the one I hate the most is the "but I'm not a computer person" bullshiat you get when you ask them the simplest questions in order to fix their issue. Really? You're not a computer person? But you took a job using a computer? That doesn't make sense. See, I'm not a cat person, that's why I'M NOT A farkING VETERINARIAN!!!!

willfullyobscure: but ffs, imagine your plumber acting that way to your face. Because that's what you are, a plumber of bits.

There's an old saying. The difference between IT and plumbing is that when a plumber tells a suit to stop flushing tennis balls down the toilet, he stops most of the time, and it's not considered the plumber's fault if he doesn't.

The thing that absolutely amazes me is how in the field of tech support someone can say "Well I'm not tech savvy" or "I am not computer literate" or whatever stupid thing they say to justify why they can't follow basic instructions or read what is on a screen. This in itself wouldn't be so bad if the people who said these things didn't wear their inability to try anything or practice basic reading comprehension as a badge of honor. Tech support most of the time is basic reading comprehension. Sure if you are sorting a hardware problem or a complex software problem takes some actual trouble shooting skills, but that isn't 99% of the calls that IT/tech support people get to deal with. Its like when it comes to computers suddenly it is okay to not think and assume everything is free.

Its like when a customer calls in with a problem and you ask them what machine they have and they get mad for you asking that. Its like you called me for help and I am gathering information so I can help you. Or when a customer calls for helps then proceeds to second guess or just tell you everything you are trying to do is wrong. If you already know so frakking much why are you calling me. AHHAAHA!

If it wasn't for me total digging sorting out problems and taking stuff apart and putting it back together again I would so not be doing this job. I also agree with most of the posters above Dr.'s and lawyers are the worse to deal with as far as sorting through problems.

I knew computer techies and IT guys were booze hounds, now I know why.

Meh. Nobody brought their A game to this thread.

My best call was with a shiathead from Hawaii that we had to call to get docs on some POS POS (dohoho) system we had to support, that this blue ribbon calf had managed to stick a finger into somewhere along the line. I had him on speaker when he said, "I have a A+ and N+ certification you know-" and my manager, the best bench tech I've ever seen said out very loud, "Yeah so does my cock!" call over.

that was gratifying. you see, in IT, there are those that have a)skills, b)talent and c) the ability to see reality clearly. And then there's "the IT guy", who sneers at "best practices", and "documentation", and "process". BY FAR the most annoying part of helldesk and then admin/noc/soc/your mother's coc was dealing with turds that thought they knew something, and didn't. I'd cull that herd far faster than any of my users. Users are supposed to be clueless. You think the internet is a Big Blue E? fine. I can't do your job and remove cataracts or build bridges. nooo problem.

You call me up and tell me your router tables are screwed and the clear first course of action is buy new everything because "Cisco is clearly making this happen", I will cut you, bish.

And the base colonel apologized, saying that this Major had a habit of overstepping his authority.

Also late to the party, but two quickies from today:

1. A lady stopped me as I walked by. She was reading a manual for a TV. "I bought a new TV for my mother. Where does it say how to turn on the closed captioning"? I was in a hurry, so I suggested Google.

2. "My monitor stopped working." I pressed the "power" button and, like magic, the monitor worked again.

3. One of our remote workers is under-performing, so she blames her computer equipment. This has been ongoing for months. This time, she said she couldn't listen to her voicemail through her phone. I asked if she could listen to it from email. She said she doesn't get the voicemail attached to her email. I told her I'd fix that. I got on her email and saw all of her voicemails, exactly how they're supposed to be.

I've OK with incompetence, but people who lie really grind my gears.

willfullyobscure: this is the larger point, kids. being "Teh GateKeepah ov all that is Shiny and Bitwise" aka MOOOOVE guy is fun, but ffs, imagine your plumber acting that way to your face. Because that's what you are, a plumber of bits.

Towards the time in IT I actually just started telling people I was a janitor. IT people go about their days cleaning up messes. Honestly, I don't know why IT people think they are so superior to plumbers either. Both professions provide an infrastructure for other people to run a business and sign their paychecks. I poop and wash my hands daily. When my bathroom started having water issues I tried for hours to figure it out and fix it but couldn't so I had to call a plumber who was in and out in under an hour. Accountants, HR people, nurses, lawyers, investment bankers, they all do need a computer to do their work. That doesn't mean they need to waste their time knowing all the ins and outs just so they can do their job.

vudukungfu: Except for the ones that got hired because their qualification in 1957 were "gams, great gams"
and the ones who say, "Who reversed that entry"? and you show them the audit report, and it clearly shows they, or someone they gave their ID and password to, did reverse the entry?
Yeah, those idiots are out there driving, calling me on a cell phone from their car, with drying grandkids in the seat next to them, on their way to the polls.

