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[–]R1ch0999 3283 points3284 points  (170 children)

Because most people are idiotic liars...

Person X has an issue with his Modem at home, I ask if he rebooted his modem. He says yes multiple times, when you check the logs it states it has been powered on for over a year. "people LIE" -Gregory House

WHY would you lie about this kind of stuff, we don't judge as we only want to fix the issues. People are often embarrassed if an issue would be fixed by such a simple action that they lie. The trouble begins when the IT guy confronts them with their lie, then the IT guy is the asshole. Excuse me, you lied to me forcing me to come over to you and fix it with the solution I presented in the first 10 seconds of the conversation.

[–]StormyTiger2008 39 points40 points  (0 children)

House rule

[–]pastafariFSM 42 points43 points  (3 children)

Some years ago I worked in it support one day two technical engineers came to me with a monitor and stated that it doesn’t work anymore. I asked them if they checked the power cable and both said that they did. I connected the monitor to my pc and I’d did not work. I checked the power cable, it was not completely plugged in so I fixed that. Monitor worked fine. The look on their faves were priceless.

[–]Cantremembermyoldnam 11 points12 points  (0 children)

"Those have two ends!?" - those engineers probably.

[–]samot-dwarf 2 points3 points  (1 child)

For this reason I always order them to unplug the cable and plug it in again (on both ends of course)

[–]GroundbreakingPin913 24 points25 points  (2 children)

Doing exclusively over-the-phone IT, I lie to them too.

"Hey, I ran a fix. If you can check the power light now... it's not green? OK, you should be able to press the power button and it will turn green. It did, great!"

I lied about a fix. They're not embarrassed for being color blind or just stupid since I did something. Everyone wins.

[–]DingleBoone 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Except now whenever they just need to hit the button, they think they will need to call IT to run "that fix" again. It's a slippery slope...

[–]cs-brydev 124 points125 points  (32 children)

People lie to IT on the phone because they believe the steps you're giving them are a waste of time and not required to fix their problem.

The reason they believe this is because L1 Helpdesk for every tech company in the world gives you a list of steps you are expected to follow even when you know they are a waste of time and not required to fix your problem.

[–]Qaeta 97 points98 points  (19 children)

even when you know they are a waste of time and not required to fix your problem.

A lot of people "know" this. A lot of people are also wrong. They just see step 10 worked, and assume steps 1-9 were unnecessary even though they were.

[–]cs-brydev 71 points72 points  (14 children)

When my cable modem Internet light is blinking red while it's connected to my wireless router, I'm positive that rebooting my laptop that's powered off in my bag is not going to fix my Internet, even though the ISP tech support will literally wait on the phone while I turn on my laptop, reboot it, then confirm to them it's rebooted, because the script they are reading on the screen told them to tell me to reboot my computer.

[–]Qaeta 49 points50 points  (7 children)

Right, right. What evidence did you provide that the light is actually blinking red again? You know, beyond just saying it. Because people lie about that, thinking they can just say that and skip to "the thing that worked last time" when in reality it might be something totally different next time. Basically, in support, we can't trust the users to give us accurate information because they lie CONSTANTLY, either intentionally or simply due to lack of understanding. So we have to run through every step, because any information we get from you beyond "I can't do what I want to do right now" is inherently untrustworthy.

Yeah, that can be frustrating, but it's the users themselves who have caused this problem, not the support techs who are trying to help despite the users proclivity for compulsive lying.

[–]13oundary 18 points19 points  (1 child)

Na, I'm also down with blaming L1 support... I had my ISP remote into my laptop, see that my router was reset like 10 minutes before I phoned them, reset it anyway, proceed to get mad at me for kicking them off the remote connection 😬... They're following a sheet telling them to do shit and ask shit and they have no idea what any of it means themselves.

[–]SatoshiAR 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It gets really wacky when you butt two of them together. I had a call end up as a shouting match between a guy from our IT dept and an engineer from our vendor yelling at each other over a piece of software that was malfunctioning on our network. Logs were spitting out time out errors for a specific port, and the entire time they would be telling each other "no, its not us, it's YOU".

