Why I love working in tech support.

[Tac]

Heh.

Just like getting a so-called Network Admin on the line screaming at you because his system doesnt work...

When I began to tell him step by step how to get to device manager, he very petulantly demanded I didnt treat him like an idiot, he was a sys admin!!!.

Ok...

"Alright, lets go to device manager and check.."

"the what?"

"Device Manager"

"Where's that?"

*sigh*

Or better yet,

I once had some real smartass furious because he had followed a previous tech's instructions to restore his kernel32 file ... the system we sold him was a win98 according to the records..


and it wasnt until his tongue slipped that we realized the moron was using a win95 CD to fix his win98 system. And of course, using System File Checker to get the file from the CD-ROM had put in the win95 kernel on win98.. and the result was beyond words. If there ever was a blue screen of death that screamed "IMBECILE" at you, this one did. Bwhaha.

[Skuzzy]

Well, iI do take some pride in the service I give to folks, but sometimes I want to throw the frakin phone across the street, through a window.

Caller:  What do I need to get an Internet connection?
Me:  You need a modem in your computer.
Caller:  Oh,..I need a computer?
Me:  Yes, you need a computer.
Caller:  How much do they cost?
Me:  Depends on the make, model, and options you pick.
Caller:  Oh,..would the Chevrolet dealer be able to help me?
Me:  No, you need to go to a computer store.
Caller:  Which one?
Me:  There are many, CompUSA, AllTex, Gateway, Best Buy.
Caller:  But can they install it for me?
Me:  You need to ask them.
Caller: Well, I dont have a lot of room in my car.  Are these computers small?
Me:  You can get what is called a laptop, which is smaller than a briefcase in most cases.
Caller: How easy is it to use?
Me:  Not too bad, if you read the manual, or ask the sales person they can let you try it.
Caller:  Oh, so I can take it for a test?
Me:  You need to ask the sales person about that.
Caller:  Well, you are not being very helpful.
Me:  I am trying to help as much as I can.
Caller:  I think I need to talk to another ISP, if that is the best you can do.
Me:  That is your choice.
Caller:  Let me speak to your boss!
Me:  I am the boss.
Caller:  Well, treating customers this way will get you run out of business, and I help that is exactly what happens to you!  How long have you been in business?
Me:  Almost 7 years.
Caller:  Hmmphfff.  It is a wonder.  People must be really dumb to use you for Internet.
Me:  That is thier choice.
Caller:  Well, just goes to show how stupid some people are.


This is a call I just took 10 minutes ago.  I didn't know whether to laugh or to pull the phone out of the wall.

I get all manner of calls from people everyday.  Some good, and some not so good.  Most days it is good, so I am grateful for a call like above to remind me there are some good people out there and thank goodness most people are not like the one above.

[Thrawn]

Originally posted by Skuzzy

Caller:  Let me speak to your boss!
Me:  I am the boss.

My god, I wish I could say this just once.

[weazel]

Thursday I got a call asking if I could install a video card, the guy said  a man at the flea market made him a good deal on a ATI Radeon 8500 ($90.00) but he wasn't comfortable with installing it himself.

Sure I told him, bring it by and I'll install it for you. He dropped off the PC and card Friday morning otw to work.  

I finished the job I was working on, opened the cards box to remove it and notice it had a small heat sink but no cooling fan, after closer inspection and searching the net I discover the guy has been ripped off, it's a Radeon 7000 in a 8500 box! ($30.00 card on Pricewatch)

Then I open his mini tower, WTF!..... There's no AGP slot, and the motherboard is an el-cheapo from a company no longer in business. (Delta mobo)

I called him and explained the problem, after he finally understood there was no way to install the video card and the mobo was obsolete/unsupported, I suggested a new motherboard would be the best solution since he insisted on using the ATI card.

He said he would pick one up otw home, I told him to make sure it supported the Intel Socket 370 with 66mhz FSB (Celeron 466)  and he replied he already knew that.

The guy arrived later with the mobo.....100 and 133mhz FSB only.  (GROANNNNN!)

He loaded his PC in his car and left in a huff.  

[Fishu]

Skuzzy,

I'd say it was definately worth a laugh
What a questions and then calling you dumb, haha
I wonder what he would have said if he would been told to look at the mirror..

[Nashwan]

My last job involved telephone support for users and the company I was contracted to's field engineers.

Users were generally fine, you could talk them through almost anything.

The engineers were a nightmare.

I spent half a day trying to get one of them to log on to a pc we had sent out to a shop.

Me: Log on as administrator
Engineer: How do you spell it?
Me: A-D-M-I-N-I-S-T-R-A-T-O-R
Engineer: Oh yeah, of course

Short pause while he tries to log in

Engineer: Is that one word or two?

