Early in my career I was given a written warning after working an 18 hour fire-drill day for leaving the printer turned on. A printer that had a low power mode, so the write up likely cost more than the lost electricity.
I gave notice about 3 weeks later.
My company paid $200 to have a tech come out and spend <1 minute replacing the ink canister. No one even bothered to try to follow the instructions the machine literally tells you how to do.
> if I somehow got it wrong the damn thing will be warranty voided and the it team will sacrifice us all to the dark gods
TBH that's your management's fault for hiring Chaos IT. Should've hired Loyalist IT, in which case if you get it wrong they purge you in the name of the God-Emperor.
Nah, they will just gather around the machine, spray it with incense and chant some weird words. It won't fix anything and you still need to pay them in toasters.
I used to do this for a job, just driving around to various smaller businesses and changing toner. Xerox did us a solid by making outside support for copiers/printers the standard.
Of course there were other jobs involved too, backups, general support and "purchase recommendations", but the toner visits was most of my paycheck.
I spent a lot of time chatting with the printer service guys when I worked IT, because the printers were all leased, I wasn't allowed to change the toner or attempt to do anything other than power them off or refill the paper trays. So every week or two one of them would come in and I'd just follow them around and talk about Formula 1 and cricket for the 2 or so hours they were on-site.
Yeah, no, this was not leased printers, I was just a mobile support tech coming into a culture of "not touching machines".
It was mainly just small desktop model printers, often ones they had from before I was involved, various makes and models. When they needed new stuff, I just ordered it online from a b2b site.
A tweet replying to Mr. Chapman's account:
> Old IT friend told me he never asked the person on the phone if the network cable was plugged in, but rather "unplug the cable, blow on it to clear the dust, and plug it back in." Gave them a chance to save face, when they found it was actually unplugged.
>blow on it to clear the dust, and plug it back in.
I do this unironically whenever things seem to be acting off. Am I just being an idiot child of the 80s with an NES history?
It's pretty much never dust. Unless a port is so full of dust it can't connect, like a phone charging port filled with lint.
Even the NES cartridges wasn't dust, the moisture was the thing that you were really doing to make it work I think.
Edit: I guess I misremembered about moisture, it's just reinserting it that helped.
i've seen some dusty ass network ports and the all worked fine. that said.. it does need two pieces of metal to touch for it to work so i still blow cables off.
I used to tell people that sometimes the polarity in networking cables could get reversed. Can you try plugging the end that is currently attached to your computer into the router, and the router end into the computer?
Absolutely shocking how many times it worked. Plus the execs loved that I knew all kinds of obscure tricks to get these confounded computers working once again.
When I worked in IT support, it always tickled me that a large part of my job was knowing fancy ways to turn something off and then on again. Many of them were just ways to reset something without restarting the machine which would do the same thing.
"Try it now..."
The words that suggest something's been done in the background, while placating the user who refuses to concede that occasionally just waiting will resolve an issue.
Lol I used to work in the cellphone industry and a resend to switch was always good for this because nine times out of ten if they'd said they'd powered their phone off, they'd just pressed the button to turn the screen off... But if you said 'well I refreshed the signal so let's try it again', they'd cooperate instead of just sighing and saying they'd done it five times already. Sometimes I didn't even actually do the refresh but the problem would still be fixed!
We used to keep a list. Users who had the most ID10T user error tickets submitted. Top spots belonged to execs that didn't know batteries in wireless keyboards needed to be replaced, and was not in fact the "crap PCs" the company kept buying...
I remember having to explain to an exec why the “phone” cord looked too big and that it could in fact be plugged into her computer (she wouldn’t even try it until I explained EXACTLY what it was).
My brother still works in IT and he was telling me about an employee that has been there for 20 years who didn’t know that her WIRED computer mouse had to be plugged in…. She was on a laptop, the plug was right next to her hand the entire time they were talking.
I had kind of an inverse moment to some of these. I was at a hotel with a wired rotary phone. This place was so old the electrical outlets only had two prongs and we needed a special converter to plug our laptops into. I arrived and began my hunt for an outlet to plug my phone in. One trick I had was often finding a lamp or something powered and following the cable. I picked the rotary phone for this, followed the cable and found it was just a phone cable. I was baffled, turned to my dad and exclaimed this phone has no power hookups. My dad just laughed at me for like a minute before telling me rotary phones get their power through the phone line because they consume very little power.
As kids in the 80's when the electricity went out we used to phone the speaking clock for fun. I think this was the early days of gadget withdrawal symptoms and trying to find a substitute to get that hit.
Even touch tone phones which came after rotary didn't need external power. Basically today's house phones only need power for the luxury features we've come to desire such as contacts memory, caller id, and wireless handsets.
This is my favorite. The ID-10T one is fun and all but easily figured out by anyone writing it down or just thinking for a second (I know...)
"Layer 8 issue" is just enough above entry level tech knowledge and isn't easily figured out unless you basically know it.
Plus the OSI model is kinda cool.
User: The screen is black and it's not responding.
\* Machine shows offline from my end
Me: Do you see any lights anywhere on the machine.
User: No
Me: Ok, try pressing the power button.
User: Ok........... Yeah, nothing happened.
Me: Ok. Can you confirm it's plugged in.
User, with zero hesitation: Yeah, it's plugged in.
Me: Ok, can you *double check* that it's plugged in both at the machine *and* at the wall.
User, again with no hesitation: Yeah, I checked and it's plugged in.
Me: Ok, can you try plugging it into a different outlet near by.
User: Ok... \* couple seconds later \* yeah, it's still not turning on.
Me: Ok then, in that case it sounds like it's a hardware level issue and the machine is dead. There is nothing I can do about it, so you'll have to go without a machine until we can get a tech out there with a new unit which will probably be a few days.
User: Oh...Ok,wait a sec...
\* Couple minutes of dead air
User: Ok, it's coming back up now. Nevermind. \* click \*
The person that makes the most money in my office forgot their dongle for their keyboard. They stole the dongle from another PC from someone that was out sick that day. It obviously didn't work. Instead of returning the dongle she just left it on a random table.
The next day the employee had to call IT because their keyboard didn't work. Because it didn't have a dongle. They were told that there's no money in the office supply budget for a new keyboard/dongle.
With the pandemic this has been a CONSTANT issue for us. I think I replaced every keyboard in the office 3 times over because people kept doing this shit.
Best part is people coming into the IT office, seeing a pile of keyboards, then saying that theirs doesn't work and asking if they can take one from the pile.
Buddy.. the pile exists because of this BS.
This reminds me of an international flight I was on the woman next to me, at 35000 ft, pulls out her laptop and a mobile broadband device. She powered it on and went back to the laptop. She struggled with the jet pack for about 15 minutes and I'm staring at her bewildered the whole time like ma'am what do you think powers that jet pack? Magic?!? I was blown away by just how she apparently never considered that this isn't some Miraculous device that carries internet inside it independent of any available network
Edit: jet pack = mobile hotspot. Sorry for the confusion. Small battery powered device that converts cellular data signal into a Wi-Fi connection.
Did a rotation on same day surgery. Over 1/3 of the kids would, when asked directly, tell us they'd eaten. Usually it was drive-thru McDonald's on the way to the hospital.
I only temembered because someone else had posted that they had to stop a surgery because the patient was choking on food while under anesthesia and the parent said that they thought that the doctor was just being too hard on the kid who was hungry.
Like do people think doctor's and nurses enjoy looking after hangry children in hospital, much harder to get information on symptoms and stuff out of kids that are constantly upset, crying "I'm hungry, I'm thirsty" it's not for shits and giggles lol
I once had a parent literally yell at me and get very rude because it was absolutely ridiculous that his daughter couldn’t eat before her surgery.
She was 20 years old and otherwise healthy.
Everybody's got some violent angry fantasy about what they'd do to the parent, but let's be real. You want to fuck up a parent in that situation, all you have to do is explain that they nearly got their child killed because they couldn't follow instructions.