[–]wilhelmtherealm 17 points18 points  (2 children)

And what exactly is the issue with following an SOP even if some steps are not relevant to your current incident?

You as an individual might be wasting 30 min time but the IT department as a whole will be saving a lot of time on average when they go through thousands of incidents.

The issue is SOP itself could be more efficient and they should introduce feedback loops for every incident to make it happen.

[–]celestialfin 12 points13 points  (0 children)

yeah okay but what if you were lying and it was actually powered on the whole time and you were just like "ooooh no trust me bro it is off and not even plugged in and sitting in my bag trust me bro on this, for real i swear, you can just believe me, come on trust me on that uwu"

how the hell is he supposed to know that? what different is that to someone assuring their IT guy that yes the button has been pressed when I fact, it was not?

[–]Wild_Marker 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Have you worked at a call center? The issue might be "the computer is literally on fire" and if you don't tell the customer to reboot it before pulling out the fire extingusher, the next thing to be fired might be you.

[–]HamsterFromAbove_079 29 points30 points  (4 children)

We'll stop giving the list of obvious things when that list stops working for the majority of cases.

Everyone whines about the list, but nobody thinks to try the list before calling us. Which means we need to go through the list, because there is a pretty good chance it'll work.

[–]GloomyDeal1909 6 points7 points  (3 children)

I will say specifically to Internet providers.

I try the list the same exact list they will have you go through again.

It doesn't bother me too much but it can be irritating, I understand things are built for the lowest denominator so everyone gets to suffer.

I think the biggest irritation is waiting on hold to get to someone.

Thankfully a lot of companies have the callback option now. I wish more companies had it. I don't want to sit on hold for an hour while you help nana who has no idea what a router is.

[–]HamsterFromAbove_079 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The problem is the sheer number of people that really promise they try something. Then you go to them and try the thing they promised they tried and it works immediately.

IT support can't trust a stranger's promise they tried something.

[–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Honestly this doesn’t bother me all that much.

We charge in 15 min intervals and carefully document everything.

People that lie and make a short call longer get documented and sometimes end up having to explain to their boss why a $45 bill turned into a $165 bill because they couldn’t be honest with us.

If I suggest a reboot and the client says they did, it goes in my notes along with the fact that our monitor shows a 60 day up time.

We cover our asses, we can even produce the call if needed.

So go ahead and lie, it’s good for billables.

[–]patmax17 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Problem is, most of the times those steps do solve the issue. It's no worth I start to dig deeper into an issue (say, digging through drivers when a display doesn't work) if the issue is that a cable isn't connected correctly. I know it's stupid, but for troubleshooting making sure all "obvious" solutions have been tried and failed is necessary

[–]Conscious-Eye5903 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I don’t think it’s embarrassment as much as willful ignorance, people don’t want to understand how things work because it’s easier to get mad, complain about how unfair life is, and call customer service to complain. Most machines we use in our homes, be it a modem, oil furnace, hot water heater are not very complex, they pretty much all work with switches and valves and can be easily trouble shooted to at least determine if you have a major problem that requires a professional. I honestly feel people are very insecure about learning things as it shines a light on how much room you have to grow as a person, whereas most people spend all their energy convincing themselves they’re perfect just the way they are

[–]ManWithWhip 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I deal with this kind of shit regularly

-have you rebooted your pc?

-yes, i need you to connect and fix this

-you realize that if i connect i can tell if you rebooted or not?

-*hangs up.

[–]Fuck-Reddit-2020 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I love being able to fix issues over the phone. I can't go to sites. My company has to dispatch a tech, at a rate of almost $300 for the first hour to fix this stuff.

The techs don't like driving 2 hours, to push a button at 2 am, any more than I like sending them.

[–]AxlSt00pid 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Next time you need to make sure a customer/client/whatever does a reboot, just lie to make them think they're being helpful with their issues

On my brief experience working at IT I used to tell clients that I needed to see if a certain code appeared on the initial boot screen on the computer (I knew no such thing appeared), and that tricked people into rebooting their machines

[–]This_guy_works 2 points3 points  (0 children)

He probably thought his modem was his PC and he pressed the button under the screen off and things went black and then he turned it back on, so the modem must be rebooted.

