Dear Users... (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people)

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Client calls on the followup line. They give me the job number, I look it up. It's an issue with their headset. I know how to fix this. It takes about fifteen seconds to change the default playback device in the Sound control panel.

They proceed to tell me their life story. About how they emailed us this morning, but they have to listen in on a Senate session in forty-five minutes and they're so worried about it not working because it's vitally important and blah and blah and blah. On and on. I try to take control of the conversation but the only way I can do so is to outright interrupt. So I let them chatter.

Eight and a half minutes later, I remote to their computer and change their default playback device. Test successfully. What a waste of time.
 
arthwollipot said:
Client calls on the followup line. They give me the job number, I look it up. It's an issue with their headset. I know how to fix this. It takes about fifteen seconds to change the default playback device in the Sound control panel.

They proceed to tell me their life story. About how they emailed us this morning, but they have to listen in on a Senate session in forty-five minutes and they're so worried about it not working because it's vitally important and blah and blah and blah. On and on. I try to take control of the conversation but the only way I can do so is to outright interrupt. So I let them chatter.

Eight and a half minutes later, I remote to their computer and change their default playback device. Test successfully. What a waste of time.
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Was the Senate session interesting?
 
TragicMonkey said:
And now the stupid bastard thinks going over my head will make it happen. The current state is how the company chose to implement our system. It's a fundamental aspect of it. To change it wouldn't just be adding information to a database, it would mean hiring hundreds of staff and training them to do their jobs differently than the current staff does. They'd also need to have higher certifications and be paid more. This stupid bastard thinks he can talk to my boss because I'm being uncooperative about a line of SQL, when in actuality he's proposing a sea change in business operations that would affect thousands of employees and cost in the tens of millions of dollars to implement. It would also, needless to say, have to come from a lot higher up the totem pole than this stupid bastard.

For the sake of one goddamn data extract that's worth at most five digit returns to the company per annum.
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There's always the quick-set concrete and carpet roll solution.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Jesus Christ another ticket for a multi-person, round robin desk move for no reason.
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My boss just called a few days ago saying this was happening to me. I feel bad for the people who have to implement this while no-one is actually in the office. How pointless.
 
Wudang said:
Why is that still a thing? My last office we did it all ourselves.
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Insurance, usually. If you do the move yourself and drop something, you're liable for the cost. If you get IT to do it, the organisation is liable.

Also, in my experience, end-users cannot plug a cable into the correct port to save their lives, and they end up calling IT anyway.
 
We weren't allowed to move any of our equipment when that happened, either. When I fired everything up in the new cube, I noticed there were a bunch of little scratches on my fairly new monitor screen. I'm one who never allowed a fingerprint, smudge, or dust dot on my screen. And now I was stuck with looking at this damage for probably the next couple years until I was due a new monitor. Piisssed off.
 
Today I have to work out why the things that can't be deleted can't be deleted. There's only a handful and they're not hurting anyone....
 
Filippo Lippi said:
Today I have to work out why the things that can't be deleted can't be deleted. There's only a handful and they're not hurting anyone....
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My sibling was cleaning up my mom's computer and I had to stop her from deleting things on the grounds that "I don't know what these are, so they must not be needed".

Of course I say my sibling was the one cleaning up my mom's computer because she was the one sitting in the chair and driving the mouse, but it was I who came up with the notion that "let's look at what processes are running" and then suggested "this one application she doesn't use is actively running eighty-seven threads all the time, perhaps that's the source of the slowness". All credit for the improved performance went to my sibling, of course. Because she was sitting in the chair.
 
Filippo Lippi said:
The old green-eyed monster getting the better of you?
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Nah, just the perennial frustration that so many people don't consider figuring something out to be work. At least my employer does, which is what they pay me for. Family, however, will never understand that.
 
Ticket. "The phone in the breakroom fell off the wall." (All the phones in our organization are Cisco IP phones, so they fall under our perview)

Me (Reading the ticket) "Fell off the wall? The phone that's mounted into the wall with three bolts into studs in a metal mounting bracket? It fell off the wall? You could do pulls up on that damn thing and it wouldn't come off the wall."

Me (Arriving on location) "Oh so when you say the 'the phone fell off the wall' you mean the front half of the phone somehow got ripped off the backhalf of the phone and the half the circurity and the back half of the phone's casing is on the wall. Lovely"
 
JoeMorgue said:
Ticket. "The phone in the breakroom fell off the wall." (All the phones in our organization are Cisco IP phones, so they fall under our perview)

Me (Reading the ticket) "Fell off the wall? The phone that's mounted into the wall with three bolts into studs in a metal mounting bracket? It fell off the wall? You could do pulls up on that damn thing and it wouldn't come off the wall."

Me (Arriving on location) "Oh so when you say the 'the phone fell off the wall' you mean the front half of the phone somehow got ripped off the backhalf of the phone and the half the circurity and the back half of the phone's casing is on the wall. Lovely"
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Must have been some phone call to inspire that!
 
TragicMonkey said:
Must have been some phone call to inspire that!
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I can't tell for certain but I can't imagine how this occured without some sort of substantial weight being put on the front part of the phone (these are Cisco phones and have a screen/keypad.)

I'm guessing they tried to hang something, maybe a garbage bag, off of the phone. Or one of the "Widdle 'Ole Ladies" tried to use it as a handle when getting up from the table.

Of course nobody was actually in the room when the phone got depressed and decided to bifurcate itself and jump to its death.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I can't tell for certain but I can't imagine how this occured without some sort of substantial weight being put on the front part of the phone (these are Cisco phones and have a screen/keypad.)

I'm guessing they tried to hang something, maybe a garbage bag, off of the phone. Or one of the "Widdle 'Ole Ladies" tried to use it as a handle when getting up from the table.

Of course nobody was actually in the room when the phone got depressed and decided to bifurcate itself and jump to its death.
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It's amazing how many times hardware breaks down... to pieces... but no one was touching it.
 
A user just dropped of a phone (lot of phone issues this week, weird they are usually the plug and forget part of my job) off for me to look at and there's enough makeup caked to the receiver mouthpiece and earpiece for me to open a Sephora.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Ticket. "The phone in the breakroom fell off the wall." (All the phones in our organization are Cisco IP phones, so they fall under our perview)

Me (Reading the ticket) "Fell off the wall? The phone that's mounted into the wall with three bolts into studs in a metal mounting bracket? It fell off the wall? You could do pulls up on that damn thing and it wouldn't come off the wall."

Me (Arriving on location) "Oh so when you say the 'the phone fell off the wall' you mean the front half of the phone somehow got ripped off the backhalf of the phone and the half the circurity and the back half of the phone's casing is on the wall. Lovely"
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Well, at least the solution is simple (if not cheap). They need a new phone. I would like to hear how that happened, but I have a feeling nobody is going to tell you.
 
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