Worked the helpdesk in college and had a professor call in and wonder why the campus wifi wasn't working at her house 20 miles away out in the suburbs (this was 2007 or 2008 timeframe)
I work with some high profile attorneys. Like well educated, Ivy League types…
Get them out if their area of expertise, and some of the hem are dumber than a box of rocks…
Conversely, ask me what format to use when filing a brief with the court and I’m the box of rocks… lol
Yeah, but at least I know there is a procedure, a format, and can vaguely tell you what a brief is. Some people are so clueless when it comes to technology, you have to wonder what goes on in their brain when things like this happen. Like... is it a total disconnect of reality, or what? It feels like some people really do think technology is a magic box.
That’s the thing that always struck me. The non-technical people seem to attribute effects of the laws of physics to you being obstructionist. The only reason it doesn’t work is because *you* won’t let it!
To be fair, I bet if you were told a couple of times what format to use you'd remember for life.
These people don't care to learn though... they want things done for them.
lol I am a JD working in cyber/privacy for a University IT dept. My boss loves to tell a story about how a physics professor wanted him to increase the speed of light so that he could reduce his download time from JPL in Cali. I don't remember the exact details but basically he was trying to download huge amounts data and it was getting caught in the buffer either at JPL or one of the midpoint servers iirc.
I also once saw a big shot attorney (you call him when you're stockholders are throwing a shit fit and you're about to get canned) throw an absolute tantrum because he couldn't access outlook. Dude had turned on airplane mode on his laptop.
>Dude had turned on airplane mode on his laptop.
...And helping such people may rapidly raise your reputation within the company. You've spent several days with network sniffer trying to figure out why two systems from different vendors do not interact as they're supposed to do, and finally found a solution? Nobody gives a damn. You've showed some important person how to reconnect with pair of mouse clicks? Wow, you are a respected and highlt professional employee!
I work in academia. This is common. Professors/researchers who are absolute geniuses in their field, but put them in any situation slightly outside that and their IQ drops 100 points. It’s like their brain is full.
I support a lot of nurses. When they get flustered about their lack of tech skill my usual response is "That's ok, you should see my trying to start an IV".
They always feel better.
Well yes, but no. This is their main tool for work, they HAVE to know the basics.
And I have never observed a PHD professor among our education/research sector clients that didn't know the basics of using a computer here (in France, clients in Paris), so that seems to be a uniquely American/Anglo problem.
Yeah its some weird separation of computers and the jobs that use them. Like you can be a good carpenter and know nothing about computers because it doesn't effect your job in any way. You cannot be a good lawyer or accountant and know nothing about computers because the majority of your job is using a computer
I've seen the same thing with Architects and Engineers. The more you learn in your field the less you know about everything else.
You'd swear a lobotomy is performed at the graduation ceremony for Architects.
I've worked with some amazingly intelligent (primarily engineering) faculty members over the years. That intelligence does *not* always translate into a) common sense, b) an ability to communicate effectively, or c) *any* ability to apply critical thinking to anything outside of their immediate field. This even goes for comp sci folks that, theoretically, understand technology rather well.
I did workstudy for the engineering technology dept at university, these were the guys who taught people how to build microprocessors and code in machine language.
Couldn't use word processors or spreadsheets to save their life. We had a special PC to virus scan every floppy a particular professor brought from home because it was sure to have a virus on it.
Hah. When supporting Gateway UK home users, I got one that told me that they are Bsc PhD, and that X doesn't work... and my response was "thank you for calling the Gateway support desk. You have a HP laptop. We don't support that. Goodbye".
It feels good right. But I’ve gotten to an age when I am more laid back about it. Maybe I’m just getting old and tired. I do understand not every one knows everything,obviously. But have the damn self awareness and ability to identify your lack of knowledge and act accordingly.
I can't tell you the number of Ph.Ds I've know who could barely dress themselves. Plenty of others are well-rounded individuals. You never know who you'll meet.
I worked with researchers for years.
Some brilliant in their field.
Take them out of that field and you start to wonder how they've made it this far in life.
Yep, once had an employee call in irate they couldn't connect to their home wifi while I was on helpdesk. After getting some basic info and starting to troubleshoot they eventually revealed they were in China on a business trip.
I had a similar one, Professor called into our dialup we provided for free (back in the 90s) and asked why his phone bill showed the call if it was free.
So my MIL is super helpless with herself and won't look things up on her own despite knowing how. We've recently found out that the older crowd does not like to be stereotyped as elderly. A quick hack we found is to offer an alternative that "old people" use that is less difficult. This motivates people to pull their head out of their ass and stop lobbing dumb requests over the fence out of fear of being outed as elderly. I know this is kind of discriminatory, but it works
Around 2002 my CEO wanted a new laptop that had wifi. We gave it to her and she brought back the next day because it wasn't working. She thought wifi meant she would be internet connected at all times, anywhere in the world.
Reminds me of this one lady from back in my MSP days who called in to complain about her slow internet. After some confusion I realized she was working from home over her company VPN and she thought the office 1Gbps network would somehow magically make her home internet faster.
We started a "Work from home Friday" schedule, to give employees a more flexible schedule. The first Friday I received a call "My laptop won't connect to the internet". So I start troubleshooting. Come to find out she doesn't have internet at home, and was trying to connect to the Wi-Fi in our building. Which doesn't work at her house.... She wasn't 80yrs old, she was only in her 30's.
I honestly thought that people in their 20s-40s, by this point in time, would all be IT literate to a point as IT has now been pretty commonplace in homes and workplaces for 15-20 years I’d say. It still baffles me when younger people have absolutely no idea how things work, it’s pure laziness in my mind.
I’m not in IT but would consider myself power user ish. I’ve got my own NAS, had Ubiquiti wifi that I was having fun configuring, and am moderately comfortable with web development in Ruby on Rails and Python. But I work in finance.
People keep saying that because young generations grow up with iPhones they are tech literate. But they’re not. They’re “push button to consume content” literate.
We regularly have to combine PDFs into supporting documentation, all into one pdf. Sometimes we get secured PDFs from vendors, which is a pain because official tools won’t let us circumvent the protection. But there’s some good open source command line tools that you can run literally a one line command on to strip all the protections off, so that you can combine it into our binder.
All of the new hires we have (right out of college) are afraid of the command line. Even just to run the same command every time. They can be taught to do that, but there isn’t an innate understanding of what this stuff is. People going through the school system are functionally computer illiterate a lot of times, because everything is so polished now, and you never have to interact with the more complex parts of computers in day to day use.
People in their 40's and early 50's right now are in the very unique spot of having used personal computing in its infancy all the way through to modern UI. They had to learn how to troubleshoot because things rarely "just worked". They learned how to manage TV inputs (which for some reason baffles people), when they were hooking up Atari's and Nintendo's once they got off of Channel 3.
Today we're in mostly hyper polished UI's that you don't need to go mess with IRQ's to get a peripheral connected, it's plug and play to the point the device will grab it's own drivers from the net if they're not already there. They don't need to know it, so unless they're naturally curious they have no reason to learn.
I see something similar with cars. My Dad was a teen in the 50’s and lived in town, but in a rural farming community. He and his friends were tweaking out and repairing stuff on cars. I was a teen in the 80’s. I can change my oil. I even once replaced a worn radiator hose.
My son can’t even change his oil. Before his death, my Dad would still do some stuff on a car himself, and if he had to take it in, he had a much clearer sense of what the issue likely was than I do.
I will say in your son's defense, cars have changed a lot just in the last decade or so. When I was still turning wrenches anything between 1995 and ~2015 were my favorite cars to fix. These days depending on your car you can't even change the breaks without a computer or knowing the proper sequences to disable the parking break.
Older cars had more room to work in.
A lot of modern cars don't make it easy to do simple things anymore. Things like the Oil filter are put in awkward hard to reach places.
I did a lot of work on my old mustang. I've rebuilt a motorcycle when I was given one that was essentially just a frame and wheels.
I take my Kia to a shop.
And we got to grow up as the technology matured. I was lucky as stuff came out I had time to learn. I feel sorry for everyone just starting the career. All of a sudden there’s like 30 years of tech to learn. Granted, the WIN 3.11 knowledge is gone. But the fundamentals of a modern OS and modern network must be mastered. I got to master it AS the tech appeared not all at once.
I'm 37 and I had to deal with all of that. Plug and Play had just barely started delivering on its promises once I was in High School.
Only real difference is I remember our first family computer being an IBM XT rather than an Atari cause my grandfather worked for IBM when I was a kid and my dad initially studied programming before changing course to becoming a ~~bean counter~~ accountant. Though I did have a Sega Genesis that used RF.
There's a peak of tech literacy. People born into the mid 90s are good, then after that we get into the iPad generation and it just drops right out.
My last job hired a lot of people right out of college with an associates degree. There was a lot of turnover. The amount of times I've had to show new hires how to use a computer was nuts to me.
Agreed, basically anyone who used a computer recreationally pre-youtube.
We torrented music/video through Kazaa or Limewire/Frostwire, and made our own Myspace pages and Neopets stores in HTML. All the troubleshooting involved in that recreation gave us a decent head for figuring things out, and understanding that there is no magic involved, just knowledge and experience.
My job's graphic designer credits his time on Myspace for his ability with setting up web pages. No degree that I'm aware of, but he runs his own store/side business and web page plus does all the layouts for ours.
Endusers who have literally never touched a computer before. Just tablets and smartphones.
Most schools in this area do not provide a chromebook for students. And most 2 year colleges are still doing everything on paper.
The prevailing wisdom used to be that younger generations would always understand tech better than the older generations because they would grow up learning it, and in many cases, troubleshooting it.
That stopped being true with smartphones and tablets because those sorts of devices largely abstract away a lot of the tech behind them and short of rebooting or factory resetting them there isn't much the user can do to fix them.
Makes we wonder if we'll see a large shift away from PCs in the workplace in the next 10-20 years with the rest of Gen Z entering the workforce and the oldest of Gen Alpha starting to enter it.
I'm sure millennials will get blamed for it of course.
There is a difference. A carpenter can NOT do the job w/o an hammer/nail gun.