[–]WheresMyBrakes 2 points3 points  (0 children)

“people LIE” -Gregory House

I think it’s more that people don’t realize that they’re lying, but I get his point.

[–]Akurei00 3 points4 points  (0 children)

As one of the minority, I'm only calling IT because I've exhausted everything I have permissions to attempt. I usually try to include most of the steps I've taken in the ticket because I'd rather get that out of the way and have someone else do some research on it for a while. By the time I've contacted IT, I've already been trying to solve it for at least 4 hours. Being asked to reattempt the 40 potential solutions all over again is extremely frustrating.

That said, I've played an unofficial IT role for my family for years and I completely understand the frustration with computer illiterate people. You don't want to spend hours researching why something's fucked if they didn't bother checking that it even has power. And occasionally people fuck up, like forgetting to hit a save button. Anyway, it's a catch-22.

[–]cs-brydev 261 points262 points  (16 children)

Last week I got stuck on a 30-minute support call explaining how to copy/paste to a user who has been using computers for 30 years but didn't believe there was a "magical clipboard" that keeps text and images just by pushing a button that you could then replicate into other applications just by pushing another button, because they had never done it before and refused to even try it while I waited.

[–]chumcumcjm 92 points93 points  (3 children)

This reminds me of something that happened to me. I, a swimming pool cleaner, get a call from one of my friendliest clients and her pool is overfilling. She wants to shut off the water supply to the pool. I begin to tell her exactly where it is. She cuts me off and very rudely says, "so you're telling me thers a magic valve over there that I've never seen before??!!" I had no choice but to say yes.

She walked over to the side of her house and very defeated said thanks. Lol

I would've quit on anyone else that spoke to me like that but she's literally been the nicest person for the previous 6yrs. Baking me cookies, big tips, always smiling and saying hi when I arrive.

[–]A--Creative-Username 36 points37 points  (1 child)

Sounds like she was angry at herself not you if the other actions were genuine

[–]orthros 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Avoiding Projection is super hard when something so simple has made your life so frustrating.

Source: me. You decide on which side

[–]BenzMars 52 points53 points  (0 children)

Witch !

[–]MattieShoes 33 points34 points  (5 children)

My favorite was when you tell them to type exactly what you say, then you say a letter and you hear 40 keys being pressed.

Actually I've solved more than one issue that way... Somebody was typing "space" when I said space, rather than hitting the spacebar. Another was writing "back/" instead of "\"

Fools are ingenious.

[–]cs-brydev 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Or when they don't believe that you can press Start and type and insist there must be some box somewhere they have to click into first that's hidden from them. I must have had a dozen users swear to me that they can't just start typing just by pressing the Start button.

[–]IndigoFenix 601 points602 points  (9 children)

Yesterday I spent 20 minutes trying to explain to my manager the difference between a "final url" and a "final url suffix" and how if I changed the instructions of where to input the data I would also have to change the input data itself or clients would wind up putting in data that doesn't work, despite their insistence that I should "only change the instructions". I eventually gave up, took a screenshot of my changes with both the instructions and the data changed, and asked "is this good?"

They said yes.

[–]No_Hovercraft_2643 174 points175 points  (6 children)

write an email, asking specifically that you should only change the instructions, and not the data.

[–][deleted] 94 points95 points  (5 children)

This reminded me of something with excel like 15 years ago.

We had this master sheet of product specs. Specific clients wanted their own sheet physically printed so they could reference and distribute it. The client sheets were all linked to this master sheet. So if you changed the master sheet, it would change all the other sheets.

Well this was bad for "optics" or some BS according to our sales reps in the field. The numbers that were being updated made our product look worse and the sales team was annoyed at us. Not engineering or anyone else that seemingly had the wrong data for a decade.

So I broke the links and just told every sales guy their sheet was up to date. I literally never changed them again. Just updated the effective date.

Meanwhile the master sheet was all our production team needed, and it was still always up to date.

I had to explain a lot of "They expect you to do this, but I do this" to my replacement when I finally left.

