as nobody knew you wanted to use the meeting room out of hours.

Caller: WHY WON'T YOU JUST OPEN THE DOOR ARE YOU STUPID?

Me: I'm not based on site as I've already said multiple times, I'm unable to physically open a door from miles away for you. You'll need to speak to your management team for further assistance as this isn't an IT issue and we currently have another caller waiting so I'm afraid I'll have to end this call.

Caller: HOW DARE YOU! YOU'RE GOING TO HANG UP ON ME. ARE YOU STUPID? I'M REPORTING YOU.

Me: Okay Ma'am, as I've said, this isn't an IT emergency, you're absolutely free to speak to someone, however I'm ending this call now as it's not IT related and we have other people in the queue who need assistance, goodbye.

Caller: YOU FU—

Me: click

For those wondering; this particular business has not provided us with any escalation contacts for their security team. If it's not IT-related, we're totally free to drop that call and move on especially if we have other callers queuing.

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8. Well, D’oh

This story happened when I first joined my current company, and while I was not the one that actually had to deal with the problem, I was by-standing and heard the juicy parts from my mentor himself. Exactlytwo2 days before a major festive celebration, we get a call from a user who is panicking because his equipment failed and production had come to a screeching halt.

Now, I work in a company that services equipment in a country with a distinct west half and east half, separated by the sea. This is important, as we are based in the western half. The client was a major refining plant for the petroleum industry. As we normally do, we go through the usual troubleshooting steps.

Did you this turn on, is this connection active, yada yada. But the only answer coming from the user was "yes yes yes" with nothing seemingly wrong. This went on for about half an hour when suddenly our boss comes in. The client's Head of Production had just called him and was apparently livid.

It turns out the machine had stopped working for more than an hour, and the production was severely interrupted until the problem got fixed. Now everyone was in a panic, as every hour the production was interrupted, the client was losing money in the tens of thousands and the client had the right to sue us for any damages that occur as a result of equipment downtime.

The Head of Production was not happy that their internal team was not able to fix the problem, and the client was not making any headway in fixing the problem via phone. To resolve the issue, the head demanded that support be performed immediately onsite. There was a big problem with this. Coming back to my earlier points: First, it's the festive season. Second, they are across the sea, so traveling was a bit of a problem. Still, the head said money was not an issue and they would pay anything for immediate onsite support.

Cue my mentor, who was handed the unsavory task of handling the emergency. Immediately he grabbed his tools and sped off to the airport to grab the next available flight. At the same time, his wife had to pack some clothes for him from home and rushed to pass it to him at the airport.

Due to the festive season, my mentor didn't have choices for flights so in the end he had to take a business-class flight that cost a ton of money. Upon arriving, he was whisked from the airport with a driver, sent immediately to the refinery, and granted immediate security clearance to enter the plant (anyone working in petroleum would know how big a deal this is).

By this time, a good six hours or so had passed since we received the call and it was well into the night. Greeting him in front of the equipment was the Head of Production, the original client who called, and various other senior management personnel, all anxious to see what the problem is.

My mentor is a guy with no chill, and he was also the one originally speaking to the client on the phone. He recounts this part.

Head: So, what is the problem?

Mentor: Wait, let me take a look (He starts to go through the normal troubleshooting checklists, but stops almost immediately)

Mentor: Are you sure you checked everything I asked you to?

Client: Yes! Everything, word for word!

Mentor: Are you absolutely sure?

Client: Yes!

Mentor: Do you remember what was the third thing I asked you check over the phone?

Client: Why does it matter? Just fix the problem!

Mentor: The first thing we normally check is to make sure the PC is turned on (points at the CPU LED indicator)

Mentor: The second thing we check is to make sure the equipment is on (points to the machine LED)

Mentor: The third thing (he brings his hand to a gas control valve, rotates it, and a loud hiss is heard as the gas line pressurizes, and the equipment beeps) is to make sure the gas is on.

Client: ….

Head: ….

Everyone else in the room: ….

Mentor: I would like to go have dinner now

After more awkward silence, the head thanks my mentor for his effort and asks the driver to bring him somewhere for dinner. You'd think the story ends here, but there's more! By the time the mentor finished his dinner, it was well past midnight, so he checked himself into a hotel for the night.

The next day he went back to the airport and found out that all flights were completely sold out for the next four days due to the festive traveling. He called my boss to inform him that he was basically stranded, and my boss just coolly said to him "Well, consider this as having a free holiday paid by the client".

So he checks into the most luxurious hotel in the area and spends the next four days basically on vacation before coming back to work. In total we billed the client for ~US$10,000 for the flights, hotel, emergency arrangements, allowances etc. All for 10 seconds to check LEDs and turn a valve.

This is not including the losses from halting the production. It's still one of our most memorable stories that we recount to new hires or clients in our industry. Sometimes we wonder what happened to the client, but he was transferred out of his role not too long after this incident.

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9. Catching On

Like most people, I too have parents who are largely tech-illiterate. But over the last two years, I've been making a conscious effort to get my parents (especially my mom) to understand computers better. I'm a big believer in the ol' give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day, teach him how to fish, and he can have food for life mentality.

So rather than showing mom how to resolve her every problem, we go through a process of: what do you think is wrong? and how are you going to solve it?

Now admittedly, things do get incredibly frustrating in this process, and it can often take ~1/2 hour up to 1 hour to resolve issues. BUT, it has slowly been working. So today, mom came to me with a problem, and as usual, seemed to explode it way out of proportion.

Mom: My phone is broken.

Me: What do you mean?

Mom: The camera doesn't work.

Me: What do you mean exactly?

Mom: When I go to the camera app, it says connection cannot be established

Me: So have you tried anything to resolve it?

Mom: I turned it off and on again. But that didn't work.

Me: Uh huh.

Me: So then I booted the phone into recovery mode.

Me: (cue disbelief)

Mom: And then I wiped the cache partition.

Me: (sustained disbelief)

Mom: But when I rebooted the phone, it still didn't work. So I thought the problem might be larger than that.

Me: ...

Mom: So I went onto several forums, and a lot of other people describing similar problems said it turned out to be a hardware fault.

Me: How the heck did you know how to do that?

Mom: I Googled it.

Me: (cue jaw drop) So...I guess your phone is broken.

Mom: Yeah. That's what I told you in the beginning.

This is the same person who two years ago didn't even know how to use the volume buttons on her phone, now troubleshooting all on her own...Mom, I am so proud of you. You've now been granted admin privileges.

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10. A Big Mouse Problem

I owned a computer shop. We donated to a local county nature center by installing a network on the campus, which consisted of several one-story buildings elevated a few feet above the ground on pilings. We ran the cables and installed the networks in the required locations, and installed and configured the routers.

We have learned that it never works to give things for absolutely free because then there is no end to what people will ask for, so we asked them to pay the wholesale cost of the cable… that’s it. Everything else, including labor, was free.

About a year later they started having random network ports go intermittently bad, and the problem seemed to be getting worse. They asked us to troubleshoot. We went out, found the problem was that rodents had bitten into some cables in multiple locations. Sometimes but not always this severed one of the wires at the point of the bite, but sometimes the wire would still work.

This intermittent fault took several hours to figure out. Since they had not actually bitten chunks out of the cables, just bitten into it, the cable appeared undamaged visually. The way we found the problem was to run a hand down the cable looking for a kink or something and feeling the little nick. Close examination showed the bite. Once we knew the problem, it required rewiring a few runs and telling them they had a bad mouse problem, and to get an exterminator.

The diagnosis and repairs took 16 man-hours on-site (two people, all day). For this we charged only for the actual cost of the replacement wire itself. I couldn’t believe what happened next. About 30 days later, I get a call from the county accounts payable.

AP: “We have found conclusive evidence of fraudulent billing on invoice (the bill for the network diagnosis and repair) from your company. Since the amount is under $100 and this is the first instance of a problem from you, if you agree with the assessment and promise never to do this again, we will ban you from doing business with the county for one year. If you agree, we will send paperwork to that effect”.

Me: “(!!) No way will I agree to that. This was a donation of our time, and we only charged for the wire so it wasn’t a freebie. We did nothing wrong. Why do you think we did?”

AP: “We ran the diagnosis and bill by our IT department as a random check. They said there was no possible way your explanation of what was wrong and what you did to fix it could be true. You can dispute this, and we will have a hearing. But if we do this and it goes against you, you can be permanently banned from doing business and may even face charges”.

Me: “I want the hearing”.

So here we are at the hearing, before a county board of something or other. This is where it all came out.

AP to their IT guy: “Look at this invoice. Do you remember us asking your opinion of this? What was that opinion?”

IT Guy: “Yes. It said the network was losing connectivity to specific drops, and the problem was due to a bad mouse. I said there was no way a bad mouse would have that effect, especially on other computers on other ports”.

Council Guy to me: “Do you disagree with this? Can you explain how a bad mouse could do that?”

Me: “Yes. It bites the wires”.

IT Guy: “…What?”

Me: “Look at the invoice. It does not say "a computer had a defective mouse”. It says there was "a bad mouse problem”. Rodents. Bit. The. Wires. We installed new wires. We donated our labor to do so, and provided the wire at cost”.

IT Guy: “That…does make sense”.

AP: “Well, OK. We’ll drop this one. But we’re going to be watching you!”

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11. The Phantom Hand

This happened last week:

Boss: Hey, I didn't know we could print on our fax machine

Me: Sorry? That's not a printer, just a fax machine

Boss: Nope, it prints as well. (This is all while showing me some pages that came from the fax machine). I printed this document and it came out of the fax machine instead of the printer. I was surprised myself.

Me: It is not possible. The fax machine is just a fax machine.

Boss: Well, then where did this come from?

Me: I have no idea, but the fax is not a printer.

Boss: I will prove it to you. I will print this other document.

Me: Go ahead.

10 minutes later

Boss: Hey, the fax machine is finally printing. It took a bit but it is now printing that document I told you.

Me: Seriously? This can't be. The fax machine is not a printer. Let me see and I try to figure out what's going on.

I printed out the journal report from the fax machine and I see the last entries are from a number in Hong Kong. I check the number and it belongs to our branch in Hong Kong, so I give them a call. Finally the puzzle is solved.

Me: Hey boss, I know what's going on with the fax machine.

Boss: You realized it is a printer as well?

Me: Have you been to Hong Kong lately?

Boss: Yes, I was there last week for some meetings.

Me: Did you try to print anything while you were there?

Boss: Yes.

Me: How did you manage to get your printouts to come out of the printer over there?

Boss: I had to configure their printer in my notebook

Me: Have you checked you are not still printing in the Hong Kong printer?

Boss: Why?

Me: Well, you have been printing all the time in the Hong Kong printer. The printer is beside a secretary, who thought your documents were very important, so she faxed them to us.

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12. The Old Switcheroo

This happened during my tenure at a mid-sized call center in 2001. Like most call centers, a ticket was required for any IT problem mainly because we had around 500 users online at any one time. Most of the users understood this and followed the rules pretty well. Except for the new supervisors.

Most were in their early 20s and it was usually their first time in any type of position of power. Hey, now that they have an inbox/outbox and their own stapler, they must be important. Liz lived up to this to a ridiculous degree. Every problem led to a panicked call to us followed by a dash to our office when told to open a ticket.

"This has to be fixed right now" she would wail "I'm a supervisor". Since most of her problems would be resolved with a couple of keystrokes, I decided to nip this problem in the bud. As soon as she would call, I knew I had a couple of minutes as she made a mad dash down the stairs to pound on our door to plead her case in person.

Now Liz was just a stunningly good-looking girl so most of my co-workers (also in their 20s and as awkwardly nerdy as you would imagine) would jump to help her. I, however, was in my early 40s and fortunately immune to her looks. So I took to using a remote desktop to fix her problem while I knew she was heading towards our office.

I would begrudgingly follow her upstairs to "see" the problem, which was already fixed. She would swear that it wasn't doing whatever before and that it must have fixed itself. After about the fifth time I did this, I dropped this on her. "Liz, I'm a happily married man and I just don't like you like that. If you don't stop trying to get me alone like this I'm going to have to go to HR".

Liz started using the help desk after that, and me and my co-workers shared a laugh every time one of her tickets came in.

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13. No Reply

Me: Hello, Service Desk

Caller: You need to help me right now!

Me: ...

Caller: HELLO!

Me: Help you with what please...you need to explain your issue

Caller: EVERY TIME I EMAIL SOMEONE FROM THIS ONE COMPANY I GET A MESSAGE TELLING ME TO NOT REPLY. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME? PLEASE FIX THIS!

Me: Well, if this is an external company I suspect there's not much we can do. May I remotely connect and take a look?

Caller: Whatever just fix it

Me: Okay please show me the messages that you've sent and received...

The caller brings up her sent box with about 50 messages sent to donotreply@.com and then her inbox with about 50 automatic replies saying she has contacted an unmonitored inbox.

Caller: SEE! YOU NEED TO GET THIS RESOLVED ASAP RIGHT NOW!

Me: You're sending emails to a do not reply address. This is why it's happening. As you can see from the multiple emails they've sent back to you. You should be using a different email to contact them.

Caller: DO YOU THINK I'M STUPID? STOP AVOIDING THE ISSUE!

Me: Can you see my mouse?

Caller: YES!

Me: Can you see this address in the "To" field?

Caller: sigh YES!

Me: What does it say?

Caller: donotrep...

Caller: oh

Caller: click

Yes, goodbye caller, you have a fantastic day now!

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14. It Wasn’t Me

I used to be a shift team lead for a hosted outsourcing company that provided our own software to various financial institutions. Some of these companies were very small and only had a single box. Some were larger and had a pair of boxes. Others had more for different functions.

Some did all their own development, others paid us to do their development and bug-fixing work for them. One of the most important things we handled was physical backups. Each box had its own backup schedule, where it would back up to IBM Ultrium tapes. Each morning, one of our tasks was to remove the tape from the previous night's backup, scan the barcode and send them offsite to our secure storage facility.

Once that was done, we'd make sure that the scratch tape for the next scheduled backup was loaded and ready to go. This one company we dealt with had both a live and test environment, and had their own in-house developers. Initially, they were both backed up nightly but due to a cost-limiting exercise, the IT manager on their side submitted a change request to limit the test system to one backup per week, to be carried out on a Friday night.

No problem. Amend the backup schedules and update the documentation to reflect the change. All sorted. I wasn't there when all of this happened, but it was all included and documented on the shift handover report when our team took over, so we knew we didn't have to load tapes for this particular box until Friday.

About eight months later, we received a ticket from one of their developers. This happened on a Thursday afternoon. I bet you can see where this is going. 

"Help! The library on the test system was just accidentally deleted. Please can this be restored from last night's backup urgently?"

My tech who received the ticket confirmed with me correctly that they were now on weekly backups on this particular box, and the most recent backup we had was almost a week old. My tech relays this back to the user in an email. The user calls back immediately.

"No! That's not good enough, if that's the most recent backup you have that means we've lost almost a week's worth of critical work. I need to speak to your supervisor immediately!"

I duly took over the call. "Your colleague has just informed me that you've stopped backing up this system daily! This is unacceptable”.

"As I heard my colleague explain, the backup schedules are decided by your company. This decision was taken on your side to reduce the backup frequency from daily to weekly. You need to speak to your IT department for clarity on this”.

"I'll do that, you haven't heard the last of this!"

About half an hour later, another one of my guys gets a call asking to be put straight through to me. "Yes, this is John Smith, the Systems Manager from Company XYZ. I've just had an interesting conversation with one of my developers stating that you've stopped doing our backups that we're paying you to perform. Just for your information this call is being recorded and I've got a conference call with our solicitors in 15 minutes whereby if this is not resolved satisfactorily by that time, we will be filing a lawsuit for the cost of our lost development work, and a recording of this call will be used as evidence”.

Wow, talk about aggressive. I explain to the guy that eight months ago, someone at their company submitted a change request that we reduce the backup frequency on this system from daily to weekly, and this was carried out as requested. It escalated from there.

"Well that's just insane. Nobody here would have done that. I need the name of the person who submitted the request as well as the person on your side who actioned the request without verifying that the request was received from an authorized member!"

"OK, well I wasn't on-shift when that change was made but it will have all been documented on our ticketing system, bear with me a second. Ah, here we go. So the request was made on April 12th this year by a John Smith, Systems Manager. That's you, right?"

"Uhm, that's not right, there must be another person here with that name”.

"You've got two John Smiths, both working as Systems Managers? Does that not get confusing?"

"No, erm. I don't recall asking you to do this”.

"Well, we have the email saved to the original ticket, along with several emails back and forth where we asked you to clarify a couple of points, and also a scanned copy of the signed change form where you've written your name and signature. Did you want me to forward these over for your solicitors? Although I suspect you might already have copies of them if you check your sent items folder”.

"Erm, no that's fine thanks. I'll let the developers know that you can't recover the file”.

"That'd be great thanks, is there anything else I can help you with today Mr Smith?"

He hung up. I printed off the ticket and dug out a copy of the call recording to forward around to the team, and I added this to my training guides for new hires as an example of why documenting everything is critical.

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15. Unicorns Do Exist

Some time ago, I got possibly the best bug report ticket ever filed. A piece of software I'd written would completely mess up under extremely specific circumstances, upon encountering web pages written in a way I thought completely insane. What I naively didn't realize is that a lot of web pages are written in a completely insane way.

So, one user happened to run the software on one of these little HTML monstrosities, and it broke. An average user, if they would even consider such extreme measures as reporting the bug, would write something like: Expected behavior: It works. Actual behavior: It doesn't Reproduction steps: Visit a website.

I've seen way too many tickets like this. This user wasn't an "average" user though. This guy was a unicorn. The bug report included a link to a tiny page hosted on a VPS of his that would cause the bug to occur. He had enough knowledge and did enough testing on his own to write a minimal example that still triggered it. I still have that ticket printed out and pinned to the wall right above my desk.

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16. Everyday Excellence

I was thrust a laptop by an angry executive early this morning with him complaining that his laptop had locked up again. Normally we have a ticketing system in place for any and all tech issues. However, when an exec wants something he bypasses the system, because he can.

So I go through the normal routine of diagnosis and through my efforts I see that the issue is simply bad memory. I replace the memory and take the unit back to the exec. That’s when it went from annoying to infuriating. He tells me he refuses to take the unit unless I have made 100 percent sure that everything that was wrong with it is fixed.

Internally I wanted to punch this man, but I held it in and simply asked him what other issues he was having and pulled out a notepad. He ran through a load of issues that all screamed "just clean out your applications” to me and I took his unit back to my desk.

After going through and cleaning out installed programs used literally once and never again and cleaning out junk data, I found that a folder in his roaming was reading 12GB, but was hidden. I log in with my credentials and enable viewing hidden or protected files and I see that the hidden folder was from 2014.

Basically, it was just a bunch of pictures and looked to be a temporary folder created by one of the old programs I removed. Some kind of picture manager or some such. Normally when we see personal pictures on the machine, we are supposed to delete them immediately. Now, no one EVER does this as we are not that big of jerks in the IT dept. Plus this guy was an exec, so I decided to just move the pictures to his desktop under a folder I created called Old Pics.

I took the laptop to him and informed him of the pictures, telling him I left it up to him if he wanted them deleted or not. He thanked me for my time and I went back to work. This ended up having an enormous effect. About an hour later him and his wife, who had come up to join him for lunch, came over to my desk. He seemed very happy and she was crying.

Now normally when I have nothing to do and a boss comes over, I stand up to greet them. Just the way I was raised, I guess. I was not prepared for what followed and was totally shocked by the outcome. The lady wanted to thank me for finding the pictures and the exec reached out to shake my hand, thanking me profusely before pulling me into a hug in front of the entire IT department.

I awkwardly hugged him back and he let me go, embarrassed. My eyes are wide, flabbergasted and totally unprepared for this, extremely out-of-character moment from this guy. Barely able to hold back the tears, his wife tells me that the pictures I recovered were thought to be lost. In 2012, their four-year-old son had passed of leukemia and the pictures I recovered were taken right before his diagnosis at three years of age.

Because of a house fire a few years ago, they thought they lost every last photo of their son. Apparently those were the photos I had recovered. His wife reached out to hug me and everyone in the IT department stared at their screens hard with puffy eyes as we were all not expecting this kind of emotional event today.

My boss came out of his office to personally thank me and forwarded an email chain to me ahead of a company-wide email that the CEO sent out basically retelling the tale while naming me personally. He threw in words about striving for excellence and the unexpected results of everyday excellence.

I had to turn off my Skype for business as the attaboys kept coming in one after the other. My boss told me to take my lunch early since the flood of messages was making it hard to do my job.

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17. Opening Up The World

I work in a store that offers technical support for consumer-level technology. A few days ago, I had an elderly gentleman that we'll call Pete in. Our receptionist made him a walk-in appointment earlier that day and I ended up taking it. When I opened it all up, the only notes I saw were "Third-party software, hard of hearing”.

I walked up to Pete and greeted him, saw that he was staring at my lips as to read them, then I asked if he knew American Sign Language (ASL). I've been trying to learn ASL it as a sort of side-hobby for a few months now. Pete signs "yes" and we continue the conversation in Sign. Turns out the issue is with Skype, which keeps crashing on his roughly five-year old tablet, and he's been having difficulty video-calling his wife who is Deaf.

She lives in a different continent. She travelled there for a temporary work opportunity and would be there for two years. This being the mid-way point, it's now been one year since Pete's seen his wife. Skype is the only way they both know how to communicate efficiently long-distance, as neither are comfortable with email or other text-based services.

As I go through verifying that he knows his password and making sure there's a backup of his device, Pete and I are signing back and forth and his face was completely lit up. I felt so good to be able to, albeit slowly, speak with him in his language and give him the time he deserved, even if his reason for visiting us had little to do with our physical product.

Once everything was verified and backed up, I uninstalled Skype and reinstalled it, had Pete sign in, and use Skype's test call to ensure it wouldn't crash (as it would immediately upon call creation before). Test call went through fine. Sweet. Then the magic happens.

I looked down to write a few extra notes and began to hear some coughs. I looked up and there was Pete, crying while waving to his wife through Skype. Pete called her and she picked up! He introduced me to her and told me that it'd been three weeks since they'd heard from each other. I stepped away to give him a moment alone.

It's moments like these that keep me going as a technician. Even though I barely touched Pete's tablet, "fixing" it made me feel like a hero. It's been a few days and I can still see his smile.

Just thought I'd share, thanks for reading.

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18. Let Me Upgrade You

I work as an Executive Support Technician for a large company. I have a team of eight people under me and we support high-ranking executives and their administrative assistants. Because of the nature of our work, we have the ability to "get things done" that the standard help desk cannot.

We can force upgrades that would otherwise be denied, get things expedited, skip the normal procedures and talk directly with the people who fix the issues. While we are executive support, there are still levels. When the CEO is in town, one of us is camped outside of wherever he might be in case there is any sort of issue.

For lower people, we make sure things get done as quick as possible, but it's not a drop everything situation. As we prepped for the releases of the new iPhones, we braced for the flood of "I NEED this" that inevitably happens. We slot in orders immediately for the top of the pyramid guys and then work our way down, replacing or sometimes having to tell them that they have to wait because the device they have is too new to warrant replacing.

So on Monday, the assistant of a lower-end executive put in a request to get both herself and the executive new 256 Gig iPhone Xs. The executive was put on the approval list, with a wait, but the assistant was denied. She had just been issued an iPhone 7 a few months ago, and she began to raise heck about "I have to support him, so I need to have the exact same phone etc".

Still denied. On Tuesday, I get a ticket from the assistant. Her iPhone will not turn on, and she requires a replacement with and attached ticket for an iPhone X request. I send one of my drones out to investigate. It got weird fast. I immediately get a text saying I have to get out there.

I get out there and the iPhone is wet, not just wet, but dripping wet, like just pulled out of a glass of water wet with a screen that could only be called heavily cracked. The assistant states, "I was using it and it fell into my water bottle". So we take the phone back to our area and I've called my manager over and we explain it.

It's obvious what has happened. We've toweled it off and when we turn it over, water drizzles out of the cracked screen. Well as luck would have it, we have spares, so I pluck a nice 64 gig Rose Gold iPhone 6s that was returned when the previous owner departed the company. I call and have the SIM card reprovisioned, then I re-assign the phone in Airwatch and I have the phone returned to the assistant.

10 minutes later, said assistant is at our door, ranting, screaming and saying that she can't work like this, she needs a new phone and if we don't give her one the “EXECUTIVE" will make us give her one. I step in and tell her "A permanent replacement is just beginning the process, we have had to issue you this phone as a loaner so you can continue working until a permanent replacement is sourced". It did not go the way she wanted. 

Cue Wednesday. The approval process has come back denied for her replacement, and the loaner phone is now her permanent phone. This info is relayed to the assistant, who is fuming, lots of "EXECUTIVE WILL HEAR ABOUT THIS" and statements of "I can't believe this is happening to me, how will I work”?

Wednesday afternoon, same assistant, new ticket: iPhone broken, need replacement. I head out myself to see the issue and the phone looks like it was dragged behind a semi-truck for 100 miles. The screen is shattered, a big chunk is missing out of the top near the camera, big dents are in the back.

I calmly ask "What happened? This phone was perfect this morning”? The reply: "Well, since you gave me an old phone, my case didn't fit and it slipped out of my hands and fell down the stairs”. “Well ok, could you tell me when and what stairwell this happened in”?

She does, and I take the mangled phone, I grab my manager and we head off to the security office, and we pull the tapes. Oh, the footage was so good. On the video we see the assistant walking up the stairwell (concrete stairs, metal hand rail, your typical big building non-public stairwell). She reaches the top and proceeds to fling the phone, like one would skip a stone, down from the 6th floor to the mid-floor landing.

It lands, and then she steps on it and kicks it down to the 5th floor. It bangs off the metal fire door and she picks it up, examines it, and then tosses it down the stairs to towards the 4th floor, bouncing off a few steps before landing on the mid landing between 5 and 4.

She picks the device up and pries a large section of something off the phone (we suspect this was the chunk missing on the camera) and then heads back up the stairs, running the phone against the cinder block wall as she climbs. Welp.

We grab a copy of the video, we head straight to HR, we sit with the personnel director, we show her the video, we show her the two damaged iPhones, we show her the tickets, I relay her demanding an iPhone X and how she has taken to destroying company property to get it.

Termination follows, however the she has gone home for the day. Meanwhile her accounts are disabled, her security badge flagged.

7:30 am today, the assistant attempts to get into the building and her badge does not work, so she has to walk to the security office. The security officer takes the badge and walks her to HR.