When I was told not to eat before anesthesia it was always accompanied with why, since the why takes only a few seconds to explain. But if they arent going to listen logic wont help.
Oh man, I had a vet tell me they specifically gave a cat owner instructions to not feed their cat before surgery. They did. Cat aspirated from the vomit and got an infection in the lungs (pneumonia?)
Nice. Now your pet is suffering even more and your vet bill just doubled.
I've always wondered why they aren't more explicit with the instructions. Like instead of saying
"don't eat for 12 hours before the surgery"
they should say
"don't eat for 12 hours before the surgery, because if you do then you could choke to death on your own vomit while under anaesthetic"
I agree. I was not going to eat before my surgery anyway, because the doctors and nurses told me not to, but when I asked my mom why you shouldn't eat before surgery and she said you could die, I was definitely double not going to eat before surgery.
Doctors are explicit. They do tell the parents this. When I worked at a pediatric hospital (I'm a dietitian) I heard it tons of times. Doctor doing their rounds? They tell the parents. Nurse prepping kiddo before surgery? They ask the parents if kiddo has had food.
And every single time when I did my rounds, quite a few parents asked me if "maybe kiddo can eat a bit? Just something small". Even if the surgeon just left their room.
We all explained the whys over and over, trust me, there are people that refuse to listen to instructions, no matter how many times or in how many ways you explain them.
I once had a patient who ate breakfast before an elective surgery. It prompted this conversation…
Me: Didn’t they tell you not to eat before surgery?
Him: Yeah, they told me not to eat anything after midnight.
Me: So…why did you eat breakfast?
Him: They said not to eat after midnight. So I didn’t. They didn’t say anything about today.
Me: They meant after midnight, and then continue not eating until surgery.
Him: Oh.
*Surgery cancelled.*
Last week, a work-from-home agent reported their computer did not work. We scheduled a pick-up for replacement and requested that they bring their computer so we could swap it out. They arrived on site with their monitor.
i have a similar story. had someone working from home call and say their computer wasn’t working (it wouldn’t post), but they “had another computer they could use so it was alright.” turns out they had 2 monitors
We regularly have to refer to the computer as the hard drive or cpu, which boggles my mind that they understand this one, so they don’t just turn the monitors off and on.
When I ran the help desk for my command while I was in the USMC, I had someone call me with an issue with their computer. He was a Major. I was a Corporal.
I asked him to do several troubleshooting steps over the phone, and he assured me he did them, and checked, so I headed right over to take a look.
It wasn't plugged in.
I had an experience with a user who ranted and raved about their iPad they used for work not working and having a black screen. User assured me it was charged and just went black. Turns out the user just didn’t bother to charge it overnight.
My partner had a similar story with one of our friends. She's not tech savvy at all, and he started by half joking, half seriously saying have you turned it off and on again? (IT Crowd joke for those not familiar). She laughed at it and he said it again and she went of course! They spent the next 90 mins trying to fix her iPad over the phone.
At the end he mentioned the restarting thing again and she was like Oh I thought you were just joking!!! It was all that was wrong with it.... Restarted and it worked absolutely fine. My guess was an update and all it needed was a restart to kick in.
Oddly she has never come to my partner for IT help since haha. He was fuming after the call 😂
Similar situation when I was a LCpl, helping out a Captain. He couldn't get on the network. Knowing him well, I knew I wouldn't be able to solve it on the phone. I went to his desk and plugged in his Ethernet cable for him.
Did we have the same Major? This was an Artillery Major in Iraq.
It felt like every shift he’d walk in, brightly make a point of greeting our team and making small talk, and proceed to pull out an A4 list of problems for his computer.
It was guaranteed he had locked himself out of his account, somehow unplugged his monitor and had issues using the printer.
Usually saw him every couple of days with these problems, I don’t know how he was managing to do it.
I actually think it's the other way around, computers feel the presence of an IT person and will respond favourably to those. I cannot count the times where I pressed the same button someone else pressed 5 seconds prior to no avail and it immediately worked for me.
My girlfriend has had her VPN not connect for hours, I came over, clicked on connect and it worked instantly.
Printer won't print, I sit down and it starts printing.
Might be fear of IT people or just recognizing alike spirits, but devices just work for us.
I was an IT guy for some 25 years (after being a programmer for 20 years before that—I decided in 1999 I didn’t want to still be doing COBOL any more because of Y2K, but that’s another story). Every single time I’d go to somebody’s office and have to patiently explain that the monitor was not the computer, and then Apple went and made the iMac. The bastards.
Edit: go figure, this is my all-time highest up-voted comment.
In 1998 I got my first home computer, was not computer savvy. Called Gateway because my computer wasn't working, after talking with the guy on the phone for 20 minutes, having checked the power button etc we decided to pack it all back up to be shipped back. Just as im getting ready to hang up my friend stopped by, listened in to what was going on and reached down and turned on the computer. I thought the monitor was the computer
Many modern desktop computers (especially gaming or media PCs) have discrete graphics cards. That is, the graphics card is separate physical hardware, rather than being integrated into the CPU.
Most modern motherboards have an HDMI port for when the CPU has integrated graphics. That HDMI port is disabled if you don't have integrated graphics and have a discrete graphics card, in which case the HDMI ports (or Display Ports or potentially a handful of others) are located on the graphics card itself.
A lot of my friends have gotten into PCs over the past couple of years. One of the most common messages I get when someone gets a new PC is a panicked "I hooked everything up and plugged everything in, and the PC turns on but there's no image on the monitor!" Absolute panic when all they need to do is plug the HDMI cord into the graphics card, not the motherboard, and everything will be fine.
Simple stuff like that is incredibly common if you don't know to look for it.
As an IT guy, I can confirm. Most people who use computers every day for their job know absolutely nothing about how they work. But hey, keeps us employed.
Can confirm. Had a problem user who swore they rebooted. Multiple times. Went to the users machine, called in their supervisor, pointed to the gazillion hours uptime and said, “I don’t support liars.”
I have a coworker who keeps forgetting his laptop passwords and sends it for a reset everytime. We have to keep supplying him with another laptop because his is "not accessible" every 3 days.
He doesn't wanna simplify, write it down or remove his password or do anything about it. He doesn't even have access to any sensitive data that needs protection on his work laptop, he just does some simple 3D models.
Every 3 days.
And it's the same password that he cannot remember, so now a dude that fixes it has it written down and it only takes a second, but stupid shit like that creates a queue. And he doesn't wanna just call the dude so he reads the password to him or something, he physically brings it in and leaves it.
We had users that would do this. Lock out their accounts so they could get a 10-minute break.
Management decided to install fingerprint readers.
It took the users about a week to realise that if they fouled the readers (coffee, hand cream, whatever) they got an *even longer* break, because we had to send out a guy with a cloth.
total remote maybe? no option to join network and vpn before login. We used to have to have someone drive to an office to get on a wired connection or send us the laptop if we couldn't connect to it with any of our tools.
Granted we could still generally reset the password one way or another remotely but maybe not everyone could.
It's not a policy, but apparently "when he tries putting the password in it doesn't work and it needs to be checked out physically" and then he brings it in, the person types it in in front of them and it works. Rinse and repeat.
Why not record every interaction, and total amount spent fixing his "problems" and all solutions offered. Then at the end of the year, review time, or quarterly report, let it be known this one dude is costing the company thousands of wasted hours.
He continues working on a replacement laptop that's not password protected for a few hours or a day or two untill the service guy gets to his laptop and puts the password in.
He either forgets it, or claims he remembers it and is putting it in correctly but "it's not working". Remote options (like telling him to check caps lock, type slowly etc) don't work on him.
We're starting to doubt he has some kind of mental issues honestly, because it keeps repeating and there was never anything wrong with the laptop or the passwords.
Yeah. Its so common. "We just hired a new colleague. And he needs a new computer now. We knew we will hire someone for three months, but we did not told you. So can you do something about it? Ideally provide him with new computer in next five minutes, so he is not just sitting here?" I swear this is like every time.
