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Tab8715 posted:Things that piss me off - when my mother volunteers me to fix her friends computer problems. I had to sit down and have a talk with my mom about this. I was still living at home, but it was a 3 hours commute every day to work and I really didn't feel like coming home and then having to drive somewhere else to troubleshoot why some family friend's wifi wasn't working.
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May 8, 2015 05:24
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Inspector_666 posted:I had to sit down and have a talk with my mom about this. I was still living at home, but it was a 3 hours commute every day to work and I really didn't feel like coming home and then having to drive somewhere else to troubleshoot why some family friend's wifi wasn't working. Ugh that's me when I visit my family in England on vacation. Gotta stop at every house to solve computer issues. I flew 3k miles to get away from my job. I don't even know how to use windows anymore let alone solve your stupid issues.
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May 8, 2015 05:29
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My coworker was at the offsite and was asking me for help. What is the subnet mask here? 255.255.255.0 (As if you can't get it from any machine there....) Hey this printer isn't working anymore Yeah, they pulled cable over there and that was on wifi before, so it's a different VLAN. But why isn't it working? I just want to fix it. Print out a status sheet, that IP is wrong now. Why can't I get into the admin panel? Because that isn't on a wifi VLAN anymore. Just reset it to factory default settings and let it grab an address from DHCP you can define it as static and mark it off on the switch later. That'll open a can of worms, I don't want to do that (he wants to go home) I just want to fix it. Let me call you back. Yeah, changing it worked. Thanks man.If you need to call me for help, why the gently caress are you arguing with me? Furthermore how the gently caress do you work in desktop for over 2 years and get scared by a printer install, don't know how to get a subnet mask, and don't know about VLANs?
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May 8, 2015 07:36
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skooma512 posted:If you need to call me for help, why the gently caress are you arguing with me? Furthermore how the gently caress do you work in desktop for over 2 years and get scared by a printer install, don't know how to get a subnet mask, and don't know about VLANs?
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May 8, 2015 08:30
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skooma512 posted:Furthermore how the gently caress do you work in desktop for over 2 years and get scared by a printer install, Printer apologist spotted
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May 8, 2015 12:41
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Heh, one of our lot got all narky with me because he sent an email yesterday with a request he wanted doing DESPERATELY URGENTLY (without urgent flag) and I hadn't really checked my email since then, short of skimming it for obvious urgent subjects. Thing is when you're concentrating on coding related things it's nice to have as few distractions as possible, which means not having email popping up like a glorified IM system every 2 minutes and sometimes even going a day without even opening Outlook. His response to "well if it was so desperately urgent was it that hard to just pick up the phone, being that you then have a guaranteed instant response?" was met with "I expected you to read your emails immediately like everyone else" Well, that's the beauty of expectations eh, I expect people to go to the extreme effort of picking up a receiver and pushing 3 buttons (or heaven forfend, get off their fat loving asses and come see me) but because we work with other members of humanity they tend to disappoint.
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May 8, 2015 13:18
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My AS/400 guy is dumb as gently caress. We just started a new division called 'ASC', for ABC Service Company. It's all anyone talks about. He keeps calling it ASK. He also calls the file server (which is named FS1) ISF. "There's an error on my screen saying ISF" He was having an issue with a mapped drive. It's funny how bad my helpdesk guy trolls him. "It says ISF? That's all it says? What do you think that means. Does it say anything else? You printed where? You did what with a Word file in Internet Explorer?" It's in the file. There's a file that goes in. Its print to the file. The file. File. He has never emailed the entire company using everyone@abc.com. You know, to announce things like system upgrades and such. So I ordered him to email everyone to let them know he was making some changes over the weekend. He used some contact list from like 6 years ago that he had in Outlook. Of course, 2/3rds of the people on it don't even work here any more, and 2 of them are dead. HR blew a loving nut about that. 
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May 8, 2015 13:27
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Oh, and our old receptionist (we have a 20 year old one and a 65 year old one) has dual monitors, but she always powers the second one off. So she'll think her computer is frozen or not working right, but you turn the other monitor on and there's a modal dialog waiting for her. She mostly uses the second monitor to hold pictures of her grandkids.