8 am, the security officer and two members of HR are escorting the assistant out of the building. She's alternating between yelling and crying, and demanding that the executive be called and that she's being framed.

As she's brought through the main foyer, I'm on the second floor balcony that overlooks the entrance. She looks up at me, curses me, and is gone. Both phones, her laptop and other equipment have been placed with the company lawyers as a precaution.

Maybe I'll buy my team pizza for lunch today, seems like the right thing to do.

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19. Turn A Blind Eye

The repair company I work at is a small business and has two locations, one of which is in an interesting area. As such, we get a lot of interesting people. This guy came in yesterday.

User: "Hi, can you show me how to access someone's text messages? I found some tutorials on YouTube but they didn't work"
I assume he wants to back up the messages, so I start walking him through how to sync his phone
User: "No no, I want someone else's messages"
Me: "Wait, this isn't a device you own”?
User: "No"
Me: "Do you have consent from the owner to read their messages”?
User: "No, that's why I need you to show me how to see them"
Me: "Sir, if you don't have permission from the other person to read their messages I can’t access them. I can't show you how to do that here"
User: "Well do you know anywhere else that can"
Me: "No sir, I'm not aware of any other repair shops that can help you do that, it's a federal crime. I can pull up the relevant laws regarding unauthorized access to someone's personal devices if you'd like"

Cue standard rant of "you guys are supposed to be the experts" as I stare blankly into the distance, losing more faith in humanity.

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20. The Bing

Another tale from my out of hours IT desk.

Me: Hi, Service Desk

Caller: GOOGLE BING ISNT WORKING IS THE SYSTEM DOWN ??? ITS VERY IMPORTANT I USE THE BING

Note: yes, the caller actually said "the Bing".

Me: I'm sorry. Can you confirm which system you're referring to as I'm unfamiliar with that

Caller: Google Bing! Really how can you not know this

Me: Google Bing is not a system we support out of hours, nor in hours. This sounds like a mash up between two different search engines. What exactly is happening?

Caller: I need Google Bing to do my job! This is unacceptable. I can't find Google Bing anywhere on my PC. How dare you remove this! I need you to fix Google Bing immediately!

Me: May I remote in to take a look

Turns out that caller had a shortcut on her desktop called "Google Bing". This opened the Bing Search homepage in Google Chrome. She'd accidentally changed the name of the shortcut from "Google Bing" to something else and hence could not find it.

Me: Okay , that has been renamed now so you're good to go

Caller: Next time don't mess around with my computer! I know you guys changed this, I'm not stupid! I have a certificate of proficiency in computering.

Me: okay thanks for calling…click.

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21. Pay It Forward

My story starts on what was a normal day taking calls on the front line for a large cable company. The job pays well and for the most part the people I deal with are fairly nice to talk to. Quite often we'll get calls from seniors (especially in the morning) who have equipment issues such as "snow on screen" or "no signal" on their TV sets connected to our digital equipment.

Now my heart does go out to some of these folks because up until recently (past few years) we would supply straight analog cable to many homes. However, most cities we service nowadays require our digital equipment to receive channels, and this has caused a lot of frustration with older people who don't know how to operate said equipment. So often times we get customers who are repeat offenders with long ticket histories of these types of issues.

I get a call from an older gentleman who's quite bitter and mean right off the bat. He doesn't like that I asked for his address and telephone number to verify the account, hates that he has to speak with a machine before reaching an agent, etc. I have some experience handling these types of customers. But this call was going to be very different.

I spent over 45 minutes with this guy (we'll call him Mr Smith) trying to get his TV set connected to the digital box properly so he could receive a picture. No luck. He was getting clearly frustrated by the whole ordeal and started blaming me for not being able to do my job properly, how I was useless, etc.

Whatever. Like I said, I've dealt with this before so I tried my best not to take it personally, but eventually I had to ask him if we could book a service tech to the home (a courtesy call) to get his TV working correctly. Unfortunately, our booking calendar was showing an appointment three days out. That's when he dropped this on me:

"Don't bother sending a technician, because I'll be dead by then. I'm 94 and TV is the only thing I have left, are you really going to make me wait for a tech”? I instantly felt bad. I mean, I've heard every complaint in the book as to why people don't want to wait for a tech but this one kind of got to me. I'm in my mid-20s so honestly I can't even imagine how it must feel to utter those words.

I spoke with my supervisor, who said they'd see if we could get someone out earlier...but we couldn't promise anything. So I let Mr Smith know and he was predictably not very happy with my answer. At that point it almost sounded like he started to cry and went into how he has no family left, and no friends that come visit—this was after I asked if there was anyone in his building that might be able to help.

Man. I felt terrible. I knew what I had to do. I took it upon myself to ask Mr Smith if I could pay a visit. He lived in a small city over from where I was, not very far to drive. He was a little shocked I was willing to do this, but sounded thankful I was willing to come out and help him personally.

I head over, get to the residence and meet him. Within 30 seconds I had the cable running again (simple input change) and even brought him a simplified remote for his set top box to avoid this problem in the future. That's when he started crying. He goes into how he hasn't actually spoken or really interacted with anyone for years.

He gave me a hug and told me how thankful he was that I came out and helped him, and told me how sorry he was for being so mean earlier on. I said it was no problem and I was happy to help, and that was it, I left. Three weeks later, my supervisor comes to my desk and asks me if I could come speak with her for a bit about an account for "Mr Smith".

Turns out, he sent the cable company a letter outlining how thankful he was for helping him with his issue and how it really "made an old man happy again for once in a very long time". The letter was framed and put on our front entrance to retail. I guess the moral of this story is no matter how nasty someone is to you over the phone, sometimes they're not always a terrible person and just going through a lot.

I still think about Mr Smith occasionally when I get those nasty customers and it makes me feel a little better.

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22. Down To The Last Cent

I had a customer call me up in mobile tech support with the problem that his data wasn't working for 20 minutes. Pretty quickly I find out why: He had accidentally turned off his data on the phone menu, which happens a lot and usually the customer goes "oops silly me". Except this customer starts demanding compensation for his time without service and being very rude about it.

After a couple of minutes he's not getting that this is not something we do. So I get an idea. I tell him I'm going to go speak to my manager. I went up to my manager, explain what's happening, and he says the customer's being ridiculous.

I said, "Listen I have this idea for him, are you okay with this”? then explain my idea.

"Are you kidding? Let me get on call listening before you go back, I wanna hear this”.

I go back to the phone, he gave me the thumbs up that he was ready to listen, and I proceed.

"Right sir, I just had a word with my manager and I've managed to swing something for you, so let's break this down. You pay us 39.99 a month for three services, calls, texts, and data, so let's divide your bill by three. That gives us 13.33, so let's divide further by 30 days, which gives 44 cents for your daily data. Now you had your data turned off for 20 minutes but for the purpose of this I'll round it up to an hour, so we just need to divide that 44 cents by 24 hours. So that means you’re looking at compensation of 1.8 cents so let's just say 2”.

I looked over at my manager during this and he was covering his mouth laughing. Customer goes; "Are you having a laugh”? "No sir, the math is there”. "...Go on then, I'll take it".

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23. I’m Your Man

This happened to a colleague of a colleague, who I’ll call “Hero”. So Hero is happily speeding along in his car, running a few yellow lights because he’s a bit late, etc. Finally, the law catches up to him and pulls him over. Here's how the conversation went:

Officer: Can I see your driving license, please?

Hero (with smug grin): Certainly. Here it is, officer.

The officer takes license back to motorcycle and speaks into radio.

Hero: It's not going to help you any, though.

Officer: (with no reaction): What do you mean?

Hero: (with a wider grin): The server you have to check it against is down.

Officer (still no reaction): And why do you say that?

Hero: Because I'm the guy they called to get on site and get it up again.

Our hero did not get a fine this time.

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24. Start Em While They’re Young

I spent three awful years working in a call center, two of which I was roped into acting as tech support despite the fact that I'd originally been hired to sell insurance. The calls I got made me weep for humanity. After my son was born, I decided not to return from maternity leave.

I just couldn't handle staying up all night with a screaming newborn, and then coming in to work and calmly asking people how the heck they can't see the huge red "CREATE AN ACCOUNT" button smack-dab in the middle of the page, but they can find our phone number in tiny font up in the corner to call and demand that we do it for them.

Well, you guys, my baby is now a toddler, and I just had that misty-eyed, hand-on-heart, proud parent moment that you always hear about. My son was playing with his Brilliant Baby Laptop, which is basically a bright plastic clamshell that plays music when the baby mashes the keyboard.

Suddenly, the music stopped. The baby was confused. Further button-mashing had no effect. I watched from the sofa as my son frowned, experimentally smashing the buttons harder. Then, as I looked on in amazement and pride, he turned it off and on again. "Welcome”! It announced, the screen lighting up in a joyful display. My son contentedly returned to his button-mashing, and I shed a proud tear.

So what if your kid can say "mommy" and "daddy" and knows how to use a spoon? Mine can troubleshoot!

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25. Pay Up

Sometimes as a consultant you get to see how an office functions from an outsider perspective. Since you are an independent contractor, the company treats you differently than an employee. Also, just due to the nature of contract work, your engagement is usually short term. This makes you a temporary fixture and sometimes you are just treated as the "fly on the wall" like you do not exist.

This can lead to some interesting observations, including seeing train wrecks in progress. This is one of those tales. So as a consultant, you are always going to be the "IT Guy" whether you like it or not. No matter how you market your services, every single company is going to assume you can do anything with a computer. And, when business is slow, this is not necessarily a bad thing if you just need work.

About 10 years ago, I found myself in a situation. I got an inquiry through my website asking about assistance deploying some workstations and other mundane tasks. Usually, I would pass on this kind of work, but it was winter and the other client work was dry that month. A guy still has to pay the bills, so I followed up and within a day the scope of work was signed.

Easy stuff. The company had its own IT department, but just needed some extra hands. I was going to be one of three outside contractors who would deploy some workstations, do some server admin work, and set up some other equipment for a new department. The money wasn't the best, but it was time I had free and it was all swing shift work (meaning no traffic and I get to sleep in). Not bad.

The first day, I report as requested at about 3 pm and talk to our contact. He was a Senior Engineer in charge of part of the IT department there. Saying he really doesn't have time to do anything more than a quick introduction as they are slammed with work, he shows us the ropes and leaves us to it. Between three of us, we break down our specialities and parse out the work.

Everyone knows this is a cake walk of a job and wants to just get it done fast as the pay was flat rate. I take the server work and see my contact, who the System Administrator. Figuring he was probably gone for the day as it was mid-evening, I was just going to leave him a note asking him to call me, but to my surprise he is at his desk. I start to get a bad inkling.

In fact, just about everyone in the IT department are milling around. Didn't think too much of it at the time, though, just that it was one busy department and the guys must be pulling double shifts. He shows me the systems and I get to work.

Around midnight we are wrapping up for the night and the three of us break down what we have left with the Senior Engineer, who is still on site. The plan is to wait until Friday night to deploy the workstations and get everything in place. The Senior Engineer says most of his team will probably be there all weekend anyhow so doesn't matter to him.

I left thinking, "Man that is a busy place...those guys must really be pulling down the overtime...I wonder what is going on they have so much work” as I walked out the door that night. Soon enough, I would find out the deal. Friday night I head to the work site a little early, figuring if we all pull a long night we should be able to wrap it up and all get our weekend back.

Things are going great and we are ahead of schedule, so the Senior Engineer offers to take us out a local diner while we wait for the office to close up so we can deploy workstations without tripping over people. At the diner, the Senior Engineer (SE) says, "I want to thank you guys for all your hard work. We are all overworked and when we got approval to contract out this job everyone was excited”.

Me: "Hey glad to be of service. Looks like you guys are crazy busy. Is everyone pulling doubles and doing weekends to handle your ticket load”?

SE: "Oh we are understaffed so we all have to pull extra hours”

Me: "That sucks, but must be some great overtime”

SE: "Overtime....not really...we are all salaried...some loophole or something...we just put in the time because we all need the job right now”

The conversation trailed off from there, but it left me thinking, "in this state most IT workers are eligible for overtime as a matter of law...there is no loophole like that...something isn't right”.

Back at the work site...I'm in the network closet with the Systems Administrator hooking up some ports and finishing the server work. He is a friendly guy, so we start chatting.

Me: "I was talking to your buddy and it seems like you guys work insane hours here”. I ask this, trying to fish for a little information.

Systems Admin (SA): "Oh yeah, it has been like this for a year. 60 hours is a light week these days. It’s ridiculous”

Me: "Yeah the other guy said you don't get overtime”

SA: Laughs. "That’s what the boss tell us. Let me show you something”.

He pulls up an email exchange he had with his manager. It is dated about 10 months ago and makes the very point I thought—that the entire department should be getting overtime and the law requires it. His boss's response in bold and caps was "IT IS COMPANY POLICY TO NOT PAY ANY OVERTIME. WORKING MORE THAN 40 HOURS IS PART OF THE JOB. DEAL WITH IT OR FIND ANOTHER PLACE TO WORK”. 

Then the SA smirks and shows me his response to the boss, "Sure. OK. Whatever" (his emphasis). And that was the end of the exchange. But it wasn’t the end of the story. 

Me: "Look I'm not a lawyer, but you might want to call up the labor department...I'm pretty sure it is against the law for you to not be getting overtime”.

Then to my surprise, the SA pulls up another email from his personal account. "Oh it is blatantly against the law. I asked a lawyer and this was his response”. He then showed me a memo explaining the law and that most likely a lawsuit would be successful. This was dated about nine months ago.

Me: (confused) "So you guys know you should be getting overtime but are not getting paid and everyone is OK with that...”?

SA: "We all make sure to log all of our hours and document the time”.

Me: (still confused) "But you still aren't getting actually paid overtime”?

SA: "No, but we will. Here is the kicker. According to the lawyer, the labor department will look back at the hours we put in for the last 12 months and award us retroactive overtime. So all of us just log our time and keep records, then in about a month we are going to file a claim all together. The company is going to be on the hook for all that overtime and they won't be allowed to fire any of us for reporting them either”. Then came the coup de grace.

SA: "We all figured when this whole thing started if we pressed the point back then they would just figure out a way to screw us. So we just all decided to stay quiet, put in the time they tell us to work, and we will get our 'bonus' check when it is all said and done if this stuff is all back dated”.

Now that is some cold stone strategizing.

Me: "How many hours do you think you guys have piled up”?

SA: "Hard to tell. Everyone keeps their own paper logs to keep it quiet. We also don't talk about it too much, so nothing gets out, but last time we met outside of work it was a boat load of time. I figure, for myself, they will owe me about 13-14 months of salary in overtime and when it is all said and done, add up damages, penalties, interest, it will probably total almost two years of pay”.

Me; "Holy...”

SA: "So if the guys won't talk about it and seem eager to work all these long hours, now you know why”.

We finished up the job that night. I exchanged contact information with a few guys and said if they had any other contract work to think about giving me a call. That was it, until...Three months later, I am at another job and see an email come in from the Systems Administrator, subject line "Overtime Claim”.

"He, Hope you are doing well. We all ended up filing a big overtime claim with the state and the company fired us for supposedly falsifying our timesheets. The lawyer is sorting it all out, but anyway I wanted to know if I could give your name to an investigator who is looking for witnesses to verify some of the extra hours we worked”.

I agreed to talk to the investigator and got a call about a week later. He asked me some routine questions about times and dates and wanted me to email him over some proof I did the job. Then he started going into the details of the case.

"We got this company for probably a million in overtime and damages between all the guys in the department plus the firing is off-book, so that is going to be another few hundred thousand on top of it. The insurance company wants to settle and once we wrap up the due diligence work I think these guys are all going to make out rather nicely”.

I didn't hear anything for a while, until another email came in from the Systems Administrator, subject line "RE: Overtime Claim":

"Just wanted to let you know we settled this whole thing. Company caved pretty quick once it was clear we kept honest logs of our time and the local management violated parent company regulations for the sake of making their site budget look better. Can't go into details, but we all got sizable checks, enough to pay off some loans, and go back to school. I'll have to find a new job but after I get my grad degree that shouldn't be an issue. Appreciate you talking to the investigators. Thanks”.

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26. Calling All Angels

This gem happened a few days ago.

Me: Service Desk

Caller: THE SERVER IS DOWN YOU NEED TO FIX THIS NOW

Me: Which server are you referring to?

Caller: THE SERVER!

Me: okay...what is it that you are trying to do?

Caller: TRYING TO ACCESS THE GODDARN SERVER

(yes, she was SHOUTING the entire time)

Me: Please can you stop shouting at me and tell me which server you are talking about or what it is that you are trying to do? We has many different servers for different things, I need to know exactly what isn't working?

Caller: HOLY GOD THE SERVER ISN'T WORKING. THE. SERVER. ISN'T. WORKING. YOU ARE WASTING MY TIME.

(In the background I've already loaded up our server monitoring tools. There are no alerts)

Me: I've checked our monitoring, I'm not seeing any servers as being down. Which department are you calling from?

Caller: IRRELEVANT. FIX THE SERVER NOW.

Me: Can I get your Staff ID please?

Caller: IRRELEVANT. click

10 minutes later...

Me: Service Desk

Caller: THE SERVER IS STILL DOWN!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT THIS?

Me: Nothing.

Caller: EXCUSE ME? NOTHING?

Me: You still haven't told me which server is down or what is not actually working?

Caller: YOU PEOPLE! IT'S OBVIOUS MY PHONE ISN'T WORKING I CAN'T MAKE CALLS. THE SERVER HAS GONE DOWN YOU NEED TO CALL YOUR PEOPLE AND FIX THIS.

Me: Ma'am I can see you are calling me from your Desk Phone, is that correct?

Caller: YES!

Me: and this is the phone you cannot make calls from, correct?

Caller: YES!

Me: ...

Me: Do you see why I'm having trouble understanding the problem?

Caller: THE SERVER IS DOWN I CAN'T CALL

Me: Ma'am that number is three digits short of a valid number, that is why the call is not connecting.

Caller: LISTEN THE SERVER IS OBVIOUSLY DOWN. I'LL HAVE MY PEOPLE CALL YOUR PEOPLE ABOUT THIS! Click.

I love my job. I love my job. I love my job.

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27. Arcane Knowledge

I’m the one who everyone in my family calls when they need help. So I get a call from my grandpa, who is 89 years old, about a new Windows 10 laptop he just got and he needs help setting it up.

Now keep in mind he is the kind of person to blame the machinery if he clicks on the wrong thing, so I already knew this would not end in a phone call. I drove to his place expecting to see it still in the box. That was not the case. When I arrive, I see him already in his desktop, after he somehow managed to install Windows correctly on his own accord—and he’s waiting for me while playing Minesweeper.

As he greets me, he freaking ALT+F4's to close the game and then tells me he cannot connect to the Internet. Not sure what happened in the week I wasn't there, I ask if he could show me the problem. He then OPENS CMD AND PINGS HIS OWN CELLPHONE and then points at the 0 packets text to show me there is no connection.

At this point I’d probably look less surprised if I see an alien invasion. So after showing him that you need to enter the password to connect to his home Wi-Fi, he then asks me how to see his email account again. Still completely stunned, I show him how to access his Outlook account and how to delete some messages.

And the craziest part: When I asked him how did he know about CMD, his answer was: "I learned it from grandma".

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28. Surprise Freebie

This happened a while ago. I own my own computer repair business and a customer called me up asking me to build them a computer. They had all the parts and just wanted someone to put it together as they didn't trust themselves. It was a fairly high-end computer, and they spent probably $2,000+ on parts.

I put it together with no issues and they were very happy. When they picked it up, they asked if I could fix up one of their older computers so their kids could play together. The computer they brought in was maybe 2-3 years old but for the time was top-of-the line parts and probably cost $2,000-$2,500. They told me that it needs a hard drive and some extra fans.

I picked up a $100 hard drive, installed the fans, and it ran like a dream. I called them and told them it was ready. They were again really pleased and said they would be by later in the day. Three days later I call them again and ask when they want it and they say they will be in on the weekend.

Seven days later they say they will be by at the end of the day. Two weeks later I call and get no answer so I leave a message and send them an email explaining that starting at the beginning of next month there will be a $20/week storage fee since it's been over 30 days since it was completed. I call them in the middle of the week to again confirm when they wanted it and explain the fee, but no answer so I leave a message and text them.

The week after, I call and no answer so I leave another message, email, and text. On week three there was still no answer. However, they called me back two days later explaining there was a family emergency and they were out of town and they would be by within two days to pick it up. Guess what happened. Three days go by and they don't show up or call.

On week four I call one last time and explain that this will be the last message they will get from me and I will hold on to the computer for 90 days, at which point I will assume you don't want it and I will take ownership. So we are over day 100 and I now have a very good gaming computer for the low investment of $100.

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29. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

My friend who works with me in IT saw a ticket had come in one day. It said: "You deleted all my files! I need them to do my job”! He called the woman to see what was going on because we don't delete personal files off of people's computers unless there is a good reason for it and we have the user's permission.

While he was on the phone, he remotes into her computer and noticed everything but the recycling bin was missing on her desktop. He noticed that there were files in the recycling bin, so he opened it and all her files are there.

Him: Here are all your files, did you move them into here?

Her: Yes I did, I moved them in here to recycle them so they will be clean for me to work on them.

Him: .....Excuse me?

Her: Yes, I moved them to the recycling bin to make them new again so I can reuse the files.

Him: This is the trash bin, you would move files here to delete them off of your computer.

Her: IT IS NOT A TRASH CAN, IT IS A RECYCLING BIN! IT SAYS SO RIGHT UNDER THE ICON!

So for the next half hour, my buddy had to teach her how to use the “recycling bin”.

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30. Your Time Is Mine

This one goes back to 1999 or so. I was working in the corporate headquarters of a very large company. We were responsible for the email system for HQ—about 1,100 users at the time. Like all the systems admins at HQ, I was a contractor. My boss was a guy I'll call Sam. Sam was the site manager.

The customer contact was a guy I'll call Jay. Jay was what they called an IT planner—basically a systems architect. He had dotted-line responsibility over all the systems admins, including me.

I also had a backup there, who I'll call Ben. Ben was a competent systems admin, capable of handling most day-to-day stuff.

We normally kept staff in the office from 8-6 on workdays, with an on-call rotation for certain specialty areas, including email. Back then, we carried a pager (yes, an old school beeper) for on-call duty. My on-call rotation was one week on, one week off. This story happened in my "off" week, when Ben carried the pager.

One Saturday night, at around 3:30 am, my home phone rang. My wife answered, and it was Jay calling. She grumpily handed the phone to me. Now, my wife and I had just gotten home, having been out for much of the night with our neighbors.

I was, for lack of a more refined term, positively hammered at this point. The news I got was utterly disturbing. Jay informed me that there was an email outage, and that I needed to remote in and get it back up immediately, and then drive to the office to start a root cause analysis.

I informed him that I was in no condition to drive (let alone touch a production rig) and asked what Ben told him when he called the on-call pager. Jay told me that he didn't call the on-call pager because this was way too serious of a problem to trust the backup systems admin. He wanted me working on this, and said that if I can't be relied upon to do my job when I was needed, he'd find someone else who could.

Then he hung up the phone. I went back to sleep. The next morning, I had an email from Ben telling me that Jay had called him at home rather than paging the on-call rotation. It was a very simple issue—our backup software went screwy and started writing out hundreds of temp files, which filled up a critical volume on our production email server.

Temp files deleted, email services restarted, problem solved. Total downtime after Ben got the call was about 15 minutes. The next day, I arrived at the office to a note from Sam, my manager, asking me to come see him ASAP. I went to his office, and sitting there was Jay, who was in the process of demanding that I be fired immediately for "drinking at work”.

From there, the conversation went something like this:

Sam: But he wasn't at work. He was at home and wasn't in the on-call rotation this weekend.
Jay: I don't want to hear it about the on-call rotation. He needs to be ready to work when I tell him to. I can't rely on an alcoholic, and I want him gone.
Sam: If he's not on call, he's free to do whatever he wants with his time.

Jay: Not as long as he works for me.

Jay then demands that I hand my office badge to him, and calls security from Sam's phone to have me escorted out of the building. I'm in absolute disbelief at this point. Sam gets up and goes off to points unknown, just as security arrives to see me out to the parking lot. As I'm driving off, I see Jay's boss, I'll call her Mary. Mary is running across the street to the parking lot.

Strange, but I was more focused on how the heck I was going to explain this to my wife when I got home.

I got home, and my wife was sitting on the couch, just absolutely livid. Now this was getting REALLY weird. I hadn't told her what happened yet. "Those jerks fired you”!? I'm confused as heck at this point. My wife told me that Mary called her, and that I need to call her back as soon as possible. Come to find out, when Sam had went off, he was going to Mary's office to explain the situation and keep Jay from firing me.

Mary freaked the heck out. When I saw her running across the street, she was trying to catch me in the parking lot before I left to tell me to come back in. When Mary couldn't find my car, she went back into the office and called the house, intending to leave me a voicemail, but got my wife instead. Mary told my wife what had happened, promised to rein Jay in, and asked her to tell me to come back into the office to sort it out.

So I let them stew for a while. Mary called about 20 minutes after I got home. We let her go to the machine. Sam called as well, just as my wife and I went out to get some lunch. Over lunch, my wife and I talked about how we would handle this, and (largely for financial reasons) we decided to talk to them to see if we could work this out.

We got back home to three more voicemails from Mary and Sam. About 30 seconds after we walked in the door, the phone rang again. This time it was Jay, obviously on speakerphone. Jay apologized to me and asked me to come back to work the next day. I agreed, but as he hung up, I could hear Mary say to him: "J, you're a complete idiot”.

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31. It’s All Downhill From Here

I received a ticket from a company we provide IT infrastructure and support to. The company is a marketing company with specific requirements and budget, so there was no going away from tower PCs. One day I received a ticket from their department manager asking me to remove the ugly boxes as they don't need them.

I decided to call and explain about the boxes...

Me (On the Phone): Hello, this is IT Support

Department Manager (DM): Oh good, you're calling to arrange collection, I would like the boxes collected in precisely one hour as we are going to a conference later.

We were talking about disconnecting about 40 PCs!

Me: No, I'm not calling to schedule a meeting, but to explain that if we remove these boxes, you won't be able to use the computers

DM: Do you think I'm stupid?

Me: No, I'm just explaining that you won't be able to use your computer without the computer being connected to the screen

DM: What are you talking about? I don't look under my table to use the computer. Look you obviously don't know what you're talking about, I want to talk to someone who knows about IT. Oh, I also want your first name and surname so that I can make a complaint!