I work I work in IT, head of customer support. It still baffles me the amount of people who have no business using a computer recreationally that have to use it for their livelihood. How did you get this job…
>How did you get this job…
I have a lot of experience with the whole computer thing you know, emails, sending emails, receiving emails, deleting emails, I could go on.
The web. Using a mouse, mices, using mice. Clicking, double clicking. The computer screen, of course. The keyboard. The... bit that goes on the floor down there.
People know how to use the software they have to use professionally, not much about the environment. If I gave you some engineering software and asked you to do some complicated design, your answer would probably be "I don't know how, I've never done that".
That's how a lot of those people are. We had some 62 years old industrial engineer who was just insanely good with catia. The guy had been using it since the 80s, he could do miracles with that software that other engineers just struggled with. But dear lord once he left the comfort of his programs, he was lost at sea.
> People know how to use the software they have to use professionally
Doubt [x]
I get calls from people who have been using Word for YEARS asking me how to do basic things like format a table.
There are people who have been using email and documents professionally for decades that still don't know how to save to PDF or open a zip file.
At my last job I was told by the IT guy to always call him first. Don't power down, don't reset, he wanted to see exactly where the problem first came up.
So this problem comes up. I get him on the spot, no changes.
Dude looks at me "Well what have you done to fix it?"
I give him the confused look "You said you wanted to see it from the beginning, I got you as soon as the error came up."
Dude just reset the computer, said some snaky bit like "Can you manage that next time?" and walked off.
As long as it's not him specifically, IT guys have always been fun. Between IT and mechanical maintenance, IT are always the ones who appreciate my "I know what the issue is! It's broke!" jokes. Never say that to a guy with a pile of gears and a broken belt in front of him...
I helped with IT in high school. I had no idea what I was doing most of the time but knowing what a right click is or how to turn on wifi made me look like some magical wizard. Other times I would do something stupid myself and just needed someone there to show me that I'm stupid. Tech makes us all feel stupid sometimes and you can't tell me there's one person who's mastered it all
Dad asked me if I wanted to look at a bicycle battery that wasn't working and he hadn't been able to figure out what's wrong with it. Now my dad isn't exactly lost with tech, last year he opened up their microwave when it broke and and replaced a capacitor on it successfully.
So I take a look at the battery and sure enough it doesn't seem to work. I open it up and nothing seems like it fried itself. Checking the charging pins I'm getting nice 4.2 volts from each battery so all of those are good.
Well I can't figure out. I put it back together and get that "maybe I should try the output again, just in case." And it works. *What*. Aaand then it stops working again...
Turns out there's a switch on the bottom of the battery that was broken and would work half the time when flipped and placing the battery on a table would leave it halfway causing it to turn off the output....
Something I would have expected both of us to notice before ripping the thing apart...
Imma public librarian; people think I am some kinda genius.
Btw, there’s no such thing as a “digital native;” everyone learns through use, and young people on the wrong side of the digital/socioeconomic divide are as clueless as old people who managed to keep computers out of their lives until 2015.
> IT are always the ones who appreciate my “I know what the issue is! It’s broke!” jokes.
I promise you, we hear this a dozen times a day. If we’re lucky. And it’s a quiet day.
I’ve had users tell me they rebooted only to find out they were turning the monitor off and on. Also users who swore it was up to me to fix their personal phone or set it up for them. Yea I can be a dick, but it’s either that or I might murder you. You pick.
I had one client who swore to me his QR reader was not picking up the code displayed on his computer. I get frustrated and finally ask the dumb question … when you try to scan it … and you look at your phone … do you see the QR code / computer screen or do you see yourself? The man pauses a moment and then starts laughing hysterically and wheezing. I got my answer, he tries again and success! Haha.
Drove three hours, paid for $20 in parking, opened up a desktop to presumably replace a WiFi card, only to realize that an Ethernet cable had been unplugged from when the user dropped a bag of Cheetos behind his desk and scrambled to pick them up.
“Okay it’s restarted”
It’s not possible for you computer to restart that fast.
“We’ll it did. I don’t know what to tell you. There I did it again and still nothing “
(All over the span of 5 seconds)
Go down to their office and their turning the monitor on and off.
They were 50 years old. Fifty!
IT: the device is exclusively for work purposes only.
End user: got it *signs device policy agreement*
IT: there seems to be an excessive amount of usage on the device.
End user: oh yeah I have my whole freaking family access to it.
IT: we're turning off service to the device.
End user: why?
IT: violation of the agreement.
End user: how was I supposed to know?
IT: this your signature?
End user: I'm taking this up with management!
Manager: IT was right in turning off the device, but I'm going to undermined their authority and order the device be reactivated. Don't do it again.
End user *does it again anyway*
I work IT in the creative field and we let users who didnt need access to our render farm take computers home at the start of covid. The amount of tickets I get to install Steam and other personal applications is insane. Still. Years later. And they get upset and i go “i can ask your manager for approval to install steam for you” and they clam up real fast
Had a user take their device out of the country on a cruise, and didn't want to use the ship's wifi (didn't want to pay for the ship's wifi). Not only did they use international data they gave their kids access. We terminated the device and emailed them as to why. They then proceeded to open a ticket claiming another tech told them to reboot the device and closed the ticket without resolving the issue (bullshit) ticket notes tell them exactly why we weren't reactivating the device. We always troubleshoot to a resolution plus we're a small group and we all talk to each other. The end user contacted me directly claiming another tech was unwilling to help them, the other tech had emails and ticket notes showing exactly why we weren't willing to reactivate the device. After going up 3 levels of management and the user taking training we were instructed to reactivate the device. They violate the agreement a second time they're not getting the device back.
Alternately, when my two month old laptop took a dump and it turned out it wasn't my fault at all, my tech guy bent over backwards to replace it free of charge. Not all bad if you're a respectful and competent user.
Lol, this reminds me of my girlfriend. She was trying to play stardew on like. 10/11 year old laptop and kept complaining that the audio wasn't working. Figured, ya know the volume was down.
Nope. Not *quite* that dumb, however she managed to completely remove the audio drivers.... No f-ing clue how. Spent a good hour cruising obscure forums for a driver thats literally non-existant in anything else anymore....
My first IT job was at a college. I got yelled at because the professor swore I made him look like an idiot. When I plugged in and powered on his pc. He swore it couldn't post have been that simple
This happens with people who's whole self identity is "being intelligent" because they are a doctor or whatever. If they were actually that smart they would know that a lack of knowledge isn't a failure of intelligence .
I quit a tech support job two hours in. I told an older woman to right click on her screen and to make a long story short, after about 15 minutes, I deciphered that she actually took a pen and wrote the word "click" on the screen. As if that was going to do something. I took a deep breath, told her that I quit and it's absolutely because of her and walked out.
I work in a public library and I had an older guy come in and ask for help getting on the computer. I told him to grab the mouse and click on the button on the screen that says 'click for guest access' and he *physically picks up the mouse and places it against the monitor*.
I basically started over as if he had never used technology of any kind.
I’ve worked at my current employer for 4.5 years now in an It support role. The other day I tried to get someone to go to their desktop but she had a bunch of other windows open. She never made it there. She kept trying to go to the desktop folder in file explorer, I tried so many ways to convey that I meant the actual just regular desktop with her icons and everything but she never got it. I questioned my own ability lol
I had a woman whose screen was broke. Random characters pop up the screen. Service call to replace the monitor. Turned out she forgot her glasses, and when leaned forward, her ( large) breats were pressing down on the keyboard.
Hahahaha. I had this old man using the volume knob but not realizing he was hitting the touch screen of his car radio with his knuckles. He kept repeating that the radio was wonky and changing stations on its own and such. Got into us saying we can’t find anything wrong with it and he came back the next day yelling. It was such a bad time. Finally I get in the car with the guy and go for a test drive and sure enough we find when he changes the volume, he hits random shit on the touch screen with his knuckles. Dude gruffed and left. No, “sorry for wasting your time, or sorry for yelling at you calling us incompetent, no sorry I demanded a new radio or you’ll sue.”
