Amusing Nightmare IT Stories

Great read, thanks for the entertainment.. Hated working as IT help desk :|
 
I never thought that porn watchers would gunk up their keyboards to the point of not working. Fucking disgusting.
 
I don't have to do user support often, usually when we are short staffed, but it is always lots of fun.

This persons mouse and key board *SUDDENLY* just stopped working. I wonder what the problem could be? Totally stumped.



 
Megalith said:
Cool, a list of things that never happened.
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Pretty much. The whole CDROM cup holder thing always makes me doubt somebody and their stories. Like how everybody claims their family was on the Mayflower.
 
schizrade said:
I don't have to do user support often, usually when we are short staffed, but it is always lots of fun.

This persons mouse and key board *SUDDENLY* just stopped working. I wonder what the problem could be? Totally stumped.



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I've had users with M&K's that get this way. WTF do they do to get them so fucking disgusting? Pisses me off when i have to touch their workstations /barf
 
And to think i almost took a career path into the Ops side of IT.

Screw. that.!
 
"Alex, I'll take "More than half of the things are bullshit" for $600"
 
chockomonkey said:
I've had users with M&K's that get this way. WTF do they do to get them so fucking disgusting? Pisses me off when i have to touch their workstations /barf
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they get them so disgusting by being disgusting. bad hygiene, being a messy... the mouse in the meeting room closest to the top management always has a crust of filth on it and so does the equipment of my boss. i don't get how people can be comfortable with this and i don't want to know how disgusting more private things are. i always wash myself if i have to touch some filthy mouse or keyboard or phone.
 
I was tech support supervisor for a hardware manufacturer, so I have a bunch of stories. My personal favorite was a guy that called in after he installed a video card in his system. He said, "I installed your video card and the monitor won't turn on.". Thinking it might be a lose VGA connection, I asked him to double check the VGA cable going from the computer to the monitor. I heard a bit of fumbling and cussing. Hey said, "I can't tell if it's connected, it's too dark." I asked him to turn on a light and double check. He replied, "I can't, the power's out.".
 
Wow. Someone seriously used expanding foam inside their case for soundproofing?! LOL!
 
A CD drive is probably more useful as a cupholder these days.
 
I don't think anyone can top this.

Her name is Sandy and I believe she was in her late 50s to early 60s, and somehow of all places got put on the night-staff emergency crew with myself and a long-term friend. At night crew, you are also acting manager and emergency response coordinator, and are expected to have an extremely high understanding and self-resolution rate so that you don't have to wake people up, and when you DO wake people up at 2:30AM that its the right people and was absolutely necessary.

So she was a direct-hire by the North America helpdesk manager, as I was told they both went to the same church, and likely he was just trying to help her out. She knew as much as anyone else very quickly though that she was incompetent, as calls would automatically roll in to each of us in order, A, B, C then A, B, C etc. Every time it was her turn, literally on the dot she would cough hysterically, and say she had to get water. This would happen 20 times a night at least, so her call volume was insanely low compared to ours.

Worse yet, when she did get a call she would always ask us a million questions, to the point it would be faster to just transfer the call... which she would also always ask us to do, which we finally got fed up with and would not accept. So then she'd ask us a question right, and we gave the solution as the customer is still #1, and then literally 45 mins later she would ask to explain the solution again... and we would walk over and be like Jesus Christ she still has the guy on hold that entire time!!!!!!!! This happened several times, lmao!

THEN, the thing that finally got her fired (we complained ad nauseum, but no one would listen since she was best buds with the big boss), they found several tickets in which she kept linking people to wikipedia articles.

Literally wikipedia articles. She would take the call, tell them she would research and get back with them, put keyword searches into wikipedia, and close her tickets with that as the solution which sent them an email. And as you can imagine, the wikipedia articles had absolutely nothing even REMOTELY to do with what the user was talking about, lmao!

She was by far the most incompetent employee I have ever in my life worked with, and I wouldn't even trust to be a receptionist. To this day, we still sometimes joke that we should "Sandy it" which depending on context means either cough and walk away, or send a wikipedia link, lol!
 