Me: I’m not giving you my surname for data protection, and I do know what I'm talking about. Trust me, if you remove the actual computer, the box you are referring to, you won't be able to use the computer.

DM: Slams the phone down!

I closed the job, documenting everything. A week's gone by and we get an Emergency call-out, stating that none of their computers are working. We arrived to find all the computer towers have been cut free from their cages and removed.

Me: What happened to all the towers?

DM: I got a professional team to remove the boxes! See, it is possible!

Me: No I don't see, now you can't use the computers!

DM: What a lot of nonsense, just get the internet working so that we can use the computers again!

Me: No, what happened to the computers?

DM: Are you stupid or something? They're here! referring to the monitors

Me: Ok, ok, what happened to the boxes?

DM: They took them to the dump

Me: Right, you are telling me that you threw away leased computers which are worth $1,300 each? I want to speak to your boss. Now!

DM: He's in a meeting

Me: Get him now! This is very serious.

DM: Ok

DM's Boss: First you refuse to do your job and now you pull me out of a meeting? Where are all the computers by the way?

Me: He threw them away and we need to get them back now as they had sensitive data on them.

DM's Boss: Where are the computers?

DM: You mean the boxes?

DM's Boss: YES!!!

DM: They are heading to the dump

We drove to the dump but there was no record of these computers being brought in. Two weeks later, the company suffered a data breach, which along with the damage bill caused the company to go into administration.

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32. Not My Problem

I was a student back when this story takes place and during the summer I managed to get an internship as IT Admin. The work was quite nice, I was doing helpdesk stuff but also things with servers. Anyway, support of users was one of my tasks. The company was from the automotive sector—airbags/seatbelts etc.

I was working in a production plant connected with offices, so I had to support both facilities. One time I get a call. That was unusual, as we always reminded users to write tickets, which were responded in real-time so it took like 10 minutes before I contacted this incident submitter. Call was more or less like:

“For God’s sake, what are you doing with the scanners? The whole line has stopped and we are completely blocked now, we can't do anything without them, they're not working and showing errors”. The line was about a 10 minute walk from my office so I stayed on the phone while I was walking there.

"Ok, tell me what is going on, calm down”.

"YOU ARE MESSING WITH THE SYSTEMS AGAIN, YOU SHOULD ALL BE FIRED, I AM WRITING TO YOUR MANAGER AS SOON AS IT IS FIXED"

"Please calm down, we have not been doing anything with that line for months”

"YEAH SURE, YOU NEVER ADMIT TO A SCREW UP "

At this point I was already thinking about different ways of ruining her, but still played it cool. I finally arrive at the line and ask her to hand me a scanner. All the people from production line were standing there with crossed shoulders and looked at me like "Here you go, you messed up so fix it huh" and the leader said something like "Oh here you are, now make it work”.

The scanner was nothing fancy, all you had to do to make it work usually was enter a username and password. So I take the scanner and look at the screen. Back at her. Back at the screen. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

"Were you asked to change password recently?"

"YES, WHAT KIND OF QUESTION IS THAT, WE DON'T HAVE TIME THIS”

"Because the screen says that you have typed the wrong password 5 times and you are always reminded that after this, the scanner blocks for 20 minutes. And by the way, you have three backup scanners so why you didn't use them? You messed up, not me. And it's not ok to talk like that to any employee of the company, so I will report it to YOUR manager. We have call recording enabled on our mobiles” (we didn't, but she could never know).

"Ugh....ummm, emmm”.

"Yeah, bye”.

I told the story to her manager. She apologized officially to the whole IT team, brought some of the cheapest cookies from the store, and basically pretended to be sorry.

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33. Be Still My Heart

I've been out of the office for about a month so the day-to-day happenings such as construction and desk moves have not been communicated to me. This morning I get to the office at 7:30 am and one of the facilities guys comes up to me and casually says, "The electricians are cutting power to the server room sometime today”.

Enter Panic Mode Now...

I state that they can't just turn off the power to the datacenter. There is a process that needs to happen for downtime. People need to be notified, other buildings need to prepare for continued manufacturing without access to work orders, all that stuff. I start messaging management asking what the heck is happening.

Management asks if we can run on the generator while power is off. I have no answer for that so I run off to find the facilities manager and electricians to ask. The electrician informs me they did not need to turn off the electricity in the server room, they just need to do it for a portion of the office. My datacenter is safe.

If anyone needs me I will be hiding under my desk softly sobbing from this horrible experience.

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34. Butterfly Effect

Since the day I started at this small company, I noticed their workstations were horribly out of date and reaching end of life for support and depreciation. I worked with a developer to get our in-house software to run on new machines. It ended up being the worst thing I could have done.

Fast forward about a year when the project is complete and the application can now finish its processing in 10-40x less time depending on difficulty. We have everyone on new systems that run like a dream and everyone is thrilled with how much more we can do in a day. The department head sends a wonderful email about the new time it takes to process.

The backlog of work is now quickly shrinking for this team, and their department head has to stop calling in per-diem workers. Slowly, we fire employees as there's not enough work for them. Fast forward another year and we've fired some 20 people (about 27% of our company). I was friends with many of them. I still feel bad five years later.

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35. Take A Load Off

Here I am, another calm morning before the storm. I sip away at my Dr. Pepper and take a bite of donut. The queue is clear and the emails are quiet. Then, as is to be expected, the phone rang. I clear my throat and pick up the receiver with a cheerful "Hello, how can I help you?"

"Good morning, my computer won't connect to the internet”.

We run through some basic troubleshooting, have you restarted the computer, is the cable plugged in, are the dummy lights on, is your computer turned on. Still nothing, so I resign myself to a brisk walk down the hall to see what's going on.

As I enter the room, I begin double-checking everything we talked about over the phone. The cable is plugged into the computer, the indicator lights are on, but they keep flickering out for a second. Seeing this, I begin tracing the cable back to where it's plugged in. This room is set up terribly by the way, so the Ethernet cable is run around the room so the person can have their desk where they want it.

As I trace the cord, I find out that it goes through a closet, then out the other side and into the wall jack. I go to check the connection and notice the cable is tight, really tight, like I can't move it an inch tight. The effects of my Dr. Pepper start to take effect and the connections are forming. I open up the closet and find the culprit. 

There are coats hanging from the Ethernet cable. We're talking big, heavy coats. The poor cable was under so much strain that it was being ripped apart. I quickly removed the coats and then made the person aware that Ethernet does not make for a good coat rack.

Once the weight was removed, everything started working again and I was off to finish my breakfast.

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36. Where’s My Money?

I work an out-of-hours service desk supporting multiple businesses. This particular business is an educational institute, and this particular discussion took place between myself and a student;

Me: Hello, Service Desk

Caller: I CAN'T PRINT!

Me: Okay, what actually happens?

Caller: I JUST TOLD YOU! I CAN'T PRINT...

Please note, the caller’s tone is very rude and I've reached my rude tolerance by this stage

Me: Yes, we've established you can't print. What actually happens? What errors are received? What does the printer do?

Caller: It tells me to top up my print credit as I have a negative balance of -$49

Me:...

Caller: HELLO!

Me: I'm sorry, I don't see the issue here. You'll need to clear the $49 outstanding balance before you can print

Caller: But I don't owe you any money!

Me: Okay, are you saying this balance has been added to your account in error?

Caller: No

Me: Can you please explain what you mean?

Caller: I was photocopying loads of personal pictures yesterday and since then I have this balance. But I don't think I owe this as I didn't get any warnings when photocopying

Me:... But you're aware there's a charge for photocopying?

Caller: YES OF COURSE I AM!

Me: Okay, so I don't see why you're disputing the balance? You used a photocopier for a large job and as a result of this have a negative balance which will need to be cleared. Regardless of "warnings" or not, you still used a service at the end of the day and need to pay for what you've used. You've just admitted you knew about the charge before using the service.

Caller: I JUST NEED TO PRINT NOW!

Me: Okay, you'll need to clear the balance on the account first by topping up

Caller: BUT THIS IS URGENT!

Me: It's 11 pm. I'm not sure what you're asking me to do. If you want to print, you'll need to clear this balance by topping up your credit

Caller: BUT I DON'T OWE YOU ANY MONEY!

Me: You said you used the photocopiers?

Caller: YES

Me: Presumably you have the documents you photocopied?

Caller: YES

Me: So you have photocopied documents that you haven't paid for. The photocopiers should not be used for personal use either. What is it that you need to "urgently" print right now?

Caller: I want to print a banner for a party

Me: So, again you're using the printing facilities for personal reasons - in clear breach of the policy you agreed to. You've also called an IT emergency line and claimed this was "urgent".

Caller: WELL I DIDN'T GET ANY WARNINGS!

Me: Thanks for calling. I'll report this to your school office for further investigation but I'm unable to deal with this on the emergency line. Goodbye click

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37. Candy Crushed

I'm a Network and Server Administrator at a hospital, but I occasionally field help desk calls as well. So, one day I'm slow, so I'm helping answer some calls when one of our Switchboard Operators calls.

Me: IT.

Operator: Hey, I have a problem.

Me: OK, what's up?

Operator: I've been playing Candy Crush on my phone and it keeps messing up.

Me: What do you mean? Is your phone disconnecting from Wi-Fi?

Operator: No, I just can't seem to beat this level no matter what I try.

Me: trying not to laugh Uhhh, I'm not familiar with that application. Each department is supposed to have a Super User for their applications, which handles tech support between the users and the vendor. Have you engaged your Super User?

Operator: getting angry No, smart Alec, I didn't.

Me: Holding back laughter as well as Jimmy Fallon on SNL I'm sorry you're upset ma'am, but all I'm doing is trying to help you by getting you to the most appropriate channel for support of your issue.

Operator: I thought that you may have played this game before and that you may be able to help.

Me: No ma'am, Candy Crush isn't an application that the IT department uses or supports.

This was the most humorous call I've gotten. What made it so funny is that the user was getting so mad that I couldn't help her and that I was laughing at her. I mean, come on.

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38. Wearing Different Hats

Our company HQ building has big conference rooms. Despite not being in the events or hosting business at all, we sometimes rent those out if we don't need them ourselves. We only offer little service but that makes for a fair rate, all usually easygoing, not much work, and earns a few extra bucks.

The day this story took place was one such time: A company that had rented our conference rooms before had booked them again, but this time for a completely different occasion, hence other guests in our house. Regarding technical equipment and support the rules were simple: We as the host provide you with one high quality projector per room, one HDMI cable, one audio cable if you want to use the room's speaker system, and one Wi-Fi voucher for each of the devices people need to present from.

Everything other than that is your own business as a guest. Last year's autumn, when this happened, both the IT team and our facility department were very short on staff thanks to a bad stomach flu going around. Preparing the conference rooms for renters hasn't been of my duties for years anymore, but due to the staff situation and still knowing how to do it, I helped out.

Usually our main janitor prepares the room layout and our internal catering woman stays on standby for the guests, but both were sick. The only option to fill in their positions on short notice was to borrow Lucy, an apprentice from another department. She was fresh from school, had only started her apprenticeship a few weeks ago, and didn't mind doing something completely different for a day.

Naturally, she needed instructing and some help with her newly assigned duties. It took longer than usual, but together we made sure everything was perfectly prepared in time for our guests. Prior to their arrival I had briefed her to call me personally if the guests require any IT help before I had to leave.

Since I passed the conference area on the way through the building a little later on, I checked on Lucy and the guests. Quite a few had already arrived, but everything so far was good, projector and sound worked, she felt comfortable enough to handle the job, everything's fine.

Half an hour passes by, then I receive a first call from Lucy. The guests wanted to know where they could get Wi-Fi vouchers. Dang, my bad, forgot to tell her. I sent her to the front desk to fetch one per device the guests need for their presentations.

Ten more minutes pass. Suddenly another call.

Lucy, sounding strangely nervous: "Could you please come down? The guests need help with the Wi-Fi…”

Since I'd never interacted with her before today, I couldn't quite place if the tone of her voice indicated a problem, or if she was just a little insecure and stressed now...Something felt off, though.

Me: "Sure, don't worry, I'll be there in a few minutes, just gotta finish something real quick”.

Upon entering the hallway to the conference rooms, I could already hear an irritated woman's voice heavily berating somebody. Not a good sign. Worried now, I picked up my pace and turned around the final corner, only to find poor little Lucy cornered by a suited woman in her 40s whose voice I had heard, absolutely barking at her about not delivering what they paid for.

Lucy was visibly shaking a little, probably getting close to a panic attack. After hearing my footsteps her eyes immediately made contact with mine, looking anxiously for help.

Me, sharply: "Excuse me!"

Woman: "WHAT? Now who the heck are you?"

Me: "I'm from IT and here to help you with the Wi-Fi issue Lucy has contacted me about. What can I do for you?"

Woman, still in a very angry tone: "We were promised Wi-Fi vouchers in the lease contract for the room, but SHE—" pointing her finger directly at Lucy, almost stabbing her in the eye, "refuses to hand out any!"

Lucy, seemingly on the verge of tears now: "But I...I gave you one for your laptop, your tablet, and your guest speaker's laptop…”

Woman, shouting down on Lucy again: "AND WHAT ABOUT THE OTHERS? We have over 100 people here and EVERYONE needs Wi-Fi, you stupid worthless—"

Those words really hurt and this new, unexpected situation became too much to bear. Tears welled up in Lucy's eyes. Before seeing this, I already had more than enough of this woman's behavior, but now I snapped. This had to stop.

Me: "HEY! STOP. Calm down. Keep those insults to yourself, where are your manners?! Back off of her, she's just doing her job and following policy!"

Woman, turning to me, cocky look on her face and maximum disdain in her voice: "Who do you think you are, telling me what to say or do, huh? And what stupid policy?! We were promised Wi-Fi, and that's what we're getting from you”.

Me: "The contract clearly states the IT policy for external guests, which—"

Woman, cutting me off: "DON'T. CARE. You two drones are utterly useless and should get fired! Get me the manager in charge, NOW!"

Me: "Alright. As you wish. Be right back”.

With that, the woman stormed off, back into the conference room. I gestured Lucy to come with me and she immediately followed, glad to get away and barely keeping it together. We made our way around the corner, back to the elevators, when I stopped and put my hand on one of Lucy's shoulders, getting her to look up at me.

Me: "I'm so sorry you were treated like that. Are you OK?"

Lucy nodded and took a deep breath, slowly regaining her composure.

Me, continuing walking with her: "Listen, you don't have to accept this sort of behavior, neither as an apprentice nor as anyone else. Feel free to simply walk away next time and report to a manager”.

Lucy: "OK. I will”.

Me: "Don't let those hurtful words get to you. Forget everything she said, you were doing a great job. Really, I mean it, and I am very proud of you for standing your ground”.

We reached the elevators and entered one. I pushed the button to the executive floor.

Lucy: "Where are we going now?"

Me: "My office. At least, I will. You go fetch a cup of hot chocolate or whatever you like from the machine next to the elevators, it's free. Have a seat on the sofa then. I'll be back in a few minutes”.

Lucy looked confused, but complied. Meanwhile I went through the adjacent hallway door and into my office. Earlier in the day, I had changed from my slacks into jeans (which I keep in my wardrobe for such occasions) earlier and left my suit jacket and tie by my desk. Now I reverted those changes, made a few quick phone calls, and returned to Lucy all dressed up. Her eyes grew wide. There was something no one there knew.

Lucy: "This question might sound stupid now, sorry, but...who are you exactly?"

Me, smiling: "I do work in IT, but I am the CIO. Since so many of my people are sick right now I'm filling in for them. That's why I helped you set up the room instead of Ben, who'd usually do this. And now, since that lovely woman down there asked for management attention, we'll teach her a lesson in respect. Follow me”.

With that we made our way down to the conference rooms again.

Me, mockingly straightening my tie and suit jacket: "Lucy, would you please be so kind as to inform our guest that the manager in charge is here now?"

She grinned and did as requested. Immediately I could hear a faint "Finally, everything takes too long around here!" Before the woman hurried through the door toward me. When she recognized me, she froze in her tracks.

Me: "Hello. I'm the CIO and therefore the manager in charge regarding your issue, with whom you demanded to speak”.

Calmly I walked towards her, reached into my jacket, and gave her my business card. The woman took it, but not being able to throw anybody under the bus apparently left her without a plan and speechless.

Me: "Now that I got your attention, I have three things to tell you.
One: You stated that you “were promised Wi-Fi” and that you “want to get what you pay for”. You signed a contract stating that you get Wi-Fi access for every device needed for your presentations, which we delivered. We neither can nor will provide access for all attendees of your event. Our network, our rules. Period.
Two: Your condescending, rude tone is bad enough in itself, but intimidating employees, especially a minor like in this case, absolutely won't be tolerated around here. I expect a sincere apology of yours to Lucy and myself”.

She slowly found the ability to speak again.

Woman: "OK, I apologize, that was not very professional of me. But—"

Me, interrupting her: "That's a massive understatement and doesn't sound terribly sincere to me. Furthermore, point three: Verbal assault and intimidation are against our house rules, which we strictly enforce and you agreed to adhere to by signing the rental contract. This alone warrants your personal removal from our premises.

Also, you apparently invited more than 100 people, which you weren't allowed to do and violates fire code rules, since the maximum room capacity is exactly 100, as stated in the contract. Due to now multiple breaches of contract and said fire code violations, I herewith have to ask you and your guests to leave.

By the way, according to internal consultation we have not the slightest further interest in renting out our rooms to your company, considering the circumstances. Please gather your people, personal belongings and then leave our premises”. Chaos broke loose. 

She of course threw a massive hissy fit, questioned my authority some more, and needed to be guided out by security. The other people from her company were confused and understandably not amused, but cooperated in a civil manner.

A week later, she had her lawyer send us a letter claiming unfair treatment and requesting a refund, which gave our lawyer a big laugh and the opportunity to lay out to their counterpart how they breached the contract in great detail. That was the last we heard from them, thankfully.

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39. The Battery’s Low Upstairs

I had a person come up and say that they have been transferring some files for hours and it's only at 61%. I have a look and find that they are not transferring files at all. All they've done is plug their video camera into the computer, and the 61% is the level of battery remaining on the device. The person has been watching the battery drain for hours.

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40. Not So Useless After All

I used to work at a small structural engineering firm with about 10 engineers as a project engineer, so I used to deal with client inquiries about our projects once we had released the blueprints for the construction of the project. Most of the time we did house projects that never presented a challenge for the construction engineer.

Most inquiries were about not finding stuff in the blueprints. If you have seen a structural blueprint, you would know that space is a valued commodity, so being a Tetris player is a good drafter skill. Then this call happened. I introduce to you the cast of this tale:

Me: Your friendly structural engineer. Big Boss (BB): The chief engineer of the company and my direct superior (gotta love small companies), aaand Incompetent Construction Engineer (ICE).

So one day we received a request to do the structural design for some houses that were meant to be on a suburban development, basically the same house with little differences built a hundred times. In that type of project, every dollar saved can snowball pretty fast so we tend to do extra optimization that on normal projects might be overkill.

Because of this, some of the solutions we do are outside what most construction engineers are used to. That was the case for this project.

ICE: One of the beams you designed is collapsing.

ME: Are you certain? Can we schedule a visit so I can go take a look before we start calling our lawyers?

ICE: Sure, but I'm telling you we followed your instructions to the letter, so I'm confident it was your design that was deficient.

Before going to the field, my boss and I decided to do a deep review of the project. We rechecked the blueprints, ran the models again, even rechecked the calculations by hand. We found no obvious mistakes on our part, so we started getting on a battle mood. We were going to shift the fault to the construction company. #1 rule of structural engineering conflict solution: It's always the contractor’s fault.

We put on our battle outfits (visibility jacket, helmet, and steel-toed boots) and went to see the problem.

ICE: See, the beam is collapsing! We had to scaffold it because it kept deflecting more and more!

Now, we could SEE the beam getting deflected at simple sight, and that shouldn't be happening. We asked ICE for a set of blueprints and started checking. Then we saw the problem. A column that we had considered and that was central to the design was nowhere to be found, neither on the blueprints ICE gave us nor the real thing.

Keep in mind that it had no apparent reason to exist because it functioned differently than the usual designs.

BB: Well, it appears we messed up. The blueprints that we sent them don't seem to have THAT column. I better start calling the lawyer and insurance because it appears to be our fault.

I was not entirely convinced. Remember, I had just reviewed the project, so I was confident that column was on the final blueprints. We usually delivered a set of signed and sealed blueprints and a digital PDF version so they could make copies and give them to their people more easily.

So I asked ICE for the sealed blueprints...and surprise! The column was there. I was free to breathe again, rule #1 was not bypassed.

Now it was a matter of knowing WHO messed up.

ME: The blueprints you gave us are inconsistent with the ones we sent. Did anyone modify them?

ICE: Oh, sure I did. You put a column there that was too expensive and was doing nothing. I asked one of our engineers if we needed it for some code compliance reason and he said that if it was not structural it had no reason to be there, so I deleted it on our working version of the plans.

That was all we needed to hear. We just went to his boss, told him he had modified the blueprints without our say so and that we were not liable for the failure. That day there was one construction engineer job opening and some happy workers got extra pay by rebuilding that part of the house.

If a structural engineer says something is needed, then you better believe it is. Oh, and it’s always the contractor’s fault. I'm so happy to work in an industry where "The client is always right" doesn't apply.

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41. A Blast From The Past

About 15 years ago, I was a bright-eyed coder still in college. My family was poor. I often did some freelance jobs to afford a living in my college city. One of the companies I coded for was dedicated to importing metal, cutting it based on the customer's preferences and selling it. I had coded them a simple local network program automating the preferences of the supervisors in the office and supervisors in the workshop, then it stored the data in their accounting program.

Today about 10 am, I received a call from their boss.

Boss: hello. We need you here in the city urgently. Your program stopped working.

Me: Excuse me? I do not recognize the number you're calling from. Which program of mine?

Boss: Don't you? I’m speaking about the program you made for our company.

Me: Oh...The one I made years ago? You're still using it?

Boss: Yes we are. But today in the morning the program stopped working.

Oh, nostalgia...Anyway. I decided to troubleshoot quickly, learning about the details. Thankfully I have archives for all my codes, even my first-ever program. Of course, even coded 15 years ago, a program doesn't suddenly stop working in a day. I try to find out what has changed. Nothing seems to have changed since yesterday. Maybe a blackout? No. Changes in network? Nope. Changes in any hardware? None...

It will indeed take time.

Me: All right, I guess I can't solve it from afar. I seriously doubt it's a problem in my code but just in case, I will provide you the source codes. It's possibly a simple problem in hardware and you wouldn't want to pay me for that. A local tech will do it for much less.

Boss: Pay you? Why should we pay you? It's your program. Fix it.

Me: (after a hearty laugh) It's a freelance job I did for you literally 15 years ago. As you're the witness to, it had worked well until this morning. Even if it was the product of a giant company, the support would have been dropped already. Think about it, Microsoft has dropped support for XP. You can't expect me to offer free support.

Boss: We still want you to fix it. How much would you charge?

Me: I'm working for another company already. First, I'll have to ask for unpaid vacation. Then I'll bill all my expenses to you in addition to my rate per day. I doubt it'll take more than a single day, though.

Boss: It's too much.

Me: I know. That's why I urge you to find a local tech and have him have a look. If it's proven that the problem is my code, I'll happily send you the source codes and then you may have it updated to your heart's content.

Boss: I don't understand why the passage of time should change it. It's your program. You should fix it.

Me: It doesn't work like that. Anyway, I'll be awaiting your call from this number.

He hung up, still muttering about how it's my program and I should fix it for free.

I'm dreaming about the future now.

Pixabay

42. That’ll Be The Problem Then

I work for an ISP that deals only in DSL-type connections. No satellite or mobile or anything.

Client: Hello. Where's the Wi-Fi?

Me: I'm sorry sir. You're going to have to be a bit more specific?

Client: I'm paying for this service! This is terrible, it hasn't been here for about a week now! It's usually right here on my phone. Where did it go?

Cue about ten minutes of troubleshooting, until…

Me: Well sir, since the devices connected by cable seem to be functioning okay, we should check if it's an issue with the Wi-Fi functionality of your router. Do you have a spare router we could test with?

Client: Yes, but I can't swap them now.

Me: ...um...why?

Client: I'm not at home right now.

Me: Well, where are you?

Client: Mozambique.

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43. Black Out

After recovering from my stroke, I was in desperate need of work. So desperate, I took an overnight shift at a webhost for tech support. Most nights it was pretty calm and people that called on my shift were usually just looking for more help with their website than just troubleshooting, but night staff had the time and it helped break up the monotony of the shift. Occasionally I would get gems like this.

I get a call and the guy is frantic on the phone. After finally getting him to confirm his username and password, I ask which website of his is down. I type the URL into my web browser and surprise, I get his website, no issues. After poking around some more, I still can’t find any issue.

It is at this point that we get into basic PC troubleshooting and the following transpired.

Me: Okay, are you using a MAC or PC?

Customer: PC

Me: Can you click on the start menu and type in CMD.

This is where the problem became excruciatingly clear.

Customer: I cannot. The screen is black

Me: deep breath Is there a light on the front of your monitor or your tower?

Customer: No

Me: deeper breath Is the cable plugged into the back of the device, and can you trace that cable back to make sure it is plugged into the wall? If you have a power strip can you see if it is in the “on” position

Customer: rustling I think it is, but I cannot quite tell

Me: What do you mean you cannot tell?

Customer: I can't tell, it’s dark

Me: Dark?!? Can you turn on a light?

Customer: I could get a flashlight, but there is no power

Me: head desk I assure you sir, your website is up. You can check it again when you have power back.

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44. You Get What You Pay For

I do IT Hardware support for a college. Coming in one morning, I hear my phone ding for a new email as I am pulling in off the freeway. I pull into the parking lot and pull out my phone to see the following email.

“Our department ordered fifty new laptops that just came in this morning. We need IT to install the latest Windows on them along with the following software (a long list of software follows). These computers need to be ready to go by 10 am tomorrow morning so we can use them for the first class”.

I check to see if this was forwarded by my boss or his boss. Nope, it was sent directly to me. No ticket, no purchase order information, I didn’t even remember seeing an order for new laptops in any department come through the system in the last month. So I go to the office and show my boss, who reads the email and tells me that he never had a request for new laptops so he has no idea what it is about.