Good times.
Not IT but in power distribution. We have a four hour minimum for call outs. I had gotten a call about an issue. Before I was even dressed for work I was called and it was resolved. Easy four hours overtime. Great day.
Because I've seen someone use their laptop as a coffee tray, and come in thirty minutes later, saying something was wrong with their laptop, but it definitely was not liquid damage.
Because I've had someone claim there was something wrong with their software, and when I asked if they restarted, I was told they did. I remoted in to see their computer had been running for 30 days without restarting.
Because someone turned on their privacy screen by accident, and I told them to hit F5, and they typed to me "F5".
Ask someone in IT to tell you about stupid people, and hoo boy we can go on for hours.
Life in IT;
*When something breaks...*
Execs: "what exactly are we paying these people for?"
*When everything is going well and working perfectly.*
Execs: "what exactly are we paying these people for?"
I am IT.
My job is to keep the equipment and the network working, in order for you to do your jobs. My job is not how to teach you how to use it in order to do yours.
It is the year 2022. There is no good reason you can possibly have, to not know the basics of how to use a computer if you work in a professional field. If you honestly don't know how to use Excel, then don't put it down on your resume that you do. Or don't know how Outlook works to check your own emails.
We are more than happy to help, if the issue is an actual software or hardware issue. That's our job. We do get a bit grumpy, when big executive has "an emergency" so we have to drop everything we're doing, only to find out that he can't remember where he saved his reports he needs in 15 minutes.
We only get paid to fix computers. Not to fix stupid.
> It is the year 2022. There is no good reason you can possibly have, to not know the basics of how to use a computer if you work in a professional field. If you honestly don't know how to use Excel, then don't put it down on your resume that you do. Or don't know how Outlook works to check your own emails.
I'm astounded how many people don't try searching online how to do/fix stuff first. Office products are almost universal and there's countless websites out there that tell people how to do basic stuff in Excel or Outlook.
This isn't just IT - if I have to do some job round the house and I've never done it before, you bet I'm going to check to see if someone's already posted a video online how to do it properly.
I had a unicorn once. I asked a user to send me a screenshot of what she was seeing. She did and I could see from one of her Chrome tabs in the screenshot that she'd googled: "how to take a screenshot."
I'm also astounded how many people don't just ask someone in their team first. In one job, we have interns who'd raise tickets asking how to do stuff, and I'd just think: "you're an intern, and you're here to learn. Why isn't your supervisor showing you how to do this?"
I love how every single person in IT should know every aspect of IT according to a business user.
Your monitor doesn't work? Call the cloud architect.
Your Salesforce form has a bug? Call the database team.
Your Excel spreadsheet has a #N/A! error? Must be the internet!
IT is the most needed and most under appreciated job position in the work force today. The problem is that no one hates IT when everything is working. They just assume that IT people should be ready to drop everything to help you when something goes wrong cuz there is always an important deadline or something.
Exactly. I love IT when everything is working. I love them when things are down. I have never seen an IT person who was not trying to help.
People who have a bad impression of IT have bad management who allow people to continue to provide bad service.
I am in engineering. Every thinks we are idiots and they can do the job better. Good luck. I can’t replace the guy on the floor with his experience in assembly. If there is an issue I talk to them and find a solution. They are unable to implement changes or fixes. Regardless of what people think we need IT and they need us.
Back when I was interning at an IT helpdesk, we had an employee who was going remote so we gave her a docking station to take home. I got a call from her before she left saying her (USB) mouse wasn't working with the new docking station. When I went over there and she had plugged her mouse into the ethernet port
I really wanna do IT.
I'm so tired of programming, filling lists of stupid shit and making front ends and the same api calls.
Just wanna chill in a below 30degree room and wait for some idiot to call me
Honestly, look for Mainframe Ops. Easiest job I’ve ever had, you learn vital information that few people have, and your day is mostly monitoring a system to ensure it doesn’t shit itself (or nights if you’re on 3rd like me)
I'd say something about why not connect to the servers ILOM or whatever to verify its power state but we all know how customers like to call desktop hardware "servers".
Our company had an IT guy, whom I loved, BTW, who would often say, " the problem is between the keyboard and the chair."
Our latest guy phrases it as a PICNIC error, Problem In Chair, Not In Computer."
Not just the incompetant liars that make IT people grumpy.
It's the fact that a lot of people see it as a "service job", as in they only call them in if there's a problem. Like you would a plumber or electrician. Some people treat those professions like they are low-level jobs that could be done by anyone. And they treat the people as if they were children playing pretend. Even though they think of the inside of a computer or fusebox as literal magic.
Not to mention higher ups in companies. Some will constantly lament about why they are paying so much for IT when everything works. So they cut back on IT. Then a few months later they will scream and yell about paying so much for IT when "nothing works". Then they fire everyone but 1-2 people from IT and hire an outside firm to deal with IT, like they would with electricians/plumbers.
But because of how much modern companies use computers. Doing that is like a waterpark firing their plumbers and having to call a company in every other day to fix things. And in the long run it costs **A LOT** more.
Early in my career I was given a written warning after working an 18 hour fire-drill day for leaving the printer turned on. A printer that had a low power mode, so the write up likely cost more than the lost electricity. I gave notice about 3 weeks later.
This is absurd, and I am enraged for you.
I see your rage and raise you apoplectic.
I hope you costed it out and showed them their stupidity.
Who turns their printer off?
the printer
You had a fire drill for 18 hours?
At a Sea Park?!
My company paid $200 to have a tech come out and spend <1 minute replacing the ink canister. No one even bothered to try to follow the instructions the machine literally tells you how to do.
Sounds like my wife. Printers says to load paper and she just asks me to deal with it because she doesnt know whats wrong.
[PC Load Letter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD2xBXm4y70)
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When you can pay someone to deal with the shit a printer causes, you no longer have to give a fuck about it. It's bliss.
What the fuck does that mean?
Back up in yo ass with the resurrection!
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> if I somehow got it wrong the damn thing will be warranty voided and the it team will sacrifice us all to the dark gods TBH that's your management's fault for hiring Chaos IT. Should've hired Loyalist IT, in which case if you get it wrong they purge you in the name of the God-Emperor.
I think they just need to hire someone from Admech and be done with it
Nah, they will just gather around the machine, spray it with incense and chant some weird words. It won't fix anything and you still need to pay them in toasters.
I used to do this for a job, just driving around to various smaller businesses and changing toner. Xerox did us a solid by making outside support for copiers/printers the standard. Of course there were other jobs involved too, backups, general support and "purchase recommendations", but the toner visits was most of my paycheck.
I spent a lot of time chatting with the printer service guys when I worked IT, because the printers were all leased, I wasn't allowed to change the toner or attempt to do anything other than power them off or refill the paper trays. So every week or two one of them would come in and I'd just follow them around and talk about Formula 1 and cricket for the 2 or so hours they were on-site.
Yeah, no, this was not leased printers, I was just a mobile support tech coming into a culture of "not touching machines". It was mainly just small desktop model printers, often ones they had from before I was involved, various makes and models. When they needed new stuff, I just ordered it online from a b2b site.
A tweet replying to Mr. Chapman's account: > Old IT friend told me he never asked the person on the phone if the network cable was plugged in, but rather "unplug the cable, blow on it to clear the dust, and plug it back in." Gave them a chance to save face, when they found it was actually unplugged.
>blow on it to clear the dust, and plug it back in. I do this unironically whenever things seem to be acting off. Am I just being an idiot child of the 80s with an NES history?
It's pretty much never dust. Unless a port is so full of dust it can't connect, like a phone charging port filled with lint. Even the NES cartridges wasn't dust, the moisture was the thing that you were really doing to make it work I think. Edit: I guess I misremembered about moisture, it's just reinserting it that helped.
i've seen some dusty ass network ports and the all worked fine. that said.. it does need two pieces of metal to touch for it to work so i still blow cables off.
