IT Workers, What's The Most Ridiculous Thing You've Had To Fix? r/AskReddit Reddit Stories Top Posts

i t workers what is the most ridiculous your it you have to fix this request you've received years ago i worked for a rather large isp as a tech lead a residential dsl customer called in demanding to speak to a supervisor because his internet was down and he was going to miss out on some multi-million dollar deal of he couldn't get on the internet he kept yelling at me throughout the call and demanded i fix it immediately while troubleshooting the issue i could see that i couldn't reach the dslam his connection ran through i advised him i would have to reach out to a dispatch center to have a tech go take a look at it at some point he informed me that on his way home he saw that a vehicle had run off the road into one of our boxes and it had caught fire he still said he was planning on suing our company if he wasn't able to be online to make this supposed deal of his i passive aggressively suggested he go to a starbucks and wished him well with the lawsuit i work in web development maintenance i got a call from a client who was absolutely livid when i told her that she could not take the hyperlink text from her web page transfer it over to their print ad and still have it function like a link lady called to report her monitor wasn't working after troubleshooting and asking her multiple times if everything was plugged in she finally pipes up that the monitor doesn't have the light on the monitor wasn't plugged in and she wanted me to wake a guy up at 3am to do it because she was dressed to nicely to do it herself because she was preparing for a beating at 6am told her to do it herself because i was not about to wake up the on-call for that she complained to our director and he literally laughed at her and her reasoning for wanting the on-call sent out and she is now banned from calling in drove for two hours to replace a touchscreen monitor that had stopped responding turns out they were wearing gloves we used to log these type of callouts as id10t errors one of my first jobs was in the 90s i was senior i.t admin for a medium-sized company and on my day off the ceo called i had to get in cause the mail wasn't working and also the banking software didn't work this ceo was primarily responsible for the financial department so especially this last part was hurting him when i came in said ceo was really flaming basically burning the entire i.t department of three ppl as being incompetent overpaid duck ups and all the loss of business revenue should come out of our pocket ctc etc so during this lovely tirade i come in and in a few seconds i realize we have a problem with the internet connection keep in mind these were the 90s so we had a dual iced connection and a dial up modem connected to it i run a few tests and instead of the common modem sounds i hear some low-res voice on the line i connect a regular phone to it listen to it and then gave it to the ceo saying it's for you after that the ceo said nothing and used his own mobile to manage the finances what did the ice and phone say due to not paying you bloody bill this line is disconnected if you want to reinstate this service you have to pay xx plus admin cost ctc etc double quote i went home after that with a very big grin and started looking for another job i was asked to fix a cabinet once i don't mean like a server rack or anything i mean a little wooden cabinet with shelves and stuff edit i was once also asked to fix an old oscilloscope that was out of warranty it was running embedded windows so i could at least sort of see their thought process on that one but it was still a no posted this before but i was a remote tech and had a woman call me and wanted me to drive six plus hours to her facility to turn on her computer because hitting the power button was not her job get an email from a user one day the numbers on my keyboard don't work all right not a lot to go on but probably easier to just give them a new keyboard i look up the user to figure out where i need to go with a keyboard and see their past logins are only on a work laptop all right better actually email them then just to confirm all the other keys on the keyboard work but not when you use the numbers on either the top row or on the pad to the right two days later nine am user response just the pad on the right this is really annoying can you come take care of this quickly all right you took your sweet ass time for that reply but maybe you were out or busy if it's just the number pad probably has num lock turned off i look up the model number definitely has an unlock key so i emailed back at 9 15 am it could just be the num lock has turned off there should be a key called num with a lock on it just above the number pad could you press that first then try to use the numbers and let me know the results next day user submits a ticket numbers on keyboard don't work frustrated at this point i send another email is this concerning the issue with the number pad were you able to try the num lock key and if so how did that turn out two days later user sends a new email directly to me and cc's the ceo of our 10 000 employee company email says i've been trying to have this issue resolved for over a week now can somebody please come fix my laptop the keyboard does not work i just stare at my screen for a minute who the