IT Support Mishaps

Recent one ...

I work as a 1 man IT department and report to the office manage who thinks he knows a lot about IT. I came in one morning to him greeting me in the car park saying the network isn't working and he's tried to fix it. At this point I thought about staying quiet and driving home never to return but I need the money :cool:.

The original problem was one person couldn't connect to the network, turns out the cable had come out the PC.

His resolution was to unplug the network switch, and try to fit all the cables from the "broken" switch into a working one and basically wrecked the network for everyone that was in. He did this because and I quote "There are orange lights on the box, orange lights are bad, why aren't they green??". I explained that orange means 100MB/s and green means 1000MB/s and fixed the problem.

Now I thought I made it pretty clear to the guy that orange and green were fine but apparently I didn't because the next day I came into the exact same situation. This time though it was because someone couldn't connect to the network, his PC was running slow so somehow from his PC running slowly it transfers to him repeating his steps from the day before and giving me exactly the same problem as I came into because and again I quote "The orange lights were on the switch which means it isn't working, why didn't you fix it yesterday and make the lights green".

I explained again why orange was fine but this time I have put a note on the network cabinet with this written down. It's been a week so far and I have only received the one email saying "the lights are still orange", he knows not to touch the server room if there is a problem but I'm sure I'll be greeted to this again.

Different job but I also drove for 4 hours to turn a switch on because when I asked is the switch turned on they said "of course it is, what do you think we are idiots?" ... Yes, yes they were.
 
Black Dynamite said:
Recent one ...

I work as a 1 man IT department and report to the office manage who thinks he knows a lot about IT. I came in one morning to him greeting me in the car park saying the network isn't working and he's tried to fix it. At this point I thought about staying quiet and driving home never to return but I need the money :cool:.

The original problem was one person couldn't connect to the network, turns out the cable had come out the PC.

His resolution was to unplug the network switch, and try to fit all the cables from the "broken" switch into a working one and basically wrecked the network for everyone that was in. He did this because and I quote "There are orange lights on the box, orange lights are bad, why aren't they green??". I explained that orange means 100MB/s and green means 1000MB/s and fixed the problem.

Now I thought I made it pretty clear to the guy that orange and green were fine but apparently I didn't because the next day I came into the exact same situation. This time though it was because someone couldn't connect to the network, his PC was running slow so somehow from his PC running slowly it transfers to him repeating his steps from the day before and giving me exactly the same problem as I came into because and again I quote "The orange lights were on the switch which means it isn't working, why didn't you fix it yesterday and make the lights green".

I explained again why orange was fine but this time I have put a note on the network cabinet with this written down. It's been a week so far and I have only received the one email saying "the lights are still orange", he knows not to touch the server room if there is a problem but I'm sure I'll be greeted to this again.

Different job but I also drove for 4 hours to turn a switch on because when I asked is the switch turned on they said "of course it is, what do you think we are idiots?" ... Yes, yes they were.
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He sounds special. I would get quite annoyed if i was in your situation lol
 
Few weeks back attended a customer to install a new router and the server room was quite small so the customer literally pushed the live server rack a few inches to give us more space. One of the power cords fell out one of the switches and about a dozen users lost their connection. Not to mention the vibration caused to all the server hard drives.
 
XeNoN89 said:
He sounds special. I would get quite annoyed if i was in your situation lol
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To be fair to the guy before a few weeks ago he hasn't done anything "special" like this before in over a year. Plus seeing him having to explain his actions to the Managing Directory was quite funny!

bignev72 said:
Yes i've driven to Regent street before for this exact reason. Not happy to say the least!
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It wasn't so much the fact it was switched off, I can deal with that but it was the grief I got on the phone as if to say "how dare you ask such a thing". I've never seen anyone go so red so quickly though!
 
Black Dynamite said:
Different job but I also drove for 4 hours to turn a switch on because when I asked is the switch turned on they said "of course it is, what do you think we are idiots?" ... Yes, yes they were.
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Had this as well, entire network rack powered down and was trying to talk this guy through some basic troubleshooting before having to make a 2 hour long trek there and back again. First question I asked was did he see any lights on the comms cabinet (you know what they're like, regular Christmas tree when turned on and this guy is generally sat bloody opposite all the green and orange flashing lights). He answered yes of course but evidently I wasn't specific enough as the only lights on when I arrived there were the ceiling lights. Still, I was paid a substantial amount for turning on a power switch :D

I hate users.
 