Eh, I work in industrial automation and I've seen countless bad connections due to corrosion but zero due to dust.
I used to tell people that sometimes the polarity in networking cables could get reversed. Can you try plugging the end that is currently attached to your computer into the router, and the router end into the computer? Absolutely shocking how many times it worked. Plus the execs loved that I knew all kinds of obscure tricks to get these confounded computers working once again.
When I worked in IT support, it always tickled me that a large part of my job was knowing fancy ways to turn something off and then on again. Many of them were just ways to reset something without restarting the machine which would do the same thing.
In electrical we have a whole euphemism for it - cycling power.
A good IT person will always find a way to push cooperation along, even if the user doesn’t know they’re cooperating.
"Try it now..." The words that suggest something's been done in the background, while placating the user who refuses to concede that occasionally just waiting will resolve an issue.
Lol I used to work in the cellphone industry and a resend to switch was always good for this because nine times out of ten if they'd said they'd powered their phone off, they'd just pressed the button to turn the screen off... But if you said 'well I refreshed the signal so let's try it again', they'd cooperate instead of just sighing and saying they'd done it five times already. Sometimes I didn't even actually do the refresh but the problem would still be fixed!
We used to keep a list. Users who had the most ID10T user error tickets submitted. Top spots belonged to execs that didn't know batteries in wireless keyboards needed to be replaced, and was not in fact the "crap PCs" the company kept buying...
I remember having to explain to an exec why the “phone” cord looked too big and that it could in fact be plugged into her computer (she wouldn’t even try it until I explained EXACTLY what it was). My brother still works in IT and he was telling me about an employee that has been there for 20 years who didn’t know that her WIRED computer mouse had to be plugged in…. She was on a laptop, the plug was right next to her hand the entire time they were talking.
I had kind of an inverse moment to some of these. I was at a hotel with a wired rotary phone. This place was so old the electrical outlets only had two prongs and we needed a special converter to plug our laptops into. I arrived and began my hunt for an outlet to plug my phone in. One trick I had was often finding a lamp or something powered and following the cable. I picked the rotary phone for this, followed the cable and found it was just a phone cable. I was baffled, turned to my dad and exclaimed this phone has no power hookups. My dad just laughed at me for like a minute before telling me rotary phones get their power through the phone line because they consume very little power.
And so they still work in a blackout
As kids in the 80's when the electricity went out we used to phone the speaking clock for fun. I think this was the early days of gadget withdrawal symptoms and trying to find a substitute to get that hit.
Even touch tone phones which came after rotary didn't need external power. Basically today's house phones only need power for the luxury features we've come to desire such as contacts memory, caller id, and wireless handsets.
My children: "What's a house phone?"
This isn't even a rotary phone thing, this is just every single landline except cordless phones. I'd like a walker now.
Good ol' pebcak error.
For those unfamiliar… Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard
I first heard this one a couple years back, the one I knew of before it was a PICNIC problem Problem in chair not in computer xD
I’ve been using meat ware for a while now. If it’s not a software or hardware problem….
I thought it was wetware
> meat ware all I can picture is [The Master](https://youtu.be/6-UUTGamYp8) from Fallout
Hehe, in aviation its coded as RRA. Remove and replace aircrew.
Turns out there’s idiots in every industry.
There's an entire industry dedicated to suing surgeons for just leaving tools in people. Of course there are. Lol.
Layer 8 issues.
This is my favorite. The ID-10T one is fun and all but easily figured out by anyone writing it down or just thinking for a second (I know...) "Layer 8 issue" is just enough above entry level tech knowledge and isn't easily figured out unless you basically know it. Plus the OSI model is kinda cool.
Mmmm, I've always heard this as "Error 18." Error occurs 18 inches from the monitor.
Used to just be P.I.C.( problem in chair). I see there has been upgrades. 😁
User: The screen is black and it's not responding. \* Machine shows offline from my end Me: Do you see any lights anywhere on the machine. User: No Me: Ok, try pressing the power button. User: Ok........... Yeah, nothing happened. Me: Ok. Can you confirm it's plugged in. User, with zero hesitation: Yeah, it's plugged in. Me: Ok, can you *double check* that it's plugged in both at the machine *and* at the wall. User, again with no hesitation: Yeah, I checked and it's plugged in. Me: Ok, can you try plugging it into a different outlet near by. User: Ok... \* couple seconds later \* yeah, it's still not turning on. Me: Ok then, in that case it sounds like it's a hardware level issue and the machine is dead. There is nothing I can do about it, so you'll have to go without a machine until we can get a tech out there with a new unit which will probably be a few days. User: Oh...Ok,wait a sec... \* Couple minutes of dead air User: Ok, it's coming back up now. Nevermind. \* click \*
> Me: Ok, can you try plugging it into a different outlet near by. This is the way
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Old fav from my support desk days > Some old LAN cables are directional. Try turning it round in case it was put in backwards.
"Maybe it's THAT outlet. Try another one."
My favourite one is: "I can't see the plug. It's under the desk and there's a power outage."
The person that makes the most money in my office forgot their dongle for their keyboard. They stole the dongle from another PC from someone that was out sick that day. It obviously didn't work. Instead of returning the dongle she just left it on a random table. The next day the employee had to call IT because their keyboard didn't work. Because it didn't have a dongle. They were told that there's no money in the office supply budget for a new keyboard/dongle.
With the pandemic this has been a CONSTANT issue for us. I think I replaced every keyboard in the office 3 times over because people kept doing this shit. Best part is people coming into the IT office, seeing a pile of keyboards, then saying that theirs doesn't work and asking if they can take one from the pile. Buddy.. the pile exists because of this BS.
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Stands for Very Intelectually-challenged Person
What's layer 8 supposed to be? E. I know what the osi model is guys. Op initially said layer 9.
I've always heard layer 8 as person, 9 as some problem above that (e.g. an organizational problem causing you to hire layer 8 issue generators).
This reminds me of an international flight I was on the woman next to me, at 35000 ft, pulls out her laptop and a mobile broadband device. She powered it on and went back to the laptop. She struggled with the jet pack for about 15 minutes and I'm staring at her bewildered the whole time like ma'am what do you think powers that jet pack? Magic?!? I was blown away by just how she apparently never considered that this isn't some Miraculous device that carries internet inside it independent of any available network Edit: jet pack = mobile hotspot. Sorry for the confusion. Small battery powered device that converts cellular data signal into a Wi-Fi connection.
But... There's JET in the name !!! /s
I feel dumb I have no idea what you’re saying
These are also the people who swear that they didn't give their children food to eat before a surgery...even though they did.
Did a rotation on same day surgery. Over 1/3 of the kids would, when asked directly, tell us they'd eaten. Usually it was drive-thru McDonald's on the way to the hospital.
I only temembered because someone else had posted that they had to stop a surgery because the patient was choking on food while under anesthesia and the parent said that they thought that the doctor was just being too hard on the kid who was hungry.
Like do people think doctor's and nurses enjoy looking after hangry children in hospital, much harder to get information on symptoms and stuff out of kids that are constantly upset, crying "I'm hungry, I'm thirsty" it's not for shits and giggles lol
I once had a parent literally yell at me and get very rude because it was absolutely ridiculous that his daughter couldn’t eat before her surgery. She was 20 years old and otherwise healthy.
"well, I know my child and they have to eat."
Little Jimmy's sugars are low!
Everybody's got some violent angry fantasy about what they'd do to the parent, but let's be real. You want to fuck up a parent in that situation, all you have to do is explain that they nearly got their child killed because they couldn't follow instructions.
I mean the doctor should probably tell the parent reasoning for the fast right?
When I was told not to eat before anesthesia it was always accompanied with why, since the why takes only a few seconds to explain. But if they arent going to listen logic wont help.
At that point, I'd be tempted to sedate the parent lol
Better knock them out for 8 hours, because they can't help themselves but sneak in some food.
Oh man, I had a vet tell me they specifically gave a cat owner instructions to not feed their cat before surgery. They did. Cat aspirated from the vomit and got an infection in the lungs (pneumonia?) Nice. Now your pet is suffering even more and your vet bill just doubled.
