r/Talesfromtechsupport How The Office Karen MELTED 3 Computers

welcome to our slash tales from tech support where a customer melts four computers our next reddit post is from macross for context on this next post the office was not at all cold nowhere near cold enough to need a space heater but there's always one lady that has to have one this is the first ticket from the insane lady my desktop keeps overheating and shutting down i'm behind on work and missing deadlines because of this repeating issue that's resulted in lost work this lady has a space heater under her desk pointing directly at her desktop because my feet get too cold in the air conditioned office i removed the unapproved heater ran test and the desktop was fine i checked the event logs and it had only ever shut down or crashed once from overheating i explained that i only found one shutdown from overheating i explained that you can't expect a pc to not overheat when it's heated i made notes in the ticket and delivered the space here to the facility's manager she raised a big sting with her manager who talked with the facility's manager and had the heater returned they didn't involve me at all and the unit was placed in exactly the same spot i got my second ticket from the insane lady the very next day desktop is overheating again i can't continue to work like this fix it or replace my desktop with a laptop i show up and see the heater right back where it was before her desktop was off but the actual hardware damage was done to the motherboard this time i replaced her computer with a spare desktop of the same make and model i reroute all the cabling and place her desktop on top of her desk so it won't melt from the space heater she complains about how her small desktop takes up too much room on her double sized cubicle desk space and she should have a laptop i explained that i didn't have a laptop available and it actually takes up less space than a laptop anyhow once you factor in the docking station i explain again that the space heater killed the previous machine and it shouldn't be placed next to a heat source i cc our manager on the ticket i also let my manager know about what's going on at this point because both cases were totally avoidable i get my third ticket from the insane lady two days later on a friday the new desktop is overheating and shutting down just like the last one i'm weeks behind on my project at this point please give me a laptop so i won't have this type of problem i show up right after her ticket was created she was packing up her stuff to leave for the day and she looked put out that i even showed up so soon to deal with her issue her desktop was on the floor next to her space heater i asked her why she moved it back there after killing the previous desktop and after clearly explaining that it caused the problem she wasn't having it said it took up too much room and she should have a laptop anyhow this time when i fired up her desktop it wouldn't even go to post i noticed the heater was on the highest possible setting and was aimed directly at the pc this time there was just something about how visibly annoyed she was that i was going to fix it like she was ready to take an early weekend since she couldn't work anyway i explained that i would have a replacement ready within 30 minutes more to gauge her reaction than anything and she looked even madder is it going to be a laptop i don't see a replacement being worth it if it's just gonna melt under my desk again i agreed a computer under your desk is probably a bad idea but if she wanted a laptop she would have to get her boss to approve the purchase of one i took her dead desktop and brought back a replacement desktop within 20 minutes she was gone her cubemate said that she left for the day since it wouldn't have a replacement ready anyhow i documented everything in the ticket and called my manager my manager didn't seem to care at all he did stress that i was not to give her a laptop replacement unless her department approved and paid for it i was busy enough that this pissed me off so i walked over to hr and explained the situation so far to the hr rep she said she would talk to the user's manager about it and i didn't expect much sure enough the following monday i had a ticket to deploy a brand new laptop to the user since the space heater was under the desk and the way the cubicle desks were built there was a space behind the tops for cable routing this meant the majority of hot air from the heater would vent right up through that space which would feed directly into the air intake on the docking stations so i deployed the docking station and laptop to the right of her monitor instead of the left where we get hit by the heat once again she complained it's taking up too much room there can we put it on the other side i once again explained that the heat will kill a laptop twice as fast as the two desktops she's already killed after closing out the ticket i sent her an email and cc'd her manager my manager and the hr lady i explained the problems a space heater would cause and that it was her refusal to listen that had caused damage to multiple pieces of company property i let her know that moving the laptop to the other side of her desk would very likely damage the brand new laptop and it should not be done and it would result in even further delays in her ability to finish projects two days later i got my fourth ticket from this insane lady her laptop won't turn on she's leaving for the day so please fix her replace it was 10 am on a wednesday when i showed up she wasn't there her laptop was moved to the left side of her desk and her space heater was still on full blast pointing backwards without touching anything i called the facilities guy he agreed this here shouldn't have even been turned on he agreed that this woman could have burned down the whole freaking building her brand new laptop was toast we took photos of everything emailed her boss cc'd hr and my manager apparently her manager didn't even know that she left for the day she was two weeks behind on a big project and kept blaming it for messing up her schedule with pcs that didn't work i pulled her hard drive dumped all the data and was able to easily show that she hadn't done any work for this project in the last month i never saw that lady again after that much stricter rules were put in place for space heaters after that so at least i didn't have to deal with so many overheating issues it's just frustrating that i could tell pretty quick that she was full of garbage but i couldn't really do anything about it and beneath that we have a silver soy from in bumbo in my office a woman complained that it was cold in the office so she brought in a space heater soon after the office got real cold the thermostat was inside a plastic box so we couldn't mess with it the colder it got the more she cranked up the space heater eventually we noticed her space heater was pointed directly at the thermostat blowing hot air on it and kicking on the ac in winter our next reply is from kevi rayne so this happened almost 8 years ago but it's something i routinely bring up to new hires when training or nesting because it's highly effective backstory our company had an issue with the product and we were aware of it but we still had to do damage control i was on the phones at the supervisor level and had been handling upset customers who didn't think our appeasement was efficient and i thought i'd heard everything q queen karen when a customer requests an escalation someone in my role has to take it after the advisor briefs us on the case this advisor warned me that i had quite the handful here and i said no worries i got this i joined the advisor when the customer was taken off hold and we were immediately greeted with it effing took you long enough due to the issue overwhelming us and management only approving overtime that day we had a 45 minute escalation queue and our 5 minute briefing time had been reduced to 3 minutes so this customer had been waiting about 48 minutes to speak with me i was