Ducman69 said:
I don't think anyone can top this. [...]
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uhm, really... i've seen bigger incompetence. like, that chief accountant i have to work with (i'm also finance, but not in accounting) who asks me to check his postings whether he got debit and credit right in whatever he posts during the year end closing. he has been an accountant for 30 years and makes 100k. and he's serious about his request. what the fuck.
 
temujin987 said:
uhm, really... i've seen bigger incompetence. like, that chief accountant i have to work with (i'm also finance, but not in accounting) who asks me to check his postings whether he got debit and credit right in whatever he posts during the year end closing. he has been an accountant for 30 years and makes 100k. and he's serious about his request. what the fuck.
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Debits go on the left, and credits go on the right... Did I get that right? :D
 
I did a stint in a help desk role about 25 years ago. It sucked. I had many stupid problems.
Like, "I can't print". Check the toner, check paper. They said they did. I go there - the printer is out of paper, but a package of paper is sitting on the printer. It's like it was supposed to magically fill itself?
Or can't type. Keyboard not plugged in.
There are many. I feel sorry for people dealing with people :)
 
I once witnessed a co-worker use Bing to find Google to do a search. She was on the Support team.:
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Our MIS dept keeps changing our default search engine to bing. I thought it was just me, or my dept, but then I mentioned it around the company, and sure enough, everywhere. Chrome, firefox, every one becomes set to bing. Doesn't always happen right away, but within a few days. Once went unchanged for about two weeks, we tried to find out who was on vacation but all we got was suspicious looks with 'who wants to know?', and 'Why?'. So I told them. They told me it was impossible. No wonder the system goes down so often.
 
I got quite a few stories lol.

More recently...sorry if it is long winded but damn.. it pisses me off.

While covering the help desk I notice that none of the printers on either of our campuses are working. I tell the person responsible for the print servers and the network they all connect too ( You know.. a network administrator ) and she says something like, " I got to go help another tech with a video conference, confirm it is an issue... blah blah blah."

Now I work for a Government that includes two schools and a health system. Not being able to print for more than a few minutes is a pretty big deal.

After about 20 minutes of me verifying that the network is fine I narrowed the problem to the two print servers print spoolers. (hind site probably should have checked that first but this isn't my job so forgive me for going back wards lol) and i couldn't get them to restart.

I was just getting ready to clear the files out of the spool when she came back in freaking out because they cannot get the conference to work and wants my help. I tell her i'm pretty busy right now.. catch me in 15 minutes. She keeps talking i'm ignoring her.. then i get a call from a government officials secretary about the conference.. I tell her quickly about the printers.. she says okay and asks me when i'm finished to go to the conference room. Then my boss walks in and says shes getting calls about the video conference.

At this point i'm getting agitated. I call our lowest level tech on another campus because he is the only one left besides the web developer that was available at the time. I tell him the print spoolers need cleared and if he knew how to do it. He said no but he will figure it out. He is smart and reliable so it was good enough for me.

I go down to the area for the video conference. I ask whats going on.. The Network Admin says she is calling the director of IT to see if we can borrow Polycom from another building because this one is really broken and she is telling the people there (councilors, judges, lawyers, etc) that someone broke the equipment some how and that they would have to budget in new equipment and all that neet stuff. Also that they are going to have to change/delay the meeting until she can find them a temporary replacement.. and they all left disgusted then head for the free breakfast.

I poke around with the remote.. make sure the cables are plugged in.. and then... I looked at the power button for what seemed like 30 minutes (was probably 10 seconds). It was in the OFF position. I looked at the Tech who I assume was googling the symptoms on his phone (or on tinder who knows). and the network admin still trying to get a hold of the director. I just walk out.

I just could not believe the incompetence. between the two, the tech and the network admin, they did not think to check the power effing switch.

I get out in the hallway and I notice all the people that where waiting are still there eating donuts and such.. and that any one of these people could fire me on the spot.

I walk back in, turn on the polycom made sure it found the other side and asked if they had it from here. The one government assistant happened to be there and knew how to use it so we leave. The net admin asked me what the problem was and i told her that, "you didn't turn it on". There was no embarrassment or "whoops! i'm stupid" reaction from either of them which pissed me off even more.

I take the long way back to the office to have a smoke and calm down. I get back and I hear my boss ask the net admin what is going on there.. and she says oh don't worry "I got it fixed"... I ignore it figuring i'll talk to my boss later about it.

Mind you it took me less than 5 minutes to find the issue and other 5 to smoke.

I call the tech that was getting the spooler fixed.. hes on the ball and is nearly done (slow network) I let him finish it up and they all come back online a few moments later.

We're all getting settled down and the Executives office called my boss. Now we all sit fairly close to each other and they are on speaker phone. The exec office asked what the problem was with the video conference. My boss asks me to tell them... so with out thinking I say in a really loud voice, "they didn't turn the f*#king thing on". I hear the office on the other end say, "What the F..." when my boss took her off of speaker but I could still hear them yelling.

No one was happy and after about a week of complaining about it no one got fired or disciplined though i probably deserved it for swearing so much lol.

This same 'Network Admin' doesn't know how to use Remote Desktop, Map a drive or even the simple concept of ping. BUT does know how to delete important documents off of the file server and then make the back ups not work... i guess she is a perfect fit for government work.
 
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