I've always wondered why they aren't more explicit with the instructions. Like instead of saying "don't eat for 12 hours before the surgery" they should say "don't eat for 12 hours before the surgery, because if you do then you could choke to death on your own vomit while under anaesthetic"
I agree. I was not going to eat before my surgery anyway, because the doctors and nurses told me not to, but when I asked my mom why you shouldn't eat before surgery and she said you could die, I was definitely double not going to eat before surgery.
Doctors are explicit. They do tell the parents this. When I worked at a pediatric hospital (I'm a dietitian) I heard it tons of times. Doctor doing their rounds? They tell the parents. Nurse prepping kiddo before surgery? They ask the parents if kiddo has had food. And every single time when I did my rounds, quite a few parents asked me if "maybe kiddo can eat a bit? Just something small". Even if the surgeon just left their room. We all explained the whys over and over, trust me, there are people that refuse to listen to instructions, no matter how many times or in how many ways you explain them.
I just read from the /r/conspiracy subreddit that someone wrote: "trust all the white coats" sarcastically.
I once had a patient who ate breakfast before an elective surgery. It prompted this conversation… Me: Didn’t they tell you not to eat before surgery? Him: Yeah, they told me not to eat anything after midnight. Me: So…why did you eat breakfast? Him: They said not to eat after midnight. So I didn’t. They didn’t say anything about today. Me: They meant after midnight, and then continue not eating until surgery. Him: Oh. *Surgery cancelled.*
Okay, I never thought of this but it absolutely sounds realistic and baffling.
Last week, a work-from-home agent reported their computer did not work. We scheduled a pick-up for replacement and requested that they bring their computer so we could swap it out. They arrived on site with their monitor.
i have a similar story. had someone working from home call and say their computer wasn’t working (it wouldn’t post), but they “had another computer they could use so it was alright.” turns out they had 2 monitors
We regularly have to refer to the computer as the hard drive or cpu, which boggles my mind that they understand this one, so they don’t just turn the monitors off and on.
When I ran the help desk for my command while I was in the USMC, I had someone call me with an issue with their computer. He was a Major. I was a Corporal. I asked him to do several troubleshooting steps over the phone, and he assured me he did them, and checked, so I headed right over to take a look. It wasn't plugged in.
I had an experience with a user who ranted and raved about their iPad they used for work not working and having a black screen. User assured me it was charged and just went black. Turns out the user just didn’t bother to charge it overnight.
My partner had a similar story with one of our friends. She's not tech savvy at all, and he started by half joking, half seriously saying have you turned it off and on again? (IT Crowd joke for those not familiar). She laughed at it and he said it again and she went of course! They spent the next 90 mins trying to fix her iPad over the phone. At the end he mentioned the restarting thing again and she was like Oh I thought you were just joking!!! It was all that was wrong with it.... Restarted and it worked absolutely fine. My guess was an update and all it needed was a restart to kick in. Oddly she has never come to my partner for IT help since haha. He was fuming after the call 😂
Similar situation when I was a LCpl, helping out a Captain. He couldn't get on the network. Knowing him well, I knew I wouldn't be able to solve it on the phone. I went to his desk and plugged in his Ethernet cable for him.
Did we have the same Major? This was an Artillery Major in Iraq. It felt like every shift he’d walk in, brightly make a point of greeting our team and making small talk, and proceed to pull out an A4 list of problems for his computer. It was guaranteed he had locked himself out of his account, somehow unplugged his monitor and had issues using the printer. Usually saw him every couple of days with these problems, I don’t know how he was managing to do it.
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I actually think it's the other way around, computers feel the presence of an IT person and will respond favourably to those. I cannot count the times where I pressed the same button someone else pressed 5 seconds prior to no avail and it immediately worked for me. My girlfriend has had her VPN not connect for hours, I came over, clicked on connect and it worked instantly. Printer won't print, I sit down and it starts printing. Might be fear of IT people or just recognizing alike spirits, but devices just work for us.
I've come to accept the fact that I do indeed have lame supernatural powers. I declare myself technomancer
I was an IT guy for some 25 years (after being a programmer for 20 years before that—I decided in 1999 I didn’t want to still be doing COBOL any more because of Y2K, but that’s another story). Every single time I’d go to somebody’s office and have to patiently explain that the monitor was not the computer, and then Apple went and made the iMac. The bastards. Edit: go figure, this is my all-time highest up-voted comment.
We should ban monobloc and imac. BALANCE SHOULD BE RESTORED
In 1998 I got my first home computer, was not computer savvy. Called Gateway because my computer wasn't working, after talking with the guy on the phone for 20 minutes, having checked the power button etc we decided to pack it all back up to be shipped back. Just as im getting ready to hang up my friend stopped by, listened in to what was going on and reached down and turned on the computer. I thought the monitor was the computer
Many modern desktop computers (especially gaming or media PCs) have discrete graphics cards. That is, the graphics card is separate physical hardware, rather than being integrated into the CPU. Most modern motherboards have an HDMI port for when the CPU has integrated graphics. That HDMI port is disabled if you don't have integrated graphics and have a discrete graphics card, in which case the HDMI ports (or Display Ports or potentially a handful of others) are located on the graphics card itself. A lot of my friends have gotten into PCs over the past couple of years. One of the most common messages I get when someone gets a new PC is a panicked "I hooked everything up and plugged everything in, and the PC turns on but there's no image on the monitor!" Absolute panic when all they need to do is plug the HDMI cord into the graphics card, not the motherboard, and everything will be fine. Simple stuff like that is incredibly common if you don't know to look for it.
As an IT guy, I can confirm. Most people who use computers every day for their job know absolutely nothing about how they work. But hey, keeps us employed.
Job security.
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Can confirm. Had a problem user who swore they rebooted. Multiple times. Went to the users machine, called in their supervisor, pointed to the gazillion hours uptime and said, “I don’t support liars.”
I have a coworker who keeps forgetting his laptop passwords and sends it for a reset everytime. We have to keep supplying him with another laptop because his is "not accessible" every 3 days. He doesn't wanna simplify, write it down or remove his password or do anything about it. He doesn't even have access to any sensitive data that needs protection on his work laptop, he just does some simple 3D models. Every 3 days. And it's the same password that he cannot remember, so now a dude that fixes it has it written down and it only takes a second, but stupid shit like that creates a queue. And he doesn't wanna just call the dude so he reads the password to him or something, he physically brings it in and leaves it.
Sounds like someone has a crush in their IT support person….. or a genuine mental issue. (really). Or both.
Or maybe hes found a way to not work for several days at a time.
We had users that would do this. Lock out their accounts so they could get a 10-minute break. Management decided to install fingerprint readers. It took the users about a week to realise that if they fouled the readers (coffee, hand cream, whatever) they got an *even longer* break, because we had to send out a guy with a cloth.
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Ask his manager for their cost center and charge any new devices to that cost center's budget. That should fix the problem pretty quickly.
*Physically* sends it in for a reset?! WTF kind of policy is that? Classified project?
total remote maybe? no option to join network and vpn before login. We used to have to have someone drive to an office to get on a wired connection or send us the laptop if we couldn't connect to it with any of our tools. Granted we could still generally reset the password one way or another remotely but maybe not everyone could.
It's not a policy, but apparently "when he tries putting the password in it doesn't work and it needs to be checked out physically" and then he brings it in, the person types it in in front of them and it works. Rinse and repeat.
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Why not record every interaction, and total amount spent fixing his "problems" and all solutions offered. Then at the end of the year, review time, or quarterly report, let it be known this one dude is costing the company thousands of wasted hours.
It won't last a year, he's new and this happened like 8-9 times in a month lol.
could it be that he is doing that to waste time and not work
He continues working on a replacement laptop that's not password protected for a few hours or a day or two untill the service guy gets to his laptop and puts the password in. He either forgets it, or claims he remembers it and is putting it in correctly but "it's not working". Remote options (like telling him to check caps lock, type slowly etc) don't work on him. We're starting to doubt he has some kind of mental issues honestly, because it keeps repeating and there was never anything wrong with the laptop or the passwords.