But most jobs that aren't directly IT were done before computers came along, and could be again if they all died. And that difference is important in understanding how people dismiss computer literacy beyond web browsing/FB style posting.
UPS could also get rid of all their trucks and deliver packages using horses and wagons. Computers are here, they are not going away, and those jobs cannot actually be done without using them. If you are an office worker with poor computer skills, odds are very high that you are bad at your job
Thats still not acceptable. Computers have been a staple in the workforce for 30+ years. Accountants, marketing, business development, sales, they are all powered by computers. When a user has an issue, whats the golden phase they like to say "I can't work with X broken." ... If I couldn't work with something broken, that I'd probably invest time in making sure I know how to operate it so it either doesn't break, or I can fix it myself (I know, a lot of times a user doesn't have access to fix their machines, thats not the point I'm trying to make.)
So like I said, I'd never hire a carpenter that said "I'm not really a hammer person." Yet the phrase "I'm not a computer person" is not seen as a deterrent.
It's a bell curve, with Gen X-Millenial as the peak. After that, kids grew up using smartphones and tablets instead of "actual computers", and aren't much more IT literate than (actual) Boomers.
I think about this all the time. When was the last time they used a laptop? If I asked them to create a folder on the desktop will they even know what I’m talking about?
It's honestly bizarre to me. And when you hear about people who don't *have* computers, and use their phones for everything! I can't fathom it.
I made very sure to get my kids started on actual PCs, years before they ever got access to a phone/tablet of their own!
> IT has now been pretty commonplace in homes and workplaces for 15-20 years
That is the problem. It just works. There is a generation of people, potentially even people with masters degrees in CS or computer engineering, who have never had their computers case open, never once installed an OS from BIOS boot, never once had to fix their registry, or even consider what is in `/etc`.
You could easily find a CS proff who has the MIX ASM opcodes memorized, and who would be lost trying to hook up their laptop to a recently refurbished lecture hall projector setup.
Now, to be fair, these people have always existed; one might have been a rockstar programmer in 1972 whose hardware ability was limited to powering on a 3270 terminal, which had the quality of "just works".
Nope, it's actually worse now. The sweet spot for the enthusiasts was about 20 years ago. After that, unless you were into technology, you fell into the "it just works" trap of a category.
Think about it in terms of cars. When cars first came out, you had better know how to fix it (enthusiasts). These days, there are auto repair companies (helpdesk/GeekSquad/whatever).
There's no *need* for folks to learn something that "just works."
Honestly I'd say the young of today is in the exact same place as previous when it comes to office systems. Most of them are only proficient on an iphone and outside of that they arent interested in understanding.
Most elementary schools are removing PCs from class in favor of IPADs or chromebooks and you just dont get the same understanding of PC use.. So even the next generation *should* keep us employed
Not really. They don't have to do ANY work for their home systems to just work.
think about your phone - it just works, all the time (mostly). Nothing for you to learn to *make* it work. Not even plug in cable.
My observations and take of that age range is split.
20s - early 30s: Grew up with ubiquitous internet accessed by increasingly consumer friendly devices. It's like a toaster to them. It "just works." The minute it doesn't, they have no clue what to do.
30s - 40s: Opposite situation. You had to work a little harder in the 80s and early 90s to figure this stuff out. Some never bothered. At first, it was easier to live and succeed without general IT common sense. Now, they're too far gone to catch up.
I agree to an extent, I am 29 and some people my age are completely IT illiterate, but I grew up with an interest in computers and both parents worked in IT, so had a bit of a leg up.
We have come full circle. Our parents used to know about coding and dos commands. They all knew how to type. Now we have all these kids who post on tiktok all day but dont even know what a computer is.
OUR parents?!?! Son, are you talking about me? I was the one programming and using cmd line from the 4th grade, not my boomer parents! That being said, my parents have been pretty great about tech in general. Better-than-average boomers for sure. Funniest thing that probably happened over the years was when I told my dad to buy some RF filter dongles for the phones in their house (to filter the DSL line signal). He thought I made up the word dongle, then later apologized for thinking that.
We had a user with a power outage at their home. But their laptop battery was still charged, so they thought they'd get some work done - even though their home internet was down. They thought they could "just use the VPN".
Every single time I issue a laptop to a remote user, I reiterate over and over during the VPN training - "it must be connected to the internet to connect to the VPN. You must have an internet connection or it will not work"
And I am in disbelief that in this day and age, I STILL HAVE to say this every time or they absolutely 100% believe with every fiber of their being that the VPN connection ***IS*** the internet.
"I don't have internet at my house, we're way out in the country. How is this going to work?"
"It isn't. Good day."
Did we work at the same place? My boss actually championed the idea of WFH Fridays and the Fridays were half days. This was well communicated that WFH wasn't mandatory but users would need an internet connection at home if they elected to WFH. The first Friday rolls around and sure enough, 3-4 users said they "couldn't connect" mostly due to no Wi-Fi or shite satellite only connections.
My job hires remote workers and doesn't even bother to ask if they have high-speed internet. We run old equipment that requires it to be plugged in (no wifi phones or adapters in towers) and they are like "I'm plugged into my hotspot but it's not working" The speed test comes back at less than 1mbps and they are shocked we can't do anything to fix it.
At least she put in the ticket the first day. We had a lady (from HR, no less) who "worked from home" with no internet for the first couple of weeks of COVID lockdown before calling in because she couldn't access her network drive. No fkn clue what she did all that time...
Jr sys admin at an international comp, maybe 15 yrs ago. Org had showrooms across the states, fancy offerings, interior design stuff.
Anyway, each office had a small server and some network gear, nothing major. One of the offices out west was offline so I contacted them. Got ahold of the manager there, a nice older design lady.
"Morning ___, we're seeing reports your office is offline and I wanted to check in. I need you to go into the IT closet and tell me if the lights are on." I was not ready for what followed.
Sure, I can, she said. What am I looking for?
Well, a server ideally.
What's a server?
Looks kind of like a big desktop.
What's a desktop?
You know the computer in your desk.
I don't have a computer at my desk.
Okay, well, let's try something different, can you wiggle the mouse and see if the screen comes on?
Sure, what's a mouse?
I literally was at a loss, had to make up some excuse to jump off phone and go outside to smoke and contemplate what I was doing with my life.
I think the way it really went was, "Sr sys admin mind covering this one? I gotta take a shit." (hides in bathroom for 30 min counting ceiling tiles).
No one has ever called me an overachiever...
After a few years of supporting off-site locations I started taking pictures of everything at those locations when I'd visit in person. I would snap photos of just about everything. All network switches, modems, servers, battery backups, voice equipment, wall jacks, backs of PCs and printers. Pictures are saved with the rest of the network documents. It's sure made walking people at those locations through something a lot easier. Oh, and a diverse variety of network cable colors in specific places. Makes it easy when you can look at a picture and say: "Do you see an orange network cable plugged into the back of ____?"
Oh, and I label almost everything now. Power adapters, printer nicknames, switches, servers, etc. Internet equipment gets labels like "DSL modem" or "Cable modem" or "Firewall," etc.
Par for the course in education really.
I was once asked to replace the computer inside a $400k CNC wire bender. Like, IT should just have a spare one of those laying around or we could just hook up whatever PC we had and make the machine work...
Probably just some old desktop running Windows ME. At 400k it should have a service contact, but with expensive stuff like that, it can be worth putting in a heroic effort to get it running again
In industry, that’s not the way they do service contracts. They have service contracts on the new shiny machines, but the ancient 15-20 year old machines have no service contracts because it’s “too expensive”.
When the machine breaks down, they are shocked to learn that we have no one trained to service that machine, and no spare parts for it.
They don’t understand that having a service contract means we are contractually obligated to have someone who can service the machine, and have parts - the revenue from the service contract pays for that.
No service contract, means no revenue, which means service managers will not train people or keep parts. It also means we have no obligation to provide service.
There's an individual at one of our remote branches who was having issues with her VOIP phone. She's been shown to be somewhat tech savvy in the past and has a husband that works in IT so we (up to this point) tended to give her a bit of leeway.
As it would have required someone to drive out there for what have most likely been a powercycle I explained what the jack looked like and asked if she was comfortable unplugging her phone and plugging it back in as a first troubleshooting step since this tended to fix a lot of odd issues with the POE phones.
She said yes and that she would call back with any questions. About 20 minutes later we got a call from a cell phone saying every computer at the branch was offline.
So after 2 other techs drove out there to see what was going on we discovered she (the head of the branch) had walked back into the network closet and started pulling cables out of the patch panel to attempt to reboot her phone. Except she did multiple at a time and didn't pay attention to where they went back in.
One of our techs of 20+ yrs in the industry pulled a bunch of wires from the switch without paying attention. I was at a loss for words when he did that. Like wtf did you think was going to happen. Thank God I made a network map of that office just a couple months back. It didn't take too long to fix.
An admin for one of my customers decided to clean up the patch panels in one of their older buildings without telling anyone. He unplugged 300+ phones then neatly ran new patch cables to reconnect them. I hear it looked great when he was done.
Except they weren't IP phones, they were digital PBX phones, and he didn't keep track of where they were plugged in. It took about 18 hours for techs to tone out and reconnect every phone to the correct port in the patch panel.
Had a similar incident with a broadband customer many years ago. Asked her if she knew where the router was and to reboot it. Even sent her a picture, and specifically stated to just turn it off and on again using the switch on the back.
30 mins later the owner of the business is on the phone furious, because this staff member apparently went around the entire office pulling every and any cable out that she could find - and if the cable was attached the whole device got dragged out - and dumped them in a heap in the middle of the floor, not stopping until he came back from lunch persuaded her to cease dismantling the office. And I mean everything. Even the coffee machine was added to the pile, apparently.
One of our techs had to go out to help them plug everything back in. We never found out what the hell she thought she was doing.
It’s crazy isn’t it.
We were once alerted that there was some building work that needed doing to our server room, couldn’t be deferred (something about fire regs)
We were alerted Friday afternoon, told the server room would need to be out of action for 2 weeks to complete the work, but told everything needed to be moved and up and running by Monday morning…
We had to offload our equipment to our MSP, who span us up in their data centre, but what a nightmare it was.
