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If it's Friday it must be time for me to file On-Call and then start drinking so you can start the last day of the week with one of our always-amusing tales of nasty jobs done at nasty times.
This week, reader "Kevin" shared a story from his time working a hell desk late shift.
With just a few minutes to go before quitting time, Kevin took a call from user complaining her computer "was stuck". Kevin couldn't remote in, so asked her to turn it off and turn it on again.
The user claimed to have done so, but also reported the machine was still stuck on the same screen.
Kevin felt the user had probably flicked the wrong switch, so asked if there was a PC-shaped box under her monitor.
"Yes, there's a grey one," was the response.
"Can you hold down the power button for about 10 seconds until all the lights go out", Kevin asked.
At which point the user asked where to find the power button
Kevin explained it would be at the front of the PC, have a power symbol and should respond to a quick prod of an index finger.
"I can't find it," said the user.
Kevin asked what lettering, if any, was on the machine, in an effort to figure out the maker and model. As luck would have it, the Compaq model on the user's desk was the same one on Kevin's. So he spent the next 15 minutes describing its case, the grey bezel on the front, and using baby steps to direct her to the power button.
To which the user said the following:
"Oh you mean the button I use to switch it off with?"
Please, share your hell desk stories. We all need a good laugh.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @12:15AM
... but it does concern a DVD drive.
I had a user about 10 years ago who needed some help with her personal laptop. Now, it was my usual policy to tell users "Take it to your local computer shop" when they came to me with their personal computer issues. However, this user was the receptionist for my area and nobody had DIDs so keeping myself in good graces with the receptionist was key to me continuing to receive my phone calls and messages. For some context, I was only onsite at this office one day a week so missed calls or messages not reaching me was a sensitive issue.
So, the user brings me her laptop and says, "Something is wrong with it and I am going to replace it. Can you back it up onto DVD for me? My son has a lot of important school work on there so we need make sure he does not lose it."
"Sure, no problem", I reply while heaving a mental sigh of relief that she does not need anything more invasive or time-consuming. I burned a copy of all her files in her My Documents, Pictures, Videos, etc...I gave her the DVD and sent her on her way. Life is good.
Not so fast
The next week, she comes to me and says, "Hey I tried the DVD but it didn't work."
"Oh that's a bit strange, I checked it before I gave it to you. Let me check it again."
"I didn't bring it with me"
"Ok, well next week bring it in and I will check it."
"Ok great", she replied. Did I mention she was not the sharpest knife in the drawer?
In any case, we are now onto week 3. She brought in the DVD the following week, I checked it, everything was there and I returned it to her with my assurances that it was, in fact, working exactly as it should and a second copy of the disc as well. She was a bit stressed as her son "needed some important files from there" but she seemed to feel a bit better after I assured her that I had verified the disc again.
The following week I come in to a voicemail from her, "Please see me." Oh, for chrissake. I give it to mid-morning and wander over. "The DVD isn't working!", she said crossly. I think for a second and go into troubleshooting mode.
"Ok can you describe to me exactly what you are doing? Sometimes the way you do things matters."
"I push eject and then put the DVD in the player"
At that moment, it connected in my brain. To this day, I can only remember a single thought passing through my brain: "No way. There is just no way!." I then ask the fateful question, "Where is your DVD player?"
"Under my TV of course", she replied confidently.
"You did not buy a replacement computer yet?"
"No."
This woman had taken up about two hours of my time over the course of several weeks because she was putting the DVD backup of her computer into her DVD Player connected to the TV . Her son typed his documents on the laptop, she bookmarked websites, she had email saved... I know this because I saw it when I backed it up. Clearly, she and her son understood how to do these things. To this day, I have no idea what she expected to happen when she put the disc in the DVD player. So, I gave her the only polite response I could muster: "Oh wow. Well, Ok. I think you are going to need to get a new laptop first. Yeah, I would say try that first and then put the disc in the new laptop."
"Oh... well thanks anyway."
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday November 20 2016, @06:54PM
Total head shaker, AC. First of all where I am receptionists are hired based on looks so she was probably a single young cutie, and you being here you're probably a guy so was her age back in the old days, and she was trying to get you to go back to her house and check the wiring on the DVD player while she slips into something "more comfortable" like perhaps nothing and then maybe cooks you a nice romantic dinner to make up for all the trouble she caused, and instead you're lecturing her on the differences between ISO9660 variants. You probably didn't even notice she had a hand rubbing your shoulder and she's licking or biting her lips the entire time. If AC had played one of those DVDs she brought in, god only knows what homemade pr0n she was trying to expose him to, AC even mentioned she had videos backed up...
Don't feel so bad AC. Like decades ago I remember this one girl asking me dozens of questions about prom, what style of tux am I wearing, would she look good in blue, what style dress do I think she should wear, what romantic songs do I hope they play at prom, what flowers would match her eyes, this type of interrogation went on every day for weeks to the point of being annoying, and I was easily as dense as plutonium way back then, so it took me until weeks after prom to realize she was trying to ask me out in her own hyper awkward way.
I've found thru the decades of being tangentially around user support, although thank the gods never on the front lines, there's always an ulterior motive in the craziest tickets. Like some poor bastard needs $$$ to live and boss is all into number driven metrics piecework monitoring every little keyclick but he's not a total asshole (only 99%) so if you open a trouble ticket its taken out of the metric calculations so you get fake tickets opened while poor bastard in the background is not really responding appropriately to you as they try to get their widgets/hour metric high enough to avoid firing. Or they just set the chemical plant on fire because they're idiots and are hoping that opening a ticket because their mouse is unusually wiggly will be the documentation they need to get them out of trouble.
Another good one is industrial SCADA control and monitoring ish areas where you got desktops in a 24x7 area and they've never been shut off only rebooted at shift changes for the last five years and no one working there is quite sure where the possibly very long monitor cable (or even worse, enterprise KVM) leads. Its not technically lost like the proverbial server plastered into a wall, but its damn close if you're in a 10 acre factory and all you really know for sure is the PC hardware is installed somewhere nearby a 300 foot long printing press. So you got ten people in the chemical plant control area thats been continuous staffed plus or minus fire and evac drills for 25 years and all you know for sure is the wiring is tangled and 20 monitors on top of the desk somehow connect to 10 PCs randomly piled underneath the desk but short of tracing the wires for two hours you may as well power cycle every PC because statistically you're going hit about 5 before you hit the one you want. Hit the power switch, I don't even know where the computer is, much less the switch.