After about 2 hours of this, he couldn't log in. He had the password, we verified the keyboard was working ok by typing the password into the login box so he could check the characters.

He refused to get one of the shop staff to try the PC.

I had to connect over a 56K phone line and install dozens of MBs of presentation software remotely. I could connect with the admin account and password, and when he had gone the shop staff could as well.

In my opinion users aren't so bad because most of them don't mind being treated like idiots and having things explained one step at a time.

[Kanth]

I have to you people who can do support over the phone.

I just don't have the patience for it.


 Recently I received a phone call at home, I was just drifting off to sleep on the couch one night and brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring.....ph one rings...I pick it up and it's this da from work. He's wanting tech support while I'm at home.

 Somehow he managed to finagle my phone number from accounting so he could call me and try to get support. So I tell him, I'm at HOME, we can take care of this tomorrow AT WORK.

he keeps trying to finagle support so I get increasingly short with him until finally the call ends..

two nights later the da calls me AGAIN and tries to get support...

 I had to talk to HR and the owners of the firm and have them talk to him and accounting to make sure he didn't call me again at home and it was brought up in the staff meeting that no one is give out anyone's private phone number unless that person specifically asks them to give it.
 
 I can't imagine the minds of the people who think that someone is so indebted to them that they can just get/give a private home phone number and expect technical support.

I'm so glad this thread was started, it's good to see you folks with the same kinda problems. Misery loves company!

 Kanthy

[Animal]

Yes, being a techie sucks hairy ass.

[Swoop]

Done both.

Done user support and that's a nightmare I'll never go back to.  Spend 4 hours on the phone with some 95 year old director who thinks PC are merely complicated abacus's and you'll want someone to shoot you.

Doing network support now, spend 3 days waiting for a linetech in Italy/Spain/Germany/Pakistan to get on site with a laptop, null modem cable and a mobile phone only to get the call record back with the update: Si, I reset the card.

Got the standard reply on macro now:  What part of reSEAT and CALL US WHEN ON SITE didnt you understand?


Know what I really hate though.........when *I* actually have to call user support cos something doesnt work as described and get spoken to like a normal numpty user.

"Have you plugged it in sir?"
"Is the power on sir?"
"Ah, thats the problem, windows not installed on the C drive sir"
"Ah, that'll be a layer 8 problem sir *scupcake*"  

I dunno, maybe user support makes you jaded.  Maybe I'm feeling light headed cos I agree totally with DjV for change.


But then that's the probem (er, not me in agreement with DjV, I mean user support making ya jaded).  Helpdesk work is highly stressful and, for the most part, badly paid compared to 2nd and 3rd level.  Helpdesk staff that have been there more than a few months and actually know something about the system generally want to move on to the calm and tranquil waters of 2nd level, which means you get a pretty constant staff turnover in helpdesks.....which keeps the skill level down on average.  ESPECIALLY on 3rd party call handling helpdesks, you know the ones, the ones that employ numpties from Albania who hardly speak english and think $4 an hour is a good wage.

Best one I ever had though was an IT technical manager (with diploma's and certificates on all kindsa cool toejame on his office wall) who decided (in 1991 this was) that if he changed his HDD type in the bios on the network server it'll give him a bigger HDD........"and what's this boot order thingy, dont need A in there.........oh, no idea what the bios password is, is it important?"

[Beefcake]

I remember one time when swoop was telling me about this really dumb guy who called him all the way from the USA. It was so har.......wait a sec....that was ME!!

Swoop

Booze is otw.

[Kanth]

I have to agree with you on this.

    We had outsourced our helpdesk to phone support and from what I have heard from the users, they were really bad.

  I guess the company we outsourced to had a huge turnover and had just hired in all new people and were in the process of training them WHILE we were paying them to do our first level of support.

 I don't think anyone even told them what our setup was like so they'd have a chance in hell of figuring anything out.

We eventually got rid of that situation and went back to inhouse.

 There is definately good and bad on both sides. We had hired one of the Unix admin's sons into our workplace and the guy had just gotten his A+ Cert and I can tell you that he was probably the most ignorant guy on earth when it came to PC's. It was all book  learning and he couldn't actually implement anything he'd learned.  I'd come in and he'd have his hands jammed into an open machine with the power still on, He'd try to force ribbon cables on backwards, he'd bent pins on chips (before slot1) it was pretty ugly..but ya know what? we kept him cause he was related to someone in the company.

I dunno how much it cost them in hardware lost..and the most common remarks I'd hear from him were:

 I just don't understand this or This is strange.

Meanwhile the rest of the team is picking up the slack for the work that he's not doing and when I asked my lead at the time why the hell he hired someone who can't do the job he yells at me saying "WHY DON"T YOU TEACH HIM" I said "WHY DON"T YOU HIRE SOMEONE WHO CAN DO THE WORK"

 see it was my fault for not being more lenient during my extra hour days because the guy they hired was an idiot.