hell is this person system says they are just a csr do they know the ceo have i really done anything wrong here after the initial shock and self-doubt i realize i'm totally fine and this guy has got to be the biggest [ __ ] in the world so i walk over to my boss's office and let him know the situation he's just as dumbfounded when i mention the ceasing the ceo part says he'll look into it but for now just go down and fix the issue so i walk over to this guy's station and he looks like he's 18. he tells me the same things i already knew from the emails i lean over him open a notepad press a couple keys and as i suspect everything works fine but the number pad is moving the cursor around press the num lock key and then type again numbers appearing i just deadpanned the guy need anything else and he of course doesn't understand and just says no but i can't believe it took you guys a week to figure that out knowing nothing good comes from this i just say have a good one and leave get back to my office boss is laughing his ass off as i tell him what happened he follows up with an email to the guy's supervisor ceasing their manager and myself as well basically retelling the story in full last i heard the manager chewed out the supervisor and the supervisor chewed out the csr damned if i know if an idiot that thick learned anything though the power went out in our building and the owner of the company wanted to know what we were doing to get the computers up i've somehow become the apple guy at my work we recently received a batch of brand new ipad pros and within a week i received a repair request due to a screen malfunctioning turns out by screen malfunctioning they meant completely destroyed shattered like it had been continuously hit with a hammer lady is giving vague explanations about what happened talking about how it might have fallen off her desk onto the carpeted floor but apparently this is something i can fix she needed it for a beating that afternoon i had to explain that this isn't something we can fix that i'll need to go through apple for a replacement device shocking news apparently i was working as a developer at a navy contract one morning a navy captain walked up to my desk you roman yes sir how can i help you i got a virus in my email so i forwarded it to you but but why well i didn't want it in my inbox but but comma as it's supposed to go to somebody else you could have deleted it or notified the it guys across the hall who deal with that type of stuff sir well your i.t right sigh our it help desk before it was renamed the support desk eventually ended up keeping fluorescent tubes and whiteboard markers in stock because people would send complaints to the ceo that we were refusing to help when we asked them to contact the office manager for these things the flip side is that the ceo eventually created a new email address for people to send complaints directly to him very few people knew that this special ceo complaints email address actually got forwarded to the office manager people have the capacity for such unimaginable greatness and such hard to believe stupidity i was personally once reported for sabotaging a specific secretary by refusing to fix her printer it was printing garbage turns out she installed an epson color printer driver from the disc that came with her friend's new color printer on her win 95 computer so that her mono hp deskjet printer would also print color she reported me the third time i uninstalled the bad driver and asked her not to do it again i'll start one time somebody at a company asked me why isn't the microwave working you're an i.t after all fix it i thought they were joking but after a bit of deliberation they were either serious or very committed to the role once had a person call into the it desk because the soda machine stole their money previous it for a u.s based online bank the sheer amount of calls regarding and supported devices or user error that customers considered my fault were staggering we had to accept and troubleshoot every call regardless and would guess at most 15 percent of calls ended up being an actual tech issue rather than ped cac problem exists between chair and keyboard my favorite though was a man cursing up a storm that he was taking his business elsewhere he was traveling and his mobile device did not allow access to our site he had also apparently bought at least five that the previous rep had fairly to make work phones from a street vendor before calling tech he refused to allow me to go over the basics like os and providers and kept saying just do your job after at least half an hour but probably longer i finally was allowed to start with the basic steps one of the first questions was os and provider all of which were 10 years out of date or were names unfamiliar to me and my list of supported devices frustrated this man complained about where he was stuck unable to access his online bank i don't remember the exact location but i do remember my sadistic glee this man was vacationing in a norfolk sanctioned country basically he was vacationing somewhere like in korea of the dem roc that the u.s has issued sanctions against and our policy did not allow his card or online access in that country his response i don't care fix it thankfully after another half hour of me explaining i could not change security policy or the fact he was in a blocked country