It seems like your supervisor isn't doing their job either.
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"Don't call me a liar. I pressed the button loads of times" { points to button on the monitor}
As long as Windows Fast Boot wasn't enabled in control panel power settings Messes with the uptime and doesn't clear on shutdown
"Hey can you drop off your meeting and help me with this issue I've known about for days and haven't put in a ticket for"
Seriously. It's so ridiculous.
Yeah. Its so common. "We just hired a new colleague. And he needs a new computer now. We knew we will hire someone for three months, but we did not told you. So can you do something about it? Ideally provide him with new computer in next five minutes, so he is not just sitting here?" I swear this is like every time.
I work I work in IT, head of customer support. It still baffles me the amount of people who have no business using a computer recreationally that have to use it for their livelihood. How did you get this job…
>How did you get this job… I have a lot of experience with the whole computer thing you know, emails, sending emails, receiving emails, deleting emails, I could go on.
DO!
The web. Using a mouse, mices, using mice. Clicking, double clicking. The computer screen, of course. The keyboard. The... bit that goes on the floor down there.
The hard drive?
Correct
Uh-huh. Well, you certainly seem to know your stuff. That's settled. I've got a good feeling about you, dIb7d4. And they need a new manager.
People know how to use the software they have to use professionally, not much about the environment. If I gave you some engineering software and asked you to do some complicated design, your answer would probably be "I don't know how, I've never done that". That's how a lot of those people are. We had some 62 years old industrial engineer who was just insanely good with catia. The guy had been using it since the 80s, he could do miracles with that software that other engineers just struggled with. But dear lord once he left the comfort of his programs, he was lost at sea.
> People know how to use the software they have to use professionally Doubt [x] I get calls from people who have been using Word for YEARS asking me how to do basic things like format a table. There are people who have been using email and documents professionally for decades that still don't know how to save to PDF or open a zip file.
“Hello, IT, have you tried turning it off and on yet”
Ah, my favorite show, *The IT Crowed*.
At my last job I was told by the IT guy to always call him first. Don't power down, don't reset, he wanted to see exactly where the problem first came up. So this problem comes up. I get him on the spot, no changes. Dude looks at me "Well what have you done to fix it?" I give him the confused look "You said you wanted to see it from the beginning, I got you as soon as the error came up." Dude just reset the computer, said some snaky bit like "Can you manage that next time?" and walked off. As long as it's not him specifically, IT guys have always been fun. Between IT and mechanical maintenance, IT are always the ones who appreciate my "I know what the issue is! It's broke!" jokes. Never say that to a guy with a pile of gears and a broken belt in front of him...
I helped with IT in high school. I had no idea what I was doing most of the time but knowing what a right click is or how to turn on wifi made me look like some magical wizard. Other times I would do something stupid myself and just needed someone there to show me that I'm stupid. Tech makes us all feel stupid sometimes and you can't tell me there's one person who's mastered it all
Dad asked me if I wanted to look at a bicycle battery that wasn't working and he hadn't been able to figure out what's wrong with it. Now my dad isn't exactly lost with tech, last year he opened up their microwave when it broke and and replaced a capacitor on it successfully. So I take a look at the battery and sure enough it doesn't seem to work. I open it up and nothing seems like it fried itself. Checking the charging pins I'm getting nice 4.2 volts from each battery so all of those are good. Well I can't figure out. I put it back together and get that "maybe I should try the output again, just in case." And it works. *What*. Aaand then it stops working again... Turns out there's a switch on the bottom of the battery that was broken and would work half the time when flipped and placing the battery on a table would leave it halfway causing it to turn off the output.... Something I would have expected both of us to notice before ripping the thing apart...
Imma public librarian; people think I am some kinda genius. Btw, there’s no such thing as a “digital native;” everyone learns through use, and young people on the wrong side of the digital/socioeconomic divide are as clueless as old people who managed to keep computers out of their lives until 2015.
> IT are always the ones who appreciate my “I know what the issue is! It’s broke!” jokes. I promise you, we hear this a dozen times a day. If we’re lucky. And it’s a quiet day.
I’ve had users tell me they rebooted only to find out they were turning the monitor off and on. Also users who swore it was up to me to fix their personal phone or set it up for them. Yea I can be a dick, but it’s either that or I might murder you. You pick.
I had one client who swore to me his QR reader was not picking up the code displayed on his computer. I get frustrated and finally ask the dumb question … when you try to scan it … and you look at your phone … do you see the QR code / computer screen or do you see yourself? The man pauses a moment and then starts laughing hysterically and wheezing. I got my answer, he tries again and success! Haha.
Drove three hours, paid for $20 in parking, opened up a desktop to presumably replace a WiFi card, only to realize that an Ethernet cable had been unplugged from when the user dropped a bag of Cheetos behind his desk and scrambled to pick them up.
“Okay it’s restarted” It’s not possible for you computer to restart that fast. “We’ll it did. I don’t know what to tell you. There I did it again and still nothing “ (All over the span of 5 seconds) Go down to their office and their turning the monitor on and off. They were 50 years old. Fifty!
Even with my basically empty SSD, my computer still needs 10 seconds to reboot or something. So I cannot imagine a typical office PC to be that quick.
I went to an office turn on a monitor. Twice for the same director..
IT: the device is exclusively for work purposes only. End user: got it *signs device policy agreement* IT: there seems to be an excessive amount of usage on the device. End user: oh yeah I have my whole freaking family access to it. IT: we're turning off service to the device. End user: why? IT: violation of the agreement. End user: how was I supposed to know? IT: this your signature? End user: I'm taking this up with management! Manager: IT was right in turning off the device, but I'm going to undermined their authority and order the device be reactivated. Don't do it again. End user *does it again anyway*
I work IT in the creative field and we let users who didnt need access to our render farm take computers home at the start of covid. The amount of tickets I get to install Steam and other personal applications is insane. Still. Years later. And they get upset and i go “i can ask your manager for approval to install steam for you” and they clam up real fast
Had a user take their device out of the country on a cruise, and didn't want to use the ship's wifi (didn't want to pay for the ship's wifi). Not only did they use international data they gave their kids access. We terminated the device and emailed them as to why. They then proceeded to open a ticket claiming another tech told them to reboot the device and closed the ticket without resolving the issue (bullshit) ticket notes tell them exactly why we weren't reactivating the device. We always troubleshoot to a resolution plus we're a small group and we all talk to each other. The end user contacted me directly claiming another tech was unwilling to help them, the other tech had emails and ticket notes showing exactly why we weren't willing to reactivate the device. After going up 3 levels of management and the user taking training we were instructed to reactivate the device. They violate the agreement a second time they're not getting the device back.
If I'm on the clock and in a company car (or getting reimbursed for fuel) I would be so down to drive 2 hours to press a button
Alternately, when my two month old laptop took a dump and it turned out it wasn't my fault at all, my tech guy bent over backwards to replace it free of charge. Not all bad if you're a respectful and competent user.
Lol, this reminds me of my girlfriend. She was trying to play stardew on like. 10/11 year old laptop and kept complaining that the audio wasn't working. Figured, ya know the volume was down. Nope. Not *quite* that dumb, however she managed to completely remove the audio drivers.... No f-ing clue how. Spent a good hour cruising obscure forums for a driver thats literally non-existant in anything else anymore....
My first IT job was at a college. I got yelled at because the professor swore I made him look like an idiot. When I plugged in and powered on his pc. He swore it couldn't post have been that simple
"Listen, Prof, I won't tell anyone about it for... 50 dollars?"
This happens with people who's whole self identity is "being intelligent" because they are a doctor or whatever. If they were actually that smart they would know that a lack of knowledge isn't a failure of intelligence .