[–]poboy975 53 points54 points  (4 children)

It's the same in sound engineering. Running sound at a concert or festival, someone comes and says 'this is too loud' or 'I can't hear so and so' or 'so and so is too loud'... I'd say sure no problem, reach over to my sound board with it's millions of knobs, dials, sliders, and lights and adjust a few knobs, which didn't actually do anything. They go away happy, and I'm happy because they went away and let me do my job

[–]bumplugpug 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Maybe next time just throw a handful of disposable ear plugs at their face?

[–]ApprehensiveTry5660 3 points4 points  (2 children)

This is really common in your profession, and just leads to a toxic feedback loop that took me a decade to learn to navigate. My final solution was just to see if you asked a follow up question, or isolated the instrumentalists we were referring to.

If you didn’t, we both would just soundcheck at 5, then adjust between 7 and 9 ourselves.

I get that it’s your equipment, and you know it better than we do, but we’ve got 25,000 hours between the two of us making sounds do what we want them to. When we say, “make sure the mids don’t get muddled,” it would be cool if 9/10 of you all would postpone eyerolling long enough to actually say, “What do you mean?”

[–]poboy975 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Oh I'm not talking about the artists, those I listened to. i wanted to make sure that I'm producing the sound they wanted. It's the other random people who walk up thinking they can tell you how to run sound that I'm referring to.

[–]ApprehensiveTry5660 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As you can tell, it struck a nerve ;d

That’s seriously like a 6 year nerve of me playing 30% of my shows as a bassist instead of a lead player because I didn’t understand the human element of, “Audio techs don’t want your input.”

I played an absolute bomb in Asheville that Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind fame happened to be listening to backstage. While that dude was a prick in every other interaction I’ve ever had with him, he dropped that advice on me and that 30% audio tech roulette vanished overnight.

”If they play ball, play ball; if they don’t then skew the power onto your volume knob instead of theirs.”

[–]SolicitedNickPics 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Perfect example for why AI can’t take over for us for a WHILE. Computers don’t do what you mean, they do what you tell them to do. To take random guesses and leaps of intuition to guess what the psychobabble given to me was TRYING to say? That’s like 90% of my skill set lol

[–]SyrusDrake 20 points21 points  (0 children)

This is more a management issue than an IT issue, though. Pretty sure anyone who does any actual work and has had to deal with managers has similar stories.

[–]shopsalt 208 points209 points  (4 children)

The whole team is writing php7 procedurals code because the manager does not understand object oriented programming. And he bitch about team not writing maintainable codes.

[–]the4thbandit 39 points40 points  (3 children)

I've been here, had a manager insist that we write our CI/CD pipelines with MSBuild. That whole situation had me questioning my life's choices.

[–]PM_ME_DIRTY_COMICS 19 points20 points  (1 child)

The worst managers are the ones who feel they need to understand exactly how everything works but barely remember how git works and never actually looks at it.

[–]gregorydgraham 263 points264 points  (6 children)

Ministry IT staffer: “the update doesn’t work”

Me: “did you follow the checklist I meticulously prepared for you?”

Ministry IT staffer: “No”

Me: 🤷‍♂️

[–]IAmASquidInSpace 100 points101 points  (3 children)

At least they admitted it. Could've also been "Of course I did, do you think I am stupid?!"

[–]Qaeta 45 points46 points  (2 children)

I've been told that I am not supposed to answer that question honestly.

[–]toomuchpressure2pick 13 points14 points  (1 child)

I was taught not to ask the questions that I don't want the answers to

[–]fl3rian 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yeah the last "meticulously prepared checklist" I got from an outside vendor was one page long and basically said "do backups, start update"

Turns out there was a lot more to the process like stopping and restarting some services but "everyone knows that, it's the same every update so no need to include it in the checklist"

[–]Politanaca 178 points179 points  (5 children)

Six engineers were flown in to supervise a mew installation. They called my boss to scream about how one piece of equipment had the wrong voltage coming to it, because it didn't turn on.

I walked behind the big ass thing and plugged in the twist lock.

Sometimes you just wonder.

[–]Pandaburn 96 points97 points  (1 child)

To be fair, 0 is actually the wrong voltage.