After a few minutes of trying to call the department with no answer, I agree to walk over and see what this was about. When I get to the Department Office, I finally track down someone who knows what is going on and she leads me to one of the classrooms with a pile of boxes in the center of the room. My heart just sinks.

There before me, a pile of new 7-inch Windows tablets with attaching keyboards sat. I pick one up and look over the specs. Low-end tablets, barely enough memory to run Windows 10 (installed) but would never run the up-to-date Windows, and nowhere near able to run any of the software that they were requesting.

Needless to say, I was a little scared about this. I asked her how these were even ordered through our system and she tells me that they bypassed the system and ordered from a web company to get a better deal. I know that there was no reasoning with her, so I ask if I could take one down to the office to get a look at it and she agrees with the stern comment of “These need to be ready by tomorrow! Make sure it happens!”

Back at the office, I show off their new toy to the rest of the staff and my boss. None of them are happy. There is no way we can install any software on these, let alone connect them to our network so the students can log into them. My boss emails the Department Head asking why they didn’t go through IT to get the computers and she responds with the same answer I got earlier, they were cheaper this way.

He lets her know that we couldn’t fulfill the request and that they would be better off returning the computers and that we would work on getting them ones that would work with our network and software. It went from bad to worse. They can’t do that because the website had a no-return policy. Not only that, but they hadn’t used a purchase order for it, they used the department credit card.

So now we are stuck with fifty Windows 10 tablets that the department can’t really do anything with and the Department head is demanding answers as to why no one told her that we couldn’t use those. For some reason they keep emailing me instead of talking to my boss, so I am getting the front end of the disaster here.

We finally get to a work around. The tablets are set up on the Wi-Fi network and we have to create a generic user account for each tablet along the lines of “DepartmentTab01” and then make sure that no one would be able to log into the network with another computer.

They were delivered to the department a week later than they wanted. I wish it stopped there, but of course it didn’t. First day with the tablets, a trouble ticket comes in saying none of the tablets would connect. I get to the classroom and the teacher had written one of the usernames on the board and was trying to have everyone connect to the Wi-Fi with that one username.

What is really bad is that we had a printed set of login instructions hanging right by the board that she used. Then they wouldn’t charge. Turns out, the tiny barrel plug that these things used had to be pushed in all the way to get a connection. Even just a little short of the mark and they wouldn’t charge. None of the tablets had been plugged in properly over the course of about two weeks.

And we still get a random request for software to be installed on these. The students won’t even use them because the keyboards are just too small to type on unless they have the hands of a seven-year-old. Why do departments do this to us? I really wish we had a purchase system in place where all computer requests go through us.

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45. Know Who You’re Firing

Back in the Dark Ages, around 1993, I worked for a medical transcription firm as their Systems Administrator. We were doing some cutting-edge IT stuff, in getting transcriptions printed at the hospitals remotely, things like that. It worked really well, until it didn't.

I was the only Systems Admin in this city, so I was on call 24/7 and was averaging three hours of sleep per night, when I could go home and trying to catch little catnaps here and there when I could. Anytime something would go wrong on the hospital side, I would have to go to the hospital and fix it.

A few months after I started, two of the Vice Presidents from the corporation relocated to my city, since we were the most productive city with the highest profits. The first thing they did was come up with an excuse to fire the current director, then they took over operations themselves.

At that point, my job went from taking care of our systems to taking care of the doctors’ computers too. I did what I could, but I was also sending out resumes. Then I was told to go to a hospital and see why the printing stopped. I remember this day. I hadn't been home for two days and had been going nonstop for 18 hours.

I get there, and someone had unplugged the modem. I plug it back in, a call comes in and jobs start printing. This doctor walks over and tells me that one of the vice presidents told him that I would go out to his house and work on his home computer. I politely explain to the doctor that I can't do that, and that I'm heading home to get some sleep.

Then I head back to the office to pick up a few things before heading home. As soon as I walk through the door, I get escorted straight to the vice presidents’ office. Both vice presidents and the office manager are there. They proceed to start chewing me out.

I just started laughing at them. I'm the only person in 1,000 miles that knows anything about this system. They lose their temper and tell me I'm fired and I have to leave immediately. I really said, "Thank You”. Then left.

This was December 15th, my oldest son's birthday. On the way home, I stop at a Mom & Pop computer store where I know some of the people to drop off a resume. They tell me that they have no openings right now but will call me when they do. I talk to a couple friends while I'm there, then head on home.

The only thing I'm worried about is telling my girlfriend that I got fired. I walk through the door, and she's at work. I see the answering machine blinking, so I hit play. It’s the Mom & Pop Computer Store saying their primary Novell Engineer just quit, and asking are you still available. I call them back and let them know I'll be there tomorrow.

That began a much more peaceful career, with better pay, rotating on-call and most every weekend and holiday off. By the way, the medical transcription firm imploded. The vice presidents were fired. They floundered for about a year and were bought up by a competing firm.

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46. Below My Pay Grade

In early 2000, I got a phone call at home from an IT recruiter. This wasn't uncommon at all. I had at one point or another interacted with half the sleazy recruitment agencies in my city. This call was a little bit different. It was from an in-house recruiter for a tech company, a company that was one of the shining stars of tech where I lived, with a reputation for not only having solid technology in their market, but also being a great place to work.

They were an honest-to-goodness "unicorn" back before anyone called them that. The conversation went something like this:

Recruiter: Hi I’m a recruiter from CoolTechCompany. How are you today?
Me: Doing well, thanks, what can I do for you?

Recruiter: I'm calling because Lynne gave me a copy of your resume, and suggested that I reach out to you about a position we have open.

A bog-standard HR introductory call followed, where I found out that they were looking for a lead Windows systems admin for their internal IT department. Now this confused the heck out of me, because Lynne was my lead, albeit through a dotted line. Let that sink in: My boss sent my resume to a recruiter without my knowledge or permission.

Obviously, this was something that warranted further investigation. So, I called Lynne. Apparently, she had just interviewed at CoolTechCompany and didn't get the job. On the "thanks but no thanks" call from HR, she told the recruiter something to the effect of "Well, that's too bad, but I know someone else you need to talk to. He’s better at this stuff than me, and I think he'd love working at CoolTechCompany”.

And then she sent over my resume, which she had from when she referred me for an internal hire job in another division of the company we both worked at. When I asked her why she did that, her reply chilled me. She just said: "You have to trust me on this one. I can't say more”.

So I had a phone interview with the hiring manager at CoolTechCompany. He and I meshed well, and he decided to bring me in for the full gauntlet interview with the rest of the systems admin team there.

Around this time, I got a meeting request from Jim, a higher-up who had it out for me. At the meeting, Jim informed me that our company had decided to insource all the contract systems admins and bring them on as direct employees—including me. He had an offer letter waiting for me at the meeting.

I opened the offer letter, only to discover that it was a 20% pay cut from what I was earning as a contractor, to do the same job. There was a slight bump in terms of benefits value, but at first glance it was obvious that this was a pay hit no matter how you added it up. Jim also informed me that this wasn't optional, that the insourcing was going to happen whether I liked it or not, and that this was a "take it or leave it" offer.

Not only would this be a pay cut, but I would also be reporting directly to Jim, as would all the other newly-insourced systems admins on the team. Either one of those would be dealbreakers, but I kept my mouth shut, knowing he didn’t like me. I caught up with Lynne a few minutes later. She took one look at my face and knew what had just happened.

"This is why I told you to trust me” she said, before I even said a word. I could have kissed her. So, a couple of weeks later I went in for the full interview at CoolTechCompany, which resulted in an offer that would have been a no-brainer to accept even if I hadn't just had my pay cut. I received that offer just before the planned effective date of the insourcing (and pay hit).

The next day, I walked in to Lynne's cube and let her know that I'd gotten the job. She got this look of utter delight on her face and said to me: "You HAVE to let me be there when you tell Jim”. So, we walked over to his office together, and told him. His response was priceless. He looked absolutely floored, and as usually did when he didn't get his way, immediately went into argument mode.

"All the other people took the job”. True, but two others quit within the first two months because they didn't have the head start on their job search that I did. "You're making a big mistake" (And why would that be?) "Do you think that little company is going to last”? (They did).

The problem was that because of the planned insourcing, there was no mechanism to continue to pay me past the end of that week. Enter Marie. Marie was Jim's boss, who I had a great relationship with. Now, I felt genuinely bad about this, because IT operations at corporate HQ was her responsibility, and this left her with not only no email server support, but only a day to figure out how to ensure continuity.

My backup had quit for unrelated reasons a month before. I was perfectly willing to give two-weeks’ notice as per custom, mind you—they just didn't have a straightforward way to pay me for it. So, Marie called me into her office after Jim had left for the day. I told her that I was already in the interview process at the time Jim gave me the offer.

This was true, although I left out the whole part about Lynne. I said the fact that it was such a big pay cut made it a no-brainer to continue the process. Marie had an utterly stunned look on her face. Then she made a huge revelation. "Pay cut? You all were supposed to be kept at parity”.

What I found out later (through my mole Lynne) was that Jim neglected to relay that instruction to company HR when they were preparing the offer letters. They prepared the offers at what HR deemed to be market rate, which in this case was a substantial pay hit. I never found out if he did that on purpose, but given that he'd complained in the past that he thought we were overpaid for what we did, I'd be willing to hazard a guess that he did.

Anyway, even though Marie upped the offer to match my current pay rate (so much for take it or leave it) and promised that I'd be reporting to her given my past history with Jim, I still declined as my new job had a lot more long-term opportunity. HR was VERY confused at my exit interview when they noticed that I'd been with the company for only nine working days.

Incidentally, I ended up staying at CoolTechCompany for over eight years. It was the best career move I ever made. My only regret about it was that I was never able to get Lynne a job there. On the other hand, Marie stepped in and took away all of Jim's supervisory responsibility, sticking him in a strict technical role. He lasted a few months after that and bailed out to a much smaller company.

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47. Will We Never Learn?

I witnessed this astounding IT meltdown around 2004 in a large academic organization. An employee decided to send a broad solicitation about her need for a local apartment. She happened to discover and use an all-employees@org type of email address that included everyone. And by "everyone," I mean every employee in a 30,000-employee academic institution.

Everyone from the CEO on down received this lady's apartment inquiry. Of course, this kicked off the usual round of "why am I getting this" and "take me off this list" and "omg everyone stop replying" responses…to 30,000 employees. It had a huge domino effect. The email started to bog down as a half-million messages apparated into mailboxes.

Still, that wasn't the real problem. That incident might've simmered down after people stopped responding. In a 30k organization, lots of people go on vacation, and some of them (let's say 20) remembered to set their email to auto-respond about their absence. And the auto-responders responded to the same recipients, including that general email address.

So, every "I don't care about your apartment" message didn't just generate 30,000 copies of itself...it also generated 30,000 x 20 = 600,000 new messages. Even the avalanche of apartment messages became drowned out by the volume of "I'll be gone 'til November" auto-replies.

That also wasn't the real problem, which, again, might have calmed down all by itself. The REAL problem was that the mail servers were quite diligent. The auto-responders didn't just send one "I'm away" message, they sent an "I'm away" message in response to every incoming message... including the "I'm away" messages of the other auto-responders.

The auto-response avalanche converted the entire mail system into an Agent-Smith-like replication factory of away messages, as auto-responders incessantly informed not just every employee, but also each other, about employee status. It became cataclysmic. The email systems melted down. Everything went offline.

A 30k-wide enterprise suddenly had no email for about 24 hours. And that's not the end of the story. The IT staff busied themselves with mucking out the mailboxes from these millions of messages and deactivating the auto-responders. They brought the email system back online, and their first order of business was to send out an email explaining the cause of the problem, etc. And they addressed the notification email to all-employees@org. But before they sent their email message, they had disabled most of the auto-responders—but they missed at least one.

More specifically: they missed at least two. It all happened again.

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48. A Simple Solution

I worked at Tech Support for a big German retailer, and the CEO’s laptop needed some updates on several programs—because we weren’t allowed to push that remotely on him, as per his rule. I go into his office and he was already annoyed about the fact it was going to take longer than two seconds.

He said he was going on a break, I do the thing and left. Took me 30 seconds. I get a call from him five minutes later: “You screwed up my computer, my screen is flashing and I can’t press anything! Get in here NOW”.

Sweat is pouring down my back as I took the elevator and came back in. “What the heck did you do? I can’t do anything here without you guys messing up every tiny thing. I swear I’m getting a whole new department if this happens again”!

I looked. The screen is flashing and I couldn’t even get to reboot. My panic intensifies. And then I see it. I look over to his side of the desk and there’s a remote numpad with a folder on the enter key. I push the folder off the thing and couldn’t hide the grin off my face. He looks too. “This didn’t happen okay?! Don’t tell anyone downstairs”.

It was the first thing i did. Condescending jerk-wad.

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49. One Special User

Every office has their special users. The ones who can't figure out anything technical, everything is an emergency, and everything has to function exactly the same or they can't work. At my job, it is the HR lady. Since she is just HR, all her problems boil down to a printer error, Excel, Word, reboot-and-it-works type of issues, and since I am the system admin they are all my responsibility.

However, every issue she has, she comes back to IT, walks right by my desk, goes to the programmer, manager, network admin, and explains the issue. Every time they either tell her to go me or relay the information to me to fix.

A few weeks back, she had a problem with the calculations on an Excel spreadsheet. Everyone was at lunch, so she's forced to ask me. Immediately, I say it is probably rounding up or down because it is only off by a penny. This doesn't suffice, so she ignores me and waits until lunches are done to return.

She goes to programmer guy and like usual, he passes it to me. I email her with a breakdown showing how it is rounding. She still wants programmer guy to look at it, so my manager responds with a message saying he will get to when he can. Well, programmer guy is swamped, the new website launch is getting pushed out, her Excel "problem" gets shelved with her emails coming ever more frequent.

My manager even resends my explanation, but she wants programmer guy to look at it. This is unacceptable, so she goes to the Vice President saying we aren't helping her. My boss sets up a meeting with the three of us for me to explain the issue. It was the shortest meeting ever because I start explaining it and our VP completely understands right away.

The VP cuts me off, looks at HR lady, and says "You pulled me into a meeting for this”?

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50. Sounds About Right

Last year, Help Desk got a call from a user complaining that the laptop we issued him would not read DVDs. He was one of those "I'm a very busy and a very important man, and I don't have time to follow your troubleshooting steps over the phone. Just fix it, darnit” kinda guys. He said he would get someone to drop off the laptop at our office and pick up a loaner.

We received the laptop a couple days later. There was a note attached saying that now it wasn't even booting into Windows anymore. Sure enough, he was right—it didn't even attempt to load Windows, and instead we were greeted by the "Non-system disk or disk error" message. It sounded and looked like the PC was trying to boot from the DVD drive instead of the HDD.

We opened the disk tray, and saw the culprit. There was a DVD in there, all right , but it was placed upside down. We flipped the disc over. It couldn’t have been more perfect. He was trying to watch Dumb and Dumber.

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51. In Desperate Need Of A Fall Guy

A few years back, I was working in a manufacturing company as IT manager. Like many industries, we had a number of machines with embedded computer systems. For the sake of convenience, we called these "production machines" because they produce stuff. By and large, the PCs we have inside the production machines are just normal desktop PCs that have a bunch of data acquisition cards in them.

Invariably these PCs are purchased and configured when this production machine is being commissioned, and then just left as-is until the production machine is retired. In some cases, this can be as long as 20 years. Please bear in mind that this is 20 years inside a dusty, hot factory environment.

I've been in manufacturing environments before, and this concept is not new to me. Thanks to a number of poignant lessons in the past, I make it my business to understand these PCs inside and out. I like to keep them on a tight refresh cycle, or when it's not practical (in the case of archaic hardware or software), keep as many spares as possible.

Also, regular backups are important. You just have to understand that unlike a normal PC, it can be difficult to do and plan it well in advance. More often than not, these PCs aren't IT's responsibility; they fall under engineering or facilities. Even so, these guys understand that IT runs just about every other PC in the business and welcome any advice or assistance that IT can provide. Finally, these PCs are usually tightly integrated into a production machine, and failure of the PC means the machine stops.

And so we have today's stars: Me, the new IT manager, and Aaron, the site's facilities manager. He's in charge of the maintenance of the site, including all of these production machines. He's super paranoid about people trying to take his job, so he guards all his responsibilities jealously and doesn't communicate anything lest they get the drop on his efforts.

Oh, and he has a fixation about not spending company money, even to the point of shafting the lawn-mowing guy out of a few hours pay. Then there’s the vice president of operations, the factory boss who’s a no-nonsense sort of guy, plus one of the old boys of the factory, Dale, who’s a man in his 70s.

I'm new, but in my first few weeks I've already had a number of run-ins with Aaron. I'm a fairly relaxed guy, but I have no qualms about letting someone dig their own grave and fall into it—and in Aaron’s case, I'd be happy to lend him my shovel. My pet hate was when organising new network drops, I will always run a double when we needed a single. We're paying working-at-heights money already, and a double drop is material cost only. He'd invariably countermand all my orders and insist on singles.

Then a few weeks or months later, I'd have the sparkie guy in again to install the second drop, at another $4k. And then there was the time that Aaron was getting shirty because I was holding up a project of his. Well sorry, if you are running a project that requires 12-16 network ports, you'd better at least talk to the IT guys prior to the day of installation.

Not only will you not have drops, you won't have switch ports. And if you didn't budget for them, or advise far enough in advance that I could, then you can wait until I get around to it. Failure to plan is not an emergency. So you could see that we didn't exactly gel together well. Which brings us to these production machines, and the PCs nested within.

Every attempt for me to try and document, or even understand them, was shut down by Aaron.

Me: Hardware and software specifications?

Aaron: That's my job, get lost.

Me: Startup and shutdown procedures?

Aaron: That's my job, get lost.

Me: Backup?

Aaron: That's my job, get lost.

Me: Emergency contacts?

Aaron: That's my job, get lost.

You get the picture. It resulted in a strong and terse email from Aaron to leave it alone. He had all the documentation, contacts, backups, and didn't need or want my meddling. I was not to touch any production machine’s PC under any circumstance. Moving forward a few months and I'm helping one of the factory workers on their area's shared PC.

It's located right next to one of these production machines. It's old. The machine itself was nearly an antique, but the controls system had been "recently" upgraded. I had actually seen this software in a different company, so I had some basic familiarity with it. Still, these particular production machines are rare, only a few of them exist in the world.

We bought this one from a company that had gone out of business a few years earlier. It was Test and Tag day and Aaron was running around a sparkie guy to do the testing. My earlier instruction to the sparkie was to not disconnect any computer equipment if it was not powered off. And so it came time to test this production machine's PC.

The sparkie wasn't going to touch it while it was on. Luckily Aaron came prepared with his thoroughly documented shutdown procedure: Yank the power cords. The test passed, new labels were applied to the power cord, he plugged it back in and turned it back on, then ran off to his next conquest without waiting for the boot to finish. This was the beginning of the trouble.

10 minutes later, the machine operator starts grumbling. I have a quick peek and see that the control software had started, but the screen was garbled and none of the right measurements were showing. Aaron is called over. He took one look, pales, and then runs off. Another 10 minutes later, the operator looks at me and asks for help.

I call Aaron’s mobile, and it's off. I called Vice President’s mobile and suggest that he comes over immediately. 10 minutes later, the operator, Vice Present, and I are looking at this machine. It's screwed. There's the better part of a million dollars’ worth of product to be processed by this machine, and the nearest alternate machine is in Singapore, belonging to a different company.

If the processing isn't done within soon, the product will expire and be scrapped. 40% of revenue is from product processed by this machine. We’re screwed. 10 minutes later, we still can't get a hold of Aaron. We can't talk to him about the "backups" or any emergency contacts that he knows about. We can't even get his phone to ring.

So as I have said, I have used this software before and have a basic understanding. I know enough that the configuration is everything, and the configuration is matched to the machine. But I also knew a guy who did some of the implementations. A call to him gave me a lead, and I followed the leads until about four calls later, I had the guy who implemented this particular machine.

This is the old boy from above. He had retired 10 years earlier, but the Vice President had persuaded him to come out of retirement for an eyewatering sum of money. A few hours later, this guy took one look at the machine and confirmed that the database was screwed. We'd need to restore it from backup. Aaron is still not contactable.

Me: Let's assume for a moment that there is no backup. What do we need to do?

Old Guy: Normally I'd say pray, buy you must have done that already because I haven't kicked the bucket yet.

To cut a long story short, we had to rebuild the database. But not from scratch. Old Guy’s MO was when setting up a machine, when he was done, he'd create and store a backup database on the machine. The only issue was that 20 years of machine updates needed to be worked out. It also just so happens that through sheer effort, I am able to compare a corrupted database file to a good one, and fool with it enough to get it to load in the configuration editor.

It's still mangled, but we are able to use that as a reference to build the lost configuration. All told, it took four days to bring this machine back online. But we did. To be honest, I certainly wasn't capable of doing this solo, and without my efforts to patch the corrupted database file, Old Guy would not have been able to restore 20 years of patches that we had no documentation for.

And what of Aaron? After we started working on the problem, he showed up again. He ignored any advice about a backup (because obviously there wasn't any), and instead demanded regular status updates for him to report to the Vice President. The little jerk had screwed up the machine, run off to hide, and that now a solution was in progress, he was trying to claim the credit.

When it was all running again, the Vice President came to talk to me.

VP: Thanks for your help. Your efforts have un-screwed us.

Me: No worries.

VP: And now we get to the unpleasant bit. Aaron claims that you didn't follow procedure when shutting down the machine, causing it to crash. He also claims that you hadn't taken any backups, and it was effectively your fault.

Me: And when we tried to call him?

VP: He claims he was busy contacting his emergency contacts.

Me: I see.

VP: I don't believe a word of that. Unfortunately, it's your word versus his. If I had the evidence, I'd fire him.

Me: (opening the email Aaron had sent me about meddling on my phone) You mean this evidence?

Half an hour later, I got the call to lock Aaron’s account and disabled his access card.

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52. Send That To Print

It's 11:30 pm and I get a call through from my least favorite business we support at my out-of-hours desk. We have no systems access and very little in the way of documentation, plus their calls are renowned for being a pain in the butt to deal with.

Me: Service desk how can I help?

Customer: Oh hello I'm not able to print

Me: Okay, any error messages? Any signs of life from the printer?

Customer: Now hold on I'm not a computer person so you'll need to use simple terms

Me: What happens when you print?

Customer: Nothing happens that's why I'm calling you!

Me: Do you see any messages appear on the screen when trying to print?

Customer: No

I have a particularly low tolerance for these kinds of callers who are unable to provide even basic details. This guy was also coming across as very condescending.

Me: Is your printer turned on? Can you see any lights?

Customer: Of course!

Me: Can you walk me through what you generally do to print something?

Customer: I'm not a computer person so you'll need to be more clear

Me: Tell me how you'd usually print

Customer: Look here, I don't really understand what you're asking me

Me: What would you usually do to print?

Customer: I don't understand you

Me: Ok sir, I'd like to connect remotely to your computer so I can see what's on the screen. Is that okay?

Customer: This is all very complicated. I'm not sure what you want to do

Me: I'd like to access your computer so I can see what's wrong

Customer: I'm sorry, can you explain that more clearly?

Me: I'm not sure how much clearer I can actually be with this. I need to remotely connect to try and fix this for you

Customer: Look this is terribly unfriendly for people who aren't technically savvy like myself. Why can't you fix this?

Me: I'm trying to help you and fix it, but you haven't been able to provide a great amount of detail on the issue, so I'd like to remotely connect a take a look myself

Customer: I'm not familiar with these technical terms. This is very hard. I don't understand why we have you people if you can't help people who aren't technically savvy

Me: I'm trying to help, however as it's out of hours our scope is limited. I need to remotely connect to see what's going on. I respect that you are not technically savvy but at the same time we do expect a certain level of existing knowledge from users in order to be able to provide our support service after hours. I can ask that the main service desk calls you back in the morning if you'd prefer?

Customer: No look this is very important and I need this fixed, how do you get on my screen?

Me: Firstly, I need you to open a web browser or just go to Google

Customer: I JUST USE THIS FOR EMAIL WHAT ON EARTH IS A WEB BROWSER?

Me: Do you use Google?

Customer: Yes of course I do!

Me: Okay, please go to Google....

Me: Thank you I'm now connected. I'm going to take a look at the printer setup now

Me: I see the printer is reporting "not connected". Can you check to make sure it's plugged in please?

I Google the model number and this is an OLD Epson printer. USB only. At this point I've had enough of this caller’s ineptness.

Customer: But I don't know HOW!

Me: I'm sorry, I really can't help you with this part. You're the one physically located with the computer and the printer. Go to the printer and make sure any wires coming from it are plugged into the PC.

Customer: OK.

Several minutes later I hear the unmistakable sound of a device being connected in Windows

Me: Okay, the printer is now showing as connected so it looks like the plug was disconnected. Please try printing again.

He navigates to Outlook, opens an email about discounted camping products, and proceeds to print it off.

Me: I can hear the printer in the background, so it looks like we're good now?

Customer: Yes it's working but you didn't help me at all click

But joke was on him. He left the remote connection open accidentally, so I spent the next half an hour inconspicuously moving his mouse each time he tried to click something before I got bored and disconnected.

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53. Works Like New

This comes from the wonderful world of home security systems customer support. My co-worker fields this one.

Co-Worker: "Thank you for calling, how may I help you”?

Grumpy Man: Gives name, address, password, blood sample of first born for verification purposes. "Well my system isn't accepting codes and won't turn on or off. I think it started after the storm that came through last night”.

Co-Worker: "Did lightning strike your house or close by”?

Grumpy Man: "Yes"

Co-Worker: "I see. Based on the age of the system, it probably took a surge. We're unable to get replacement parts anymore, so you'll need an upgrade. I can get someone in sales to call you with a price”.

Grumpy Man: "Well can't you just send someone out to fix it”?

Co-Worker: "We certainly can, but as it's obsolete equipment it's unlikely they can repair it. You'd still be billed for the service call”.

This is where the customer gets irate

Grumpy Mane: WHY WOULD YOU SELL ME AN OBSOLETE SYSTEM???

Co-Worker: soft voice "Well Sir, it was brand new in 1986”.

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54. Meet Virginia

I work for a small software company doing IT and customer service work supporting the users of our order-writing software. We brought on a new company six months or so ago, and along with it came a sales rep we'll call Virginia.

Virginia is 75 years old, "not good with computers," but has the best sense of humor and understanding I've ever had from a client. Every time she calls in, she's always got something to say, which usually ends in a "I hope you've got your Valium nearby”! and considers us all wizards.