he escalated to my supervisor which made it no longer my problem old story back in the early 90s all of alaska's comb was via satellite we would get notices from our providers when a solar storm was going to slow down our throughput i went upstairs to our finance and accounting chief to tell her the nightly processes might be late due to the storm her response was your i.t just fix it never let her forget that she saw me as a god got a call to remove a plug on a radio and push the wire through a small vent in the cabinet because the wire was unsightly i did this while 15 executives watched none of them knew how to change a plug and had never even seen the inside of one but because it had a wire it was its responsibility [Music] back in my very early career i had this customer named mr windsor he was this grumpy older guy and everything was an emergency and he was always yelling about some i.t issue he was having the most memorable as he called us livid over some sight he was getting a forbidden error on how dare we forbid him from going to his website i had to patiently explain that there was an issue with that site and he'd have to contact the owner about an hour later he calls back demanding to speak to me personally he got an email saying he had a fatal error how dare we wish him to die finally figured out that he'd misspelled the email address and the fatal error was coming from the mail system i just looked up the number to the web company and told him to call i'd love to know how that conversation went anyway few days before christmas we get a phone call it's mr windsor he is slurring his words and clearly been drinking something festive he called to apologize for being a miserable old duffer and thank us for being patient back to his usual miserable self after christmas of course interesting character i'm not i.t but i have to support our product for one week intervals periodically the worst call went like this answers phone hi company name off our support can i help you it's not working uh okay what's not working it's a thing it doesn't work at all okay what are you trying to do when it errors it just crashes when i try to use it i wound up needing to walk her through every single step from opening our website logging into the portal which icon they click opening citrix the utility they use within our program etc just to determine where the problem was occurring i'm an application architect for medical record software my primary users i refuse to call them customers are physicians and nurses in a clinic setting there's one specific doctor who will call and give a very vague description to the help desk she refuses to do a shadow session refuses to let us get screenshots and the person from the help desk isn't an application expert so they're trying to write down her issue and she's using the wrong words by the time we usually figure out her issue we could have resolved it in half the time if she just would have taken two minutes to speak with us my favorite is when our internet service goes out usually when this happens there is a fiber or cable line down or our ice is doing general maintenance i try to explain to baby boomer co-workers that my responsibility ends outside of our local area network and it's our ice duty to repair whatever is causing the outage no matter how many times i try to explain they don't listen it's my fault and i'm a lazy piece of do nothing it's in the reason they can't get their precious internet and email one place i worked it was pretty much if it got electricity it was it's issue we had to fix the water fountain that wouldn't stop running we had to fix a coffee machine i had a doctor ask my why the state's death certificate database didn't work for him over the weekend mind you i didn't work for the state i worked for a practice he did contract work for i told him they were probably a flying for maintenance when he tried to log in but that wasn't good enough he insisted i get to hold of the state's i.t department and find out what happened the database was working just fine when he asked btw as he brought the working site up on his ipad right in front of me so a week goes by and he is in my office again and asks if i had any luck with the state i t dept i had completely forgotten about his absurd request so i said the following as it turns out i did they told me some clod in their department decided to microwave a hot pocket on his lunch break but accidentally left a fork in with it the microwave blew a breaker that controlled the server room knocked everything offline for a bit until they got it back up and running everything should be fine now he was satisfied and walked away sometimes people don't care what the answer is just as long as they get one i worked for an online college and a student wanted me to change his username it was goat bigger not necessarily an i.t worker but a computer scientist a lot of people get those confused but one time i was at my sister's house and she needed help getting her printer connected so she asked me you know how to do this help me and i tried to do it because it was a simple google search to fix this but she is breathing down my neck because i'm not getting this solved at the speed she wants me to get it done she then drops it didn't you go to school for this on me and i respond with no i make software that sometimes works moral of the story if