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May 8, 2015 13:47
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GargleBlaster posted:Heh, one of our lot got all narky with me because he sent an email yesterday with a request he wanted doing DESPERATELY URGENTLY (without urgent flag) and I hadn't really checked my email since then, short of skimming it for obvious urgent subjects. Thing is when you're concentrating on coding related things it's nice to have as few distractions as possible, which means not having email popping up like a glorified IM system every 2 minutes and sometimes even going a day without even opening Outlook. Email is the absolute worst way to communicate urgent issues. That guy is an idiot.
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May 8, 2015 13:52
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GargleBlaster posted:Heh, one of our lot got all narky with me because he sent an email yesterday with a request he wanted doing DESPERATELY URGENTLY (without urgent flag) and I hadn't really checked my email since then, short of skimming it for obvious urgent subjects. Thing is when you're concentrating on coding related things it's nice to have as few distractions as possible, which means not having email popping up like a glorified IM system every 2 minutes and sometimes even going a day without even opening Outlook. This is why ticketing systems exist and methods of escalation are so important. Marking emails as important, walk ins, and phone calls will eventually just be the norm for every issue and be a bigger distraction than an email pop up. ijustam posted:Email is the absolute worst way to communicate urgent issues. That guy is an idiot. Depends on the org and who is watching what. Direct phone calls and walking around a building hunting people down can sometimes be worse than an email. Process Process Process. Sickening fucked around with this message at 14:14 on May 8, 2015 |
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May 8, 2015 14:12
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Did he include the word ASAP in the email? I have a rule set up in Outlook that makes klaxons go off if someone says it's an ASAP issue.
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May 8, 2015 14:24
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ijustam posted:Email is the absolute worst way to communicate urgent issues. That guy is an idiot. I have a few customers who will happily press the "system-down emergency" button in our after-hours IVR to bug an on-call technician at 9 PM on a Sunday because they forgot their voicemail password, but if their internet goes down and takes their entire phone system in the middle of the business day with it they'll just email me from whatever random personal account they have on their phone and hope for the best. And of course the subject of the email is always "Phones" so most modern email clients stack it with the 10,000 other times they did that as if it's one conversation.
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May 8, 2015 15:27
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Mr. Clark2 posted:Thanks, I'll give this a shot tomorrow. Spent about 2 hours on the phone with kaspersky support today, managed to stump them too. They gave me a tool to run on a couple of my test PCs, I emailed the results to them and they're supposedly going to escalate the ticket. ESET also makes uninstallers for various products - http://kb.eset.com/esetkb/index?page=content&id=SOLN190 I think the "Rip and Replace" should remove pretty much anything iirc
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May 8, 2015 15:30
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wolrah posted:I have a few customers who will happily press the "system-down emergency" button in our after-hours IVR to bug an on-call technician at 9 PM on a Sunday because they forgot their voicemail password, but if their internet goes down and takes their entire phone system in the middle of the business day with it they'll just email me from whatever random personal account they have on their phone and hope for the best. And of course the subject of the email is always "Phones" so most modern email clients stack it with the 10,000 other times they did that as if it's one conversation. Do you have an SLA on what systems/classes of failures are supported on the emergency hotline? Ask for their name, then tell them you cannot support their request and you may have to report them for abuse of the hotline. If that flies with your org.
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May 8, 2015 15:31
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We have one client we provide 24/7 emergency support for and we(and their own management) make it abundantly clear to people what is and is not an emergency. Not paying attention and waking people up at 3am because one computer out of 6 has an error is going to get you yelled at by a bunch of people come daylight.