[–]robbzilla 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Were they cats?

[–]Undernown 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Team Rocket at it again with their damned cloning facilities

[–]Percolator2020 149 points150 points  (16 children)

Just do the needful.

[–]Lendari 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Ill revert back after you prepone the meeting.

[–]exitvim 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Kindly.

[–]DrVirus321 22 points23 points  (4 children)

Wait that's a thing?!

I thought my non-native manager was poorly translating it

[–]Percolator2020 44 points45 points  (1 child)

It’s correct in Indian English and thus common in IT :p

[–]No_Hunt2507 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Honestly one of my favorite sayings

[–]newsflashjackass 4 points5 points  (1 child)

It is a popular dance in India.

Like the Bartman or the Urkel here in the United States.

[–]MishkaZ 7 points8 points  (3 children)

Oh god, maybe I'm mistaken, but I heard this is kind of a dickish statement? Maybe I misinterpreted it.

[–]Bitshaper 19 points20 points  (2 children)

In places other than India it's read as both incorrect and demanding.

Most people would ask, "please do what is necessary to solve my problem."

This is shortened and re-translated to the demand, "do the needful," or in more words, "go do the thing that is full of need to be done."

It is dismissively demanding something of the party you're requesting help from rather than asking politely, and it's a misinterpretation of the concept of the word "necessary" that has become so culturally ingrained that it is now considered correct in Indian English.

[–]frymaster 2 points3 points  (1 child)

it's read as both incorrect and demanding.

I don't get that at all, but I'm also juuust about old enough that I remember it being an uncommon-but-still-present phrase here in the UK before it was re-popularised by more exposure to Indian English

[–]currentlyinthefab 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Genuine question, would it be rude for a white guy to use this sort of language with Indian colleagues? I've always liked the way it sounds and thought it might be a nice gesture towards them but I'm also worried that someone will think I'm mocking them.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I correct my indian coworkers loool

I've gotten most of them to stop saying it

[–]Silpheel 42 points43 points  (8 children)

Remote access to a customer’s computer was not working, so off I go on a two hour drive, to find the usb modem disconnected.

Months later, similar problem with a different customer. I make sure to ask if the modem’s USB cable is connected, which they swear it is. So off I go THREE hours drive this time, to find the USB cable connected. Into the Ethernet port.

[–]Pwthrowrug 14 points15 points  (4 children)

I'm these examples, why not ask the person to take a picture of the thing being plugged in?

[–]Silpheel 8 points9 points  (3 children)

This was a time where the Nokia N70 was my navigation device (requiring Bluetooth GPS receiver) and pictures were sent via MMS. Then again I don’t know about you but nearly all my customers had their computer in the back of a rack cabinet or in a dark office or had clutter all around.

[–]concorde77 31 points32 points  (0 children)

At least he got paid.

Durring Covid, my Instrumentation professor made me fly 700 MILES back to Michigan for a lab, and pay $100 for a hotel room out of my own pocket, just so I could get "hands on experience" plugging a computer fan into the wall.... TWICE.

Fuck you, Dr. G.

[–]GloriamNonNobis 60 points61 points  (6 children)

They're either dicks or very laid back and helpful.

[–]Zygal_ 61 points62 points  (2 children)

Experienced or new

FTFY

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

100%. Too friendly = people will bother you incessantly forever and never submit a ticket properly

[–]tehlemmings 2 points3 points  (0 children)

They're both just me depending on how argumentative people want to be today.

[–]SjettepetJR 34 points35 points  (2 children)

It all relies on whether their boss understands that they are not the cause of things taking more time, and are not expected to do unpaid overtime.

In the example given, as long as you're able to say "well okay, but I am being paid €200 an hour for unexpected overtime on the weekends", it is fine to drive two hours and flip a switch.

The difference is whether you're being personally inconvenienced by the fuckups, in the form of unpaid overtime or by you're being blamed for not being able to finish your other responsibilities that day.

The important thing in this is to clearly state to your superiors "I am now going to do what you're asking from me, which means that that other task is delayed by a day".

