Computer uptime: 156 days
Don’t worry, tomorrow’s ticket will be “It was doing it every time before you got here”
No one who’s worked in IT ever thinks it’s going to be a quick ticket.
Attempting to access the keyboard in order to physically unmute the mute button for the HR director in a live conference spanning five continents, while being yelled at and called “incompetent” for “not knowing how to do my work”, in front of the entire board of directors, by the HR director, was probably the longest goddamn minute, can confirm.
I had this near exact situation happen. I turned around and in a calm tone told her “I need to to stop trying to do my job over my shoulder and if that’s an issue I can get my director to come and resolve this for you” (my it director and her were buddies) she became silent in shock I assume. Resolved the issue a minute later (video feed issue). Walked back to my office and got fired for my comment 2 hours later.
Wow, that’s fucked up.
everyone treats these anecdotes like funny little isolated instances but they really paint a constellation of just how oppressed we all are in many tiny ways. people just accept the massively biased power balance as normal.
idk what’s wrong with us man. all this time and we’re still here bopping each other on the head.
“You’re on unmute.”
‘So de-unmute me, come on!’
Whenever I’m in the middle of something and I get a message from someone high up on the org chart.
“Hey, got a moment for a quick question?”
Me, internally: ‘Ah, fuck.’
Externally: “Yeah, totally!”see I just ignore that shit until I actually have a moment, if it were important then they’d have said what it’s about
I’m not IT. but I can’t imagine being IT would change my response
and given that my job is often 4 hours straight of running from one fire to another, it could be a while until they get a response
That’s part of the gig in many IT roles. You have to be at least partially available for IT help requests.
Well I still do sometimes but I am a very slow learner. In my defense, I’ve only been in the field for 20+ years.
When I worked phone support I’d say about 50% of incoming calls were easily identifiable as quick tickets, cuz I knew I wouldn’t have the access, tools, knowledge, or some combination to deal with it. Just document and escalate. Hell those were quicker than the supposedly quick and easy password resets. Thinking I’d actually figure something out or getting roped into remoting in because they don’t want to wait for someone is where problems would arise.
I think I have learned about seven separate ticketing systems at my work, so far. The specialized ones are associated with small teams I know and can go harass if they don’t answer in a reasonable time frame. The big main one, the associates reliably answer quickly, to let me know they can’t help me. It all feels very broken.
Honestly I prefer a good stumper, usually. If it’s some bullshit that Microsoft did, then we’re both going to be sad. But if it’s an interesting problem and I can (mostly) figure it out, that’s way better then fixing the same thing over and over and over and over again.
Same, they’re like puzzles.
Not directly relevant, but this reminded me of the joke that debugging is like a murder mystery where the programmer is the detective, the murderer and the victim.
90% of the time I put in a ticket, it’s just Microsoft being shit
it annoys me too, but I have come up with a few stumpers for our IT company. even once got to sit in on a call of two guys from our IT team and two engineers from the service’s team as they tried to figure out what was going on. and there’s me not understanding networking at all just laughing my ass off listening to them discuss what might be the problem
I always liked these problems because I’d likely have to tinker around in the registry.
Not pictured, the 15 prior tickets where it was in fact a simple fix.
They refused to turn it off and on again. Typical.
As “The IT Guy”, having to call another with this shit is the stuff of nightmares. Like, are you suuure you can’t just make me look like a fool and get this over with so we can both move on with our days?
And than the other joins the call and asks the client, again, to click on the basic option and run the basic command. What you just asked them to do. Like you’re some moron who would forget to do a basic check. And than it turns out that you are a moron who forgot to do a basic check.
Rather find out I’m a moron than be stuck all day, or have to call for parts or schedule a “once we’ve figured it out” return visit. Doesn’t happen nearly often enough for me to be upset or insulted by it.
100%. I’ve done IT support. If I’ve called you, you either have access I don’t to solve my problem or this ticket is gonna take a week to resolve.
As an IT guy I fucking hate you
I secretly broke it real bad so we could spend the day together! :3
That’d be actually really sweet.
Now kiss!
Aww! 🤩
if it were simple, I wouldn’t have made a ticket, I’d have fixed it myself
Any time an engineer makes something foolproof, the universe comes along and makes a bigger fool.