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May 8, 2015 15:38
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Bob Morales posted:My AS/400 guy is dumb as gently caress. My counterpart to your dumb as400 guy just quit (He's moving to the Philipines to live out his fantasy of being doted on by women 40 years younger than he is because he's white) and it is a loving glorious day of me just being able to tear out, modernize and automate all his busted/hosed old crap without having to deal with bitching and moaning. The system itself is so easy to deal with and automate if you're even passably familiar with SQL, meanwhile he was still running programs relying on printing loving spoolfiles and parsing text out of the printout and jesus christ it's so dumb. We just got dinged on an audit because he supposedly had a program disabling accounts that hadn't signed on for 30+ days. Turns out that his program was in fact doing the opposite. Instead of looking for stuff older than 30 days and disabling it, it was looking for anything -30 days or newer, and enabling the account. I think my head was about to pop off when I dug that up a few days ago. (Luckily there was also a built in IBM function disabling idle accounts, but it was set to 60 days instead of 30.)
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May 8, 2015 15:45
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nielsm posted:Do you have an SLA on what systems/classes of failures are supported on the emergency hotline? Officially according to the contracts it's an emergency if a main number is down or if more than a certain percentage of phones at a site are unable to make/receive calls. We usually give them a few warnings but if it's something simple we'll still usually do it. If they want to completely rework their call flow that's a different matter, but for a voicemail password reset at that point they're already on the phone and it'll waste more tech time in the morning plus annoy the customer to not just do it. If someone's a regular offender we'll charge them our consulting rate, but that usually vanishes off the bill in exchange for a promise not to do it again after they call and talk to the owner. I can think of maybe two or three times in 10 years where the charge actually got paid. edit: We do have a lot of leeway to express our displeasure with their nonemergency calls. We make it very clear that we're doing them a favor when doing something simple outside of normal hours. wolrah fucked around with this message at 16:12 on May 8, 2015 |
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May 8, 2015 16:08
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Inspector_666 posted:I had to sit down and have a talk with my mom about this. I was still living at home, but it was a 3 hours commute every day to work and I really didn't feel like coming home and then having to drive somewhere else to troubleshoot why some family friend's wifi wasn't working. I try to be as clear as possible with people that I haven't worked on desktops since I was in college and now I deal exclusively with big, expensive, imaginary computers that do not run Windows. I still ended up helping an older friend set up a non-work printer on work laptop to keep him from going and giving his IT guy a hard time.
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May 8, 2015 16:29
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Yeah I don't think anyone begrudges helping immediate family, it's when immediate family then pimp your services out to their friends that it rankles. My parents did that to me once when I was visiting them and I completed the work they'd committed me to because I didn't want to embarrass them, but then had a strong word to set expectations. In my case, it wasn't that I wanted to be paid but that I didn't want to be doing it, period. My father was a social worker at the time, so the conversation went along the lines of "You know how you often come home stressed after sorting out social housing cases? Imagine if I had a homeless guy waiting for you in the kitchen and I'd promised him that you'd find him a home this evening." It's not that either of us didn't enjoy doing what we were doing whilst at work (and his work was obviously way more socially laudable than mine), it's just that I don't want to be doing my job when I visit my family. I should be catching up with them, not being shopped around the neighbourhood as if my time has no value - and value doesn't have to imply money.
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May 8, 2015 16:48
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My peeve is when my parents ask me for tech advice, I give it to them, they don't follow it, and then get upset at me when I don't want to help them with whatever to did. My mom wanted a cell phone, she's completely tech illiterate, so I told her to get an iPad. She ended up getting some anoi elf Android tablet, and when she attempted to factory default it, it just wiped the entire SDCard, and bricked itself. My bro spent HOURS trying to fix it, but if she had listened, it would have all been avoided. Later, she wanted a cellphone, she was looking at the Galaxy S3 for whatever reason, maybe it was cheaper, but I told them "no, get an iPhone." They were miffed about the cost difference, so I offered to buy her the iPhone with the understanding that they won't need to call me for support with it. My dad flipped out, like a maniac, that I wouldn't help mom with her phone if she didn't buy an iPhone. He was livid. It was completely ridiculous. I tried to explain to him that she wouldn't need help with the iPhone because it's clearly the easiest to use. The best anecdote is that one time a guy called me, not even someone I'm close too, and said "Hey, someone gave me a computer, but I don't know the password, how do I get the password?" He barely even said hello, just launched into this. I responded, I'm not sure, what does the computer look like? Is it Windows? Apple? He said he wasn't sure. I ask what do you see on the screen? He replied "Nepis" "Nepis?" "Nepis, yes" "What is Nepis?" I say. "is that on the screen, on the case, where?" "No idea, it just says 'Nepis'. How do I get the password?" "Sorry, I'm not familiar with Nepis. I don't know. Maybe take it to Best Buy or something and they can reinstall Nepis. I'm not sure how to do that." That was the end of it. One thing that came out of it is that now I use "Nepis" to refer to something that I have no understanding of.