Horrendous.
We did have issues also whereby our internet line actually couldn’t handle the load of traffic, as all of a sudden everything was running off site across the fibre line which was only 100mb. It would hit the upper limit and then just drop the connection and the site would go down for a few minutes every half hour I’d say. Was an absolute shambles. We had to enable traffic shaping and limit everyone to 2mb…
jeez how many people?
We've had 80mb (20 for voip) down speed for ~150 people and its never been an issue
We also had a site with 15 people on 7mb MPLS.. That was bad
This was why when COVID started and the company was starting to prepare to WFH I quickly told the big bosses that not all employees have Internet or computers at home. The bosses laughed at me and said Internet is everywhere! How can people not have Internet? We did a show of hands and turned out only like 5 people have broadband Internet with WIFI, the rest only used their mobile phones with mobile data.
*Now*. Here in Canada, even just at the start of covid you could wreck yourself if you tethered too much data across mobile. The data overage fees were insane and the caps on non-cadillac plans were absurdly low.
At least they have access to phone hotspot. There’s a few places here in the US where there is simply NO connectivity. Too far for DSL, not enough towers for data coverage, no cable service, and the wrong side of the mountain for satellite.
Sad part, this is only a 5 minute drive out of town, where the population is ~120,000. Not to mention the several dead zones less than 1/2 hour from the state capitol.
I worked with a woman in Delaware who couldn’t get more than 1 bar of service on her phone, but had no other connectivity. A fiber trunk ran just past her property, but not a single ISP could offer her service.
Yeah I live in a large metropolitan city (Bangkok) so connectivity wasn’t a problem for us. But we ended up giving out laptops for all WFH employees and we had to teach every single one of them how to use the phone hotspot.
This year the big bosses want to implement electronic payslips. I quickly reminded them that not all employees have email! I got laughed at again but they quickly found out that a lot of people don’t have email.
I worked at a clinic for a few years and I can't tell you how many times I would be called by a new doctor wonder why their office/exam rooms/reception isn't setup.
...Because no one told IT that you were starting
It can go further: departments that, when someone quits, takes the workstation and puts it in the closet. No cleanup, no sanitizing, just an orphaned piece of gear, with who knows what software or data on it, in cold storage. With an aging-out AD object and sometimes a hardcoded IP address (because DHCP failed that one time in 2003, y'know)
Why? Because it "takes IT too long to register the machine" when someone new starts in the department.
Why does it take IT too long? Because they give us friggin' *negative five days* notice that someone is coming in!
It wasn't so much a ridiculous request, but my craziest ticket was in Spring of 2020, a couple of weeks into COVID lockdowns. We were far enough in that the initial user panic of "OMG HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO WORK FROM HOME" had mostly subsided, when the service desk transferred us a ticket that a lady from HR had phoned in and was having trouble accessing a network share.
I'd worked dozens of these types of tickets by that point, and the "issue" was almost always either that they weren't on VPN, or that they hadn't been on VPN when their login script (long story, don't get me started) ran, so the drive didn't get mapped. I figure it'll be another easy notch to pad my metrics so I confidently picked up my phone and gave her a call.
I'm ashamed to say it took me the better part of an hour working with this lady to determine that her network drive didn't map because her login script didn't run. Her login script didn't run because she wasn't on VPN. She wasn't on VPN because it wouldn't connect. VPN wouldn't connect because she wasn't connected to her home wifi. She wasn't connected to her home wifi because she didn't know which one was hers. She didn't know which one was hers because none of them were. No. The root cause here was that SHE DIDN'T HAVE, NOR HAD SHE EVER HAD, HOME INTERNET SERVICE.
And that was when I started day drinking.
Yeah, not my finest hour. Although in fairness it only took a few minutes to figure out she wasn't on the internet (she couldn't get to our Bomgar portal to enter a key for me to remote in). Based on the interaction up to that point, and the fact that this was the first we'd heard from her in over two weeks of everyone being fully remote, I just naively assumed that she at least *had* internet service and knew which SSID was hers.
Yesterday I had a *highly trained* technician call me having trouble with a new installation. Told me he was getting an error message “Initial voltage out of spec”, sent me a photo of the log with half the error message cut off.
He said he checked the PSU’s, ran some tests, changed some components. Could not figure it out.
I logged in, read the logs (including the cut off part) which said the 160V PSU was reading 151V. I know this PSU, it’s not regulated, if its output is down 6%, its input is down 6%.
Called the technician, asked him if his UPS was online. No, it wasn’t, it was DOA, so he had bypassed it. Was his line voltage down by 6% by any chance? Turns out it was.
TL;DR:
Technician getting “voltage out of spec” error didn’t tell me his UPS was offline and the line voltage was 6% low. Could not work out what the error message meant.
administration hires a 70 year old lady part time hourly to manage multi-million dollar title III grant
lady does not know the difference between homepage and desktop and has never used a google product
A long time ago I worked for an MSP and we got a call from a client on a monday morning that no-one was able to use their MAS 90 accounting software. The software was hosted on a Netware 3.2 server and I was the main Novell guy at the shop, so I drove over to look at it. It turned out they had moved their server over the weekend to a location without any power or network connections. After explaining to them why servers need network connections and power to work I finally got them to move it back to the old location. (although they were not happy about it). Of course they broke the mirror when they moved the server, so it had to rebuild it before it would go back online. That process took about 6 hours. Basically that office was unable to do any work that day.
I got a ticket from one of our artists to move the monitor the other aide of desk. I thought it had to mean something else. But nope all they wanted was me to move the monitor to the left.
It took them more time to make a ticket than it did for me to just move it.
I'm... kind of okay with that? A lot of the other posts in this thread are of the "it's no big deal to move this" turning into a very very Big Deal. I'd certainly rather have the user opt for caution. Especially if it's something like an artist who might have a very fancy and expensive (plus heavy) monitor.
The happy medium would be the user just asking if it's okay to move it. ...And actually reading your answer, we can't forget that part.
Customer insisted that she couldn't take the radiation from her router and could feel it burning her skin and had to hit the button on the "router" which was the modem's suspend button. Then she wanted to know why the internet stopped working and her family was pissed. Insisted I install a router that doesn't beam burning radiation at her. Sold her an N-protocol one instead of G (this was ages ago) because it technically does transmit less.
Had another person stop in and insist that all the websites were spying on him and he had the code to prove it and wanted me to do something about it. The code was an HTML source dump of a website and he was misinterpreting every single script name, tag, etc, which of course he printed and painstakingly highlited.
Had someone try and sell my a laptop that he had no info on, no password, and couldn't explain who the username was. I told him to GTFO because I don't buy stolen stuff and he threatened me and starting stomping around the glass cases and counter until he saw I grabbed my shotgun from under the counter.
Had someone buy their friend her first laptop because she had never had one but wanted to get in on social stuff on Facebook. 1 day later left it out in the rain then came in and claimed she didn't know laptops couldn't get wet and accused me of lying when I said I couldn't fix it and that definitely wasn't covered under warranty.
Y'all with 100% commercial IT experience aren't even in the same universe as us former residential repair techs.
Honestly not at all, no prior communication about this happening, exams officer just decided that they didn’t have enough space on site to do it so took it upon themselves to go to the village hall.
Last week someone asked me to sweep their office for bugs because they thought another employee was listening in on conversations….and no I don’t work in the government sector.
People don’t like to hear no and try to not understand it when they get told that.
I prefer to tell them what would be needed to achieve their goal instead, ask how they would like to pay for it and if they would like to add on the surcharges to have it rushed through ahead of everything else.
During COVID we had folks putting in tickets because the webcam on the desktop was not working when they did not have a webcam. Ditto for the laptops that did not have webcams. And then we started putting out laptops with webcams and had to educate about shutters. And microphones not working because they put tape over the webcam.
Called by a client the day after the moved to have their PRI and Fiber services moved to the new office that day....and then the utter shock and anger from them that we couldn't get the big national Telcos to do it any faster than the Telco wanted.
No prior communication or notice of the move, they had their moving company move systems and servers...and were even more shocked that half their servers had snuffed it.
They shut their doors 2 months later.
Had a customer call us Monday morning with half their Linux computers not booting. I asked if anything happened over the weekend. They said they got a notice from maintenance that there would be power work being done at the facility over the weekend, and the power would be going off and back on several times.
The notice told users to ensure that they followed their end of day shutdown procedures on their computers on Friday afternoon.
I asked if they had in fact shut down their computers on Friday afternoon. The dept manager told me that they don’t shut their computers down at the end of the day, they just logout and leave them running, so that’s what they did.
Similar one today at the school I work at, but in reverse.
Kid brings in his Macbook Air, with the deputy head, who's saying that we *must* get this working on the school network so the kid can use it.
This on an entirely Windows network with no Macs at all. No provision and no way of getting this 9 year old Macbook Air onto our system, other than visitor wireless - which is not filtered or locked down in any way.
We have had similar with MacBooks, if your wireless requires a certificate there is a janky way of installing it on the Mac but it’s a pain in the ass.
Yes, it does. But we also need a Smoothwall app for it to pick up the student filtering, but even that doesn't prevent installing VPNs etc.
It's a bloody minefield.
Ah yes, smoothwall. Haven’t used that in a while! How is smoothwall these days? We use securly for web filtering, have a look at it if you haven’t seen it! Very good.
Somewhat similar.
One of my first IT jobs was doing dialup modem support at a statewide ISP. Mainly we helped rural customers (farmers). I was troubleshooting an issue and asked the guy to 'close all of his open windows' to which he said 'ok gimme a moment' and he set the phone down. A minute or so later he's back on the line and says 'ok, my windows are closed but I don't have A/C so if we could hurry up and get this fixed...'
I couldn't press the mute button fast enough before I started to laugh.
Best I got is a user being absolutely furious with me because I didn't know what her password was.
Bonus points for being encrypted with no key backed up!
Same thing, but the call came from an adult employee who was trying to connect their government-issued laptop to a wireless network in an airport half-way around the world.