Yeah but those people are getting further and fewer in between these days with the economy the way it is. Besides, if they did get hired back in 1957 because they were hot, they're not now. They're old, saggy, and have varicose veins. There must be some reason why they are still around today. Just because the guy who provides the infrastructure doesn't understand how the business actually runs may think they're dumb because they just want to do their jobs and not have to deal with a computer any more than they do with fixing a toilet can't see why they're still around doesn't mean they don't have their purpose.

willfullyobscure: I bet you're A+ certified, huh?

I couldn't agree with you more. It was the geniuses like this that made me want to leave IT. I have more fancy letters that stand for various certifications after my name than I do actually in my name. That meant, at most, that I knew the technology side of things fairly decently. What led me from being a support line person into management was the fact that I knew how to listen to the people that actually ran the company and then tailor the IT environment so it could be something that they could use to do their jobs and make the money that paid everyone else's salary.

Almost any IT person is someone who can fix a network, clean a virus, or build a computer. The good ones actually try to understand how those things can be leveraged in a way that makes life easier and more productive for everyone else and that means talking to and being able to relate to the non-technical staff which is something most IT people are sorely lacking in.

SO I'm a help desk monkey, fixing laptops, making franken machines, Fixing users problems like a boss.

Suddenly, a wild alarm from the server room UPS. It's shutdown and hasn't failed over. The server room is without power and the website and the intranet is down.

Being a help desk monkey, and being that the UPS was installed in our work area, I learned a thing or two about this van sized UPS. Most importantly, there is a bypass switch near it that will run power straight to the server room so you can take the UPS down and maintain it without it being connected to 3 phase power and killing you.

Me and the other tech monkeys are investigating the UPS when the ENTIRE NETWORK OPS team comes in. I quickly relay the error messages the UPS is throwing, and point out the bypass so we can get the servers (and the website, and company e-mail, and the entire intranet, VPN, etc) working ASAP.

The head of network ops stared at me like I was the baby from eraserhead when I suggested running the server room on utility power (Maybe he didn't understand that server power supplies are plenty durable to take a voltage fluctuation or two from outside power, just like any desktop PSU is.)

After being excluded from the circle, the network ops team departed to a meeting room to exchange cell phone numbers and call the UPS maintenance guys.

24 hours of complete downtime later, the UPS guy shows up, and without even looking at the display panel or a word, slaps the UPS into bypass mode, restoring power to the servers. A part was delivered a day or two later, replaced, the UPS was brought back online and the bypass was disabled without so much as a hiccup.

The head of networks ops was a marked man after that incident, and went away in the next round of layoffs.

/IT certifications don't make you smart.

Vertically Challenged: Me at work being called by my boss, "My computer won't come on again!"
Me: *heads to her office, pushes power button on monitor*
Her: "Oh thanks! You saved the day!"
Me: "No prob!"
...I did this every damn morning for five years.

...Then one day the IT guy realized that when his boss said "My computer won't come on again!", what she really meant was "I love you".

Behold.

/Not mine

bigstoopidbruce: I used to work for the internal (employee) helpdesk for a giant computer company. A few days after I started, an employee called in from the bus stop around the corner to ask when the next bus was coming. He was serious. And he was seriously pissed that I couldn't tell him.

Patch him through to the library. I can't begin to tell you the stuff we have to answer (and I work for a law firm), but this sort of question is more frequent than you'd think.

/will answer anything if it is billable

MaoTenDoo: My favorite is when you ask them to reboot their computer and they turn they're monitor off & on.
/CSB

Why? That one makes sense to me. Some of these people have never actually switched off their computer, they just turn off the monitor at night. Nothing wrong with that.

Not tripping the circuit or unplugging a computer that's on fire? That one baffles me. If it were any other electrical piece of equipment, would you watch it burn?

Look computer people. sure non tech users may not be good with technology stuff at all. I'm sure they do lots of stuff that you think are stupid. The thing is though, your job is to to help those people do their job. I'm sure you have done some stupid stuff in an area you don't specialize in. Get over yourselves and quit acting like you are some kind of a god or something just because you know how to push a few buttons better than other people who actually do something for living. I'm sure that chef that you laugh at can cook way better than you can and would think your Mac and cheese is way below their level. Laugh at the accountants all you want but they are the ones who can balance the books for rather large businesses and know how to actually use the money that they earn instead of blowing it some fancy graphics card.

I'm not just saying this from some angry user either. I spent a decade working in just about every level in IT and support from phone drone to IT director for technology company. I also quit it and am going back to s hoop to be a nurse. One of the biggest reasons for that is I got tired of being surrounded by people who thought they were Superman because they could fix a computer. O don't care if I do nothing but change old people diapers all day long, there is still way less shied than working IT.