Both inhouse and remotely you can get total boobs.

Btw the guy I mentioned just got his MCSE and was interviewing with Microsoft last I'd heard

Kanthy
 

Originally posted by Swoop

But then that's the probem (er, not me in agreement with DjV, I mean user support making ya jaded).  Helpdesk work is highly stressful and, for the most part, badly paid compared to 2nd and 3rd level.  Helpdesk staff that have been there more than a few months and actually know something about the system generally want to move on to the calm and tranquil waters of 2nd level, which means you get a pretty constant staff turnover in helpdesks.....which keeps the skill level down on average.  ESPECIALLY on 3rd party call handling helpdesks, you know the ones, the ones that employ numpties from Albania who hardly speak english and think $4 an hour is a good wage.

[Vulcan]

How about from the other end, sometimes help desk dweebs are such a hinderance. My previous ISP split there dial, flatrate dsl, and full speed (charge per mb) dsl bandwidth pools up. And made a mess:

Me: yeah hi I'm having real trouble with international bandwidth, I can get to national NZ sites ok, but anything out of the country is less than dialup, like 14kbps.

TD: we'll have to get someone from the telco to check your circuit

Me: but I can get to your website fine

TD: so you're not having bandwidth problems

Me: YES I AM, but INTERnational, not NATIONAL

TD: well that could be your line sir.

Me: So are you telling me you host your website in my garage?

TD: No? Why do you say that?

Me: Well if my line is porked like you say, then it must be in my garage because I get to it just fine.

TD: Oh, no sir. Then its in the Telcos local exchange.

Me: So now you're telling me you host your servers in Waitangarua exchange?

TD: Oh, Waitangarua? Uhmmm no. I see what you mean. Uhmmm. Please hold for a moment sir.

Me: OK

later

TD: Sorry, we don't guarantee any level of international bandwidth. If you can access local websites that means we are providing you with a connection to the internet.

Me: Yeah right! 99% of the internet is in the states and I can't get to. Stop giving me these BS lines and tell me WTF is going on!

TD: I'll have to put you through to my supervisor as you are now being hostile. Please hold.

Me: !#@$%!$!! ... then heres talking in the background.

TD: Ahhh my supervisor can't talk right now, but he suggested you send in a written complaint.

Needless to say, within 48hrs I had a new ISP.

[Kanth]

Sounds like one of those talking heads Vulcan, the type of person who cannot think on thier own, cannot make any decisions and get absolutely tongue tied if things don't go by their script.


 They are in all fields and you don't notice them unless something out of the ordinary happens and you watch them short circuit.

Hate those.

Kanthy

[Maniac]

I work with support

Well im an Network admin & Webb admin, we got about 150 users in an WAN-network. Since every computer is linked to the network and got its own unique IP-adress we have installed an application called "WinVNC", its an "remote control" application wich you can "take controll" over an remote computer located elsewhere on the network (like PC-anywhere).

The time we save by actually taking controll over the users computer is huge.

I cant imagine going back to the "phone support" where you had to guide the user every step... with the constant problem of the users missing vital information/steps...

Regards.

[Mickey1992]

This is a response to an email that I wrote some time ago about a user that refused to use Windows Explorer for file access and insisted on using the My Computer icon to access the hard drive.  The user's screen would become full of windows as he opened up directories 10 levels deep:

=====
That's the good thing about Windoze.  If people want to repeat menial tasks eventhough the OS gives them the functionality to automate or eliminate the need to, they can still continue to do it.  I believe that it was developed this way so that corporations would be able to instantly identify the undesirable employees and cull them from the herd.

Unfortunately it has had the opposite effect.  These people who refuse to create shortcuts on their desktop or get confused when you say, "No, idiot....I said RIGHT click" are the same people who continue to open their car trunks manually with a key eventhough they have a trunk release button on the dash.  They are diagnosed with having "computer problems" when in actuality the problem is between their chair and their keyboard.

I frequently get support calls from users who are too paranoid/stupid/impatient to call our help desk first.  Many times I will have had other idiots call about the same issue previously, and I will have a canned email response already created.  Usually I will include annotated screenprints of the procedures to follow.  Because like 3rd graders, the average computer user seems to comprehend things better when I include "pictures".

The real kicker is, more than once one of these users has called back after receiving my email.  They state that they are following the procedures in the email but it still isn't working.  The first thing I ask is if they still have their email database open.  Because on more than one occasion, I have found that the user was actually trying to click on the f**king screenprints in the email instead of going back to the application that they were having problems with.

But then again.....without mental morons like these, many of us would not have a job.