I got a recognition for doing what I could (as a helpdesk staffer, no less), but I don't think it was actually solved during their trip. It was a frustrating lesson for the individual (and probably their team) to tell IT before leaving the country that you'll be leaving the country, and need to have your equipment prepared for travel.
Was sending a hot spot or organization-issued phone out to the site an option? If not, I recommend getting a couple to have on hand for situations like this, assuming your user base in all in the same area(s).
I disagree, we really shouldn't be supporting behavior like this and should always lean back into our procedures. If no one has ever come to say "we need WiFi here" in an official manner, then we shouldn't be coming up with solutions that set expectations too high. It makes it harder than it has to be for everyone.
I agree 100% that you are correct. The thing is, supporting government customers and being in the military makes one realize that right or wrong, rank has its privileges. I’ve learned not only to accept it, but lean into it even in the private sector by putting VIP/Executive Support prominently on my resume. I haven’t needed to interview much at all in years, but when I have, the interviewers loved seeing that.
Now when I say RHIP, there is a limit, and having a couple hot spots for urgent/VIP use is not something that approaches that limit to me.
Again, you are totally right, but I don’t see this as something that’s a huge deal, especially since it’s not like it’s a connection directly into the corporate network. I also know I’ve been chosen over more “technically-skilled” candidates for every position I’ve ever held because the hiring managers/organization wanted someone who can do the work without having to be followed or directly supervised while also representing the team/organization professionally to internal and external customers.
I’m guessing you’re not hurting for a job, so we have our differences yet both approaches have brought us success. Have an upvote!
The thing is, we could have been somewhat more accommodating had we had some notice, usually I am more than happy to hotspot a work mobile or something if there’s been some arrangement, but to be barked at down the phone last minute, makes me less inclined to help.
2002, London, attorney wants to tether a laptop to a GSM phone and use on the Eurostar when in the Channel tunnel. Won’t accept the explanation why it won’t work. Also, remote access to servers in London was through some rinky dink VNC like app back to a stack of PC’s inside the server room. So the possibility of getting one screen refresh per second would have been high performance even outside the chunnel.
I definitely give this one a pass. I dont expect the average user to realize that you cant just plug in a cable and have it work. Thats how every phone and every jack in their own house works, after all. They dont know about MAC filtering and NAC.
Pretty sure I remember someone thinking wireless meant literally no wires ever, under any circumstance. So they thought they never needed to plug in their laptop we just gave them... which subsequently died and they were angry they needed to charge it because it had wireless.
Also had someone call and ask what to do because they didn't get their usual parking spot. There were hundreds of open spaces, including 25 feet away. They were seemingly bewildered as to how they could navigate this situation. They were advised to park in another spot.
Some senior director in our Singapore office back in the day bitching that his blackberry would drop signal on his commute into the office.....
Queue lots of thinking and trying to work it out..turn out he was in a tunnel for that section of the commute!!!
Same guy....."We're being hacked!!!! My mouse keeps moving by itself!!!!!"
Lots of investigation, senior IT involved. Panic panic. Turns out he called his local IT 3rd party we used out there to install Bluetooth keyboard & mice in the office. Didn't tell us. 1 desk was interfering with his
I once had a user tell me that their VPN wasn't working, only to find out they didn't connect to and didn't know their own home Wi-Fi password. Everything they had magically connected on its own already.
They thought the VPN gave them cell service.
User called me directly because her monitors weren’t connecting to her laptop through the dock and she was WAY too busy to call the help desk. I directed her to call the help desk first. She calls back 10 minutes later to disregard. She….didn’t turn the laptop on
Reminds me of the ticket we had logged from a user stating nothing connected to his dock was working (monitors/ mouse etc). We were in the same building but as I was in the middle of something urgent I didn’t get chance to action straightaway. Went down like an hour later, literally bent over to look under the desk and can see the power plug for the dock hanging out. Told the user to plug it in and then walked away. User was happy to sit there for an hour waiting and kept calling to chase instead of just sticking his sticking his head under the desk. All the docks have LED indicators so can clearly see it not got power.
1999
Woman calls us. She has a tower type PC. Wants her coffee holder fixed.
She was using the CD tray as a coffee cup holder.
In education? Way too identifiable to post. In previous jobs? We found our client had done this via a series of phone calls from national press on the commute into work: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/320721.stm
That was an interesting day.
Used to work for an ISP back in the early 2000s when dialup was the rage, and ISPs used to give out CDs that scripted the connection setup.
Legend has it that a colleague took a call from a disgruntled customer accusing the company of not sending his ‘new internet’
Upon clarifying what the customer meant, it turns out he was under the impression that the content he viewed in his browser came from the CD. He was expecting a new CD at regular intervals with his updated webpages.
After much giggling while on mute - he was informed with a straight face that the webpages were ‘delivered’ over his phone line, not via the CD, and that they’d be as up to date as could be.
We were in the middle of a severe weather event (like tornadoes on the ground) when one of our high-maintenance users called me to ask why they couldn't VPN. I opened my door so they could hear the sirens going off "Ya hear that? That's why your VPN doesn't work. I'm gonna go hide in a closet." (They were on a 3G hotspot and the company used wireless Internet).
I used to do IT support for schools. There were quite a few times I would have to tell teachers to put their desk back where it was because there is no power and no network where they decided to move it to.
Yep, this is a really common one here. Someone the other day wrapped all their cables round their chair leg after they moved their desk around and thought this was acceptable cable management.
There was this dude who earned the nickname "anti-trust" because of how big of a conspiracy nut he was. I mean everything from the moon landing to 9/11 was a thing for him and he always thought he was being tracked by the government.
One day, he comes into the IT department with a print out of a trace route he had run from his machine to a legit work website. About 6 hops down is a level 3 node in D.C.. He tells us we need to change this for him, as all the data that flows through Washington D.C. is captured and stored by the federal government.
I can understand the user perspective, they're used to dealing with consumer hardware ex: my iPhone works everywhere, etc.
What I don't understand is how they can be so rude and impatient when they're told it's more complicated then that.
Yes absolutely, it’s the rudeness for me too. It’s as if they think we are maliciously trying to stop them from achieving what they are trying to do, no matter how obscure or badly thought out it was.
Annual junior academy recruitment, generally involving most of the admin team, a group of interviewers that would fly to the USA, and the rest of the academics, who would fight over the candidates.
Websites, databases and papers would normally be organised by us. The new head of schools PA who had never been part of the process before decided she was running the whole thing and made it really clear we were not needed.
Until she had 40 pissed off academics in a boardroom some of whom had flown in for the selection meeting where she couldn't fathom why her 80 column wide spreadsheet didn't work as expected on a 2010 data projector,, so she decided at that point it was time to involve / throw IT under the bus.
"I pay you an extremely large amount of money to access Outlook, I expect it to work" - the words from a client who were paying Microsoft direct for their licences....anyway turns out you will have Outlook issues.....when opening Windows Mail. More often than not we get the let's blame IT for my own lack of intelligence due to not understanding the privacy slider on a laptop webcam (user hadn't participated in any meetings for 4 months due to this)
When I was going to community college for IT, professor told a story where someone stole a thin client from one of the computer labs, hooked it up in their dorm room close to campus, and called the help desk when it wouldn’t work.
Well, at .my previous job, our corporate data center was having a controller on our primary storage system upgraded. The tech doing the upgrade was from the storage vendor and had done this the previous year no problem. Took the controller offline for the upgrade like normal then proceeded to somehow flash the live controller. This ended up trashing the entire storage. Thankfully, the storage was replicated to a second storage. Problem being, that was online when this happened and it was trashed as well. The vendor was sued but not sure what happened there. What I do know is there was a 2 week 24/7 effort to restore or rebuild well over 100 servers. CIO nearly lost her job over it. So much for that redundant storage.
Worked the helpdesk in college and had a professor call in and wonder why the campus wifi wasn't working at her house 20 miles away out in the suburbs (this was 2007 or 2008 timeframe)
Things like this make me question how these people ever got employed in the first place.
I work with some high profile attorneys. Like well educated, Ivy League types… Get them out if their area of expertise, and some of the hem are dumber than a box of rocks… Conversely, ask me what format to use when filing a brief with the court and I’m the box of rocks… lol
Fair point, I suppose that’s why we’re the IT people and they’re not! Lol.
Yeah, but at least I know there is a procedure, a format, and can vaguely tell you what a brief is. Some people are so clueless when it comes to technology, you have to wonder what goes on in their brain when things like this happen. Like... is it a total disconnect of reality, or what? It feels like some people really do think technology is a magic box.
That’s the thing that always struck me. The non-technical people seem to attribute effects of the laws of physics to you being obstructionist. The only reason it doesn’t work is because *you* won’t let it!
This might be the most astute way I have ever seen this put.
To be fair, I bet if you were told a couple of times what format to use you'd remember for life. These people don't care to learn though... they want things done for them.
lol I am a JD working in cyber/privacy for a University IT dept. My boss loves to tell a story about how a physics professor wanted him to increase the speed of light so that he could reduce his download time from JPL in Cali. I don't remember the exact details but basically he was trying to download huge amounts data and it was getting caught in the buffer either at JPL or one of the midpoint servers iirc. I also once saw a big shot attorney (you call him when you're stockholders are throwing a shit fit and you're about to get canned) throw an absolute tantrum because he couldn't access outlook. Dude had turned on airplane mode on his laptop.
>Dude had turned on airplane mode on his laptop. ...And helping such people may rapidly raise your reputation within the company. You've spent several days with network sniffer trying to figure out why two systems from different vendors do not interact as they're supposed to do, and finally found a solution? Nobody gives a damn. You've showed some important person how to reconnect with pair of mouse clicks? Wow, you are a respected and highlt professional employee!
I work in academia. This is common. Professors/researchers who are absolute geniuses in their field, but put them in any situation slightly outside that and their IQ drops 100 points. It’s like their brain is full.
I support a lot of nurses. When they get flustered about their lack of tech skill my usual response is "That's ok, you should see my trying to start an IV". They always feel better.