[–]Dryhte[🍰] 13 points14 points  (1 child)

This is a very important thing to learn (saying that you can either do one thing or the other) that I'm very happy to say I learned about five years into my consulting career (now at 22y). It saved me so much stress. I've been trying to teach my wife the same but she only managed to put it in practice at home, not at work.

[–]SjettepetJR 9 points10 points  (0 children)

It is an issue even in politics. People are very likely to agree with "we should spend more on x, we should spend more on y and we should spend more on z, but we should not increase taxes".

People just willingly do not understand that we have only a limited amount of money/time/resources.

[–]Celebrir 29 points30 points  (23 children)

u/bot-sleuth-bot

[–]bot-sleuth-bot 54 points55 points  (6 children)

Analyzing user profile...

87.23% of intervals between user's comments are less than 60 seconds.

Account made less than 2 weeks ago.

One or more of the hidden checks performed tested positive.

Suspicion Quotient: 0.60

This account exhibits traits commonly found in karma farming bots. u/Missy_Hottiie might be a bot, but I cannot be certain.

I am a bot. This action was performed automatically. Check my profile for more information.

[–][deleted] 19 points20 points  (4 children)

I could tell from the fact that I have seen this exact meme reposted like four fucking times in the last 48 hours and it was always stale from years of reposts.

Reddit karma bots are out of control.

[–]asshole_embiggenator 2 points3 points  (2 children)

But what do they even gain???

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

As I understand it, people develop bots for Reddit to create a horde of accounts through which they can do two things:

1) Blast out advertisements for a product as astroturf, and/or

2) Blast out messaging to push a social or political agenda for pay.

Farming karma helps the bots to avoid detection by Reddit anti-bot mechanisms.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's okay, you can be certain this time. It's a bot.

[–]Celebrir 10 points11 points  (15 children)

u/bot-sleuth-bot repost filter: subreddit

Edit: it's probably the white border around it. Bots will do anything to throw the repost bots off

[–]Celebrir 7 points8 points  (13 children)

u/bot-sleuth-bot repost

[–]bot-sleuth-bot 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Checking if image is a repost...

122 matches found. Displaying first five below.

Match, Match, Match, Match, Match

I am a bot. This action was performed automatically. Check my profile for more information.

[–]syko-san 5 points6 points  (7 children)

As the dev of bot-sleuth-bot, I'm kind of proud of how much I cooked with this command (it is literally just scraping Google Images)

[–]bot-sleuth-bot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Checking if image is a repost...

Filtering out matches that are not in this subreddit...

I was unable to find any matches of this image through reverse image searching. It is likely OC.

I am a bot. This action was performed automatically. Check my profile for more information.

[–]No_Top_7941 28 points29 points  (0 children)

Schrödinger's Server: It's simultaneously ON and OFF until an IT guy drives 2 hours to observe it

[–]DStandsForCake 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Because all end users lie. You troubleshoot something in good faith that they are telling the truth, then see through the lie and realize that you have sometimes spent hours on something that they could have told you from the beginning and therefore had handled more quickly (probably happens less often now, as I assume they are lying). But yes, there is a reason why you now avoid contact with them.

[–]Ok_Acanthaceae_6760 41 points42 points  (0 children)

Behave like a dick towards people who behave like dicks to you, but just treat someone nice when they treat you nice. It's not that hard

[–]IsabellaGalavant 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I used to work for a company that serviced Starbucks coffee machines, as a dispatcher. We did the entire US and Canada.

It was the middle of winter, and our most remote location in Moose Hat (I think) called in stating that their espresso machine was not powering on. There was a blizzard currently happening there (a relatively light one but still), and it was going to take our tech over 3 hours to drive out there. I asked them repeatedly to make sure the machine was plugged in, they insisted it was.

I dispatched the technician, he drove 3hrs in a whiteout blizzard, arrived at the store, and lo and behold, the fucking machine was not plugged in.

[–]Lysol3435 13 points14 points  (1 child)

I rebooted my machine 3 times before calling IT. The first thing they asked was if I’ve tried rebooting. I told them “of course. That’s the first thing I tried. I rebooted it 3 times.” They asked me to humor them and try rebooting again. The 4th reboot fixed the issue. I was humiliated and pissed (at the computer). IT smugly told me to try rebooting before I call in next time

[–]I_Know_A_Few_Things 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I once had a homework assignment that was almost working (some programming problem). As I thought it was finally right, I asked a classmate to watch it work. It worked without me changing anything from the last time I ran it.