Mine aren't that funny, more incompetence from my colleagues.

- The most memorable ones are from bad patching. People (colleagues) patching switches in to switches in an accidental loop causing network storms etc.
- Also had a colleague pull a fibre cable out of our live Production disks on the SAN as he thought they went into the JBOD he had taken offline.
- People forgetting to put tapes in the jukebox all the time for backups
- Have had a colleague reboot our prod box atleast twice because he forgot he was in Prod environment and not Dev/Test when he switched sessions.
- Worst one was the aircon to the comp room completely failed due to pollen (some sort of plant seed stuff from nearby trees) build up on the outside extractor fans. Everything got very hot very quick during a weekend in summer few years ago.

As for funny stuff.... had so many with silly users just can't remember them all.
 
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Memphis2K said:
Unfortunately the place were I work has experienced a few major fails in the last few years.

One of my colleagues decided in his infinite wisdom to somehow uninstall Windows Installer off a customer's PC then wonder why he couldn't install our software or anything else. I don't think he realised his mistake until there were 8 of us crowded around his PC laughing and making sarcastic comments.

We liase with some of our customers own IT support (we act as second/third line support) and one particular customers IT support are known to be lazy and somewhat reluctant to do anything remotely difficult. Well one of my colleagues had a general dislike for one of their staff and he sent an email to who he thought was our manager (they had the same first name) basically saying "It's about time they did some f'n work. Lazy so-and-so's." He actually sent it to the guy he didnt' like. Seeing his face when he realised his mistake was priceless. He spent the next 5mins trying to recall the email, then about 2mins after he stopped we get an email from the guy at the customers IT support saying please stop trying to recall this email, I've forwarded it onto my manager.
He got a severe talking to and a final verbal warning for it. He's not lived it down since.
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I've done this. I had the person I was hating on the brain, so sent a rage email straight to them, rather than my colleague. Nothing was ever said or done. I assume she read it though. lol
 
Antar Bolaeisk said:
Had this as well, entire network rack powered down and was trying to talk this guy through some basic troubleshooting before having to make a 2 hour long trek there and back again. First question I asked was did he see any lights on the comms cabinet (you know what they're like, regular Christmas tree when turned on and this guy is generally sat bloody opposite all the green and orange flashing lights). He answered yes of course but evidently I wasn't specific enough as the only lights on when I arrived there were the ceiling lights. Still, I was paid a substantial amount for turning on a power switch :D

I hate users.
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I suppose that's one good thing, a nice simple job and a day on the road instead of staring at a screen. But yes I hate users!
 
Was first on shift one morning and as soon as the helpdesk opened calls came in that people could no login.
I got around a dozen calls dumped in my queue so I start to investigate.... can't connect to an DC in the building, or any Citrix server.....pretty much anything in the comms room.

Walk to the other side of the campus to the comms room, open the door not to be met with the roar of fans, but silence along with a beeping. I walk over to the 20kVA UPS and it's tripped UPS output but not gone into bypass.

Easy fix I thought as this had happened previously - put the UPS into manual bypass and get the UPS engineer out again. As I throw the handle for the bypass there is a blinding flash and a deafening bang which throws me to the floor. Not sure exactly what happened but it destroyed the UPS - some kinda of internal rectifier fault.

Ever since then I wont go near any large UPS unit as they scare me stupid.
 
This was last year.
We were contracted to re-purpose a server from there main office to a satellite office. Que me driving 4 hours to get there only to find they hadn't arranged for it to be shipped up :rolleyes:. They get someone to drive it up while i'm pretty much twiddling my thumbs for 4 hours.
So the box arrives mid afternoon and unsurprisingly they had shipped up a Desktop pc.
Apparently it looked like a server, they failed to listen when i described it as having a Dell logo on the front. (the desktop was a no brand pc case, and about half the size of the actual server that was sat RIGHT next to it at the time)

Thankfully this client went bust not long after having came as no surprises, the above incident was one of many similar during the time we supported them.
 
When I worked at Sky, we used to use putty to log in to the DSLAMs. Eventually we moved over to a GUI called Llama as it was easier and had all the key tools as simple dropdown options without risk of some of the more complex tools. One guy was using putty to bounce a customers port but accidentally rebooted the DSLAM and that was not something we could restart properly from the office. Cue a rather loud 'Oh ****' and some frantic phonecalls to our engineer dept to send someone to the exchange. We also had to deal with the other few hundred people on the DSLAM calling in as their broadband had gone down.
 