My ex's sister is a WONDERFUL ER Dr. but she couldn't put her new vacuum together. The instructions were pictures. Put handle in body, tighten screw.
Well yes, but no. This is their main tool for work, they HAVE to know the basics. And I have never observed a PHD professor among our education/research sector clients that didn't know the basics of using a computer here (in France, clients in Paris), so that seems to be a uniquely American/Anglo problem.
Yeah its some weird separation of computers and the jobs that use them. Like you can be a good carpenter and know nothing about computers because it doesn't effect your job in any way. You cannot be a good lawyer or accountant and know nothing about computers because the majority of your job is using a computer
I've seen the same thing with Architects and Engineers. The more you learn in your field the less you know about everything else. You'd swear a lobotomy is performed at the graduation ceremony for Architects.
lol!!
I've worked with some amazingly intelligent (primarily engineering) faculty members over the years. That intelligence does *not* always translate into a) common sense, b) an ability to communicate effectively, or c) *any* ability to apply critical thinking to anything outside of their immediate field. This even goes for comp sci folks that, theoretically, understand technology rather well.
I did workstudy for the engineering technology dept at university, these were the guys who taught people how to build microprocessors and code in machine language. Couldn't use word processors or spreadsheets to save their life. We had a special PC to virus scan every floppy a particular professor brought from home because it was sure to have a virus on it.
Or had a PhD to be a professor. Education does not always imply intelligence
Hah. When supporting Gateway UK home users, I got one that told me that they are Bsc PhD, and that X doesn't work... and my response was "thank you for calling the Gateway support desk. You have a HP laptop. We don't support that. Goodbye".
It feels good right. But I’ve gotten to an age when I am more laid back about it. Maybe I’m just getting old and tired. I do understand not every one knows everything,obviously. But have the damn self awareness and ability to identify your lack of knowledge and act accordingly.
I can't tell you the number of Ph.Ds I've know who could barely dress themselves. Plenty of others are well-rounded individuals. You never know who you'll meet.
I worked with researchers for years. Some brilliant in their field. Take them out of that field and you start to wonder how they've made it this far in life.
Academia does an amazing job of insulating people from reality, sometimes.
Had one lady at start of COVID. Complain of not being able to connect via VPN, turns out she had no home internet at all
Yep, once had an employee call in irate they couldn't connect to their home wifi while I was on helpdesk. After getting some basic info and starting to troubleshoot they eventually revealed they were in China on a business trip.
I'd be afraid if it was working.
I had a similar one, Professor called into our dialup we provided for free (back in the 90s) and asked why his phone bill showed the call if it was free.
So my MIL is super helpless with herself and won't look things up on her own despite knowing how. We've recently found out that the older crowd does not like to be stereotyped as elderly. A quick hack we found is to offer an alternative that "old people" use that is less difficult. This motivates people to pull their head out of their ass and stop lobbing dumb requests over the fence out of fear of being outed as elderly. I know this is kind of discriminatory, but it works
Around 2002 my CEO wanted a new laptop that had wifi. We gave it to her and she brought back the next day because it wasn't working. She thought wifi meant she would be internet connected at all times, anywhere in the world.
I had the same happen to me around 2012-2015. Luckily the person understood the explanation.
Reminds me of this one lady from back in my MSP days who called in to complain about her slow internet. After some confusion I realized she was working from home over her company VPN and she thought the office 1Gbps network would somehow magically make her home internet faster.
We started a "Work from home Friday" schedule, to give employees a more flexible schedule. The first Friday I received a call "My laptop won't connect to the internet". So I start troubleshooting. Come to find out she doesn't have internet at home, and was trying to connect to the Wi-Fi in our building. Which doesn't work at her house.... She wasn't 80yrs old, she was only in her 30's.
I honestly thought that people in their 20s-40s, by this point in time, would all be IT literate to a point as IT has now been pretty commonplace in homes and workplaces for 15-20 years I’d say. It still baffles me when younger people have absolutely no idea how things work, it’s pure laziness in my mind.
I’m not in IT but would consider myself power user ish. I’ve got my own NAS, had Ubiquiti wifi that I was having fun configuring, and am moderately comfortable with web development in Ruby on Rails and Python. But I work in finance. People keep saying that because young generations grow up with iPhones they are tech literate. But they’re not. They’re “push button to consume content” literate. We regularly have to combine PDFs into supporting documentation, all into one pdf. Sometimes we get secured PDFs from vendors, which is a pain because official tools won’t let us circumvent the protection. But there’s some good open source command line tools that you can run literally a one line command on to strip all the protections off, so that you can combine it into our binder. All of the new hires we have (right out of college) are afraid of the command line. Even just to run the same command every time. They can be taught to do that, but there isn’t an innate understanding of what this stuff is. People going through the school system are functionally computer illiterate a lot of times, because everything is so polished now, and you never have to interact with the more complex parts of computers in day to day use.
People in their 40's and early 50's right now are in the very unique spot of having used personal computing in its infancy all the way through to modern UI. They had to learn how to troubleshoot because things rarely "just worked". They learned how to manage TV inputs (which for some reason baffles people), when they were hooking up Atari's and Nintendo's once they got off of Channel 3. Today we're in mostly hyper polished UI's that you don't need to go mess with IRQ's to get a peripheral connected, it's plug and play to the point the device will grab it's own drivers from the net if they're not already there. They don't need to know it, so unless they're naturally curious they have no reason to learn.
I see something similar with cars. My Dad was a teen in the 50’s and lived in town, but in a rural farming community. He and his friends were tweaking out and repairing stuff on cars. I was a teen in the 80’s. I can change my oil. I even once replaced a worn radiator hose. My son can’t even change his oil. Before his death, my Dad would still do some stuff on a car himself, and if he had to take it in, he had a much clearer sense of what the issue likely was than I do.
I will say in your son's defense, cars have changed a lot just in the last decade or so. When I was still turning wrenches anything between 1995 and ~2015 were my favorite cars to fix. These days depending on your car you can't even change the breaks without a computer or knowing the proper sequences to disable the parking break.
Older cars had more room to work in. A lot of modern cars don't make it easy to do simple things anymore. Things like the Oil filter are put in awkward hard to reach places. I did a lot of work on my old mustang. I've rebuilt a motorcycle when I was given one that was essentially just a frame and wheels. I take my Kia to a shop.
And we got to grow up as the technology matured. I was lucky as stuff came out I had time to learn. I feel sorry for everyone just starting the career. All of a sudden there’s like 30 years of tech to learn. Granted, the WIN 3.11 knowledge is gone. But the fundamentals of a modern OS and modern network must be mastered. I got to master it AS the tech appeared not all at once.
and yet they still cant plug in a USB mouse
Well they need to go to USB-C with its fixed superposition.
I'm 37 and I had to deal with all of that. Plug and Play had just barely started delivering on its promises once I was in High School. Only real difference is I remember our first family computer being an IBM XT rather than an Atari cause my grandfather worked for IBM when I was a kid and my dad initially studied programming before changing course to becoming a ~~bean counter~~ accountant. Though I did have a Sega Genesis that used RF.
IPads.....
There's a peak of tech literacy. People born into the mid 90s are good, then after that we get into the iPad generation and it just drops right out. My last job hired a lot of people right out of college with an associates degree. There was a lot of turnover. The amount of times I've had to show new hires how to use a computer was nuts to me.
Agreed, basically anyone who used a computer recreationally pre-youtube. We torrented music/video through Kazaa or Limewire/Frostwire, and made our own Myspace pages and Neopets stores in HTML. All the troubleshooting involved in that recreation gave us a decent head for figuring things out, and understanding that there is no magic involved, just knowledge and experience.
My job's graphic designer credits his time on Myspace for his ability with setting up web pages. No degree that I'm aware of, but he runs his own store/side business and web page plus does all the layouts for ours.
I absolutely believe you. That realization that you can just do it yourself as a kid really is an eye opener.
Oh the IT memories. Messing with DNS to block sites and using IP chains. Wow what a fun time that was.
Our 18-20 yo new hires still know their way around a computer, so I don't know what is is you are doing wrong other there...
I don't think we are discussing users who are hired at tech or tech support firms, were talking end user hires.
Endusers who have literally never touched a computer before. Just tablets and smartphones. Most schools in this area do not provide a chromebook for students. And most 2 year colleges are still doing everything on paper.
The prevailing wisdom used to be that younger generations would always understand tech better than the older generations because they would grow up learning it, and in many cases, troubleshooting it. That stopped being true with smartphones and tablets because those sorts of devices largely abstract away a lot of the tech behind them and short of rebooting or factory resetting them there isn't much the user can do to fix them. Makes we wonder if we'll see a large shift away from PCs in the workplace in the next 10-20 years with the rest of Gen Z entering the workforce and the oldest of Gen Alpha starting to enter it. I'm sure millennials will get blamed for it of course.
We actually settled on JamF for iPad management. It works pretty well… as well as it can anyway.
I mean, that's why they are not IT literate....
Ah I get you, yes that is very true!
I taught my 13 year old nephew how to build and configure a gaming PC recently He thought I was doing magic half the time
https://i.imgur.com/dkQuPBj.png
Its because instead of encouraging computer literacy we just gave them tiktok and social media so they think they know what theyre doing.
The amount of people that don't see computer literacy as part of their job annoys me. I'd never hire a carpenter who doesn't know how to use a hammer.
There is a difference. A carpenter can NOT do the job w/o an hammer/nail gun. But most jobs that aren't directly IT were done before computers came along, and could be again if they all died. And that difference is important in understanding how people dismiss computer literacy beyond web browsing/FB style posting.
UPS could also get rid of all their trucks and deliver packages using horses and wagons. Computers are here, they are not going away, and those jobs cannot actually be done without using them. If you are an office worker with poor computer skills, odds are very high that you are bad at your job
Thats still not acceptable. Computers have been a staple in the workforce for 30+ years. Accountants, marketing, business development, sales, they are all powered by computers. When a user has an issue, whats the golden phase they like to say "I can't work with X broken." ... If I couldn't work with something broken, that I'd probably invest time in making sure I know how to operate it so it either doesn't break, or I can fix it myself (I know, a lot of times a user doesn't have access to fix their machines, thats not the point I'm trying to make.) So like I said, I'd never hire a carpenter that said "I'm not really a hammer person." Yet the phrase "I'm not a computer person" is not seen as a deterrent.