introducing the advisor left the call this is where the fun begins hello customer i'm i know the ceo and i'm a shareholder i know my rights and if you don't give me what i want right now i'll hang up this phone and you will be fired okay i apologize if you feel our appeasement offer is insufficient i can escalate your case to see if we can grant an additional appeasement but i would need at least 48 hours to see what can be done i know the effing ceo i can call him right now and have you fired so do it now in this moment all my frustration and rage boiled over and instead of calling her stupid i decided to call her bluff ma'am i can clearly see that you're very important and since you've clearly stated twice that you have a far more effective path of escalation than anything i can provide i feel it's best that you follow that path of escalation there was silence for a good 30 seconds followed by what you said twice during our conversation that you can directly speak with our ceo my escalation path ends far below the ceo or any other senior officer in the company so i think it's best you follow your escalation path realizing she screwed up she tries to walk it back no you see no no i simply can't allow you to continue down this path when you have a far more effective way to resolve this issue i'll make sure to note this on your account so you don't have to bother with our less effective escalation path in the future i hope you have a great day click in case you're wondering what happened she filed a formal complaint when she called another advisor who saw my notes and complied with her request my manager thought it was hilarious and she took the extraordinary step to call her and ask her why the customer was bothering her staff when she could have dealt with the ceo directly and gotten her preferred resolution the customer was dumbfounded that we actually believed her and whined about getting the appeasement my manager held the line on denying her the appeasement and advised the customer to choose her words more carefully moving forward so yeah if you call tech support and say that you personally know the ceo of the company you may get a customer service rep who will call you on your bluff our next reddit post is from andrew knox this story happened when i first joined my current company and while i wasn't the one that actually had to deal with this problem i was standing by and heard the juicy parts from my mentor himself exactly two days before a major festive celebration we got a call from a user who's panicking because one of his equipment failed and production has come to a screeching halt now i work in a company that services critical process equipment in a country with a distinct west half and east half separated by the sea this is important because we're based in the western half the client was a major refining plan for the petroleum industry as we normally do we go through the usual troubleshooting steps did you turn this on is the connection active yada yada yada but the only answer coming from the user was yes yes yes with nothing seemingly wrong this went on for about half an hour when suddenly our boss comes in the client's head of production had just called him and he was apparently livid it turns out the machine has stopped working for more than an hour and production was severely interrupted until the problem got fixed now everyone was in a panic because every hour that production was interrupted the client was losing money in the tens of thousands of dollars and the client had the right to sue us for any damages that occur as a result of equipment downtime the hit of production was not happy that their internal team wasn't able to fix the problem and the user wasn't making any headway in fixing the problem via phone to resolve the issue the hit of production demanded that support be performed immediately on site coming back to my earlier points i should point out that one it's the festive season two they're across the sea traveling was a bit of a problem but the hit of production said money wasn't an issue and they would pay anything for immediate on-site support cue my mentor who was handed the unsavory task of handling this emergency immediately he grabbed his tools and sped off to the airport to grab the next available flight at the same time his wife had to pack clothes for him and rush to meet him at the airports we would have close to change into due to the festive season my mentor didn't have choices for flights so in the end he had to take a 1 000 business class flight normally flights to where the client is located cost 80 bucks we're a developing country so yeah upon arriving my mentor was whisked away from the airport with a driver and sent immediately to the refinery and granted immediate security clearance to enter the plant anyone working in petroleum would know how big of a deal this is by this time a good six hours or so had passed since we received the call and we were well into the night greeting him in front of the equipment was the hit of production the user and various other senior management personnel all anxious to see what the problem was my mentor is a guy with no chill and he was also the one originally speaking to the user on the phone according to him this is what went down the head of production said so what's the problem my mentor said wait let me take a look he starts to go through the normal troubleshooting checklist but stops almost immediately user are you sure you checked everything that i asked you to yeah everything word for word are you absolutely sure yes do you remember what the third thing i asked you to check for over the phone was why does that matter just fix the goddang problem the first thing we normally check is to make sure the pc is turned on he points to the cpu led indicator the second thing we check is to make sure the equipment is turned on he points to the machine led the third thing is to make sure the gas is on he brings his hand to the gas control valve rotates it and a loud hiss is hurt as the gas line pressurizes and the equipment beeps everyone standing in the room is silent my mentor just says i would like to go have dinner now after more awkward silence the head of production thanks my mentor for his effort and asked the driver to bring mentor somewhere for dinner you would think the story ends here but there's more by the time my mentor finishes dinner it was well past midnight so he checked himself into a hotel for the night the next day he went back to the airport and found out that all flights were completely sold out for the next four days due to holiday traveling he called my boss to inform him that he was basically stranded and my boss just coolly said to him well just consider this as a free holiday paid for by the client so my mentor checked into the most luxurious hotel in the area and spent the next four days basically on vacation before coming back to work in total we build the client for over 10 000 for flights hotel emergency arrangements allowances etc all for just 10 seconds of troubleshooting to check two leds and turn a valve that's not even including the losses from halting their production it's still one of the most memorable stories that we tell the new hires or clients in our industry sometimes we wonder what happened to the user but he was transferred out of his role not too long after the incident beneath that we have a similar story from own cupcake i had a nearly identical experience except it was in the u.s and it was on a nuclear power plant all i did was travel halfway across the country waste a day in training and then turn on a breaker literally it was a five second job that was our slash tales from tech support and if you like this content check out my patreon where i publish extra episodes also hit that subscribe button because i put out new reddit videos every single day

Channel: rSlash

Views: 472,102

Rating: 4.9473171 out of 5

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Id: mcZHjzWFgdw

Length: 15min 30sec (930 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021