you are an i.t worker or a computer scientist keep that to yourself a couple simple ones i got called in to repair a broken printer the guy was pretty livid as he was trying to print in a hurry turns out it ran out of paper even worse i had my boss loose is it on me that his computer didn't work and made the comment that nothing ever works around here hinting that i failed at my job i went into his office and found that he didn't turn it on i pushed the power button and all i got was an o i.t support has to be one of the worst jobs stupid-ass people and anytime something like a mouse battery dies your oppose got a call the scanner in hr was broken thought to myself we don't have a scanner in hr go to the office the lady has word open and is holding a document to the screen hitting enter repeatedly i thought no one would believe me so i brought about five other texts along to corroborate edit my first gold i have been waiting to say thank you kind stranger forever vague tickets that give no clue as to what's wrong beyond computer broke lol then you ring them up asking them to fill it in properly and they get annoyed i thought you guys knew what you're doing or when the cairns at work drop off their personal laptops or phones and expect us to fix it that's not what we're here for all sorts it wasn't a demand but i was once called to help get a fish out of a fish tank it had decided to go on a suicide mission into the pumps and i had to dismantle it all to get it back out it died i'm regularly asked to help hang doors fix locks program thermostats and boilers change time on clocks even repair people's spectacles shoes and anything they carry that could break and look technical hell helping people with their broken down cars or breaking into them when they lose their keys fixing gates all sorts some of it has electronics which people assume is an i.t specialism when it's not but often it's just the hands on nature that they're after most people realize it's not my job but we have the tools the eyesight so many people with bad eyesight the fine hand control the know-how the ability to find manuals and tutorials quickly and the work surfaces to do it on someone refused to believe that computers need power and won't work in a blackout not me and not the guy i knew but someone he knew a story from many years ago this other fellow is a photocopier serviceman he gets a call from one of their clients about their photocopier not working he goes through the short list with the person on the phone including it's plugged in right the client assures him everything else is fine so he grabs his stuff and heads to the client site first thing he looks at when he gets to the copier is the power cord sure enough it's in the socket but not properly seated so no juice so with the client there he stands over the copier in the right spot lays his hands on the top of the copier and begins chanting as he reaches the crescendo out of sight of the client he lifts his leg up and kicks the plug into the socket fully and the copier comes to life on the worksheet in the area where he's supposed to describe what actions he took he simply writes i healed it and has the client sign in worked for a small bank two it staff including me drove 60 miles out to a branch to fix an issue and while i was used to getting hit with a million saved up while your hair issues i was not prepared for the toilet is acting weird can you look at it while you're here early in my career when i still did home user work i had a client request him on site because every time i go get a beer my computer crashes wouldn't crash when he like went to the bathroom or anything just when he went to get a bear so i'm staring at this computer and i can see in the logs that there are crashes but nothing that would help me understand what was causing it because it's not the beers finally i'm grasping at straws and ask him to show me what he does when it crashes he says i told you it crashes when i go get a beer so i'm like just humor me he sits down in the chair and then stands up walks clean to the other side of the house huge open living room thing with one of those weird sunken conversation pit things and heavy shag carpet walks up to this built-in mini fridge opens it grabs a beer closes it starts walking back and opens the beer and the computer takes it what the duck took about 30 seconds of feeling like the world had gone mad and this dude was like some sort of weird beer magician when the light bulb came on the mini fridge was probably on the same circuit as the pc the compressor in the mini fridge was going bad and drawing too much from the circuit when it kicked in brown out and the computer would crash dude was right all along his computer would crash whenever he went to get a bear i'm not an i.t worker but this would happen when i was in school we used laptops in school on some occasions and the person's account who would use a laptop the previous lesson would still be logged on my teacher would really make the it guy working in the school walked in our class and log accounts on and off because the kids were too stupid to know that all you had to do was log off the previous person's account i work in the networking department as a support technician i had a lady yelling at me and telling me our network service is totally crap after calming her down i found out that her tv is showing a blue