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May 8, 2015 17:11
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Inspector_666 posted:I had to sit down and have a talk with my mom about this. I was still living at home, but it was a 3 hours commute every day to work and I really didn't feel like coming home and then having to drive somewhere else to troubleshoot why some family friend's wifi wasn't working. I tried this and it ended up with "All you do with your free time is play video games and drink with your friends! You're so selfish and only care about yourself!" I've gone with the "Oh, what's wrong? Hmm... Interesting, I have never seen that before... Have you called tech support? No, I don't know how to fix that..." approach.
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May 8, 2015 17:28
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Tab8715 posted:I tried this and it ended up with "All you do with your free time is play video games and drink with your friends! You're so selfish and only care about yourself!" It ended up that she would ask me if I was willing to look at the stuff. Which is fine, I'm willing to take time out on a weekend afternoon to do it over a few beers. Like other posters have said, it's mainly that she was making appointments for me without my input that got me really miffed.
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May 8, 2015 17:30
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I am a low level Linux firmware programmer, so there isn't any tech support being asked of me ever!  Except the one time my dad bought a Raspberry PI to use as a replacement for a audio board for the local theater group, that was a fun father son project. 
FlapYoJacks fucked around with this message at 17:44 on May 8, 2015 |
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May 8, 2015 17:37
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I once got randomly called by a customer who was having voice quality issues over VoIP. They must have entered my extension at random in the main phone line because I'm a developer and my extension isn't listed anywhere.
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May 8, 2015 17:42
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ISPs that issue static /31 addresses and the billions of firewalls that don't like it.
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May 8, 2015 17:44
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Sickening posted:This is why ticketing systems exist and methods of escalation are so important. Marking emails as important, walk ins, and phone calls will eventually just be the norm for every issue and be a bigger distraction than an email pop up. Depends on the size of the company. 80 staff 50 of which are computer users, 2 of us looking after IT. Escalation on this scale is "hey Tom, any idea on this?" and ticketing systems are considered overkill (I've tried. No one wants to know, users or management alike) It's a fair point about calls and walk ins possibly increasing because everyone thinks they're important, but priority/urgency flags set by the user to make a ticket system give off an instant alert would also be heavily abused for the same reason. Dr. Arbitrary posted:Did he include the word ASAP in the email? I have a rule set up in Outlook that makes klaxons go off if someone says it's an ASAP issue. He used the word "today". It's not the worst of ideas, though I'd have to set up a filter on top of that as there are a couple of people who just habitually add "asap" to every request because they IMO, pressing issues are when it's perfectly okay (in fact more than welcome) to do the "have you received the email I just sent you" thing, as it means you have a clear written record of the request backed up by a call to impress on and justify its urgency. Though I may have been a bit short with my reply since obviously this isn't a universal standard, but if someone bitches at me I find it hard not to bitch back. Potentially a fun Monday! GargleBlaster fucked around with this message at 17:49 on May 8, 2015 |
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May 8, 2015 17:46
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"I'm a consultant" Oh really? What do you do as a consultant? "Consult, consultanty things, you know, the usual". I never tell anyone I work in IT anymore. Saves me so much headache.