We recently updated our software and sent an email out notifying users of this. She calls in yesterday, and we chat it up while I explain to her that yes, this was a real email, not spam, and that she should in fact update her program.

She says "Ok, I'm going to try to be a big girl and update this myself, but stay by the phone”! A few minutes go by, and the phone rings. Sure enough, it's her on the Caller ID, so I pick up without using the standard greeting, and say "Hey, Virginia”!

She responds, "Darn, how did you recognize me with my hat and fake mustache on”!? I lost it for a bit. Having a long week full of incompetent, ignorant, or intentionally destructive users was washed away because this little old lady told the most Dad-like joke over the phone.

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55. Prove Me Wrong, Why Don’t You

I have a few spare laptops around the house from tech donation when I left my old job. My director has said "They'll just sit around otherwise, at least you'll use them”. The battery's shot on one of them, but it's obviously fine when plugged in. My wife is using one of them right now, so I walked over to check model numbers to look for a replacement battery on eBay.

She asks what I'm doing, and I let her know. She asks why I think the battery's shot. I point to the orange flashing "NOT CHARGING" indicator. She made a big mistake. "No, hon, it is charging. Look”. Unplugs laptop. Aaaaaand whatever she was doing is gone now, since the battery's not charging. She looked at me and said: "Okay, maybe not”.

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56. If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try Try Again

We have a pretty simple system at my IT workplace. You ask for something and you get something. With me so far? It really is that simple for the user. We have to do some crazy routing on our end depending on what that something is, but that is an entirely different story.

There is also a big button that say “click here” if you want something for someone else.

It also has a giant red warning underneath that says "Hey if you don't use that big button right above, the something you ask for will be FOR YOU". We even have , ARE YOU SURE YOU DON'T MEAN YOU WANT IT FOR SOMEONE ELSE?

So enter Alice, a user. Alice supports many other users. The department might get a lot of turn over because every month they get at least one new person. Or maybe they're expanding? Who knows, not my problem. Like clockwork the second Monday of every month we get a ticket from Alice. "I asked for something for the new hire but they never got it. Please fix”.

I'm not kidding. Literally every second Monday of every month for the last year or so. Can you guess what went wrong? Let me give you a hint...it has something to do with Alice not using the giant button and not reading the two different warnings or popups. I had gotten really tired of sending Alice the same email every month. ”Please use the button to ask for something for someone else. We'll send ticket over to finance to swap the charges".

That email also contains very detailed step by step instructions. The rest of my team had also gotten tired of hearing from Alice, so we decided to not help this time, with manager/director backup. In fact, we came up with a drastic pan. We disabled the ability for Alice to submit tickets. She must call the help desk for tickets now.

We also didn't forward the current ticket to finance. We sent Alice a strongly worded email that basically said "Look, you do this EVERY month. We told you HOW to do this the correct way for a year. If you still can't figure it out, you're on your own and all these charges will fall on you”. Attach the last 12 months’ worth of tickets. We also CC Alice’s boss.

Alice must have not noticed her boss CCed, on the email because we get a nasty email back. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN'T OPEN TICKETS ANYMORE?! AND WHY AM I GETTING CHARGED FOR IT?! DO YOU KNOW WHO I SUPPORT?! YOU WILL FIX THIS NOW OR MY BOSS WILL HEAR ABOUT THIS”. Insert other comments about how stupid the system is and how incompetent my team is and other non-professional language. Email was also largely in caps.

We didn't get around to responding until after lunch but as it turns out we don't need to respond anymore. Alice’s boss has apparently already responded. "I apologize for the behavior of Alice. Please don't let her behavior affect the wonderful support you provide to our department. Ben will now be responsible for interfacing with your team to get things for our new hires. Please grant Ben the permissions Alice previously had. I've read through your directions you sent Alice and tried it out. It worked as expected. Ben will be using those directions to complete her work. Also please terminate Alice’s network access.

We shut down her network account with pleasure.

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57. May The Power Of IT Compel You

A call comes in, and a user reports her keyboard is going erratic, as in it is "possessed”. I take a stroll down to the office bearing a new replacement keyboard.

I get there and I begin to make sure that it is indeed a faulty keyboard and not just some gunk sticking the key down. I open up notepad and immediately I am barraged by "...nnnnnnn”. Everything seems fine otherwise. This keyboard is the same model as the replacement I brought over, so relatively new, no sticky keys either. Very well a faulty keyboard it is. Until...

...Until I move the tower and notice a second, wireless keyboard sitting on the side of it, laying flat on the floor, with a stack of papers and a tissue box sitting atop. I pull it out and notice the “n” barrage has stopped on the screen. I press the N key once again and an n is added to the word file.

Exorcism was performed, demons were banished, am now priest.

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58. You Want What You Can’t Have

I was working for a large warehouse and customization company under contract through another company, and recently they had been talking about cutting people and shifts to make up for the lack of sales during the summer and wanted us to show our worth.

The IT manger asked me since I was the last hire to show my worth and why I should not be cut. 80% of what I had to do in the first three months I had gotten down to simple scripted fixes by talking to the software vendors and learning the fixes. I presented all of this to him and the following week I was notified by my contract manager they were letting me go.

Fine with that really as seasonal was coming up and the no drug test or background check hires were the worst each year. Only, that wasn’t the last I saw of them. Two days later I get a call from the manager demanding the scripts I used. While at the job they never provided me with any tools and they told us to use our own if we needed it.

I had never put the scripts on the server or on my work computer. I check my contracts for any clause for files or documents I create while on the job and then proceeded to tell him they were not worth me keeping my job, so I deleted them when requested to hand in my drive upon termination.

I was a contractor, so the scripts would belong to my contract company and not the company I was sent to. Sorry, nope.

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59. The Long Way Round

I had to walk a client through setting up a printer over the phone. This required her to set an IP address to the printer. She was not tech smart at all.

Me: "Ok, do you have a USB cable? Sometimes they come with the printer"

Her: "No, I’m looking in the box now. There’s no USB cable. Only the printer and power cord"

So it needs to me networked, great. I walk her through getting the printer on her network.

Me: "Ok, do you see a place to enter 4 numbers”?

Her: "Yep, its right here"

Me: "Ok the number is 192.168.0.3"

Her: "Ok, I put in 19216803. What’s the 2nd number”?

Me: "No, let’s start over. The first number is 192, second is 168, third is 0, and fourth is 3"

Her: "Ok, so 192.168.03”?

Me: "No, the third number is just 0, the fourth is 3"

Her: "So, 0.0.0.3”?

Me: "no, 192.168.0.3"

Her: "But what about the 0”?

Me: "What about it”?

Her: "Shouldn't it be a number”?

Me: "0 is a number"

Her: "Look, this it too complex for me, can’t we just use the cable it came with”?

Me in my head: WHY DIDNT YOU TELL ME YOU HAD A CABLE!?!??! YOU SAID YOU JUST HAD THE PRINTER AND POWER CABLE!

Me: ".....Yes"

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60. Fire And Brimstone

This is my all-time favorite interaction with tech support. Late one December evening a number of years ago, I got an unexpected call from my boss. He said there was a fire at the office, and I might want to come in and see what was going on.

So I did. By the time I got there, the fire was on its way out, and I and a couple dozen others were standing around in the parking lot waiting for the firefighters to give us the all-clear to enter the building.

We had Internet service through an awesome local ISP at the time. The kind of small company that really cared about service. While I was shivering next to a fire truck, my cell phone rang. It was one of their techs, whom I had shared on office with at a different company years ago and knew well.

Me: Hello?

Tech: Hi. Just wanted to let you know that our monitoring noticed your Internet link is down, and we're working on it.

Me: That might be because it's on fire.

Long pause. Then:

Tech: Did you just say it's on fire?

Me: Yeah, there was a fire in the building. I'm standing next to a fire truck right now. They aren't letting us in yet.

Tech: Ah, well OK then. I'll assume the problem is on your end. click

Despite the cold and the uncertainty (how badly damaged was the office, etc), I couldn't help laughing at the absurdity of it all. But because that tech was awesome, less than five minutes later he called back to say, "I just checked, and we have two portable generators that aren't in use right now. If you need them. Just say the word, and I can have them there in two hours, any time, day or night. No charge”. Our contract with them had nothing in it about generators.

Pixabay

61. Catching A Big Fish

Some years ago, I get an offer for a side job. I nearly always have something going on the side, but it happened that I didn't right then. The guy who made the offer was a friend of an acquaintance. I didn't know anything about him and he lived about four hours from me.

We spend some time talking online, and it seems like a good gig. Basically, it was writing some shipping/warehouse software. He wanted me to travel down to meet him, expenses paid. I agreed.

When I got there, things seemed a little bit sketchy, but often people who are starting small businesses or running one-person businesses don't have much capital. So I didn't think too much about it. I should have run right then. We met in a restaurant. He told me about the job...again. I patiently listen to nothing new, wondering why I had to travel for this.

Then he tells me I need to come meet his client. That his client won't sign the contract until we meet. Okay, fair enough. I think his client wants to see if I'm capable. We go to the client's place of business. Right before we go in, this guy tells me not to worry about anything he might say. If I have any questions, ask him afterward.

So, he presents me to the client as an employee. Other than that, things are fine. I don't get to see any of the computer equipment. I don't get to see any of the existing software, because we aren't building off the existing software. After we leave, I question the "employee" bit, and the guy says he doesn't want his client to know he's using contract labor.

Well...okay. If you're just starting in business, you want to look bigger than you are. We get down to brass tacks, and the guy has a whole elaborate system set up for work production and payment. I think it's overly elaborate, but whatever. I'm not planning to cheat the guy, and if he's paranoid, that's his problem.

He would front me some money, about a week's worth. Every day, I would upload the current source code to the cloud. He wanted to pay by the hour, so I would keep a time sheet of hours worked. Personally, I think this is plain stupid. If I give a price for completed work, then I carry the extra time for mistakes. If he pays by the hour, then he carries the price for mistakes. But some people pay for work. Some people pay for the time your butt in the chair.

Every two weeks, he would pay based on the time sheet hours. This works out fairly well…until one day. The first time he missed a paycheck. I notify him that I haven't received payment and I keep working.

When I hit the one-week mark (the amount of the initial advance), I keep working but I stop uploading the source code. I get a paycheck. I start uploading the source code again. Next time I send him a time sheet, I get a phone call.

Him: You're cheating me! I can see it on your time sheet. There are three days here where you put down hours you didn't work.
Me: What do you mean?
Him: You didn't work these three days because I didn't send your paycheck. That's how you forced me to pay you when I didn't have the money.
Me: I worked those hours. I just didn't upload the source.
Him: From now on, you need to upload the source or I won't count those hours as work. But I'll go ahead and pay you this time, even though I don't believe you really worked those hours.

My paycheck finally arrived a few days late, but without the days I supposedly "didn't work". I calculated where I was on hours worked vs hours paid, taking into account the initial front money. It was good, so I kept working. When I reached the end of the paid hours, I stopped working, and stopped uploading.

I get another phone call:

Him: Why are you not uploading source?
Me: I've run out of money. You didn't send a complete paycheck last time. If you want me to keep working, you need to pay me.
Him: You're cheating me! Do you think I'm made of money?
Me: This is what we agreed. If you'd rather switch to a pay for work delivered, I can do that.
Him: No! You'll cheat me out of more money. I can get some kid out of high school to do this for less than I'm paying you. If you don't start working again, you will lose the whole project.
Me: Why don't you go find that high school kid?

That was the end of that. Or so I thought.

About a month later, I get a frantic phone call.

Him: You have to fix this!
Me: Fix what?
Him: The client's computer system has been compromised. Everything's gone!
Me: Don't you have another employee now? The one that took my place?
Him: But he's just a kid. He can't fix this!! Can't you at least give me some suggestions?
Me: What exactly happened?
Him: It's the systems admin. He got fired. He took down the whole system.
Me: Why did he get fired?
Him: We didn't need him anymore. The system was up and running fine. After he left, he remoted in and erased all the operating systems.
Me: Well, you've got backups. Reload everything.
Him: We can't. He got the job because he had unlicensed copies of all the operating systems we needed. He used those to set up the network. Now we can't reload without buying licenses.
Me: ....

After I hung up, I had a good laugh, and realized that I'd dodged a big one with that company. That was the end of that. Again, or so I thought.

Early one Saturday morning, I'm sleeping in. Enjoying a well-earned day off. Phone rings.

Me: Hello?

It’s the FBI.
FBI: This is a Special Agent from the FBI. I need to ask you a few questions about this company.
Me: I don't work for them anymore.
FBI: It concerns the computers that were compromised.
Me: I wasn't employed there when that happened.
FBI: Yes, but your boss got some advice from you at the time? He says you can confirm the incident.
Me: He did call me. I talked to him for about 10 minutes.
FBI: Good. I need to verify exactly what he told you about the damage done.
Me: He told me the operating systems had been erased.
FBI: Yes. Can you estimate how much monetary damage was done by erasing the operating systems?
Me: Well, none. They didn't own the operating systems, so it's not like any property was damaged or stolen.
FBI: They didn't own the operating systems?
Me: That's what they told me. They were running unlicensed copies.
FBI: He told you that??
Me: Yes. He told me that the systems admin, the person who compromised the system, brought the operating systems with him. After they fired him, he took the operating systems back. But he said they were unlicensed, so I don't know that they legally belonged to the sysadmin.
FBI Thank you for your cooperation.

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62. Mystery Solved

This is a second-hand story told to me 20 years ago by someone who was already a veteran systems administrator back then, so it could have happened in the 80s or early 90s. The scene is a factory making heavy machinery. They are modern and the factory floor had terminals connected to a mainframe for tracking parts and whatever else they needed it for.

One day a systems admin gets a call from the factory floor and after the usual pleasantries the user says: “I can't log in when I stand up”.

The admin thinks that it's one of those calls again and goes through the usual: Is the power on? What do you see on the terminal? Have you forgotten your password?

The user interrupts: “I know what I'm doing, when I sit down I can log in and everything works, but I can't log in when I stand up”.

The admin tries to explain that there can be no possible connection between the chair and the terminal and sitting or standing should in no way affect the ability to log in. After a long back and forth on the phone, he finally gives up and walks to the factory floor to show the user that standing can't affect logging in.

The admin sits down at the terminal, gets the password from the user, logs in and everything is fine. Turns to the user and says: “See? It works, your password is fine”.

The user answers: “Yeah, told you, now log out, stand up and try again”.

The admin obliges, logs out, stands up, types the password and: invalid password. Ok, that's just bad luck. He tries again: invalid password. And again: invalid password. Baffled by this, the admin tries his own mainframe account standing: invalid password. He sits down and manages to log in just fine. This has now turned from crazy user to a really fascinating debugging problem.

The word spreads about the terminal with the chair as an input device and other people start flocking around it. Those are technical people in a relatively high-tech factory, they are all interested in fun debugging. Production grinds to a halt. Everyone wants to try if they are affected.

It turns out that most people can log in just fine, but there are certain people who can't log in standing and there are quite a few who can't log in regardless of standing or sitting. After a long debugging session, they find it. Turns out that some joker pulled out two keys from the keyboard and switched their places.

Both the original user and the admin had one of those letters in the password. They were both relatively good at typing and didn't look down at the keyboard when typing when sitting. But typing when standing is something they weren't used to and had to look down at the keyboard, which made them press the wrong keys.

Some users couldn't type properly and never managed to log in. Others didn't have those letters in their passwords and the switched keys didn't bother them at all.

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63. Taking Me On A Journey

Me: Hello, Retail IT. This is Daniel.

Caller: Hey Daniel. I’m in a big bind here. I'm a district manager and I’m doing a presentation in 15 minutes and my laptop crashed. I'm kind of freaking out here and don't know what to do.

Me: Oh no. Well, I'll have to have a desktop tech give you a call and help you with that.

Caller: Well, is there any way you can help me? Not to be that person, but I'm really freaking out here and I have no time left until my presentation....

Me: Ok, well what's your laptop showing?

Caller: It's not powering on. It showed like a blue screen and just turned off on its own and now won't turn on....

Me: Yeah. That doesn't sound good. We might have to replace your laptop....

Caller: Oh my god....(starts crying)

Me: Oh shoot.....

Caller: I worked on this all week! I can't believe this (starts sobbing)

Me: Ok. Please don't cry. Let me see what I can do.

Caller: (continues crying)

Me: Alright. So when you worked on your presentation, it was a PowerPoint right?

Caller: Yes... (sniff)

Me: Did you have it saved on a network drive or just on your computer?

Caller: I'm not sure. I think just on my computer...(sniff)

Me: Ok, I'm willing to bet you saved it on the network drive and didn't know it.

Caller: Ok.

Me: I have to search like a million folders. Can you tell me the name of the presentation?

Caller: Yeah. It's (he tells me)

Me: Ok. Let's see. Got it!

Caller: Shut up..... (sniff)

Me: Ok so I’m going to save this. Send it to your email. You have a phone or iPad right?

Caller: I have both!

Me: Ok. Are you in a conference room?

Caller: Yeah!

Me: Do they have Wi-Fi?

Caller: Yeah... I think so....

Me: Ok. Try to find out the Wi-Fi and connect your iPad to it.

Caller: Ok. Emails are coming through. I see yours......Oh my god......OH MY GOD!!!

Me: There ya go! I don't know the connection of the conference room but there should be a way to airplay your PowerPoint from your iPad to the tv or whatever they have.

Caller: Oh my god... (crying) I can't believe it. You saved me!

Me: Not a problem. Glad I was able to help

Caller: Next time I'm at the office, you're getting a drink and a long hug!

Me: Sounds good. Hope your meeting goes well.

Caller: .........................

Me: Ok Bye?

Caller: Hahahahahahah. So. My laptop just turned on....It wasn't plugged in and I guess the battery was gone. Ha ha ha.....

Me: ...................................

Caller: Hello?

Me: (crying)

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64. Never Say You’re Sorry

My client provided a PSD file that she wanted converted into an HTML file. The PSD was 600 pixels wide. I sliced and diced the file, converted live text where possible, uploaded the HTML page to the server and provided her with the URL. I then get a frantic email which turns into the below conversation.

Client: This is terrible! Everything is so much bigger. It looks nothing like the PSD I gave you.

Me: What do you mean "so much bigger"?

Client: It's huge! You have to re-code this so that it matches what I provided

Me: (utterly confused) So that I know exactly what the problem is, could you provide a screenshot of what you're seeing?

Client: (Sends a screenshot of Photoshop and Safari side-by-side. They look identical)

Me: They actually look the same to me. They should both be 600 pixels wide. I didn't alter the PSD at all

Client: (Tech savvy enough to know how to "inspect element" in Safari) Okay, yeah, it's 600 pixels but why is it so huge?! This is unacceptable. I'm going to send this job to someone else to re-code.

At this point, I have no idea what to say or do. I decide to look at her screenshot again and this time I notice her Safari window says "33%”. Evidently the zoom setting on her Safari browser was at 300%, but in the screenshot she sent me, it was scaled down to fit on the screen (which defeats the entire purpose of sending a screenshot to show the discrepancy).

Me: Can you make sure you're not zooming in in your Safari browser? Your screenshot looks like that might be the issue

(No reply)

Several hours later, the client emails me again for another project, not mentioning this issue at all.

Me: By the way, is that other project approved?

Client: Yes.

No apology or sign of humility. This client does this kind of stuff all the time. I'll never understand how she is smart enough to know about pixel width and analyzing image properties, yet still pulls out stuff like this.

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65. All In A Day’s Work

My friend bought a Netflix box for a tv, and when it wouldn't work, she asked me to come set it up. I couldn't get there until after work, and when I did it was working. She said she called Google to fix it (it was not a Google product, nor does it use any Google services) so I thought she googled the company number and had them fix it.

I wanted to show her it wasn't Google she called, so I checked the caller ID. I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was Google. After a while on the phone a Google tech support guy helped her set up an unrelated product for free. I guess Google really is a helpful service.

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66. Burn It To The Ground

I'm not in tech support. In fact, none of my job descriptions ever included anything remotely resembling tech support. Yet, life finds a way... As a long-time nightshift worker who often hung out with the local IT folks, I was "promoted" to an honorary tech support role. It was a win-win (win-lose?) scenario for the guys as they could chill at home while on call, in the meantime I resolved low-level on-site issues and had something interesting (or at least different) to do in addition to my boring desk jockey job.

A few companies later, when the buzzwords "business intelligence," "data analysis," "data-driven decisions," etc started to pop up on the corporate bingo, I was already involved in these things at my current workplace. As usual, my job description had nothing to do with it, but I had to manually create a lot of reports, and work with a lot of data.

I'm as lazy as it comes, so if I have to do the same task twice I'm going to spend an unreasonable time (trying) to automate it. The result of my laziness was a PowerBI dashboard hosted on SharePoint.  It had a lot of moving parts and tried to do way too much. It was also a horrible mess, but I tried to keep it as organized as possible. My team's standard reporting tasks, which were taking usually an entire week at the end of each month, condensed down to a few hours, which in theory could've been less.

So, in addition to my standard role (which I performed "above expectations" according to my annual reviews) I was the local BI developer/data analyst/ad-hoc tech support. At every salary increase cycle I always had to ask for a salary at the top of the range of the role which I had on paper, citing the above reasons.

The company always fought tooth and nail and it was always a painful and a bit humiliating experience. (Un)Fortunately, after a few years they decided that "Now that you've built these solutions, we don't need you anymore, we only need to hire someone to maintain it. You are fired”. According to my contract this would mean I'm still employed for another 60 days.

I made sure to double-check everything and tried to make sure that everything goes smoothly when my replacement takes over. There was just one problem. By the time my notice period was up, they still couldn't find anyone as they'd been advertising a wonderful "3 in 1" package. Yep, my successor was supposed to do everything I was doing...

My last day was at the end of the month, and I pushed out one more update under the watchful eye of my supervisor. As soon as they saw that everything had updated, security came in and my boss said to delete everything from GitHub as it's an external site and a security risk. I tried to explain that it's tied to my corporate email and it would be best to keep it alive and transfer ownership to my successor, but they wouldn't budge and told me to delete it.

Okay then, let's nuke it from orbit. I told them that there's a local copy (duh) on my work laptop and also on OneDrive (not in my private folder) they said IT will take care of it. Apparently that meant a deep cleanse of my laptop without retaining any of the data (while the "she's on maternity leave" woman's laptop was still in a locker after four years...), so the only remaining copy was in my former team's shared OneDrive folder.

A month passed, and my former boss called me asking for help. They still haven't found a replacement, unsurprisingly. Not wanting to burn any bridges and because I'm an exploitable idiot I told them sure, I'll help, toss in a steak dinner voucher for two at a local mid-range restaurant and I'll help. They were dragging their feet, despite the fact that my ask was significantly lower in value than what the contractor rate would've been and I knew they could expense it anyway.

After a day or two they gave in. I hopped on my bike, signed an NDA, got a laptop, and asked a team member to add me to the Teams channel so I can start working. As I started to poke around on OneDrive, I couldn't find my backup folder. After a while, I went to ask my former boss where they moved it, as I can't find it anywhere. His response made me almost do a spit take.

"Oh, we deleted them, didn't seem important. There were only a couple of files though, I'm sure you can easily do it again". Those "few files" were the result of hundreds of hours of experimentation, trying to figure out how the various systems work together, and without documentation there was literally zero chance of recreating it in a short amount of time.

"Can't you just restore from that online hub thing?" Not really, as you specifically asked me to delete it despite my protests...I left without getting my steak dinner. A few days later, they've called me again asking me how much would it cost make a brand-new dashboard.

Apparently some corporate bigwigs overseas were using it for their PowerPoint meetings (remember, it included global data) and were pretty angry that the fancy charts were gone. I may or may not have found a relatively recent local version of the Git report, which I may or may not have used to do some of the number crunching as my old corporate laptop could barely handle anything. I may or may not have forgotten to mention this obvious security breach and billed out my hours as I've been creating everything from scratch.

Pixabay

67. That One Didn’t Land

I work for a surgery center. So does Sandy. Sandy is a very kind (gullible, evidently) older lady who mans the switchboard phones. This is about the day I upgraded Sandy's computer. This is about the day I made Sandy cry.

Me: And there you are. Do you have any questions I can answer about your new setup before I go work on the other tickets today?

Sandy: Well, how am I supposed to use it?

Did I mention this was a particularly off-kilter day, and I had deployed the machine without a keyboard or mouse?

Me: Oh, these new machines don't require keyboards or mice any more. There's actually a neural implant, very low power and completely painless. It makes it a truly wireless experience, and the procedure only takes about 45 minutes. We have you booked for operating room seven with Dr. Smith at 12:15

Sandy: But...but I...

At this point, Sandy's eyes start to bug out and she bursts into tears.

Me: Oh my God! I'm so sorry! I'm joking! I just forgot your keyboard and mouse. There is no implant, I was pulling your leg. Please forgive me! I'm going to go get your keyboard and mouse right now!

This was many years ago now, but I still feel bad about it. Luckily she calmed down (and found it funny) a few minutes after I explained that I was joking.

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68. That’s Between You And Your God

I have a horrible client. People like him should be forbidden from hiring web developers.

He calls me, mad:

Client: "Hey! I was under the impression that this website would work on a laptop!"

Me: "It does. It's a website"

Client: "So if I were to get on a laptop right now, you're telling me it would work?"

Me: "Yes...Like I said, it works on a laptop”

Client: "How in world would you know that?"

Me: "Well, 1) I wrote the website, 2) this ain't my first rodeo, and 3) I USE A LAPTOP!"

Client: "You have a laptop?!"

Me: "Yes! You've seen it. It's my primary computer"

Client: "And it works?"

Me: "Yes!"

Client: "Neat!"

Me: "Do you have a laptop?"

Client: "No”

Me: "THEN WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?!?"

Client: "Should I get a laptop?"

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69. Karma Comes Back Around

A few years ago, I was sent to our Italian office where the three Italian IT guys were to train up their new IT Support Guy on how to manage his help desk stuff. Things were going really well, and one day they decided that we should all go out for a traditional Italian meal—a Turkish Kebab.

We got to the kebab shop and I'm trying to read the menu and getting some help from the team. The guy behind the counter can fortunately speak English and he wants to practice, so we get talking and I place my order of 1xAwesomeKebab.

He then asks me what an English-speaking guy is doing in Italy. I made a big mistake. I tell him that I'm here doing "IT Stuff". That was all he needed to hear. About 15 seconds later I have this knackered old laptop running Windows 7 with a Turkish operating system that "won't work" and there's an error when he tries to do stuff with it.