In German theres the concept of the “DAU” which means (translated) “The dumbest possible User”. It does not matter if an edgecase isn’t supposed to happen, but you still have to account for it, since somehow a user will get it to produce this edgecase and break everything.
End users are the great equalizer. Their unpredictability and destruction grows equal with the amount of foolproofing you apply
God I used to hate it, they’d put a ticket in and immediately go to lunch or go home.
I’d go to their desk, ticket vague AF. Every damn time, I’d have to get their manager to call them to go over the ticket.
Yeah I know turn it off and on again. I know to check and reseat connections. I know other hardware checks and eliminating variables like unnecessary hardware or software incompatibilities. I know how to Google. If I’m calling IT support it’s not something I can fix without their admin permissions. It might be simple for them or it could be hell on earth but at least I probably didn’t cause the problem.
Good that you know the basic checks.
Doesn’t change the fact that you might have missed one, so lets still go over them all. Otherwise the ticket might go on much longer than it should.
Damn this must be one of the funniest XKCDs ever. “Shibboleet” [sic], Haiku and “some bearded dude with swords”. 🤣
Comcast in my local area in the early 00’s had a secret. If you called on third shift, you automatically got level 2 techs. There were so few calls at 3am so they just had one or two people on that had enough access/knowledge to fix things or write up a reasonable service ticket.
Hey, I went into my modem and pulled up the diagnostic, and my signal is really poor. I know you have some flowchart, and I’m ready to run that if you need it, but that signal reading is certainly my root cause. I’ve already unplugged all the TVs’ coax from the wall. I replaced the line of the model too. No splitters, but I am in an apartment building.
tech: huh, let me look at that… tappity tap tap, yeah, we need to dispatch someone out there, tomorrow between 12pm and 9pm ok?
in the early 00’s
Different era. Seriously, in terms of ISP’s and customer support that’s like a century ago.
But 95% of people that call support don’t know that stuff. And those things solve 95% of the problems that users have. And support staff have been told to go through the script or get fired. So just be nice to them, get to the end of Level1’s script AQAP then you’ll get someone that’s allowed to use their noggin, considerably more quickly than if you piss around.
Yup, when I call tech support, I’ll list all the stuff I did to cut through the base levels of support to get to someone who can actually help.
last time I started listing what I had already tried, the support agent cut me off to reiterate that I needed to restart the device
yeah, I know. you told me to, I clearly responded “okay, I’ll do that now”, and then I started giving you the relevant information of what I’ve already tried. no need to be rude, just giving you info while we wait for the thing we both know will fail
Yeah, it depends on the agent. Sometimes I get stuck too, but if I ramble off enough relevant info, they usually put me through.
For example, I had an internet issue, and it was obviously on their end because pings to my router and their gateway were both solid, while pings to a reliable server kept dropping packets. Rebooting my router obviously wouldn’t help because everything up to their gateway was fine.
In most companies L1 Support are severely underpaid offshore, total muppets, or both. Their most frequent triage or escalation path is gonna be “I routed it to the wrong application team because the caller said some words that sounded vaguely relevant to something that team works on”.
But, did you try restarting?
My department at work has made what I’m just now naming A Deal With The Penguin.
We pretty much don’t get IT support, but it’s because we can run Linux!
Things like broken hardware or locked out M360-AD accounts are another matter of course. But come to think of it, the front desk admin ordered me a replacement part once, and we have a dedicated website for resetting and changing your password. So other than initial onboarding years ago I don’t think I’ve used them at all. lol.
So you are proud of not understanding the tools you need to use day to day. Good thing you aren’t a woodworker or a welder, I guess?
This argument doesn’t hold water. There’s a reason specialization exists. No person can know everything about everything, and just because you know more about a specific topic doesn’t mean that individual doesn’t have specialized knowledge in another topic. By your own standard, you should be able to repair, troubleshoot, and maintain everything you utilize daily. Are you a mechanic, hvac specialist, appliance repair specialist, building inspector, ect? Unlikely.
Welder: normal electricity goes in, furious electricity comes out. There must be something truly annoying inside that box.
To be fair, the welder needs to know a thing or two about the metals being annoyed.
Yeah, but no welder is capable of fixing the welding machine, except for simple fixes like cleaning stuff and checking if everything is configured the right way.
That is a bit presumptuous. A tradesman may know their tools inside and and out. They aren’t necessarily a jobber that knows how to push the power button and point the electrode at the problem to be solved.