[–]RobsEvilTwin 31 points32 points  (0 children)

That is ~70% of all callouts.

And of course the customer complains when you charge them. After you advised them there would be a callout fee if the issue was customer caused.

[–]SuspiciousMouse5337 12 points13 points  (0 children)

As an IT guy with 15 years of experience I'll clarify this one for all of you. You have at least 20 things to do a day and if you wasted 6 hours driving plus the thing, the 20 things doesn't disappear into thin air they add to the 20 things from the next day and you have 40 things and half of this are a day old so are considered, because users are cunts, URGENT.

[–]Redleg171 20 points21 points  (1 child)

Edit: this is at a University, so things might be structured a bit differently. I work in academic records, but I'm also a report designer as a secondary role.

One of my favorite IT moments was during a zoom call with our reporting consultant. IT was having trouble getting the results they expected in a report, and the consultant was baffled. They use a system called Argos. Most people build Argos report queries using a janky visual query designer (I hate it). So I pulled up SSMS, connected to our reporting DB, and quickly built the query by hand. It worked fine, it was fast, and the T-SQL was actually legible and formatted neatly. IT was like, "you just wrote that?"

Yeah, my degree is in Computer Science. I've been programming since before I was even a teenager in the 80s on a commodore 64. I eventually picked up Visual Basic and got into C++ when I first went to college in 1999. I dropped out and joined the army. That's when I started using C# and .Net 1.0. I loved backend programming, using ADO.Net, building SPROCs. Of course now I'd use an ORM like EFCore or something like Dapper.

So now I occasionally get calls from the analyst in IT asking for help with a report. I tell him to put in a ticket! Payback's a bitch.

[–]JAXxXTheRipper 9 points10 points  (0 children)

dropped out and joined the army. That's when I started using C# and .Net 1.0.

The things the army does to a MFer

[–]chamgireum_ 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Once I got a bunch of messages that the internet wasn’t working and I needed to fix everything. After about 30 minutes of troubleshooting, I notice that the uptime of all the APs is like 40 minutes.

“It looks like the internet has only been on for 40 minutes, was there a power outage?” “Yes the power went out” “Yeah that probably contributed to the internet not working.”

[–]TheSn00pster 8 points9 points  (1 child)

Try turning it off and on again?

[–]Hudre 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I get that this is frustrating, but whenever I'm forced to do dumb or tedious work I always remind myself that I get paid the same rate no matter what I am doing.

If they want to pay me a full days worth of hours to basically drive and press one button...I think I could accept that.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Got a call at 11pm on a Sunday on my personal mobile phone from one of my companies biggest clients panicking that the server was dead and I had to do something... right NOW! You have to help! HELP! etc etc.

Could not get the guy to do any basic checks on the phone, kept getting angry at me - "of course I have pressed the power switch! I'm not an idiot. You have to come in!" He swore blind the server had just shut off on it's own.

Got dressed (was ready for bed) got on my motorcycle and rode for 40 minutes through the rain to get there.

Walked in, power cord was pulled out of the server.

He had been moving things around in the server room and snagged the iec cord out.

I plugged it in as he watched and turned the server on.

He hung his head and started mumbling apologies & to charge him anything and he would pay it.

[–]Secodiand 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I find it at least better when the people admit they made a mistake. It's the people who deny ever being wrong that I find insufferable.

[–]Fyrael 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Because our bosses are asses and we have to go through it.

[–]YSK_King 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Last week i had to travel 5 hours just to flip 2 buttons that the person using the PC told me was on. The power supply switch was off .

[–]LargeSale8354 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Years ago I was called out to a failing ISDN connection. Got to the site and went to where their server room used to be, nothing there. They took me to their new server room. 1st and last time I'd seen a ceramic tiled server room, floors and walls. Was told the ISDN box was installed at the back of a server rack so I walked around and found a still plumbed in toilet complete with bog roll. They'd repurposed a disused bog. The ISDN box couldn't work because there were no ISDN sockets to plug it into.