I tried to help as he was preparing my food and I like helping people anyway. My kebab turns up and I slowly ate it over the course of about 20 minutes while I tried my hardest, using context and experience, to figure out what was wrong from the description he gave me that "something was wrong with his internet connection and it didn't work".

I managed to work out that it looked like his network card was broken and non-functioning and that he could maybe try re-installing it from the original disks he had or get a cabled connection so he could get the drivers if he didn't have the disks. He seemed happy with this and brought us our bill.

He went round the table collecting the money and when he got to me he said, "Not you my friend, today, you eat for free!" The kebab was totally worth the impromptu tech support.

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70. Oops, My Bad

I got a message from a friend saying someone they knew wanted to replace the broken screen in their laptop, and that they already had the replacement screen. I got in contact with him, and he asked if I could come to his place of work to replace the screen. I said I would as long as I had permission from his boss, turns out he was the owner of the company.

The next day I showed up at his work and he gave me his laptop. He showed me to an empty desk in the accounting/stats department, and I replace the laptop screen without any trouble. He was in a meeting so while waiting for him to finish, I hung out in the accounting/stats department. I see two older gentlemen working on an excel spreadsheet, one was reading off each number while the other was putting it into a calculator, and reading the results back.

They were doing this to calculate the sum of hundreds of numbers and started over twice. I thought was about to blow their minds—I was really about to ruin their lives. I introduced myself and showed them how to get excel to do it automatically for them, and I said, "this way it will only take you minutes to do a sheet instead of hours". I then heard a loud "You are all fired for incompetence".

Turns out the owner had been in the doorway listening. After everything settled down, he told me, "I have been waiting on that sheet for two days, and you did it in under a minute”. He ended up giving me $200, and has sent a lot of work my way over the years.

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71. A Bunch Of Morons

I own a small IT company in Georgia. At one point in my life, I was a pretty decent technician but these days my job is mostly shaking hands. I try to work a ticket or two every day though just to keep in shape so I can talk intelligently.

Today one of our system monitors alerted us to excessive login failures at one of our largest customers. This is an alert that is set up to let us know if someone has failed to log in successfully several times and is designed to give us a heads-up if there is a brute-force attack happening.

We have the threshold set pretty low and we get one alert a week just on the shared computers usually. But this one was different. This alert was on a fax server at one of their smaller remote locations. No users typically are at the fax servers, so I decided to go ahead and investigate. I fired up screenconnect and was greeted by the Windows login welcome screen just spinning.

After a few seconds it hit the password authentication window but almost instantly blinked out of it and was trying to log in again. RED FLAGS immediately! I watched for another 30 seconds or so and saw it hit the login screen again and fail the password check three more times again almost instantly.

Clearly this was some sort of bot trying to brute force its way into the system. This is a pretty secure system as things go and we take things like this incredibly seriously. I am trying to rack my brain and figure out where an attack like this would even come from and why it would be hitting this server, which is much less exposed than a lot of other things on the network.

I grabbed two of my senior techs real quick and put them on the case to try and figure out what was happening and where this was coming from. We didn't want to log into the system because it might have a keylogger going and we didn't know what the situation was, so we were pushing out commands on the backend. Everything kept getting weirder and weirder.

We couldn't find an outside source hitting this machine in the firewall or through the switch. So one of my techs said, "Maybe it has something already on it trying to brute force itself that will phone home once it gets a domain login???" So we decided to isolate the machine on the network to test this theory.

Sure enough, the attack continued even with no communication from the outside. It didn't make a lot of sense though. If the machine was already compromised, there are better ways to get passwords? Maybe this is an amateur attempt? So we start looking for rogue processes. Not much is really running on it and everything looks pretty standard.

Regardless though something is causing this, so we start terminating whatever looks like the most likely offenders. No luck, every 30 seconds three failed login attempts about as fast as you can blink. Eventually we are digging deep. Nothing is working. We deploy a tech to go pick up the server and bring it back to the shop and get it off their network.

In the meantime, I call management and let them know we are seeing an attack on their network and we are investigating. This place is only a few minutes away, but as the tech is driving over the attacks suddenly stop. One of the processes we had deleted stopped it.

But the last thing my tech deleted was a HUGE server process on the machine. Panic sets in. I play through in my head the thousand machines we have running on this same process that might also be compromised. I am pretty close to a full-on freak out at this point. My tech goes ahead and reboots the server to see if the assault continues.

After the reboot though, it was quiet. We pushed out a temporary admin account and new password and went ahead and logged into the box to start poking around. We dug into the event viewer security logs to see what was going on and started to see all of the audit failures. Weird thing though, they were all trying our admin account and they were all coming from the local machine???

If you have ever seen this kind of attack normally what you find here is a bunch of common names and account names being tried from various overseas IP addresses. You will see several logins under "john" and "chris" and "root" and "admin" and "local" etc and normally it would not come from the local machine. If you already have malware running on the local machine, there are a million better and less obvious ways to collect passwords.

The server had just come back up when my technician got into the remote office. That’s when we finally figured it out. As he walked in, the front desk receptionist said: "Hey when you get done with whatever you are here, for this machine next to me keeps beeping at me". She waves at the fax server. My technician walked up to the fax server, picked up a catalog off of the enter key, and then promptly called back to let us know that we are all a bunch of morons.

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72. The Harpy Rises, The Harpy Falls

I have been working my way up the food chain at the little IT company I'm with. The clients I deal with, I treat much like I did customers at Starbucks. Compassionate, caring, empathetic, blah blah good customer service, blah blah. And this has put me in good favor with all of our clients that I've dealt with.

One in particular is a mid-size, regional company that specializes in giving sociopaths a lucrative opportunity to exploit people less strong-willed than them. I'll let you determine the field. They are not my primary "station," but I help out there when the ticket queue gets overloaded. We can call them SlimeCo.

Most of the folks there that I deal with, while slimy in general, are quite pleasant towards me. I'm the cheerful guy with the laptop who doesn't make promises and just does what needs to be done, unlike the three other burnt-out techs stationed there who make hard deadlines they never meet. But there is one woman here who is beyond help.

Ever see that episode of Kitchen Nightmares that had the husband and wife pair where the wife was just completely convinced she could do no wrong and that everyone was out to get her? That's this woman. Not literally, but a bit-for-bit duplicate. She is a problem for everyone, and my pleasant demeanor doesn't mean anything to her because I'm just trying to ruin her life.

I avoid her like the plague because I have more important things to deal with than her 15 tickets about the same goddarn stuff that has been resolved over and over again. We'll just call her The Harpy from here on out.

It’s the fourth of July, and I'm up at my friends' cottage for the long weekend, and it’s 2 am. It happened so quick. I get a call from a number I don't recognize. I answer, because at 2 am it could be important. Something could be wrong at home, or with my family or what have you.

Me (groggily): "Uh...hello?"

The Harpy: "Finally someone answers. Aren't you guys on call or whatever?"

Me: "I'm sorry, who is this?"

Harpy: "Who do you think it is? It's The Harpy from SlimeCo. My goddarn laptop keeps restarting”.

Me: "How did you get this number?"

Harpy: "Why does that matter? You're IT. You're on call. That's how it works. Fix my laptop or I'll have your job”.

Me: "This is a personal cell phone and I'm not on call, ever. We don't have 'On-Call Support'“.

Harpy: "If I can get a hold of you, you're on call. And this laptop you gave me isn't working. It keeps restarting and I need it to do my job”.

Me "I'm 200 miles away, I have no internet access so I couldn't remote in if I wanted to, and it's a holiday weekend. SlimeCo is closed until Tuesday”.

Harpy: "WELL I WORK OFF HOURS AND I HAVE WORK THAT NEEDS TO GET DONE SO GET IN YOUR CAR AND FIND SOME INTERNET AND FIX MY LAPTOP".

Me: "I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do. I'm not going out looking for an internet connection at two in the morning on a holiday weekend just because you decided you need to work right this second. I'm not even a dedicated SlimeCo technician. I'm only there when support is needed, and I haven't been in the branch since last week”.

Harpy: I DON’T CARE, YOU WORK FOR US AND YOU WILL FIX MY LAPTOP RIGHT NOW. I DON'T CARE IF YOU HAVE TO DRIVE ALL THE WAY HERE TO DO IT”.

Me: "You know what? You're right. I just need you to submit a ticket so I can get to it in the system and I'll head right over to the nearest Starbucks”.

Harpy: "THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT. YOU KNOW I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO JUMP THROUGH THESE KIND OF HOOPS TO GET STUFF DONE AROUND HERE. YOU SHOULD JUST BE GRATEFUL YOU HAVE A JOB AT ALL YOU DIMWIT”.

Me: "Yep. You're right. Go ahead and place the ticket and I'll head right on over to Starbucks and remote in and get this all taken care of for you right away”.

Harpy: "GOOD”.

She hangs up. I immediately put my phone on silent. My laptop is sitting comfortably in its docking station back at the main office, 200 miles away, the nearest Starbucks is about 40 miles away, and I go back to bed, about ten feet away. I check my phone in the morning.

61 missed calls.

14 voicemails.

Two hundred and thirty-nine emails.

Alternating between personal attacks fired off like text messages and submitted tickets. Funny how her laptop was stable long enough to submit around 50 tickets and another 180-ish emails.

I blocked her number after that. I got into work today, and my boss had a similar situation. She kept calling his phone, long into the night.

Boss: "You're nicer than I was. I just told her to enjoy her holiday weekend and hung up”. But here’s the best part. My boss spoke with upper management after, and when I came into that office (as I normally do on Wednesday), I was immediately escorted to the board room by two security guards. The President, CFO, Chairman of the Board, SlimeCo's lawyer, our IT firm's lawyer, and my boss were all at the table.

I found out my boss had threatened to file a proper suit as a result of The Harpy’s behavior, on my behalf. It was explained to my boss and I that The Harpy, while an obvious problem, is a high-earner for the company and they would not fire her. However, it was discovered through an internal investigation that she had, in fact, gotten the numbers of all of the techs out of the CFO's Blackberry.

We don't know how she got into the Blackberry, but what we do know is that the CFO left his Blackberry unattended, which is a serious security compromise and also a breach of the contract between the company and my IT firm. Some very strong words were exchanged between SlimeCo's officials and my boss.

The lawyers agreed that it was, in fact, a serious breach of contract leaving any data available to unauthorized users, and it was made clear that the contract in place would be terminated at the end of the meeting. It was later explained to me that, given the nature of the breach, we'd basically have an "all hands on deck" situation where every available tech would report to SlimeCo and start pulling servers, switches, and any other leased equipment.

Estimated time of dismantlement was about two and a half hours. There was also the phrase "wood chipper for hard drives" thrown in there. I don't know if this was literal or a figure of speech. For the next two hours I was not allowed to leave the room.

My boss, his lawyer, and SlimeCo renegotiated the contract on the spot. A 36% price hike, increased security improvements, and a couple of other things that went right over my head. The lawyer then pointed out that I was still well within my rights to, and asked if I would be, seeking court action. I asked what my options were. Before he even got it out of his mouth, SlimeCo started talking about a "settlement" to keep me from going any further.

Without going into too many specifics there, a check was cut (and immediately cashed because they ain't gonna play me for no fool). The Harpy was put on actual probation, my boss gave me the rest of the week off—billed to SlimeCo—so I can have an actual vacation, and I'm no longer going to do any service at SlimeCo. Not the outcome I expected, at all.

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73. I Want University

I work as a student IT for my university (for obvious reasons I won't name the institution). Part of what I do is watch over the computer labs that are open for students to use. As it is summer when I’m writing this, there are not too many students that come through, but a couple of weeks ago I dealt with the most incompetent, contradictory, and confusing person I have ever had the displeasure to come across.

One day while I am sitting at the lab’s help counter, a blonde woman walks in. She has on lots of make-up and looks to be in her mid-20s. I could tell she was going to be an issue the moment she sat down at a computer and immediately looked towards me with what I can only describe as a look of fear.

Sure enough, within a few minutes she shouts out in my general direction, "HI I AM HAVING SOME PROBLEMS". I try to get her to explain but, getting annoyed, she insists that I come over and help her. I really wish I hadn't. She was staring at the log-in screen just saying, "What’s this?! What am I supposed to do with this??!!" all while flicking the mouse around uncontrollably.

Not wanting to be rude, and just assuming she may not be that familiar with computers, I explain that the login screen for these labs simply wants your university username and password, the same for the Wi-Fi and every other service. She responds with, "Ok, yeah, but why does it look like this?!"

At first, I thought she was referring to the way the log-in screen looked—we had just upgraded all the lab computers to Windows 10, so she may just have not been used to it. I explained to her it’s the same as other labs, we've just updated to Windows 10. She responds, saying, "Ok ok but I want the university, not this". Starting to get weird but ok, I manage to get her to log in all the while she is sighing and huffing and puffing.

What I noticed was how fluent she was with the keyboard, which contradicted my initial thought that she was just not accustomed to computers. So we finally log in and...she’s even angrier, clicking like crazy on random icons and getting quite upset, saying this isn’t working why is this like this.

Our computers have a lot of science and math software on them and she hovers over a random icon and clicks it, starting the application. When it (obviously) didn’t open up "the university," she started to freak out asking what the heck this is. I explained that it was graphing software used mostly for physics students...she promptly yells at me "WHY THE HECK WOULD I WANT THAT".

How should I know…you're the one who opened it! At this point my co-workers are getting interested and I can see them laughing as I try to help this woman. She kept saying "I DONT WANT THIS, I WANT UNIVERSITY!" Which did not make any sense. I tried to get her to open the browser. She said "WHAT?!" “Ok open up Google Chrome?” "WHAAT???" “...Uh, the internet. Open up the internet”. "SIGH I DONT WANT THAT, I JUST WANT UNIVERSITY". So I open it for her and sure enough when the default university page opens up, she starts typing away and everything seems fine.

Cut to 10 minutes later and she’s back complaining that it isn't what she wants, "Can I just have a guest account?". At this point I noticed she was completely ignoring my two other female co-workers and kept asking me (am male). I explained to her we don't give out guest accounts, and that also a guest account is kind of pointless because she has her own account.

"But I don’t want other people to get my stuff!" “Ma’am, nobody but you can access your account. Your files are saved to the account”. This is when the problem becomes obvious. "Yes, but if someone goes on this computer they are going to get my phone number and other info!!"

I then try to explain to her that our files are saved on a server and not on any individual computer in the lab. This seems to be the most complex and foreign concept she has ever heard, and she’s arguing with us every step of the way. Again, completely ignoring most of my co-workers. She keeps asking for a guest account and I tell her for the 10th time "WE DON"T GIVE OUT GUEST ACCOUNTS IN THIS LAB".

She then plops her chest on the counter, trying to show some cleavage. "Please…can I just have a guest account". I tell her no we cannot give her one, and that it wouldn’t help! (Whatever help means in this case, I do not know). At this point a more senior staff member walks in and asks her what the problem is.

Upon getting a deluge of nonsensical ranting, he says, "Well if you do not feel comfortable with Windows 10, the other labs on campus still have windows 7". Her response, "I DONT WANT WINDOWS, I WANT UNIVERSITY". I snap telling her that WINDOWS IS AN OPERATING SYSTEM, UNIVERSITY DOESNT MAKE ANY SENSE.

She gets extremely angry and then leaves. To this day I still have no idea what she wanted, or how someone who seemed to be able to use a computer and yet was also so computer illiterate at the same time could exist. My only semi-plausible explanation: Mac user?

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74. Some People Can’t Be Helped

So among the literally thousands of calls I've had in my four years in tech support, this guy really took the cake. It was the apotheosis of all those calls. It was the most infuriating yet (in hindsight) hilarious call I'd ever had in my life.

He came in on a fairly quiet Saturday morning, and the conversation started quite normally.

Me: "Good morning. How may I help you?"

C (Customer): "Yes, hello. I just woke up to my wife and kids complaining there's no internet and the television isn't working either”.

Me: "Oof, that's quite inconvenient. I'm going to have to check where the issue might be and try and fix it”.

C: "Thank you”.

He gave me his postal code and house number, I confirmed his details and ran a scan on his address. There was absolutely no signal. I needed to do a basic troubleshoot with him first.

Me: "Do you know where your modem is, sir?"

C: "Yes, it's next to my front door”.

Me: "Good. Could you please tell me which lights are on or blinking on it?"

C: "There are a couple of lights on...not as many as usual, though”.

Me: "Is the 'online' light on?"

C: "No”.

Me: "Ok, your modem is not receiving any signal, then. I'm going to have to test if the problem is in the modem or the signal towards your house. For that, I need you to turn off your modem for about 30 seconds. Could you please do that?"

C: "Umm, no?"

Me: "....... I'm sorry?"

C: "That sort of thing is YOUR job. I'm not touching that modem”.

Me: "You only need to pull out the power cable, wait 30 seconds, and plug it back in”.

C: "Like I said, that's YOUR job. Send someone over to fix it”.

I was not sure if he was joking or not. I was just baffled at the hard turn this conversation had just taken.

Me: "Sir, there is a basic troubleshoot we need to run with all our customers that solves like 90% of all—"

C: "I don't care! I'm not getting paid for this, so I'm not doing your job! Now send someone over!"

Me: "I can't very well send our technicians over, just to restart your modem, sir”.

C: "You can, and you will, and you'll compensate me for the time I haven't received any of your services!"

Me: "I don't care much for your tone, sir. Either you cooperate with our standard troubleshoot, or I cannot help you”.

C: "You've got a pretty big mouth there, missy! What's your name? I'll issue a complaint against you!"

I gave him my first name, and he demanded to know my last name.

C: "Scared to give me your last name, hm?"

Me: "No, just not obligated to give it to you. You've been very rude to me, so I won't give it to you”.

C: "You think you're so high and mighty because you're on the phone! I know where your HQ is! I'm driving over there right now, and you'd better make sure you have your eyes open when you come out, [my first name in a mocking tone]”.

I snickered at the thought. He lived about 175 miles from our HQ. Plus, he only had my first name and he had, of course, no idea what I looked like.

Me: "If you would rather take three hours to get here and then another three to get back home, rather than taking 30 seconds to restart your modem, you're welcome to do so. I'm now terminating the call and issuing a threat warning. Have a lovely day”.

I hung up before he could respond and reported the threat to my manager. He made note of it and put it through to our second line to pick this further up. I wish I could say the story ended there. Unfortunately, it continued as soon as I resumed taking calls. Not five minutes after I got back to work, I got him on the phone AGAIN.

Me: "Good morning, this is [name] from—"

C: "HA! There you are! You think you can just hang up on me!? I'm taking this to court! I'm cancelling our services as of RIGHT NOW!"

Me: "I've issued your violent threat, which we've recorded, by the way, to our second line, sir. I'll add that you wish to end your contract. They'll call you back within two hours. Goodbye”.

I hung up again and he thankfully didn't try to reach me again after that. I did learn afterward that he had, in fact, taken this case to court...and lost. His services were cancelled five months before the end date of the contract, and he had to pay for the remaining five months. I hope it was worth it to him.

I did not press charges for the threat since I never took it seriously. I mean, I literally laughed it off. Thinking back on it still makes me snicker. I'm imagining him driving for three hours, arriving at our HQ, asking all the women who left the building their names in the hopes he could do God knows what to one of them, then driving back home for three hours (not to mention having to stop for gas, which costs a lot here) and still have his wife and children complaining they have no internet or television. Idiot.

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75. Don’t Cut Out The Middleman

This happened at a university in Germany, around the turn of the century. The physics department had quite a nice setup for the students. At the beginning of term the new students had their accounts created by one of the student supervisors. I was the middleman between the student supervisors and the real techs who kept the system running.

So I somehow got stuck with the support when the supervisors didn't know what to do. One day a student, Samantha Melina Butler, was sent to me. She was quite into computing but had no idea why she had problems with her account. She was able to access her account, but she couldn't write to some files. On the other hand, she had discovered that she could read nearly all the files in other people’s accounts—even in the accounts of some professors.

I asked her to log into her account and opened a terminal. I looked at her files, but everything seemed in order. She shouldn't be able to access this stuff. Suddenly I looked at her username. She had asked for her initials: Samantha Melinda Butler: smb. When I looked that up, I saw the student supervisor had made a big mistake.

Samantha and had all the rights of the “ServerMessageBlock” (smb). And every user was a member of the group smb. The student supervisor who had created Samantha's account didn't even get why this was his fault.

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76. A Long Drive For A Short Day At The Beach

I work for a corporation where users handle enough information to be able to commit at least 2-3 felonies for every little query they touch. As such, they have a lot of policies that seem like extreme overkill, but on some level I agree with the attempt. The actual application of the rules I think borders on insanity but the attempts aren't all complete failures.

Anyway, because of this there's an "internal" USB connector inside the case of the computers, and all the "external" USB ports have physical blocks super glued in. So, Friday morning 8:00 am I'm sitting around waiting for a ticket or something to do. I get a call in that a computer can't login. There's no ticket because…well they can't log in to start a ticket. Entirely understandable.

The computer is network login, so there are 1,000 different things it can be. Heck, it could just be unplugged and not turning on. Y'all know how users can be. I head up to their cubicle and start checking. Everything is plugged in, the computer turns on and there's no internet. I switch her network cord with her neighbor’s to check the cord.

Her neighbor’s computer connects with her jack. I log into the local admin account and there's no internet connection or network connection at all. Check device manager and there's the problem. The driver for the onboard network got corrupted or something, can't roll it back either.

Great, this means I need authorization from cyber security to use a flash drive, and then I'll need to tear the computer apart to get to a USB port that is hidden inside the case that isn't superglued. Now, the key for the case requires my supervisor to sign off on it and give me the key for the case lock, as well I have to write up the ticket and put it into the system.

I run down to the bat cave and download the driver for her computer and email it to my boss, with a note to stick it on a thumb drive. And then walk to his desk. "Hey boss I emailed you a network driver I need on a thumb drive. I also need you to submit my authorization form to cyber security for the use of a portable storage device". Yes that really is two forms.

So we sent the form off to cyber security to authorize. Half an hour later, no response. Head of IT calls down to cyber security to get an ETA. 10 minutes later the request comes back as denied.

Turns out, we got the biggest idiot ever reviewing the request. She has a tendency to just completely drop the ball. Before she took the job in cyber security she had neither experience in cyber security, nor any basic understanding of IT. But it's OK, she can haphazardly enforce rules she doesn't understand, and she spends her day helping idiots reset their passwords using the password reset tool.

So my boss has to call her and explain the situation. After five minutes on the phone he has to go upstairs to the boss of cyber security and explain why she's an idiot today. Half an hour later, the approval from cyber security comes in to my email and my boss texts me to grab the form from him, and his spare keys and USB drive.

Now I have both authorization forms and I return to the woman's desk. She left a note for me that she's making a Starbucks run and will be back. I power down her computer and turn it on its side so I can get it open to plug the USB in. I'm standing there fiddling with the flash drive—then chaos broke loose. Someone yanks it out of my hand tosses it to the floor and starts stomping on it.

"What the heck are you doing”?

"USB devices are banned" he replied.

"WHOAH WHOAH. First of all, I have an authorization form from cyber security. Second of all, that's company property, and third of all, you just destroyed evidence" I tell the idiot. I call my boss and he's still in the cyber security office as I explain what went down.

Cyber security overhears this exchange. Cyber security decides to open a file on mishandling of suspect data. Around about 11:00 am my boss comes back to the user’s desk with a different flash drive and the drivers for the network adapter and another stack of new forms for him to do the work.

I spent an hour with cyber security filling out paper work about the destruction of a $5.00 flash drive, giving my statement on the data mishandling, and my statement responding to the accusation of using a USB storage device. So it took 3 hours and 15 minutes of two techs’ time (including the head of IT) to reinstall a network driver.

And now they have to pay a data recovery specialist God only knows how much to try to recover nothing of any value on a $5.00 flash drive, just to prove there was nothing malicious on it. It gets more ridiculous. I'm on paid leave because they don't know for certain what's on the flash drive.

Cyber security told me that as long as data recovery finds what I said is on it, or can't find anything, I’m in the clear. If the drive hadn't been smashed, cyber security could/would have just looked at the USB drive and looked at what is on the drive. Should have taken like eight seconds to do.

Instead, I can collect pay checks until the data recovery experts take a few cracks at the USB drive. But the good news is that I got to go home early on a Friday.

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77. iDiot

My company has a summer internship for high schoolers. They each get an old desktop and access to one folder on the company drive. One day, this kid can’t find his folder. It happens sometimes. I tell them to restart (the usual fix) and call me back. They must have hit shutdown though because five minutes later I get a call back that it’s not starting up.

Long story short, after a few minutes of trying to walk them through it over the phone I walk down and find he’s been thinking his monitor is the computer. I push the power button. He still can’t find the folder…He’s looking on the desktop. I open file explorer. I CAN SEE THE FOLDER. Kid says, “I don’t see it”. I click the folder.

Kid: “Ok now I see the folder”. I create a shortcut on his desktop. I ask him what he uses at home….an iPad. What do you use in school? iPads. Just to be clear I’m not blaming the kid. I blame educators and parents for the oversight, because basic tech skills are part of a balanced education.

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78. Everyone’s Buzzing About It

Sometimes, people pry apart my spreadsheets and tools and code for various reasons. And when they do, they find a hidden bit of code. I put it everywhere, as a sort of signature. People wonder what it is and they ask me. And I get to tell them this story.

I was a remote support tech. This was one of my first official IT jobs, and I was a young, fresh-faced, wide-eyed kid with a working knowledge of some kind of code and the ability to install Java with over a 50% success rate.

ring ring went the phone. I perked up. Another customer desperately in need, on the brink of disaster, had called upon me to single-handedly resolve their problem and leave them 110% satisfied. A problem I alone had the keys to fix, so long as it was within the exceptionally narrow purview of the types of problems I was trained to handle.

"Thanks for calling Tech Support! Can I have your name and client number, please”?

There was a long pause and then the person slowly gave me their info. I plugged it into my system and BAM. I looked at the client's info: They were based out in Washington State. A very remote office, easily three- or four-hours’ drive from their nearest deskside support analyst. If I couldn't fix their issue, they might not be up and running for days.

I was their last hope.

"So our computer's been running really slow," the guy starts out, and I jump on it.

"I see! Let me see if you have any hanging processes going on? Do you know what version of Java you're running? Have you recently uninstalled or reinstalled any programs”?

No to all of these. Our remote session was lagging for sure. But I couldn't find out what was the cause.