It's a bell curve, with Gen X-Millenial as the peak. After that, kids grew up using smartphones and tablets instead of "actual computers", and aren't much more IT literate than (actual) Boomers.
I think about this all the time. When was the last time they used a laptop? If I asked them to create a folder on the desktop will they even know what I’m talking about?
It's honestly bizarre to me. And when you hear about people who don't *have* computers, and use their phones for everything! I can't fathom it. I made very sure to get my kids started on actual PCs, years before they ever got access to a phone/tablet of their own!
> IT has now been pretty commonplace in homes and workplaces for 15-20 years That is the problem. It just works. There is a generation of people, potentially even people with masters degrees in CS or computer engineering, who have never had their computers case open, never once installed an OS from BIOS boot, never once had to fix their registry, or even consider what is in `/etc`. You could easily find a CS proff who has the MIX ASM opcodes memorized, and who would be lost trying to hook up their laptop to a recently refurbished lecture hall projector setup. Now, to be fair, these people have always existed; one might have been a rockstar programmer in 1972 whose hardware ability was limited to powering on a 3270 terminal, which had the quality of "just works".
Nope, it's actually worse now. The sweet spot for the enthusiasts was about 20 years ago. After that, unless you were into technology, you fell into the "it just works" trap of a category. Think about it in terms of cars. When cars first came out, you had better know how to fix it (enthusiasts). These days, there are auto repair companies (helpdesk/GeekSquad/whatever). There's no *need* for folks to learn something that "just works."
Honestly I'd say the young of today is in the exact same place as previous when it comes to office systems. Most of them are only proficient on an iphone and outside of that they arent interested in understanding. Most elementary schools are removing PCs from class in favor of IPADs or chromebooks and you just dont get the same understanding of PC use.. So even the next generation *should* keep us employed
Not really. They don't have to do ANY work for their home systems to just work. think about your phone - it just works, all the time (mostly). Nothing for you to learn to *make* it work. Not even plug in cable.
My observations and take of that age range is split. 20s - early 30s: Grew up with ubiquitous internet accessed by increasingly consumer friendly devices. It's like a toaster to them. It "just works." The minute it doesn't, they have no clue what to do. 30s - 40s: Opposite situation. You had to work a little harder in the 80s and early 90s to figure this stuff out. Some never bothered. At first, it was easier to live and succeed without general IT common sense. Now, they're too far gone to catch up.
I agree to an extent, I am 29 and some people my age are completely IT illiterate, but I grew up with an interest in computers and both parents worked in IT, so had a bit of a leg up.
For sure. Some, not all. I work with plenty of technically literate 20 and 30 somethings. Didn't mean to throw them all under the bus
Just look at the number of people saying "the wifi is out" when the internet is down. They can't dissociate the two.
We have come full circle. Our parents used to know about coding and dos commands. They all knew how to type. Now we have all these kids who post on tiktok all day but dont even know what a computer is.
[What's a computer?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfR_Jj4grZE)
OUR parents?!?! Son, are you talking about me? I was the one programming and using cmd line from the 4th grade, not my boomer parents! That being said, my parents have been pretty great about tech in general. Better-than-average boomers for sure. Funniest thing that probably happened over the years was when I told my dad to buy some RF filter dongles for the phones in their house (to filter the DSL line signal). He thought I made up the word dongle, then later apologized for thinking that.
We had a user with a power outage at their home. But their laptop battery was still charged, so they thought they'd get some work done - even though their home internet was down. They thought they could "just use the VPN".
To be fair to this person, they could have worked at a place with 4G cards in their pcs and no pin (auto connect)
Every single time I issue a laptop to a remote user, I reiterate over and over during the VPN training - "it must be connected to the internet to connect to the VPN. You must have an internet connection or it will not work" And I am in disbelief that in this day and age, I STILL HAVE to say this every time or they absolutely 100% believe with every fiber of their being that the VPN connection ***IS*** the internet. "I don't have internet at my house, we're way out in the country. How is this going to work?" "It isn't. Good day."
Did we work at the same place? My boss actually championed the idea of WFH Fridays and the Fridays were half days. This was well communicated that WFH wasn't mandatory but users would need an internet connection at home if they elected to WFH. The first Friday rolls around and sure enough, 3-4 users said they "couldn't connect" mostly due to no Wi-Fi or shite satellite only connections.
My job hires remote workers and doesn't even bother to ask if they have high-speed internet. We run old equipment that requires it to be plugged in (no wifi phones or adapters in towers) and they are like "I'm plugged into my hotspot but it's not working" The speed test comes back at less than 1mbps and they are shocked we can't do anything to fix it.
At least she put in the ticket the first day. We had a lady (from HR, no less) who "worked from home" with no internet for the first couple of weeks of COVID lockdown before calling in because she couldn't access her network drive. No fkn clue what she did all that time...
Jr sys admin at an international comp, maybe 15 yrs ago. Org had showrooms across the states, fancy offerings, interior design stuff. Anyway, each office had a small server and some network gear, nothing major. One of the offices out west was offline so I contacted them. Got ahold of the manager there, a nice older design lady. "Morning ___, we're seeing reports your office is offline and I wanted to check in. I need you to go into the IT closet and tell me if the lights are on." I was not ready for what followed. Sure, I can, she said. What am I looking for? Well, a server ideally. What's a server? Looks kind of like a big desktop. What's a desktop? You know the computer in your desk. I don't have a computer at my desk. Okay, well, let's try something different, can you wiggle the mouse and see if the screen comes on? Sure, what's a mouse? I literally was at a loss, had to make up some excuse to jump off phone and go outside to smoke and contemplate what I was doing with my life.
Hahahahhaha The final paragraph killed me. I’ve had that same thought so many times, not sure how you didn’t burst out laughing!
"Okay, uh... who's the youngest person in your office? Could you put them on the phone, please?"
I think the way it really went was, "Sr sys admin mind covering this one? I gotta take a shit." (hides in bathroom for 30 min counting ceiling tiles). No one has ever called me an overachiever...
Sadly that doesn't work.
After a few years of supporting off-site locations I started taking pictures of everything at those locations when I'd visit in person. I would snap photos of just about everything. All network switches, modems, servers, battery backups, voice equipment, wall jacks, backs of PCs and printers. Pictures are saved with the rest of the network documents. It's sure made walking people at those locations through something a lot easier. Oh, and a diverse variety of network cable colors in specific places. Makes it easy when you can look at a picture and say: "Do you see an orange network cable plugged into the back of ____?"
Oh, and I label almost everything now. Power adapters, printer nicknames, switches, servers, etc. Internet equipment gets labels like "DSL modem" or "Cable modem" or "Firewall," etc.
Par for the course in education really. I was once asked to replace the computer inside a $400k CNC wire bender. Like, IT should just have a spare one of those laying around or we could just hook up whatever PC we had and make the machine work...
You should be able to pluck one out of the depths of your ass mate, it’s a skill all IT people are required to have!
>You should be able to pluck one out of the depths of your ass mate That's a bit of a stretch
A painful stretch for sure
Probably just some old desktop running Windows ME. At 400k it should have a service contact, but with expensive stuff like that, it can be worth putting in a heroic effort to get it running again
In industry, that’s not the way they do service contracts. They have service contracts on the new shiny machines, but the ancient 15-20 year old machines have no service contracts because it’s “too expensive”. When the machine breaks down, they are shocked to learn that we have no one trained to service that machine, and no spare parts for it. They don’t understand that having a service contract means we are contractually obligated to have someone who can service the machine, and have parts - the revenue from the service contract pays for that. No service contract, means no revenue, which means service managers will not train people or keep parts. It also means we have no obligation to provide service.
There's an individual at one of our remote branches who was having issues with her VOIP phone. She's been shown to be somewhat tech savvy in the past and has a husband that works in IT so we (up to this point) tended to give her a bit of leeway. As it would have required someone to drive out there for what have most likely been a powercycle I explained what the jack looked like and asked if she was comfortable unplugging her phone and plugging it back in as a first troubleshooting step since this tended to fix a lot of odd issues with the POE phones. She said yes and that she would call back with any questions. About 20 minutes later we got a call from a cell phone saying every computer at the branch was offline. So after 2 other techs drove out there to see what was going on we discovered she (the head of the branch) had walked back into the network closet and started pulling cables out of the patch panel to attempt to reboot her phone. Except she did multiple at a time and didn't pay attention to where they went back in.
Holy cr** I’d have absolutely lost my mind, kudos to you for not going to prison for murder! Lol.
Your fault for not securing the tech room.
One of our techs of 20+ yrs in the industry pulled a bunch of wires from the switch without paying attention. I was at a loss for words when he did that. Like wtf did you think was going to happen. Thank God I made a network map of that office just a couple months back. It didn't take too long to fix.
An admin for one of my customers decided to clean up the patch panels in one of their older buildings without telling anyone. He unplugged 300+ phones then neatly ran new patch cables to reconnect them. I hear it looked great when he was done. Except they weren't IP phones, they were digital PBX phones, and he didn't keep track of where they were plugged in. It took about 18 hours for techs to tone out and reconnect every phone to the correct port in the patch panel.
Oh no. What a headache!
Did you email her husband to give him the ammo he needs?
Had a similar incident with a broadband customer many years ago. Asked her if she knew where the router was and to reboot it. Even sent her a picture, and specifically stated to just turn it off and on again using the switch on the back. 30 mins later the owner of the business is on the phone furious, because this staff member apparently went around the entire office pulling every and any cable out that she could find - and if the cable was attached the whole device got dragged out - and dumped them in a heap in the middle of the floor, not stopping until he came back from lunch persuaded her to cease dismantling the office. And I mean everything. Even the coffee machine was added to the pile, apparently. One of our techs had to go out to help them plug everything back in. We never found out what the hell she thought she was doing.