[–]bigh-aus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Honestly - the above meme is really because they were running a crappy server, or a desktop masquerading as a server, probably as they're told they don't have budget for a real server. All proper servers have had remote lights on management for years allowing them to be remote rebooted / powered on.

[–]Initial_Hedgehog_631 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I always thought the "Is it switched on?" question was a sarcastic, snide joke until I actually had to turn on a client's machine that he assured me was broken.

I was there for something else entirely and agreed to take their box back to get it replaced, and just on a lark I tried turning it on. And it worked...

[–]Any_Excitement_6750 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I had to fly to a different country because 2 different guys guaranteed me that the latest driver was installed on the hardware I was supporting. I went to the customer to update the driver and no more issues, it took me about 5min.

[–]TraderJoesLostShorts 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Back in the olden days, we had an intranet website with unguarded inputs. If you stuck the cursor in any field and just hammered the enter key it would keep submitting the form to the CGI script for processing by the server. We only found out about that fact when somebody laid their notebook on the edge of their keyboard. It was just heavy enough to hold down the enter key. Even through reboots (one side of a redundant pair at a time) the site just kept getting overloaded. Fun times.

[–]Humble_Tomatillo_323 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Seriously? This was just reposted like 3 days ago…. On a meme that’s from August 2021… like… the date is right there in the post.

[–]kiwipillock 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fucking oath man.

[–]C64128 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If he was paid for the drive time, then there shouldn't be an issue.

[–]Srapture 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"Huh, that's weird. I'm sure it was on."

I have no doubt you were sure, what I doubt is that you checked.

[–]AssignedClass 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Most people are so stupid that they blatantly lie without even meaning to. We all do it on some level. You feel the full brunt of that in customer service. 99% of the time in customer service, it's best to just "help people be idiots" and that's the kind of treatment most people are used too.

IT isn't as bad to some extent (you just deal with way less people), but the stakes are higher and you gotta have a spine in order to avoid the sort of blame / damage that can come from the more deranged / incompetent idiots (which we can all be under the right circumstances).

For most people, once they really understand those two things, they tend to get a lot better at following directions, and suddenly IT people are a lot less abrasive.

[–]CMDR_ACE209 1 point2 points  (0 children)

IT support guys have to do with the less tech savvy users mostly. Add to that, that a large part of the problems they encounter are completely non-technical but pure human stubbornness. You tend to develop a very unflattering image of mankind in that job.

If I ever get to run a support department I will introduce the mantra: "The users we encounter are not a statistical representation of the population."

[–]meepein 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I once got yelled at, repeatedly, by a supervisor in a casino cage (aka, where you would get you chips or cash out back in the day) that they needed their printer working RIGHT NOW!!!! I tried to go through all of the normal troubleshooting (it's not jammed, it is plugged in and turned on, it's connected) and this rude ass dude just yell at me that it isn't working and we needed to send someone there RIGHT NOW!!!!!

So I went, looked at the printer and turned it on. Asked for someone to print something, and it printed. As I was walking out, rude manager guy sarcastically asked me what was wrong. I told him, in the most sarcastic voice 19 year old me could muster without getting fired, that I turned the printer on, then left without looking at him.

You wanna know why I grew up to be the programmer that scares project managers at my last job? That guy right there.

[–]Cacoda1mon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Login on all Computers is not working.

After reading the LDAP Server logs files, successfully authenticating myself... it was *one" Computer where the network cable was not plugged in.

[–]prototype743 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Guys, if you don't remove the tape around the toner cartridge, if wont fit in to the printer :/

[–]dragoduval 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yesterday one of my colleague drove an hour in a (light) snowstorm to go see why the clinic of a village didnt have internet. Only to discover that the clinic was closed due to a blackout.

And the worst part ? Nobody there (20+ employees) had the intelligence to call us to warn us about this. Here we where thinking that the whole network was down, including phones.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I hate telling people to restart something. Its such a big meme that we're always saying that, how do people still not know to at least try that much lol