YouPeopleAreCrazy: Unoriginal_Username: He figured hey, it's wireless I can get online anywhere.

Recently, I had a neighbor who had a Toshiba Satellite laptop. Her internet connection was intermittent. Neighborhood IT guy to the rescue! (hey...she was semi-hot)

Turns out, she had no internet service...she was randomly connecting to one of the other neighbors.
Me: "Sharon, you need to pay Cox or Verizon for internet service"
Her: "No, it gets the internet from the satellites!"
Me: "huh?"
Her: "See? It says right here - Toshiba Satellite!"

palm, meet face

That would knock me speechless. I think I'd just say "you're right, you should call Toshiba tech support and get them to fix that" and GTFO.

bingethinker: y car mechanic doesn't sneer at me if I don't know how to rebuild the transmission myself blindfolded with a broken toothpick.


But he will laugh his ass off if you call him every time you need to gas up the car, because 'I'm not mechanical like you'.

I've always wanted to ask the user if the 'magic' switch on the back of the CPU is set to 'Magic' or 'More Magic'.

/old head-scratcher

FTA: "Can you come over and plug in this cord for me?"

In some union shops, you have to call maintenance to do mundane crap like this and swapping out light bulbs. At my dad's old company, it was a fire-able offense if you did it yourself.

I could see if you came from a place like that, you might be conditioned to call over stupid trivial things. Or maybe the person had a bad back.

32oz High Life: "Can I turn on the coffee pot with my computer?"

Ok Nerds, why isn't this possible?

http://www.tomstore.ca/usb-rechargeable-tea-water-heater-coffee-warme r -cup-black-p-7744.html

Bag of Hammers: Rickenbacker: A recent favorite of mine. "My laptop won't connect to the VPN at home" Okay, is it connected to your router? "I don't have a router". Uh...okay, laptop plugged directly in to your modem then? *disgusted sigh* "I DON'T HAVE INTERNET! Just tell me how to connect to the VPN!".

Seriously. She thought the wireless card in her laptop magically connected to the internet. Not a 3G card, a wireless card.

Oh Jesus, we get that one all the time. And I deal with mostly Doctors, you'd think years of medical school would translate to a *smidgen* of common sense, nope. "Yeah, is this tech support? Yeah I'm on vacation in Barbados right now and my laptop won't connect to the VPN. I asked the hotel about it and they say they don't have internet here, can you guys send me one?"

got you topped on this one for stupid people who *should* know what they are doing...

Fresh out of college with a CS degree I get hired by a major oil company to fix one of their IT departments (because it was run by idiots)... here's one of my stories... I have tons.

I'm in Houston and I'm working with this woman in California via a remote desktop client (she's *in* IT and has been for 15-20 years now). While I'm showing her how to do some task she starts saying, "Wow, that's some awful glare coming through the window, I can barely see my desktop. Can you see the glare?"

Now, mind you, I assumed at this point she was asking her office mate (a 4.0 kid from Berkeley) if she could see how horrible the sun's glare was on her monitor... But then it went on...

" (name protected for my own sake here), can you see the glare?"

"The glare???"

"Yes, can you see the glare on my monitor?"

At this point, her office mate literally fell out of her chair laughing hysterically. I put the phone on mute and said "wow." It takes the woman a second and then she says...

"What? What's so funny?"

(her office mate explains to her I can't possible *see* the glare on her monitor in California from Houston)

"Oh. Really?"

/not making this up. I wish I was...
//this woman made more money than both me and the 4.0 Berkeley grad combined because she had been there so long.
///...which is why both me and her office mate eventually had enough of this crap and moved on... and also why our generation hates *most* boomers so much (not all of you guys, but you *do* have some of the dumbest rocks in the pile for sure).

Disposable Rob: I had to find the most polite way to tell the Lt Colonel his laptop was out of power because the surge protector on his desk was turned off.

Easy, you flip the switch a few times and say 'Wow, that switch is going out, I'll have to order you a new one.'. If you think that won't fly, you unplug the thing from both ends, tap it a little like you're searching for dust, hit the switch, and plug it back in to the other outlet on the wall, and say that the other one must be wearing out, and the plug was loose.

/I've done similar to keep the people here from feeling bad, I actually like everyone I deal with.

itstehpope: Broadwing managing to delete their entire BGP table.

hahahaha.

We got into an argument with MCI that one of their routers was causing a loop. They refused to investigate it, said it wasn't their problem. One of our engineers logged into the router and fixed it and sent them an email suggesting they change the default login info.

Jake Havechek: In the late 90s, there was a web page of stupid IT queries and stories...

It still exists. (new window)