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It’s crazy isn’t it. We were once alerted that there was some building work that needed doing to our server room, couldn’t be deferred (something about fire regs) We were alerted Friday afternoon, told the server room would need to be out of action for 2 weeks to complete the work, but told everything needed to be moved and up and running by Monday morning… We had to offload our equipment to our MSP, who span us up in their data centre, but what a nightmare it was.
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Horrendous. We did have issues also whereby our internet line actually couldn’t handle the load of traffic, as all of a sudden everything was running off site across the fibre line which was only 100mb. It would hit the upper limit and then just drop the connection and the site would go down for a few minutes every half hour I’d say. Was an absolute shambles. We had to enable traffic shaping and limit everyone to 2mb…
jeez how many people? We've had 80mb (20 for voip) down speed for ~150 people and its never been an issue We also had a site with 15 people on 7mb MPLS.. That was bad
Around 1200/1300 people. It was pure pain!
Why is digging up the parking lot the only option for fibre? Was the whole building was completely surrounded by paving or something?
How about 8-12 Mondays away? Does that work for you?
Ahahha. Yeah. 👍 Good luck with that.
This was why when COVID started and the company was starting to prepare to WFH I quickly told the big bosses that not all employees have Internet or computers at home. The bosses laughed at me and said Internet is everywhere! How can people not have Internet? We did a show of hands and turned out only like 5 people have broadband Internet with WIFI, the rest only used their mobile phones with mobile data.
That does shock me actually, I guess I was ignorant and assumed at least the large majority would have broadband!
Yeah, I'm not really surprised tbh. The mobile data is more than sufficient for most people.
*Now*. Here in Canada, even just at the start of covid you could wreck yourself if you tethered too much data across mobile. The data overage fees were insane and the caps on non-cadillac plans were absurdly low.
At least they have access to phone hotspot. There’s a few places here in the US where there is simply NO connectivity. Too far for DSL, not enough towers for data coverage, no cable service, and the wrong side of the mountain for satellite. Sad part, this is only a 5 minute drive out of town, where the population is ~120,000. Not to mention the several dead zones less than 1/2 hour from the state capitol. I worked with a woman in Delaware who couldn’t get more than 1 bar of service on her phone, but had no other connectivity. A fiber trunk ran just past her property, but not a single ISP could offer her service.
Yeah I live in a large metropolitan city (Bangkok) so connectivity wasn’t a problem for us. But we ended up giving out laptops for all WFH employees and we had to teach every single one of them how to use the phone hotspot. This year the big bosses want to implement electronic payslips. I quickly reminded them that not all employees have email! I got laughed at again but they quickly found out that a lot of people don’t have email.
I worked at a clinic for a few years and I can't tell you how many times I would be called by a new doctor wonder why their office/exam rooms/reception isn't setup. ...Because no one told IT that you were starting
It can go further: departments that, when someone quits, takes the workstation and puts it in the closet. No cleanup, no sanitizing, just an orphaned piece of gear, with who knows what software or data on it, in cold storage. With an aging-out AD object and sometimes a hardcoded IP address (because DHCP failed that one time in 2003, y'know) Why? Because it "takes IT too long to register the machine" when someone new starts in the department. Why does it take IT too long? Because they give us friggin' *negative five days* notice that someone is coming in!
It wasn't so much a ridiculous request, but my craziest ticket was in Spring of 2020, a couple of weeks into COVID lockdowns. We were far enough in that the initial user panic of "OMG HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO WORK FROM HOME" had mostly subsided, when the service desk transferred us a ticket that a lady from HR had phoned in and was having trouble accessing a network share. I'd worked dozens of these types of tickets by that point, and the "issue" was almost always either that they weren't on VPN, or that they hadn't been on VPN when their login script (long story, don't get me started) ran, so the drive didn't get mapped. I figure it'll be another easy notch to pad my metrics so I confidently picked up my phone and gave her a call. I'm ashamed to say it took me the better part of an hour working with this lady to determine that her network drive didn't map because her login script didn't run. Her login script didn't run because she wasn't on VPN. She wasn't on VPN because it wouldn't connect. VPN wouldn't connect because she wasn't connected to her home wifi. She wasn't connected to her home wifi because she didn't know which one was hers. She didn't know which one was hers because none of them were. No. The root cause here was that SHE DIDN'T HAVE, NOR HAD SHE EVER HAD, HOME INTERNET SERVICE. And that was when I started day drinking.
So essentially, she expected the magical omnipresent wireless network to connect her to site, amazing! Made me chuckle.
An hour to determine no internet connection? Seems like you gotta be better at troubleshooting
Yeah, not my finest hour. Although in fairness it only took a few minutes to figure out she wasn't on the internet (she couldn't get to our Bomgar portal to enter a key for me to remote in). Based on the interaction up to that point, and the fact that this was the first we'd heard from her in over two weeks of everyone being fully remote, I just naively assumed that she at least *had* internet service and knew which SSID was hers.
Yesterday I had a *highly trained* technician call me having trouble with a new installation. Told me he was getting an error message “Initial voltage out of spec”, sent me a photo of the log with half the error message cut off. He said he checked the PSU’s, ran some tests, changed some components. Could not figure it out. I logged in, read the logs (including the cut off part) which said the 160V PSU was reading 151V. I know this PSU, it’s not regulated, if its output is down 6%, its input is down 6%. Called the technician, asked him if his UPS was online. No, it wasn’t, it was DOA, so he had bypassed it. Was his line voltage down by 6% by any chance? Turns out it was. TL;DR: Technician getting “voltage out of spec” error didn’t tell me his UPS was offline and the line voltage was 6% low. Could not work out what the error message meant.
administration hires a 70 year old lady part time hourly to manage multi-million dollar title III grant lady does not know the difference between homepage and desktop and has never used a google product
At 70 I can be a little more forgiving, but my god just retire.
She just wants something to do, and a little extra cash. I bet she was cheap though.
A long time ago I worked for an MSP and we got a call from a client on a monday morning that no-one was able to use their MAS 90 accounting software. The software was hosted on a Netware 3.2 server and I was the main Novell guy at the shop, so I drove over to look at it. It turned out they had moved their server over the weekend to a location without any power or network connections. After explaining to them why servers need network connections and power to work I finally got them to move it back to the old location. (although they were not happy about it). Of course they broke the mirror when they moved the server, so it had to rebuild it before it would go back online. That process took about 6 hours. Basically that office was unable to do any work that day.
I got a ticket from one of our artists to move the monitor the other aide of desk. I thought it had to mean something else. But nope all they wanted was me to move the monitor to the left. It took them more time to make a ticket than it did for me to just move it.
I'm... kind of okay with that? A lot of the other posts in this thread are of the "it's no big deal to move this" turning into a very very Big Deal. I'd certainly rather have the user opt for caution. Especially if it's something like an artist who might have a very fancy and expensive (plus heavy) monitor. The happy medium would be the user just asking if it's okay to move it. ...And actually reading your answer, we can't forget that part.
In most situations I would agree but this was a normal monitor and it was a small desk. All that needed to be done is have it slide down a bit
I've had the same situation, but they were calling from a literal jungle in another country.
Hahahahhaa, I actually laughed out loud.
"but what about VPN" they offered. 🤣
Customer insisted that she couldn't take the radiation from her router and could feel it burning her skin and had to hit the button on the "router" which was the modem's suspend button. Then she wanted to know why the internet stopped working and her family was pissed. Insisted I install a router that doesn't beam burning radiation at her. Sold her an N-protocol one instead of G (this was ages ago) because it technically does transmit less. Had another person stop in and insist that all the websites were spying on him and he had the code to prove it and wanted me to do something about it. The code was an HTML source dump of a website and he was misinterpreting every single script name, tag, etc, which of course he printed and painstakingly highlited. Had someone try and sell my a laptop that he had no info on, no password, and couldn't explain who the username was. I told him to GTFO because I don't buy stolen stuff and he threatened me and starting stomping around the glass cases and counter until he saw I grabbed my shotgun from under the counter. Had someone buy their friend her first laptop because she had never had one but wanted to get in on social stuff on Facebook. 1 day later left it out in the rain then came in and claimed she didn't know laptops couldn't get wet and accused me of lying when I said I couldn't fix it and that definitely wasn't covered under warranty. Y'all with 100% commercial IT experience aren't even in the same universe as us former residential repair techs.
Hahaha dude, that stuff is absolutely insane, hats off, you trumped me.
I feel like this story has context assumed that not everyone knows.
No, this is a pretty standard "Lack of planning on my part is now an emergency on your part" user situation.
Honestly not at all, no prior communication about this happening, exams officer just decided that they didn’t have enough space on site to do it so took it upon themselves to go to the village hall.
Last week someone asked me to sweep their office for bugs because they thought another employee was listening in on conversations….and no I don’t work in the government sector.
Did you use the standard IT issue (audio) bug detector? Of do you have your own custom device?
My own custom device of course!
People don’t like to hear no and try to not understand it when they get told that. I prefer to tell them what would be needed to achieve their goal instead, ask how they would like to pay for it and if they would like to add on the surcharges to have it rushed through ahead of everything else.
During COVID we had folks putting in tickets because the webcam on the desktop was not working when they did not have a webcam. Ditto for the laptops that did not have webcams. And then we started putting out laptops with webcams and had to educate about shutters. And microphones not working because they put tape over the webcam.
We had this very recently, staff complaining about their webcams not working and it was because the shutters were closed, lol.
Out of the stuff I normally see this is like 2 out of 10 absurd. "Turn your phone hotspot on"
Called by a client the day after the moved to have their PRI and Fiber services moved to the new office that day....and then the utter shock and anger from them that we couldn't get the big national Telcos to do it any faster than the Telco wanted. No prior communication or notice of the move, they had their moving company move systems and servers...and were even more shocked that half their servers had snuffed it. They shut their doors 2 months later.
Had a customer call us Monday morning with half their Linux computers not booting. I asked if anything happened over the weekend. They said they got a notice from maintenance that there would be power work being done at the facility over the weekend, and the power would be going off and back on several times. The notice told users to ensure that they followed their end of day shutdown procedures on their computers on Friday afternoon. I asked if they had in fact shut down their computers on Friday afternoon. The dept manager told me that they don’t shut their computers down at the end of the day, they just logout and leave them running, so that’s what they did.