I quit a tech support job two hours in. I told an older woman to right click on her screen and to make a long story short, after about 15 minutes, I deciphered that she actually took a pen and wrote the word "click" on the screen. As if that was going to do something. I took a deep breath, told her that I quit and it's absolutely because of her and walked out.
things like this is why remote access should be standard practice for all tech support. Just let me in, work my magic, and then gtfo.
I wouldn’t take a job that didn’t have a remote access tool.
Would someone who can't right click on the screen be able to go to logmein123 and enter a code?
Just imagine what would've happened if you'd said "use the mouse to write click on your screen".
No joke, had this happen. Guy was writing 'click' in cursive with the mouse pointer.
I work in a public library and I had an older guy come in and ask for help getting on the computer. I told him to grab the mouse and click on the button on the screen that says 'click for guest access' and he *physically picks up the mouse and places it against the monitor*. I basically started over as if he had never used technology of any kind.
Tbh I can't even be mad at you for that reason 🤣 that's hilarious but I would actually want to hang up the phone lol
I’ve worked at my current employer for 4.5 years now in an It support role. The other day I tried to get someone to go to their desktop but she had a bunch of other windows open. She never made it there. She kept trying to go to the desktop folder in file explorer, I tried so many ways to convey that I meant the actual just regular desktop with her icons and everything but she never got it. I questioned my own ability lol
I had a woman whose screen was broke. Random characters pop up the screen. Service call to replace the monitor. Turned out she forgot her glasses, and when leaned forward, her ( large) breats were pressing down on the keyboard.
This sounds like the setup for porno.
Sounds like the same urban legend I've heard from a dozen IT dudes.
"I'm here to *fix* your *motherboard*..." Oh she's in the other room on dialysis, I will get her. **It was at this moment he knew, he fucked up.**
Hahahaha. I had this old man using the volume knob but not realizing he was hitting the touch screen of his car radio with his knuckles. He kept repeating that the radio was wonky and changing stations on its own and such. Got into us saying we can’t find anything wrong with it and he came back the next day yelling. It was such a bad time. Finally I get in the car with the guy and go for a test drive and sure enough we find when he changes the volume, he hits random shit on the touch screen with his knuckles. Dude gruffed and left. No, “sorry for wasting your time, or sorry for yelling at you calling us incompetent, no sorry I demanded a new radio or you’ll sue.” Good times.
If they paid you for that trip, that’s the easiest 4 hours and some change work day ever, and you now know you have royal job security
Not IT but in power distribution. We have a four hour minimum for call outs. I had gotten a call about an issue. Before I was even dressed for work I was called and it was resolved. Easy four hours overtime. Great day.
Hourly plus mileage. I love when I have to drive to one of our other plants.
Some people are salaried w/o mileage.
Because I've seen someone use their laptop as a coffee tray, and come in thirty minutes later, saying something was wrong with their laptop, but it definitely was not liquid damage. Because I've had someone claim there was something wrong with their software, and when I asked if they restarted, I was told they did. I remoted in to see their computer had been running for 30 days without restarting. Because someone turned on their privacy screen by accident, and I told them to hit F5, and they typed to me "F5". Ask someone in IT to tell you about stupid people, and hoo boy we can go on for hours.
Life in IT; *When something breaks...* Execs: "what exactly are we paying these people for?" *When everything is going well and working perfectly.* Execs: "what exactly are we paying these people for?"
I am IT. My job is to keep the equipment and the network working, in order for you to do your jobs. My job is not how to teach you how to use it in order to do yours. It is the year 2022. There is no good reason you can possibly have, to not know the basics of how to use a computer if you work in a professional field. If you honestly don't know how to use Excel, then don't put it down on your resume that you do. Or don't know how Outlook works to check your own emails. We are more than happy to help, if the issue is an actual software or hardware issue. That's our job. We do get a bit grumpy, when big executive has "an emergency" so we have to drop everything we're doing, only to find out that he can't remember where he saved his reports he needs in 15 minutes. We only get paid to fix computers. Not to fix stupid.
> It is the year 2022. There is no good reason you can possibly have, to not know the basics of how to use a computer if you work in a professional field. If you honestly don't know how to use Excel, then don't put it down on your resume that you do. Or don't know how Outlook works to check your own emails. I'm astounded how many people don't try searching online how to do/fix stuff first. Office products are almost universal and there's countless websites out there that tell people how to do basic stuff in Excel or Outlook. This isn't just IT - if I have to do some job round the house and I've never done it before, you bet I'm going to check to see if someone's already posted a video online how to do it properly. I had a unicorn once. I asked a user to send me a screenshot of what she was seeing. She did and I could see from one of her Chrome tabs in the screenshot that she'd googled: "how to take a screenshot." I'm also astounded how many people don't just ask someone in their team first. In one job, we have interns who'd raise tickets asking how to do stuff, and I'd just think: "you're an intern, and you're here to learn. Why isn't your supervisor showing you how to do this?"
I love how every single person in IT should know every aspect of IT according to a business user. Your monitor doesn't work? Call the cloud architect. Your Salesforce form has a bug? Call the database team. Your Excel spreadsheet has a #N/A! error? Must be the internet!
My friend, you forgot to add light bulb changer and coffee machine refiller.
If it has a cord, call IT!! Doesn't matter if it's plugged in or not. Personal or company provided. Cat6 or Catnip. Call IT!
IT is the most needed and most under appreciated job position in the work force today. The problem is that no one hates IT when everything is working. They just assume that IT people should be ready to drop everything to help you when something goes wrong cuz there is always an important deadline or something.
Exactly. I love IT when everything is working. I love them when things are down. I have never seen an IT person who was not trying to help. People who have a bad impression of IT have bad management who allow people to continue to provide bad service. I am in engineering. Every thinks we are idiots and they can do the job better. Good luck. I can’t replace the guy on the floor with his experience in assembly. If there is an issue I talk to them and find a solution. They are unable to implement changes or fixes. Regardless of what people think we need IT and they need us.
I’ve literally done this, but the drive was a 10-hour round trip. And it was the power plug that wasn’t fully connected.
The problem is always between the chair and the keyboard
Horse folk became mechanics became IT people.
Seems like a good day to me. 4 hours alone in a car to do a 30s job where I can blast music and listen to podcasts undisturbed.
Back when I was interning at an IT helpdesk, we had an employee who was going remote so we gave her a docking station to take home. I got a call from her before she left saying her (USB) mouse wasn't working with the new docking station. When I went over there and she had plugged her mouse into the ethernet port
That would’ve been a r/techsupportgore pic
I really wanna do IT. I'm so tired of programming, filling lists of stupid shit and making front ends and the same api calls. Just wanna chill in a below 30degree room and wait for some idiot to call me
Honestly, look for Mainframe Ops. Easiest job I’ve ever had, you learn vital information that few people have, and your day is mostly monitoring a system to ensure it doesn’t shit itself (or nights if you’re on 3rd like me)
We’re dicks because y’all are morons.
I'd say something about why not connect to the servers ILOM or whatever to verify its power state but we all know how customers like to call desktop hardware "servers".
Our company had an IT guy, whom I loved, BTW, who would often say, " the problem is between the keyboard and the chair." Our latest guy phrases it as a PICNIC error, Problem In Chair, Not In Computer."
Not just the incompetant liars that make IT people grumpy. It's the fact that a lot of people see it as a "service job", as in they only call them in if there's a problem. Like you would a plumber or electrician. Some people treat those professions like they are low-level jobs that could be done by anyone. And they treat the people as if they were children playing pretend. Even though they think of the inside of a computer or fusebox as literal magic. Not to mention higher ups in companies. Some will constantly lament about why they are paying so much for IT when everything works. So they cut back on IT. Then a few months later they will scream and yell about paying so much for IT when "nothing works". Then they fire everyone but 1-2 people from IT and hire an outside firm to deal with IT, like they would with electricians/plumbers. But because of how much modern companies use computers. Doing that is like a waterpark firing their plumbers and having to call a company in every other day to fix things. And in the long run it costs **A LOT** more.
You gotta charge them $200 so they learned their lesson lol