"See it started after this storm…” the guy went onto a ramble about the weather and how they've been dealing with landslides and other unrelated things. Meanwhile, I kept scrounging for data in the system. The processor was just running so slow.

"...and it's been hot and the computer smells pretty funny”.

I stopped. "Smells funny? have you...um…have you cleaned it recently to get dust out of it”?

There was a long pause while the guy presumably took the case off the PC. I was not prepared for the following events. Then—"Agh! Oh god! aaaaaahgh”! Slam. Slam. "Over there”! Strings of profanity. Then quiet.

"Sir”? I asked after a moment. "Are you still there? is everything ok”?

"No”! he shouts. "There's a hole in the wall, and it looks like they got in after the storm...some...God, they've built a hive”.

"What”?

He repeated himself. "So...yeah...can you like, get someone out here with a new PC or something? I know it's hard to get someone out here and all…”

Undeterred, I assured them I'd have someone out as soon as I could. I typed up the ticket and sent it on its way, and I never heard how it got resolved. But I will never forget that ticket as I sent it on its way: Computer completely filled with bees. Sending to deskside support.

I learned something important that day. Never take a problem at face value or assume you have all the pertinent info, no matter how usual it may seem. Listen when the customer gives you background info, some of it might be important. And never, ever, choose to work in deskside repair in the mountains.

And that is why, in every code or spreadsheet I've ever written, somewhere you will find the phrase "Computer completely filled with bees". To remind myself that no matter how much I feel like a genius, there's always room for being completely wrong and completely surprised.

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79. You Can’t Cure Stupid

Ever try to run tech support for someone with their equally technologically challenged husband or wife behind them telling them what to do?

Me: Okay, click on the email I just sent you. Then click on the link inside it to reset your password.

Customer: Okay...let me see

Wife (in the background): Wait! stop! Go back!

Customer: what?

Wife: A free iPad!

Okay, a scam email. No big deal, just tell the customer and we can move on.

Me: That's not real. It's most likely a virus.

Wife: No, let's take a look

Please don't.

Me: I really wouldn't do that

Customer: It's okay. We're just going to look and not download anything

Wife: Maybe it's from the mall!

No it's not.

Customer: Okay we're just going to take a quick look

Wife: Wow a free iPad! I can't believe it! We won!

No you didn't.

Wife: Click on it!

No really please don't. Please.

Customer: Okay let's see how to redeem our iPad from Apple

It's not from Apple. You're not getting the iPad. You're getting a virus.

15 seconds later I hear the "your computer has a virus" message playing from their speaker

Customer: Our computer just got a virus. Can you fix this? Can you remote in and fix this?

No.

Wife: I can't believe people would do that!

And I can't believe people still fall for it.

Cue two hours of baby-stepping them through running Malwarebyte because we aren't allowed to hang up on stupid.

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80. Should Have Kept Your Mouth Shut

This is the day I used the Nuclear option.

User: Hi, I need your help.
Me: OK, What's the problem?
User: I need to you incubate something on my computer.
Oh what fresh torment is this?
Me: What do you mean?
User: Look, if you can't help can you put me through to a senior tech!?

Oh, screw you.
Me: It's not that I can't help, it's that I need more information about your problem before I can help.
User: It's simple, there is something on my computer and you need to put it in incubation for me!
Me: What type of file is it?
User: I don't know, I can't do anything because the program needs admin rights, that's why I need you!
Me: Have you downloaded a file or been on a dodgy website?
User: I don't need the 4th degree here, I just need get this incubated and we can both go on with our day!
Me: - If you right click on the green W at the bottom right of the screen and select “Scan Now” it will run a check for anything bad and we can go from there.
I have jumped onto the AV console to have a look as well at this point.
User: I can't do anything with that as when I click it, it says “Please contact the network administrator to access” blah blah.
Me: I need you to right click on it, not left click.
User: I KNOW WHAT I AM DOING, IT SAYS I CANT!
Clearly I need to escalate this to the “help a moron” division.
Me: There is no need to raise your voice, I am trying to help.
User: It's simple though, I need your admin rights so that I can move something to incubation. It's not hard.

Me: OK, I will remote in and have a look. Please click the Rescue Me icon on your desktop.
User: FINALLY, you're going to do what I asked for in the first place!

Oh, I was now going nuclear.

Me: There is no such thing as incubation or an incubator on your computer. You mean quarantine. You believe you have downloaded a virus or opened a malicious website and got yourself some malware or worse. This doesn't happen on its own. You have all of the tools needed to diagnose and hopefully remove the infection. You have two buttons on your mouse one on the left and one on the right but refuse to click the correct one in the correct place. I have taken over your machine and I am currently running the scan for the issue. I can also see from your open internet pages that you have been trying to access a number of sites. There are many, many malicious advertisements and links on those sites that are designed to trick you or catch you out and get you to download questionable files. You are in breach of company policy by using your company property for questionable activity. This will be logged and reported. The scan has now completed and found and removed five infections and I can see from my console that your system has blocked and automatically defeated 10s of threats or attacks today so this is clearly an ongoing issue for you.
User: What...
Me: I am now going to escalate this to the IT manager who has been monitoring this call and would like a word.
Click

The user was very quickly summoned to attend a meeting with HR and an appropriate manager and I believe asked to leave the company because the IT Manager reviewed their activity a bit more thoroughly, including their internet use when on the company network/VPN.

The user then tried to sue for unfair dismissal, and the IT Manger actually laughed out loud when he was told that the reason was “unfair invasion of privacy”.

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81. Not Your Average Joe

A number of years back, I was working for a company that had been around for many years. I was only relatively new myself but there were still a couple of "old guard" senior engineers around who had been there from the start. The kind that knows where all the obscure, undocumented insider stuff is and can fix most problems in five seconds that the rest of us might take hours to solve.

One of the guys in particular, who I shall refer to as Joe, was a bearded and jovial gent with a very Steve Wozniak persona. He was always happy for us to approach him with our questions and welcomed us to leverage his VAST knowledge of how the company's sprawling IT infrastructure worked to make our lives easier and cope with the constant unrealistic expectations of upper management.

He was a real, old-school engineer—someone who loved their job and was well respected by everyone around the department. So when his friend the current department head, a man of comparable knowledge and experience, retired and was replaced from the outside with a young and brash one with a business degree and little technical knowledge who was also called Joe, it was a big change for everyone. Fortunately for us he didn't interfere too much with the technical aspects of our day-to-day jobs at first. But then things started to change.

When the company first started out, they weren't too concerned with formality when it came to e-mail address policy. In later years as the company had grown, they tightened the bolts with an official policy of issuing staff with a longer, more formal address, but those who were around from the early days retained their original, shorter addresses as an alias.

It was somewhat of a status symbol and sign of authority in the company to have one, and those that did would use that version as their sending address and proudly have it in their e-mail signatures and on their business cards. The retired head had one such address, as did my old Joe in the form of joe@company.com.

You always knew when you saw an e-mail come into the inbox from somebody with one of these addresses that they were someone important who had been around for a while. Most of the department heads were long-term employees who used them, and it wasn't long before the new IT head noticed this aspect of our corporate culture and clearly envied his peers.

But as a new employee, he was stuck with his formal e-mail address and they weren't issuing new legacy e-mail addresses of this kind unless they were for someone way up the food chain. Even as head of IT, he had no authority to claim one, which is why when one day he spotted an e-mail from Joe using his legacy address, he came up with a malicious plan. He saw an opportunity to get what he was coveting.

So as the tale goes, he called Joe into his office and had an exchange that went something like this:

IT Head: "Hey Joe, great work on the capacity report and getting it to me so quickly. We should be able to get approval from finance to expand our storage way sooner than I thought"

Joe: "Not a problem, is there anything else you needed from me for it”?

IT Head: "Nope, everything is their thanks. But I happened to notice when you sent it through you were using a different e-mail address—a little different from the rest of the team”.

Joe: "Yes, that's the one I've always used from when I started and everyone here knows to reach me at. Also some of our older systems and scripts we still use from the early days were hard coded to use it as well so I'm still actively using it to get critical alerts”. 

IT Head: "I've got no problem with that, but I was interested in getting one of those kind of addresses for me. It would make it easier for people to, you know, know I'm the head of this department rather than just another employee here. My predecessor had one so it should be no problem for me to have one as well too, right? Can you make that happen”?

Joe: "I'm sorry, I wish I could but it's HR that makes that decision and it's their policy is to only issue personal addresses at the top corporate domain level now for C-level recruits and their immediate assistants”.

IT Head: "You've been here for a long time, surely there isn't a way or someone you know who can make this happen”?

Joe: "I'm sorry, it's a decision way above my pay grade. I'd be happy to put a request in for you to the head of HR to see if they could do it as a favor, but I'm pretty certain what their answer will be”.

IT Head: (Annoyed) "Ok thanks, do it and let's see what happens"

Joe goes and logs the request, but of course the head of HR knocks it back, citing policy and not wanting to set a precedent even as a favor to Joe. Joe goes back to give the IT Head the bad news:

Joe: (Knocks) "Hey, you know that request I put through to try and get you a top-level e-mail address? Unfortunately HR have knocked it back. I did my best to try and push it through but they were firm on our current corporate policy of not issuing any new ones except for those at the very top”.

IT Head: (Visibly unhappy) "I'm sorry to hear that, are you sure you did everything you could”?

Joe: "Yes, it's out of either of our hands unfortunately”.

IT Head: "Fine then".

And Joe was right. There was no way the IT Head was going to be issued with a brand-new personal address. But that unfortunately wasn’t the end of it. However, his position did allow him to authorize the reassignment of existing e-mail addresses to staff, which was normally used to forward mail and alerts still being sent internally to staff who had left the company.

He soon realized this was possible and formed another plan, calling Joe back into his office for another conversation:

IT Head: "Hey Joe, you know how we can't get new personal e-mail addresses created, but we can still reassign an existing one into my name, right”?

Joe: (Frowning) "We can do that, yes. You have the authority to have the e-mail address of anyone who has left redirected or assigned to anyone else if you so wish. Did you want your predecessor's address? I mean, we can do it, but it would confuse a lot of people if they saw your e-mail coming from someone who is gone”.

IT Head: "What about e-mail addresses of existing staff”?

Joe: (Frowning harder and seeing where this was going) "You do have the authority, but it would still confuse people and you would be getting all the legacy alerts and notifications, which would make you responsible for ensuring they flow through to the right people when they arrive".

IT Head: "I think I can handle forwarding a couple of lousy e-mails whenever I see them. I have a greater need for visibility here and there is no business requirement for you to have one, so start the process of transferring joe@company.com across to me immediately. Let me know once it's done so I can let everyone know”.

So poor Joe was forced to dig his own grave and give up the e-mail address he had held since day one. He definitely wasn't happy about it but did as he was instructed. Falling back on his regular corporate address, he sent an e-mail out to the immediate team and his contacts to let them know what was happening and to please use his full address moving forward to contact him.

At the same time, the IT Head proudly sent out a company-wide e-mail broadcast letting everyone know that his e-mail address had been updated and he could now be reached at joe@company.com as the Head of IT.

Weeks went by and it was clear he was taking every opportunity to send out e-mails using his new address. New stationary was issued, along with business cards clearly showing his position and contact address. He was clearly reveling in having a coveted address and the prestige and recognition it instantly gave him, especially when dealing with other offices and people who didn't know he was only a relative newcomer.

Life was good, that is until one fateful morning. It happened when he wasn't in his office browsing Facebook like he usually would be doing when everyone else arrived. Turned out he had forgotten about his responsibility to forward through important notifications when they can through to him. He had set up a rule to handle them, sure, but not to forward them as promised.

Instead he would delete them directly from his inbox without notice. One particular alert dealt with backup failures for a particularly important and long-term defense contract. One of our key responsibilities was to ensure daily incremental and weekly full backups being performed on one of these old legacy systems that Joe had mentioned to him, both verbally and in writing.

The media in an old backup unit had failed and was repeatedly notifying the issue. It was normally a simple fix, but with no alerts being sent through nobody knew there was a problem. So when a request came through from the client to perform a restore of the previous week's data after an accidental deletion, the backup team found, to their horror, that no backups had been running for the past several weeks and the data had been lost.

The client was not amused. The CEO with whom they had a close relationship was even less so. Then the IT Head really showed his full colors. He attempted to throw Joe under the bus when word came down that the company was going to incur a MASSIVE fee for the breach. Well, too bad: Joe in his wisdom had ensured he had done a complete “cover your butt” when handing over his e-mail address, including e-mail exchanges with the IT Head highlighting the importance of the alerts and to ensure they went to the right people.

He also included detailed instructions on how to set up forwarding rules and where to send them. All completely ignored. HR policy was specific when it came to important e-mails. It was the clear responsibility of the recipient to ensure they were handled accordingly, and the IT Head had clearly failed in his accepted responsibilities. He didn't last probation and was gone within the next month.

Everyone was wondering who we would be getting in the position next. HR and management were tight lipped on the topic and there was plenty of speculation within the department about what might happen next. We got an excellent surprise. Everyone was smiling when they walked in on the Monday to see Joe sitting in the IT Head office. In the wake of what happened management decided in their wisdom that the IT Department should have a Head who actually knew something about IT and tapped Joe to take the seat.

He hung on for a few more years before retiring or moving on, but during his tenure he was one of the best IT managers I have ever worked for, and the position didn't change him from being the friendly, helpful, and supportive teacher that he was. I was sad to see him go but while he was still with u, I always smiled when I saw his e-mails coming through to us from the old, friendly address of joe@company.com, which he had reclaimed and had been returned to its rightful owner.

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82. Calling In A Favor

My home phone, which I keep because the security system uses it, started ringing at 5:45am. Yes, I was asleep. I don't get to it quickly enough and the answering machine picks it up. The person hangs up. Then I hear my mobile phone start ringing downstairs...must be some kind of family emergency, so I make it downstairs in time to hear the home phone start up again.

I answer, still half asleep and half scared that something big has happened.

Me: "Hello”?

It’s a friend of a friend, who I barely know.

Fake Friend: Hi, do you have a second? I can't get my laptop on my home wireless, and I really need to check to make sure my flight is on time”.

Me: "Who is this again”?

Fake Friend: I’m a friend of James’s. We met at a bar a couple of weeks ago. My Internet's down and I remembered you're in IT so I looked up your number and gave you a ring. Can you help me real quick?

I hung up, after screaming at him for a bit.

Pixabay

83. A Backdoor Solution

So there's this website used by a few thousand paying customers—something like $200/year. It's used by pastors to download material to use in their Church services. We support Internet Explorer for Windows and Mac (keep in mind this was probably 2006). If you've never heard of Internet Explorer for Mac, be grateful.

Anyway, Chrome did not yet exist, and Firefox either didn't, or was super early on and not that great. Then something happened. Microsoft nixed IE Mac. I don't mean they just stopped developing it. They pulled the download links and more or less pretended it didn't exist. If you didn't already have it, there was no way to get it. If there was some sort of abandonware website or other repository for old software back then, I didn't know about it and couldn't find it.

Our Mac browser support remained the same: Internet Explorer only.

Customer: Hi, I'm having some trouble with your website.

Me: What browser are you using?

Customer: Safari

Me, through gritted teeth: Unfortunately, we don't support Safari. You'll need to use Internet Explorer.

Customer: Oh, how do I get that?

Me: You can't.

Customer: ...what?

Me: We only support Internet Explorer on Macs. If you have a Windows computer, you can use that. If not, you'll need to get Internet Explorer.

Customer: Ok...this is my only computer, so how do I get it?

Me: You can't. They no longer make it. It's not available anywhere.

Customer: So how do I use your website that I'm paying for?

Me: You can't.

Customer: Do you not see the problem here?

Me: Ok look, maybe we can help each other out here. We really should support Safari, but we don't. There's no other option. If possible, can you please write me an email, and be as upset as you can—swear, threaten to cancel, threaten to sue, whatever you can. I'll take it to the powers that be and try to get this fixed for you.

Customer: You want me to swear? I'm a pastor!

Me: I know. Look, it's Thursday afternoon. Getting this pushed through before Sunday isn't going to be easy.

Customer: I'm sure God will understand.

So I get this email from him, and it's everything I asked for. Ranting and raving about how we're preventing him from doing God's work. Thankfully, he didn't complain about me at all. I take it to the web development team.

Dev: So what's not working?

Me: [I explain the problem]

Dev: I'm pretty sure it works. [Opens Safari and tests successfully].

Me: Wait, we don't support Safari.

Dev, rolling eyes: I know. It works great, it's what I use all the time, faster than Internet Explorer. But the Vice President won't approve the 30 minutes it'll take me to fix it for newer versions of Safari. I just don't upgrade mine so I can use it.

Thankfully, I had just helped Vice President with a weird problem with his computer, and he was super grateful. I walked over to his office, and he happened to be free. It was about 3 pm on a Thursday, and we closed at 4.

Me: Sorry to bug you, but...well, you should read this.

He reads the email, and his eyes go wide.

VP: This is from one of our customers?

Me: Yeah, he was trying to finish his sermon for Sunday and—

I didn't even finish my sentence before he was calling the developer’s manager. By 4:45, our website officially supported Safari and I was on the phone with the original customer to deliver the good news. I'd like to think God understood.

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84. I Won’t, And I Shan’t

I do user training and support for a web application that was developed by my firm. Our clients skew older.

Client: I can't get into my account. My login isn't working. This is ridiculous. I've been trying for hours and now I'm locked out.

Me: My apologies for the inconvenience! I've just reset your password. You should receive an email with a link to set and save a new password in a moment.

Client: I don't want to set a new password. I liked my old password. It's the same password I use for everything else and it's easy to remember.

Me: My sincere apologies, but you will need to set a new password in order to gain access to your account.

Client: Can't I just use my old password?

Me: No, our data security standards do not allow that. However, if for any reason you aren't able to follow the password reset link, I would be happy to generate a random password for you, and share it with you over the phone.

Client: Do that, then, and email the password to me.

Me: Again, my apologies, but part of our security policy states that we cannot email passwords in plain text. I would be happy to give you a call and share your password with you over the phone.

Client: Why are you being so difficult? I just want my old password to work again.

Me: Sir, I'm so sorry that this process has been frustrating for you. I want you to have access to your account. Have you followed the link in the password reset email?

Client: No. It looks like a virus. I don't want to click on it.

Me: I can assure you that it is not a virus. It is a hyperlink. You can just click on it, and it'll open a page in your browser where you can reset your password.

Client: That's ridiculous. That's so much work. Why do you make it so hard? This should be simple. I want to speak to your manager.

Me: (eager to pass them off on someone else) No problem. My manager is CC'ed. He would be happy to assist you.

Manager: (this then goes to email) How can I help?

Client: Your employee is rude, stupid, and not helpful. I just want to log in, I don't want to reset my password, I don't want to click on this virus she sent me, and this is taking forever and it is ridiculous.

Manager: Sir, respectfully, we are going to need you to meet us halfway and change your password.

Client: (in all caps) THIS IS RIDICULOUS. I DON'T WANT TO CHANGE MY PASSWORD. YOU ARE IDIOTS.

Manager: Again, we are sorry that this is frustrating for you. Please let us know what we can do to help.

Manager then CC's the client's boss, the director of their organization, and the one whose signature is on the contract. My manager does not take any trash from clients.

Client's boss (to their employee with us CC'ed): Are you serious? These nice people are doing everything they can to help you, and you are belittling them. This is an embarrassment to our organization. You owe them both an apology, and you need to reset your password, stop complaining, and log in so you can get me that report that was supposed to be on my desk yesterday. The fact that you've wasted your entire day on this is ridiculous and this will definitely be included in your performance review.

My manager and I were in tears. The client's boss was savage and did not pull a single punch. The client did end up resetting his password, but did not apologize. Last time I sent out an email to clients, though, his bounced. He got fired. I cackled.

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85. Boss Of The Year

I used to work for a particularly large company doing tech support. One day the guy working next to me was dealing with a particularly rude business customer. The business customers were usually treated like kings, but this guy was having a particularly hard time even getting a word in.

Eventually he put up his hand to motion to the supervisor come talk to the customer. Right then, the owner of the company happened to be walking by with another one of the execs. I've met the guy a few times at the company social events, and he is a really down-to-earth, employee-friendly boss. He asked what the issue was with his customer and after it was explained, he took the headset and picked up the line.

After listening for about 4-5 minutes, he said very flatly, "That's never going to happen, especially not when you have an attitude like a 13-year-old girl”. Then he said, "I don't have a manager. I own this company and I don't have to listen to this from a jerk like you and neither do my employees. I'm terminating your account with us”.

He hung up and I watched him disable this guy’s account and add a note to the file. "Customer is a jerk. Do not reinstate account - Boss". Then he just handed back the headset and carried on about his day.

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86. The Boat Must Go On

This one is from way back when, about six years ago now, when I was in an entirely different career and halfway around the world. On a certain class of military warship, there is a place. The bridge may be in control of where the ship goes, but Damage Control Central is in charge of how fast it is getting there and whether or not it arrives in one piece.

It's run by a high-ranking officer from Reactor Department, Earl, and his two cronies, one that monitors the ship's water usage and one that monitors the ship's electrical usage—me. These three people can bring 97K+ tons of steel and sadness to a halt. Behind them are a small pile of engineering folk, literally the ship's tech support branch.

People could call us and report a problem (from an out light to a fire), and between all of us in there, we had the knowledge, skill, authority, and political clout to get a response team out. A lot of people didn't know what kind of authority we held, or exactly who they were talking to when they called down. This made for some very entertaining conversations.

One evening, the engineering folk get a call. One female sailor picks it up and naturally, we all listen in, because if it's a fire or something, we all need to respond as rapidly as possible. From our POV, this is how the conversation goes from her side:

Engineer: Damage Control Center
Engineer: The heater doesn't work?
Engineer: Oh, yeah, that's normal.
Engineer: No, we can't turn it up.
Engineer: What? No, we can't replace it, we're in the middle of the Persian Gulf, where are we going to get another one?
Engineer: Look, it works fine. Take shorter showers.
Engineer: Your division can put in a request for a bigger one when we get back to home port, but you're not getting one now.
Engineer: Yeah, no, I'm not ordering one. Replacing those things is beyond the scope of what we're allowed to do underway.
Engineer: Because policy.
Engineer: Okay. You do that. We'll be waiting. Make sure you request permission to enter.

With that, she hangs up. Naturally, we're all staring. She grins at us.

Engineer: Game faces on, this one is gonna be good. Sir, I am sorry in advance.

We sit back and put on our best game faces on and wait.

Not 15 minutes later, the door thuds open. In walks the hero of this little story, a very low-ranking punk who thinks he's hot stuff because he does maintenance on airplanes instead of steam pipes. With him is his immediate supervisor, a gentleman of my rank, and their divisional officer, a wee young lieutenant.

The divisional officer is all fired up because how dare engineering not fix his guy's problem. He makes a bee-line for the engineering folk. This path will, briefly, place him between my boss and a panel that, by the order of people with a rank I could never hope to achieve in my life, my boss is not allowed to be obscured from. They HAVE to be able to see it, at all times.

I wait until the merry little band is almost in front of my boss before I speak up.

Me: Sir, please go around, he needs to be able to see that panel.
Divisional Officer: I will walk where I darn well—

He stops. Because someone of approximately double his rank, four times his time-in-service, and significantly crankier is staring him down. All of the fire leaves him in an instant. Which, honestly, is exactly what I wanted. When high-ranking people get fired up, it's usually for a good reason. When baby divisional officers get fired up, everyone in their general vicinity is stupider for witnessing their temper tantrum. They get much more done when they're calm.

The low-ranking punk realizes that a Commander is sitting there and nearly poops himself. His immediate supervisor is completely oblivious. They walk back around our desks, not nearly as grudgingly as they could have, and take the slightly longer route to the engineering folk. Who are having the time of their lives, because the circus is well underway and they haven't had to even do anything yet.

The engineer they were talking with spins around, her hands on the arms of her chair, a very pleasant, blank smile on her face.

Officer: Are you the one that won't fix my guy's showers?
Engineer: The showers aren't broken, sir. Did he tell you what his complaint was?

The low-ranking punk nearly cringes out of his skin.

Punk: Well, the hot water heater in the shower head can't keep up with the entire division when we all shower in the morning.
Engineer: Does it put out hot water at all?
Punk: Well, yeah, when we all get up it works just fine. But as everyone takes their showers, it gets colder and colder.
Engineer: Does it ever go completely cold?
Punk: No, but with a bigger heater, we could all take as long of showers as we wanted without it running out.
Water Control Guy (also in the room): Showers should be limited to five minutes, you're wasting water.
Punk: Well, yeah, morning showers are pretty short, who wants to wake up early and shower? But when I take my second, longer shower in the evening, to relax after a long day of working—

At this point, some teeny tiny sense of self-preservation kicks in and he shuts up and looks around. He is in a room full of people who play the “food, shower, sleep—pick two” game on a daily basis. Every single person in this room, including his back-up, is staring at him with either full derision or outright hostility.

Except the engineer. She's still smiling her blank, polite, “I have been in the retail trenches and am dead inside” smile. I may be in love.

Engineer: Sir, you can see why I denied his request. Supervisor, you may want to remind your guys that, despite being surrounded with water, there is a limit on how much fresh water we can make in a day and that long showers should be saved for in port. Was there anything else I can help you all with?
Officer: No, I think I've heard enough. You two, my office. Now.

They leave. The punk looks close to tears. The officer is full of now-justified wrath. The door shuts. All of us immediately put our heads on our desk and cry with laughter. Someone hands the engineer an IOU for drinks at the next port.

The engineer’s supervisor drafts an email to the ship's mid-tier leadership that not waking up early enough to get a hot shower is not a reason to request a new hot water heater and that water on board is limited. No details are provided and everyone eagerly looks forward to the rumor mill as people try and figure out what spawned that particular reminder.

The engines turn. The ship chugs on.

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87. It’s Hard To Ask For Help

My mom is sweet, but she has this notion she shouldn't bother me unless it’s important. My phone rang last week while I was home. It was my day off.

Mom: "Do you have a minute honey? My internet doesn't work, neither computer nor the tablet. I was thinking maybe you could come have dinner later and look at it? I bought chicken, soft cheese, and I’m baking a—"

Somewhere later down her menu, I had already fixed it. I work at a big company and have access to my tools remotely. I saw her computer had no valid IP so I reset the modem and the router we provide her. Basic lease renewal issue. It happens, everything else is green.

Me: "Boom, magic, you're online mom”.

Mom: Whaa?...Oh. You're right”. Sounds disappointed. "Thank you, that was really fast, I guess I won't trouble you to come over then”.