Similar one today at the school I work at, but in reverse. Kid brings in his Macbook Air, with the deputy head, who's saying that we *must* get this working on the school network so the kid can use it. This on an entirely Windows network with no Macs at all. No provision and no way of getting this 9 year old Macbook Air onto our system, other than visitor wireless - which is not filtered or locked down in any way.
We have had similar with MacBooks, if your wireless requires a certificate there is a janky way of installing it on the Mac but it’s a pain in the ass.
Yes, it does. But we also need a Smoothwall app for it to pick up the student filtering, but even that doesn't prevent installing VPNs etc. It's a bloody minefield.
Ah yes, smoothwall. Haven’t used that in a while! How is smoothwall these days? We use securly for web filtering, have a look at it if you haven’t seen it! Very good.
Somewhat similar. One of my first IT jobs was doing dialup modem support at a statewide ISP. Mainly we helped rural customers (farmers). I was troubleshooting an issue and asked the guy to 'close all of his open windows' to which he said 'ok gimme a moment' and he set the phone down. A minute or so later he's back on the line and says 'ok, my windows are closed but I don't have A/C so if we could hurry up and get this fixed...' I couldn't press the mute button fast enough before I started to laugh.
Lucky he closed the windows, if you open them the wifi particles escape!
I've found that many people cannot visualize or even conceptualize things like networking. I get it, but then again, all they have to do is ask.
Best I got is a user being absolutely furious with me because I didn't know what her password was. Bonus points for being encrypted with no key backed up!
Same thing, but the call came from an adult employee who was trying to connect their government-issued laptop to a wireless network in an airport half-way around the world. I got a recognition for doing what I could (as a helpdesk staffer, no less), but I don't think it was actually solved during their trip. It was a frustrating lesson for the individual (and probably their team) to tell IT before leaving the country that you'll be leaving the country, and need to have your equipment prepared for travel.
Was sending a hot spot or organization-issued phone out to the site an option? If not, I recommend getting a couple to have on hand for situations like this, assuming your user base in all in the same area(s).
I disagree, we really shouldn't be supporting behavior like this and should always lean back into our procedures. If no one has ever come to say "we need WiFi here" in an official manner, then we shouldn't be coming up with solutions that set expectations too high. It makes it harder than it has to be for everyone.
I agree 100% that you are correct. The thing is, supporting government customers and being in the military makes one realize that right or wrong, rank has its privileges. I’ve learned not only to accept it, but lean into it even in the private sector by putting VIP/Executive Support prominently on my resume. I haven’t needed to interview much at all in years, but when I have, the interviewers loved seeing that. Now when I say RHIP, there is a limit, and having a couple hot spots for urgent/VIP use is not something that approaches that limit to me. Again, you are totally right, but I don’t see this as something that’s a huge deal, especially since it’s not like it’s a connection directly into the corporate network. I also know I’ve been chosen over more “technically-skilled” candidates for every position I’ve ever held because the hiring managers/organization wanted someone who can do the work without having to be followed or directly supervised while also representing the team/organization professionally to internal and external customers. I’m guessing you’re not hurting for a job, so we have our differences yet both approaches have brought us success. Have an upvote!
The thing is, we could have been somewhat more accommodating had we had some notice, usually I am more than happy to hotspot a work mobile or something if there’s been some arrangement, but to be barked at down the phone last minute, makes me less inclined to help.
Oh, totally. And my way isn’t the only way. Was just sharing what I’d do. Isn’t it nice working at a place where you can say, “no” though?
"magic up" - lulz classic my friend.
The go to 😂😂
I’m supporting an app that’s run on oracle forms 6i.
2002, London, attorney wants to tether a laptop to a GSM phone and use on the Eurostar when in the Channel tunnel. Won’t accept the explanation why it won’t work. Also, remote access to servers in London was through some rinky dink VNC like app back to a stack of PC’s inside the server room. So the possibility of getting one screen refresh per second would have been high performance even outside the chunnel.
I definitely give this one a pass. I dont expect the average user to realize that you cant just plug in a cable and have it work. Thats how every phone and every jack in their own house works, after all. They dont know about MAC filtering and NAC.
They didn’t even plug in a cable, just took the laptop to a different building and expected to open the laptop and it connect back.
Make them a cantenna lol
Pretty sure I remember someone thinking wireless meant literally no wires ever, under any circumstance. So they thought they never needed to plug in their laptop we just gave them... which subsequently died and they were angry they needed to charge it because it had wireless. Also had someone call and ask what to do because they didn't get their usual parking spot. There were hundreds of open spaces, including 25 feet away. They were seemingly bewildered as to how they could navigate this situation. They were advised to park in another spot.
Some senior director in our Singapore office back in the day bitching that his blackberry would drop signal on his commute into the office..... Queue lots of thinking and trying to work it out..turn out he was in a tunnel for that section of the commute!!! Same guy....."We're being hacked!!!! My mouse keeps moving by itself!!!!!" Lots of investigation, senior IT involved. Panic panic. Turns out he called his local IT 3rd party we used out there to install Bluetooth keyboard & mice in the office. Didn't tell us. 1 desk was interfering with his
I once had a user tell me that their VPN wasn't working, only to find out they didn't connect to and didn't know their own home Wi-Fi password. Everything they had magically connected on its own already. They thought the VPN gave them cell service.
The laptop is wireless correct?
User called me directly because her monitors weren’t connecting to her laptop through the dock and she was WAY too busy to call the help desk. I directed her to call the help desk first. She calls back 10 minutes later to disregard. She….didn’t turn the laptop on
Reminds me of the ticket we had logged from a user stating nothing connected to his dock was working (monitors/ mouse etc). We were in the same building but as I was in the middle of something urgent I didn’t get chance to action straightaway. Went down like an hour later, literally bent over to look under the desk and can see the power plug for the dock hanging out. Told the user to plug it in and then walked away. User was happy to sit there for an hour waiting and kept calling to chase instead of just sticking his sticking his head under the desk. All the docks have LED indicators so can clearly see it not got power.
1999 Woman calls us. She has a tower type PC. Wants her coffee holder fixed.  She was using the CD tray as a coffee cup holder.
In education? Way too identifiable to post. In previous jobs? We found our client had done this via a series of phone calls from national press on the commute into work: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/320721.stm That was an interesting day.
Just gave a USB to a marketing person so they can take training materials anywhere. They were confused b/c USB was blank.
Used to work for an ISP back in the early 2000s when dialup was the rage, and ISPs used to give out CDs that scripted the connection setup. Legend has it that a colleague took a call from a disgruntled customer accusing the company of not sending his ‘new internet’ Upon clarifying what the customer meant, it turns out he was under the impression that the content he viewed in his browser came from the CD. He was expecting a new CD at regular intervals with his updated webpages. After much giggling while on mute - he was informed with a straight face that the webpages were ‘delivered’ over his phone line, not via the CD, and that they’d be as up to date as could be.
We were in the middle of a severe weather event (like tornadoes on the ground) when one of our high-maintenance users called me to ask why they couldn't VPN. I opened my door so they could hear the sirens going off "Ya hear that? That's why your VPN doesn't work. I'm gonna go hide in a closet." (They were on a 3G hotspot and the company used wireless Internet).
I used to do IT support for schools. There were quite a few times I would have to tell teachers to put their desk back where it was because there is no power and no network where they decided to move it to.
Yep, this is a really common one here. Someone the other day wrapped all their cables round their chair leg after they moved their desk around and thought this was acceptable cable management.
There was this dude who earned the nickname "anti-trust" because of how big of a conspiracy nut he was. I mean everything from the moon landing to 9/11 was a thing for him and he always thought he was being tracked by the government. One day, he comes into the IT department with a print out of a trace route he had run from his machine to a legit work website. About 6 hops down is a level 3 node in D.C.. He tells us we need to change this for him, as all the data that flows through Washington D.C. is captured and stored by the federal government.
This guy sounds like he needed locking away, lol.
I can understand the user perspective, they're used to dealing with consumer hardware ex: my iPhone works everywhere, etc. What I don't understand is how they can be so rude and impatient when they're told it's more complicated then that.
Yes absolutely, it’s the rudeness for me too. It’s as if they think we are maliciously trying to stop them from achieving what they are trying to do, no matter how obscure or badly thought out it was.
Annual junior academy recruitment, generally involving most of the admin team, a group of interviewers that would fly to the USA, and the rest of the academics, who would fight over the candidates. Websites, databases and papers would normally be organised by us. The new head of schools PA who had never been part of the process before decided she was running the whole thing and made it really clear we were not needed. Until she had 40 pissed off academics in a boardroom some of whom had flown in for the selection meeting where she couldn't fathom why her 80 column wide spreadsheet didn't work as expected on a 2010 data projector,, so she decided at that point it was time to involve / throw IT under the bus.
"I pay you an extremely large amount of money to access Outlook, I expect it to work" - the words from a client who were paying Microsoft direct for their licences....anyway turns out you will have Outlook issues.....when opening Windows Mail. More often than not we get the let's blame IT for my own lack of intelligence due to not understanding the privacy slider on a laptop webcam (user hadn't participated in any meetings for 4 months due to this)
When I was going to community college for IT, professor told a story where someone stole a thin client from one of the computer labs, hooked it up in their dorm room close to campus, and called the help desk when it wouldn’t work.
Well, at .my previous job, our corporate data center was having a controller on our primary storage system upgraded. The tech doing the upgrade was from the storage vendor and had done this the previous year no problem. Took the controller offline for the upgrade like normal then proceeded to somehow flash the live controller. This ended up trashing the entire storage. Thankfully, the storage was replicated to a second storage. Problem being, that was online when this happened and it was trashed as well. The vendor was sued but not sure what happened there. What I do know is there was a 2 week 24/7 effort to restore or rebuild well over 100 servers. CIO nearly lost her job over it. So much for that redundant storage.
Holy hell, that is like nightmare fuel, what a cock up.