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May 8, 2015 17:57
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ratbert90 posted:I am a low level Linux firmware programmer, so there isn't any tech support being asked of me ever!  The reason is because you tell people that, and they think it's an insufferable answer. Whether or not people ask me for help depends on how I describe what I do. If I include "linux" in the answer anywhere, their eyes glaze over. If I say "boring computer stuff" (which is kind of my default answer), I may get asked. I develop Linux virtualization products and I still get asked for tech support, because I'm not a boob, and I know a hell of a lot more about how to troubleshoot even operating systems I haven't touched in half a decade than 100% of the people who may ask for tech support. You'd also be better at than them, and your family knows it. You know it, I know it, they know it. But  about how you're "low-level Linux firmware programmer" and you haven't touched Micro$oft products in years nor would you know the first thing about whatever trivial computer problem they're having (like transferring files to a new computer) because you do really important, obscure stuff just makes people not wanna talk to you.
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May 8, 2015 18:27
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evol262 posted:
what sometimes you just need a polite excuse to tell people that you're not fixing their computer, and "lol idk mate" is as good as anything
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May 8, 2015 18:44
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Migishu posted:"I'm a consultant" I'm a sysadmin. I don't work on computers, I work on servers.
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May 8, 2015 18:47
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Yeah I hate having to make the distinction, because I really just want to say "I work in IT", but people's brains instantly go to helpdesk or computer janitor, and while they're nothing wrong with those jobs, I just kind of want to avoid even the implication that I have an opinion about your printer problem or even know what the difference between a Radeon R9 and Radeon R7 is. Hey so here's something exciting. I got promoted! Now it turns out that my pay grade is not being changed nor is my HR title, but within our organization I am being considered this new title. My boss assures me that even though it comes with no pay and no official recognition of promotion, that I'll be treated as though I am promoted. Yay! Yay? Yay......
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May 8, 2015 18:57
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EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:what No, you don't. "No" or "that's not really what I do" is a fine answer without going into detail about whatever boring (to everyone else) thing it is we actually do.
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May 8, 2015 18:58
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:Yeah I hate having to make the distinction, because I really just want to say "I work in IT", but people's brains instantly go to helpdesk or computer janitor, and while they're nothing wrong with those jobs, I just kind of want to avoid even the implication that I have an opinion about your printer problem or even know what the difference between a Radeon R9 and Radeon R7 is. Depending on the title it could look great on a resume for a  in the near future.
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May 8, 2015 19:01
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I don't know why but I haven't had to deal with annoying help requests for a few years, it feels like. Last time I remember fixing a cousin's wife's laptop, they paid me with 2 cases of beer, which I was ecstatic about.
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May 8, 2015 19:03
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evol262 posted:
People are going to get the same response whether I couch it in niceness or just bluntly say "no". My time is valuable to me. There are times where I may help out with *close* friends and immediate family. But I am not their help desk. Hell, I bought my parents an iMac and my "how do I" and "why can't I" calls have dropped to zero. It's the same thing if you have an auto mechanic as a neighbor or friend. I'm not going to ask them to come over and ask them "hey, can you help swap my brakes out?" or "Please spend your day off figuring out why my car does X" because that's a lovely thing to do, done by lovely friends.
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May 8, 2015 19:05
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evol262 posted:
... No poo poo I know how to troubleshoot PC problems, but whenever I tell people "I do computer stuff." I get asked to troubleshoot their PC's. If I tell them " low level Linux firmware programmer" their eyes glaze over and we talk about beer or something else that isn't computers. I think it's a good thing, I don't WANT to troubleshoot a ancient compaq because it's "slow."
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May 8, 2015 19:06
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evol262 posted:...nor would you know the first thing about whatever trivial computer problem they're having (like transferring files to a new computer) because you do really important, obscure stuff just makes people not wanna talk to you. If they only want to talk to you because they think you can fix their trivial computer problems, nothing of value would be lost.
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May 8, 2015 19:17
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evol262 posted:
You are truly the grumpy old man of this thread.
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May 8, 2015 19:18
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People argue about the most mundane crap in these threads. It's Friday everyone.
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May 8, 2015 19:20
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There's a bottle of Gosling Dark Rum in the kitchen and a fridge full of ginger beer. Summertime!
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May 8, 2015 19:23
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