Clearly she was more excited at the prospect of the meal than the free tech support, but for her it seems something broken or a holiday is required to “trouble” me to hang out.

Me: “Hey now, I was promised a home-cooked meal here. I'm happy to come anyway”.

Mom: "Haha that's fine, it’s nice of you to be polite. But I know you're busy, you don't have to. We can do this another time”.

Okay let's do this the hard way. I reach back to the tools and deprovision the router.

Me: "There, its broken again mom. And it'll stay that way until dessert”.

Mom: "Oh! Lovely. Then, shall we say 6 o'clock”?

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88. You Can’t Print That

I’m currently working in the managed print industry. A customer logs a call saying no printing devices in a building are working, so it was definitely server/software related. I log in with their IT guy. The server is freezing and when logging in with a new account, and there is a disk space error. I inform the IT guy that he needs to make some space and we can then troubleshoot anything if there are issues once it’s done.

I then call the user who logged the call and let her know the issue. Unfortunately, she isn’t computer savvy, and it makes no sense to her. A depressing conversation occurs:

Me: Morning, just calling regarding your printing issue. It’s due to a server fault that your IT team members are looking into. They should hopefully have it resolved soon, which will likely resolve your issues.

User: Oh, well the printer still isn’t working, none of them are, this is URGENT.

Me: I understand, but your IT is looking into it due to a server fault and should have it sorted as soon as possible.

User: Ok, so when are you coming out to fix it?

Me: I would not be able to fix the machine on site. It is a server issue as it has run out of disk space. The IT guys are looking into it.

User: This is urgent. The ENTIRE site can’t print, what’s the ETA on the fix?

Me: I am not your IT so I am unable to advise. You would have to call them as they need to resolve it.

User: I need an ETA to inform the users and management.

Me: I’m not in your IT so I can’t give an ETA, unfortunately.

She then punted me over to her manager.

Manager: We need an ETA for the fix or send someone on site. I want this actioned ASAP.

Me: I'm not your IT. I’m from the managed print support company. The issue is with your server and your IT are looking to fix it. An engineer from us won’t be able to assist.

Manager: So you are categorically stating YOUR print engineer can’t fix the printer? What kind of support is this?!

Me: The issue isn't with the printer, it’s with the server the print software is on, which your IT are looking to fix urgently.

Manager: No, the PRINTER is not PRINTING so it’s a PRINTER problem, we don't have servers.

Me: You do have servers.

Manager: Why are you refusing to fix this? You can't just say no! We have a support contract!

Me: Your IT fix your servers; we fix the printers and the software that’s on the server. You need to call your IT.

Manager: I’m escalating this to my director. Expect a call back shortly.

Click.

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89. Can’t Hack It

This happened a while back but it's still the best thing that ever happened to me at work. True story. So, I was hired by a big defense company with over 3,500 employees. You can imagine this was a very big company. We were in building 34, and if you needed to go somewhere quick you took a bike or an electric car.

I usually did second line support, but they had a couple of people call in sick and asked me to do first line support. It was a Friday and not much was happening besides the usual email problems. The phone rings.

Her: Yes hello, this the secretary of the CEO. We need you to come over NOW! We have a big problem.

Me: What seems to be wrong?

Her: The CEO is trying to open a file in Word, but every time he does this, scrambled text is showing up. I THINK WE ARE BEING HACKED!

To be fair, this was a big issue, since a couple of weeks before this a group of activists broke into the company and climbed on top of our radar tower.

Me: I'll take a look from here and take over your screen. Hang on.

I take over his screen this is what happens: File, open: JKAHSFHJKHJHJJJJJJFJJJJJSAKKKALALLLALLALLALALLAL*UUU**JJJDKJKJASLKLKSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Her: I don't know what this is. You see?!? This is so weird...

Now, I knew what was wrong at this moment, but I wanted to see in person. You don't just walk into the exec office every day.

Me: Uh-huh. I'll be there as soon as possible!

I grab this electric car, drive over, and five minutes later I walk into the executive building. A very nice building, totally different from the rest of the offices. They even had their own dining room and bar. The security guy sees me coming and waves me through. He was informed of my coming and understood the importance.

I get out of the elevator at the top floor and am greeted by the secretary, a manager, and some other assistant. They are all a bit panicked.

“Come over, have a look at this”! the CEO says.

He shows me: File, open: JKAHSFHJKHJHJJJJJJFJJJJJSAKKKALALLLALLALLALALLAL*UUU**JJJDKJKJASLKLKSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

I look at him. I look at every single person in that room. You could feel the suspense. I look back at the computer. I pick up the newspaper that was on top of the keyboard and ask:

Try again please? The looks on their face: Priceless. I also got a free lunch with the CEO.

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90. Mother Doesn’t Always Know Best

I work for a small IT company providing website, email servers, and web software. After a few years of collaboration with the client, our accountant comes to me saying that the client hasn’t paid the monthly fee for their website and mail server. Sometime clients forget to set up automatic transfer when they change banks, or their accountant went on vacation and forgot to tell someone to do it—things like that. 

So I called them up to figure out what had happened. One of the first problems was that the main contact was the co-boss of the company, who was actually the mother of the other boss. 
Me: Hi there, we haven’t received your transfer from last month. Is there a problem?
Mom: I don't know what those fees are. I won't pay it.
Me: These fees are for your website and your mail server.
Mom: We don't use it. I don't want it. I won't pay for it. Click.

Okay! You do not have to be this rude. So we send a registered letter with recorded delivery saying that if they do not pay by the end of next month, we will have to shut down all their services. After a month and a little bit, still no transfer, we shut off everything.
Sure thing, 30 minutes later we receive a call from the boss—AKA the first woman’s son.

Boss: My emails stopped working, you have to fix this please.
Me: Yes, we shut off your server because you haven't paid your monthly fees for the last two months.
Boss: What? But my mom is in charge off all the suppliers, she should have paid you.
Me: No, she told us that you did not need our services and did not want to pay for it.
Boss: She is crazy! We take care of all our invoices and contracts by emails. Without them we may as well close the company. I will take care of paying you personally from now on. But please start the server back on.

So we did, and 20 minutes later, one of his employees was at our door with a check for the last two months and the upcoming one. And from this point, he always paid us on time.

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91. User Loser

A customer of ours has all their server and networking equipment support through us and the helpdesk services from another company. I went on-site to investigate a network issue when I was suddenly interrupted by a very aggravated employee of theirs. She is insistent I would come fix some issue on her workstation like RIGHT NOW.

I explain to her I can't, we don't do their support. The following conversation unfolds:

Me: I'm sorry, but I don't do user cases.

Her: WHAT did you just call me??!

Me: (puzzled) A user?

Her: IS THAT SOME SORT OF A DEROGATORY TERM, HUH?

After that there's no calming her. She fumes on about being insulted and listens to no voice of reason. In the end I just ignore her and finish my work. The next day my boss comes to me about having received a complaint about my conduct. He says he's very surprised about the accusation as I'm normally pretty calm and professional about what I do.

I explain to him what had happened, and my boss bursts into laughter and walks away.

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92. Everything AND The Kitchen Sink

So this just happened like a minute ago. One of the team leads in my department was having trouble getting something to work in Excel and pinged me for help. I asked if she could email me the spreadsheet so I could take a look myself, and she sends me a link instead...to the spreadsheet on her desktop.

I began rubbing my temples because I knew this particular person well enough to know that a simple explanation would not be heard, processed, or acted on. But I had to try anyway. I responded explaining that I can't access files stored on her hard drive, and that she needs to send it to me as an attachment.

She responds by saying "It's on the desktop, if the link won't work just open it". I again explain that her desktop and my desktop are not the same thing, and that I am no more able to open items on her desktop than she is of opening things on mine. This is when it got downright ridiculous. She responds that she's opened the recycle bin. And I have a recycle bin. Therefore since we both have recycle bins, I should be able to open things on her desktop.

This is the point where I dial back the professionalism and let my tenure absorb the hit if she pitches a fit. I say excuse me, get up, then turn on the kitchen faucet. I work from home and I know from prior experience that it's audible from my home office. I sit back down at my desk and say "I've just turned my kitchen faucet on. Do you have any water in your sink?"

The silence lasted a good 10 seconds, and I swear I could almost hear the hamster wheel in her head straining. And she finally says, quietly and clearly trying to sound as neutral and unflustered as possible, "OK that makes sense, I'll send it over as an attachment”.

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93. Making Mountains Out Of Mole Hills

This just happened. So, I had a laptop system board fail. Under warranty. No problem.

Engineer comes on site. Does the job. All good. 10 minutes later, I'm called down to where he was working by a member of management, saying that he must have been doing illicit substances in there because there's a syringe in the bin. There's about 10 members of staff all freaking out.

It's thermal compound—basically glue for CPUs.

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94. You Need A Time Out

I was working service desk, and it was getting towards the end of the day. We were winding down before leaving at 5 when I had a call from a very angry man who ran a small business.

He'd logged a ticket the day before for being unable to print to a specific printer, however he could walk 20 more meters and collect his documents from another perfectly fine printer.

The job had been with the senior engineers for the day as obviously, this is not the highest priority issue we'd had today. Despite being polite and offering to speak with the team leader, he flips out. I DON'T WANT YOU TO SPEAK WITH A MANAGER, I WANT YOU TO FIX IT.

My boss is very good about us not taking flak from customers, so I immediately flick him a message that it's starting to go south. I tell him I'm sorry I can't fix it, but I'll organize an engineer to give him a call tomorrow and speak with my team leader. He doesn't take this well and immediately yells "I WANNA SPEAK WITH YOUR MANAGER".

I say of course and go to transfer the call. My boss picks up and I deadpan to him, “I've got a gentleman who wants to speak with my manager”. He gives me a grin and then says to put it through. He sits on the phone for five seconds before asking him to stop swearing, I didn't hear this part but evidently he doesn't stop.

He immediately hangs up on the customer, speaks with the director and has all services for this customer cancelled. My manager then says you did absolutely the right thing and says if he ever calls back, we're to put him straight through and never help him with anything.

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95. Not A One Size Fits All Solution

What follows is a story that comes from my first few months at a medium-sized company. I was a tier 1 phone jockey and this was my first “adult job” after college, so you can imagine how surprised and nervous I was when one day I get an email with the subject line “FWD: DISABLE FACEBOOK NOW”!

It was written just like that. In all caps, two (or maybe three) exclamation points. Inside, there was a long message chain containing an extended rant from our marketing executive, sent to the CEO, replied to, forwarded to the CIO, replied to, forwarded to my manager, and then kicked down to me with no explanation.

My manager did this kind of thing a lot. Rather than open a ticket in the ticketing system he insisted we use a certain way, or explain anything in his emails, he would simply forward us an email chain of a conversation he’d been having with some store or department manager, some executive, or some vender, and we’d have to read through all of it to figure out what he wanted.

This email was one of those. But that wasn’t the worst part. Since it had come from people up the chain from him, I had to read through all of his pathetic groveling and deferential boot-licking to reach the part where he made his unqualified promises about what I’ll do in how much time.

Eventually, I surmised the following: Our marketing executive is upset that his employees are spending work time on social media. He has decided that this is all IT’s fault. He wants social media "disabled on ALL computers”. He sent this complaint to the CEO, because it’s not good enough to contact IT and open a ticket to get something done, he has to try to get someone fired while he’s at it.

Okay, fine. We actually had Websense, so I wrote up a ticket, opened up the admin console in Websense, and added Facebook’s URL to the blacklist. Done and done. I hit reply-all to the message chain and let the executives know that we’re good. It had a surprising effect. Immediately I got hammered with replies from the CEO, my manager, and the marketing executive (who had made the request). They all wanted to know why I disabled Facebook on their machines.

Exercising all the restraint I had, I apologized and explained that when they said “disable Facebook on ALL computers” I didn’t realize that they meant for there to be exceptions to the rule. I grabbed one of our Tier-3 guys and he helped me set up MAC filtering in Websense. We made a group for the executives and managers to be excepted from the social media blackout, and then blocked Twitter, Instagram, and all the other common social media sites while we were at it.

Thinking the issue has now been properly dealt with, I updated the executives, who seem placated, updated the ticket, and then closed it. 15 minutes later, a red-faced young woman appeared in the IT office. She’s from marketing and was upset because she couldn’t reach Facebook or Twitter.

I gently explained that those had just been blocked at the request of her department’s executive.

Her: “But you’re NOT supposed to block ME! I’m a social media manager! It’s MY JOB to be on FACEBOOK. NOW I CAN’T WORK”!

Me: “Oh. Hang on”.

I placed a quick speakerphone call to the marketing executive and got his admin assistant.

Me: “Can I speak with the marketing executive? It’s about the Facebook blackout he requested”.

Assistant: “Ooh yeah, he’s pretty upset about that”.

Of course.

Me: “Can I speak to him”?

After a minute, she got him on the line.

Exec: “Hi! Glad you finally got it right”.

Me: “Sir? The social media manager is in my office right now”.

Exec: “So? Tell her to get back to work”.

Me: “Sir, she can’t. She says it’s her job to run the company’s social media pages and she can’t work now because of the block. Do I have your permission to unblock her”?

Exec: “…”

Me: “…”

Exec: “You mean we’re paying someone to be on Facebook”?

Me: “...She works for your department, sir”.

Exec: “Unblock her for now, and tell her to come see me in my office”.

Me: "Okay”.

Okay.

I turned to look at her, and she was already walking out.

ME: “Hey—are you alright”?

She turned back to me.

Her: “I’m fine. This is the third time this month that dinosaur has forgotten that I work here. I’m used to explaining my job to him”.

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96. Clean and Clear and Out of Control

In the late 90s, I had a co-worker who complained about her computer being slow. I took a look, and the hard drive was full. The largest folder was her recycle bin. She had never, ever emptied it in years of use. I emptied the recycle, cleared the Temp folder, and the PC started working fine. She was happy until...her big Excel tracking sheet was gone. Oh, No!

She did not know where it was on file explorer, so I asked her to show me how she opened it. She goes to the little storage container on her desktop, named...Recycle Bin. It was normally at the top, but now it's gone. No backup. Oops...She cried to management that I "destroyed her computer." The manager laughed when I told her the truth.

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97. No Connection

A very grumpy high-society woman came to the store saying her brand new 3,000-dollar Microsoft surface bought by her husband was defective because she could not get internet when she was on the move. I quickly realized she was talking about Wi-Fi, so I tried explaining to her how Wi-Fi actually works. Boy, was that a mistake!

I told her that she could not use her Wi-Fi outside her house, but that she could share her smartphone internet connection. She would have none of it. She said I was lying to her and making fun of her. She even asked to speak to my manager, who then proceeded to tell her the exact same thing, almost to the word. She left screaming.

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98. What An Icon

Last night I did a scheduled upgrade of QuickBooks for a client. One server, 10 desktops, three databases. It went well. As usual with an upgrade like this, I'm scheduled to be on site the next day for a couple of hours to help out and answer questions about the new version. In this case, I was scheduled for Monday morning since like most offices, they're closed over the weekends.

My cell phone rings this morning at 7:30 am (on the weekend). I don't recognize the number so I ignore it. I quickly regretted it. They then proceed to call back continuously for the next 10 minutes, never leaving a message until the last call. I listen to the message. It's from a staff person at the client where I upgraded QuickBooks, irate as heck and yelling, "QUICKBOOKS IS BROKEN! I CAN'T DO MY JOB! THIS IS GOING TO COST THE COMPANY TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS! YOU BETTER GET THIS FIXED. GET OVER HERE! CALL ME BACK IMMEDIATELY”!

So I remote in to the remote desktop server, verify that all is well, take a deep breath and call her back. She proceeds to berate me until she runs out of breath, never tells me what the problem is but instead focuses on how her inability to enter some transactions she didn't get to Friday is going to cause the end of life on this planet. After several minutes I finally get her to tell me what problem she's having when she runs the program.

"IT WON'T START”!

"Does it give you an error message when you try to start it? What do you see”?

"I CAN'T RUN IT! THERE'S NO ICON ON THE DESKTOP! YOU NEED TO GET OUT HERE AND FIX THIS NOW! YOU'RE SCREWING WITH THE COMPANY”!

I remote into her system. The icon is there, in the exact same place as it was before, but it's a slightly different icon. Still titled "QuickBooks" of course, but it's a different color. I tell her to watch the screen, double click it, and of course QB comes right up.

I remind her that this is a new version and that some commands and screens will look a bit different. She accuses me of screwing around with it just to make things more difficult for her. I tell her that's not the case, ask her if there's anything else I can do to assist. A couple more ugly comments from her and we end the call.

My phone system sends me voicemails as emails with MP3 attachments. I forwarded the email to the owner of the company and told him I expect to be treated more professionally in the future. Frankly, I hope it costs her the job.

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99. You Don’t Know Jack

I had been working as a small office's systems administrator for a little over two months when Jack was hired. Jack was a paid intern whose mother was friends with my boss's wife. Jack grew up in the wealthiest county in the state (where my boss lives) and has had everything he ever wanted.

A sense of entitlement that hung around him like the smell of five-day-old socks was the first thing I noticed upon being introduced to him as he went around the office. "Jack this is our, erm...uh...tech...guy..”. My boss introduces me in that way that old bosses who don't use computers often do.

Jack extends his hand. "Oh, cool. Nice to meet ya".

I shake. "Welcome aboard".

Jack is very eager to get started doing...whatever. "Will I get a business email?" as if this is the most interesting thing ever. Adorable, I think.

"Eventually, yes. For the moment though, we have a shared email for interns on staff. I'll get you the credentials shortly". Most of the interns use the shared email for a while until getting their own. Just standard procedure.

"You run the firewall, right?"

"Yes”.

"So you can block and unblock sites?"

"Yes". Jack's eager smile is contagious.

"Cool! Nice to meet you". He waves and the boss and Jack and he leave to go be introduced elsewhere. Now, dear reader, you might be wondering why I would call Jack the worst user ever given his politeness and general smiling demeanor who has some understanding of what I do. That's above average when it comes to users. Well, we're only getting started here with Jack.

The first thing Jack did was complain the moment he was out of earshot. He apparently explained to the boss that it really would be professional to have his own email given his experience and the fact that he was really more than just an intern. See, Jack knew his stuff, and if he complained to his mother, she would complain to the boss’s wife, who would complain to the boss.

My boss, figuring an email is a small thing to ask for, had a request to set up a personalized email account for Jack on my desk within the hour. This was not to be a good start of a relationship with one's IT Guy.

Day two, I got an IT ticket for the room where the interns work. it's a large open office with a bunch of computers and printers where the interns print stuff all day long. Because it's such mind-numbing work, they tend to play music off of Pandora or Spotify in there. The ticket says:

"Hey, we're having issues with Spotify. Not super important, but please help if you're free! Thanks”.

Aw, those guys are always nice to me. An hour or so later, I have a few free minutes and I head down. I check out Spotify and find the issue and fix it. Jack is there and watches closely.

"We can use Spotify here?" he asks.

"Yep," I reply.

"Pandora works, too," another intern adds. Everything checks out and I leave the happy-again-they-can-play-music interns and Jack. A couple hours later, I got a note on my desk that made my blood boil. See, the boss knew I allowed people to play music and such at the office. But he now believed that Spotify is a HUGE security risk, leaving holes in our firewall through which everything from viruses to malware to cyberterrorists could come through. The boss was unhappy that I would allow such a threat to exist in our system, and ordered me to close it up.

I called the boss. When I asked who told him these incorrect things about Spotify, his answer was: Oh, Jack did, of course.

I explained that Spotify was not a threat, and that Jack was simply mistaken. Jack, however, was on the other end of the line, in my boss's office, on speakerphone, and interjected: "Dude, it's alright if you didn't know about the security issue. But don't try and make me look bad for your mistake”. I'm stunned as the boss hangs up the phone after demanding I fix it.

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100. They Are Out To Get You

So yesterday was strange, to say the least. We had a meeting that was scheduled for noon, so the beginning of my day was pretty mundane. At noon I walked into the conference room for the video review. The head of IT was in there as well as the executive vice president of IT and technology. The conference started hilariously as none of them could get the head of HR’s video working.

I walked her through how to fix that as it was a simple error.

Me: Have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?

HR Lady: Oh duh. Should have known it was something stupid like that.

We started the conference and HOOO BOOOY. It quickly became clear to me what was going on. She was gunning for me hard.

Her: So I have in front of me 19 complaints against you this year. Can you explain these?

Me: That’s it?

Her: Clearly not expecting that. Uhh yes. How do you explain it?

Me: Well as you well know, each complaint is different and most do not have merit.

Her: So you are saying these complaints were made…incorrectly?

Me: Yes that is exactly what I am saying.

I then pulled out the same folder she probably had.

Me: On Feb 12th, this man complained that I refused his request.

Her: Good one to start with. Explain it.

Me: He wanted me to put a folder on his desktop that would allow him to transfer items between his local desktop and another server. This was not possible. I offered him several alternative options but he refused each one.

Her: So this was impossible?

Me: Technology wise of course it is possible. But the solution would never EVER get the approval.

Her: Let’s move on to the next one. A different user claimed that you were rude to her on the phone and hung up on her.

Me: let's play the call log.

The call log is me being professional while she politely berates me on the phone…until she cusses me out. I end the call and send it to HR.

Me: Your predecessor said I handled it well.

Her: Ok let’s move on to the lady who had to wait for extra days to get her laptop back from you. She said you helped her three days in a row and finally took an extra four days to get her laptop back to her.

Me: You mean the lady who yelled in my face? Yeah, I remember her. I had to go to the hospital that Friday so none of my work got done.

Her: I see the note here. You thought you had a hernia but it turned out to be a UTI?

Me: Thanks for repeating it here…Yes. Anyways, the point is her laptop was finished within two hours of me returning to work. The four days she is talking about is because we had a three-day weekend.

The meeting went on like this for well over 30 minutes as we ran through each complaint with only one that was legitimate. That was when I misread a technical error and had to fix it 30 minutes later. Oh well. Then came the real kicker.

Her: Let’s talk about the fire you started.

Me: I STARTED!?

My Head of IT: HE STARTED!? (same time)

Vice President: Wait what?

Her: Per your report. The fuse box was overloaded when the third rack of servers plugged in and started a fire inside the wall that ended up burning out most of the building.

Me: Yes that does sound correct. What you’re failing to mention is that the circuit breaker was not an actual circuit breaker. It was a bypass installed to bring the building up to code. The fuse box had cabinets built over it so that the owner could hide it. That’s why it caught on fire.

Her: How was this missed.

Me: I don’t know. I am not an electrician, I am not a state building inspector, I am not omniscient, and I am certainly not omnipotent. I went in to set up an office.

Her: You appear to have an excuse for everything.

Me: Yes it's called “Cover Your Butt”. You literally have that on a poster in your office. But then it got ten times worse.

Vice President: (to me) OK, That is far enough, you have made your point. Remember that she holds your job in her hand.

Head of IT: Like a small bird. (Yes, they really said this)

Vice President: Thank you. So you do need to show her some respect…that being said. (Talking to HR Lady) He is right. (Turning to me) Do you want to keep your job?

Me: Yes.

Vice President: Then never take a disrespectful tone at a member of the senior management again. I expect a written apology to her by the end of the day. No further action needs to be taken here. (Turning to HR Lady) As for you.

HR Lady: Yes?

Vice President: You will apologize to both of them by the end of the day yourself. While he was disrespectful, he is not wrong.

He then stood up and gathered his things.

Vice President: Hopefully this is the last I hear of any animosity towards upper management, or animosity coming from upper management. Good day people.

He left and I went back to my desk, apologizing for the attitude I took with the head of HR. At 4:55 PM the email came in from the head of HR apologizing for her role.

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101. Woman Overboard

A colleague of mine dialed into a meeting of two or three managers plus about 25 sales representatives, only for everyone to suddenly go quiet. One person told him the meeting was cancelled and he could drop the call, as they were just chatting about sales stuff. He pretended to hang up and stayed on the line. That's how he found out the truth.

They were basically planning a mutiny because they didn't like that their regional manager was a woman. They had a whole strategy for how they were going to cause a massive screw-up that would cost the company a ton of money and make it look like it was her fault so that she would get fired. The idiots even did a little "are we all in agreement" roll call at the end.

We worked in a call center, so his end of the call was recorded. Within a week, every last one of them was fired and within a month they were replaced.

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102. Repeat Offender

I've always wanted to tell this story. It happened on my third day at my new job. It was at a cell phone store, and I already felt pretty comfortable working without any help. All of a sudden, this customer walked in, ignored the other customers who were waiting to be helped, and slammed her phone on the counter in front of me.

She said she had just bought this phone and then started talking about how it was not a really Galaxy S3. She was convinced it was fake. At first, I thought maybe she was trying to swindle us by swapping it or something, but when I determined she was just spewing nonsense, I apologized and told her there was nothing we could do.

She was not happy, so I checked in with the assistant manager who told me to give her the runaround because it was more than 14 days after she had purchased it. When I told her that we could not give her a refund, her horrifying reaction only intensified. She pounded her fist on the counter over and over again, screaming while she did it. After a few more pounds, she bellowed, GIVE ME MY MONEY”!

She then continued to scream and pound both of her fists like hammers as if she were Donkey Kong. I calmly explained that we could not give her a refund, but we were more than happy to exchange it without a restocking fee. She didn’t think that was good enough, though, so she started to act like Donkey Kong again, but this time she stomped her feet as well.

She then started telling me that she has three kids in her car right now, and she can’t take care of them with this garbage phone. She said she needed her money back so she could feed them. I told her our policy once again, and she grabbed the phone, screeched, and pushed the door as hard as she could. I thought it was over, but…

She left the store, still screaming at the top of her lungs. She then sped out of the parking lot and, instead of backing up out of her spot, she drove over the cement parking divider and floored it, spinning her wheels across the grass in front of the store. Alas, that was not the last of her. I encountered her again a few months later.

She was buying another Galaxy S3 because her son broke the other one. Then, three weeks later, she came in saying that the phone was “defective”. Since she couldn’t prove that it was faulty, we went through the same Donkey Kong routine again. This time, however, she wouldn't leave. She kept stomping her feet and screaming at customers about how we were ripping everyone off.

Eventually, it got to the point where the stomping was getting a bit scary, so I told her that she was making our customers uncomfortable and threatened to call the authorities. Just as I pretended to dial, she rushed out of there. I later learned more about her from another customer of mine who is her best friend. Apparently this maniac has also been banned from Walmart and several restaurants in the area.

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Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4