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Techie reported to management for failing to fix a stapler:
On Call The seasons turn, the tides ebb and flow. Just as regularly, each Friday The Register delvers another instalment of On-Call, our reader-contributed tale of another sad constant: IT people being asked to do amazingly dumb things.
This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Phil" who shared a short and sweet tale of his time as a senior systems engineer.
That grand title reflects the skills and qualifications required to tend a sizable fleet of virtualized servers and their respective operating systems.
Which made the support call we recount today all the stranger – because it came from an executive assistant who needed help to fix an electric stapler.
[...] This machine was not even located in the facility wherein Phil toiled. Instead, the call came from another office several states away.
Phil nonetheless tried to help, starting with the – pardon the pun – staple tactics of asking the user if the device was plugged in and then requesting it be turned off and on again.
When that proved ineffective, Phil asked the executive assistant what he felt an IT person hundreds of miles away could do to repair the stapler.
"It plugs into the wall, isn't that what IT fixes?" was the non sequitur reply. Phil's response was to suggest the user contact their facilities department and order a new stapler.
For offering that sensible advice, Phil became the subject of a complaint to corporate that labelled the IT team "unresponsive."
What amusing things have you been asked to do which were nothing to do with your job? For those of you who have worked on help desks, what are your most amusing recollections of problems you have been faced with?
(Score: 4, Funny) by vux984 on Saturday October 15 2022, @11:39PM (4 children)
Back in the 90s...
Branch manager logs a ticket, "Internet is down", at a branch office, 2 cities away (about 90 minute drive from head office). I was unable to remotely determine the cause over the phone with said branch manager (he was unhelpful, useless, and insisted on eating his lunch in my ear while talking to me - but unfortunately he was also the only one there for the day) so I decided to just head out to see what it was.
Get onsite, and it was obvious. Even though we'd gone through checking all the equipment, checking all the lights were on, rebooting everything over the phone, confirming the the connections. It was pretty bloody obvious that the ADSL modem was powered off... the lights were off the and power cord was dangling off it unplugged.
Prior to the internet going down, the branch manager had gone into the back room where the IT equipment was all mounted, and unplugged it to plug in his cell phone charger.... which was still sitting there, just off to the side, charging his Motorola StarTAC.
(Score: 5, Funny) by inertnet on Sunday October 16 2022, @12:31AM
Similar thing happened to me, only it was the cleaning lady who unplugged our power adapter to plug in her vacuum cleaner 3 nights in a row. According to the person on the phone the next morning, everything was plugged in and powered up. Turned out that they didn't even bother to check and just told us to come and "fix things". The third time I insisted to check the power adapter before driving all the way there again. Sure enough it was unplugged again, but they were so unhappy with our service that they quit and went to the competition. Good riddance, I hope that cleaning lady is still working there after all these years.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Sunday October 16 2022, @07:37AM (2 children)
No problem, write an onsite service report, cause of incident "someone thought it's a good idea to unplug the ADSL modem to plug in his phone charger, phone's inventory number is #####", bill it and hope his successor is smarter.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Sunday October 16 2022, @05:17PM (1 child)
Sounds good on paper, but sometimes you work for a tech company where the customer has a support contract so they can call any fucking time for any stupid shit (been there, dealt with it)!
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0x663EB663D1E7F223
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Sunday October 16 2022, @07:47PM
Then drive there and run up a bill, and if someone complains, tell them to tell marketing to stop handing out crappy contracts like that.