screen and won't switch channels the wi-fi is working more than fine on her phone and her kids xbox as he is playing an online game while we were talking i was expected to fix her old tv as it was a network problem work in networks and used to share an office with people who just basically took situation reports so when they were out of the office for lunch or called in sick we'd answer their phones and take notes for when they got back out next shift came in so our guy calls out one night and i take a call that some generator somewhere went out okay cool write it in the log and pass it on for the next shift then boss ends up questioning me on what i did about the generator like what do you expect me to do ping it would you like me to get its mac address it literally has nothing to do with my job everyone thinks i know how to get a printer from 1980 to work on windows 10 fellow churchgoers family members but i love this old dot matrix printer i want to keep it e okay everyone i know it's possible but is it worth the effort when the person can buy our printer for 50 colon e for the love of all that is holy stop spending time on figuring out how to do this nothing was broke but i got a request into the it help desk once from an employee asking where he could get a pig carcass i have the stack of loan applications on my desk why can't you come up with a way to get the data into the system a sign to help workers in the field use some new mapping software every field crew member has to be able to log into the laptops in the trucks even if they do not use it login is by fingerprint scanner wtf i find this guy and tell him to show me he can log in he says i am a laborer so i will never use it doesn't matter my job is to check the box so he tries to log in and it will not recognize his fingerprint i ask him if they got a fingerprint on file for him i meant during the training session where he was set up to log in he says yes none of his fingers work and he says well they got them all i log in and pull up the fingerprint scanner reads for him and he is not registered at all i set it up to the recorder print for him and tell him to go ahead the guy looks at the laptop for a second and then carefully rolls his finger on the touchpad okay so what were you in for assault i would kindly direct you all to our talos from tech support for a cornucopia of such accounts and regailments not i.t but i'm a huge computer nerd in a computer illiterate family we have a family computer on our living room for everyone and my sister decided to download a bunch of useless programs and viruses then the computer began to run really slow what a surprise my mother told me to fix it since i was the computer expert after a quick analysis i told her that i needed to remove all the junk my sister downloaded she called my lil sis and told her everything lil sis is an entitled kid sis made a huge tantrum about removing her programs then mother told me to remove something else instead of her programs i argued that that was the only way to get the computer running and she claimed that she knew better than me cause she's older and wiser i smuggly said fine you deal with this fast forward a couple of weeks the computer crashed and won't work i got a used laptop for myself they demand me to help them fix the computer since i know a lot about computers i told them to ask my mother since she's older and wiser tldr just because you are older that doesn't make you smarter always listen to a computer expert my dad used to work in software development one of his co-workers had to call lighty because his computer wasn't turning on turns out his power strip was plugged into itself he never lived that one down in a prior position i worked as a shift leader to oversaw the tier one troubleshooting team for the pacific for the dod's military network infrastructure we got a ticket which we are required to investigate regardless that a user was not able to connect their mobile device to wireless strange this sounds like an end-end user issue and we don't troubleshoot wireless turns out a user was some woman at a starbucks on a base in georgia or somewhere like that could not connect to the wi-fi at starbucks so she had googled military internet and through a series search refinements ended up with the help desk number i politely told her she'd have to talk to the starbucks and that we dealt with military services and military customers not as precise a term i should have used and she gave me an earful about how she was a military spouse and she is on base and her husband was captain so and so i didn't waste any more time so i gave the phone to my battle captain a big black actual captain and he told her hpls unless this is for nipr or sipr or you're a tactical mission this isn't for you is you a tactical mission he then told us to cancel the ticket assembling the office furniture is a good use of it time i worked help desk back in the 90s i got a call once me hello help desk how can i help you them my monitor is on fire what should i do me get the hole away from my t and get an extinguisher them okay i thought there was some way you could maybe fix it me i don't have a refined put out monitor fire button on my desk [Music] you

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Id: qdNEJR8GdXY

Length: 28min 43sec (1723 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 21 2021