This is a bit long, so apologies in advance. I am in a ranting mood today.

I enjoyed a recent mishap with BT. Communication to some of their small business customers, about a switch to Office 365 for some basic services, was less than stellar, again... Cue a flustered manager after me, ten days past the fact, figuring out that no email is coming through to the office. I don't normally deal with this customer, but my day was slow, so I decided to drop in and diffuse the situation - famous last idea!

The place only had three machines, in three separate buildings, with three separate BT Business accounts - oh joy! I updated the settings and set the new stronger passwords now required for two machines in a row, and all was well again. First email they got through on each was notifying them of the impeding mailbox move and Office 365 upgrade; very droll, BT, very droll.

Unfortunately, the manager's account was borked on the provider's end - it ceased to be. You could not complete the new password form for it, access account history or the remnant of the old mailbox. So I called BT, and got through to the relevant hotline. Scottish lass answers, who shall be known as Bonny.

Me: Hi, I'm calling from *client* regarding *my story*. Could you shed some light on the issue?
Bonny: OMG! *we are terribly sorry customer service script* May I remote into the machine and have a look?
Me: Sure, be my guest. :)
*has a “look”*
Bonny: I'll check with my supervisor, and brb.
*runs off*
*returns after a long while*
Bonny: Hello. I think we are good to go now. Please go back to the services page and try entering your details again.
Me: *types away*
Bonny: OK. I see you have successfully logged in. Try setting the new password for the account now, please.
Me: *tries and fails a few times with standard rule conforming combinations client agreed on* Looks like we are back to square one, I’m afraid.
Bonny: Hmm, could you please try one of our temp passwords?
Me: *knowing them all, I try them all, diligently* Nope, still no go. It’s back to you, Bonny.
Bonny: *works some BT magic and ends up on a 404 page* Oh, I have never seen this before! I’ll brb.
*runs off and returns*
Bonny: OK. Let’s try this again with the temp password. *tries, but gets bounced back to the new password reset form every time*
Me: Well, at least it isn’t a 404 this time. ;)
Bonny: But it should work now. ;_; *types furiously, fails and tries again* I’m terribly sorry it is taking so long.
Me: I’m here for another couple of hours and this is my last ticket, so don’t worry, take your time. We really need this sorted out.
Bonny: OK. I’m putting you on hold again for a little while.
Me: OK.

I’m really bored now, so I roll out the keyboard tray, look down and start lining the thing up for more comfort. Then I notice the amusing bit. As Bonny works away at her task, and is still remoted into my machine, I can see my keyboard’s CAPS lock LED flash on and off! You know, the way some people think they can touch type and use it as a SHIFT key? ;)

Bonny: Hello again. I’m still working on the issue. *explains what she has done for the past half hour, even though I could see her work just fine on screen*
Me: Bonny, that’s fine, but can I ask you an odd question?
Bonny: Errrm...OK?
*I time my bombshell rather well*
Me: What’s under your left pinkie?
*silence*
Bonny: Oh...nooo...

Bonny eventually recovered and offered to help me reconfigure Outlook, and set the customer’s preferred password. But by that time I was already way ahead of her on that front, so I let her go in peace. But needless to say the client was not so forgiving.

She did not even verify who I was, or my account details, bless. I could have been anyone!

And this is why children you should not move people from customer service, or sales, to IT, without training, on a major upgrade project.

I also used to leave USB drives connected to HP servers in my green days, during a reboot. A bit wiser now. :D
 
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I guess me being hired for a start :p

Nah In all seriousness the issues for us at the moment is the centralisation of certain office applications to Germany and thier refusal to do things like give us access to our own backups when our backups start to be based over there no we'll have top put in a request with them I mean where's the logic in that at the end of the day it's UK data therefore we should be able to access it in emergency situations.

And email backups as a case in point right now is if a certain email is deleted and can't be recovered from the recover deleted items folder in outlook they won't recover it because it's too much work and I'm not allowed to recover it well because I'm not german support the only recovery work they seem happy to do is batch email file recovery and thats it. :mad:

anyhoo It's the higher ups decision which I'm pretty sure will come back to bite them in the ****.
 
I ***** hate Cisco 4900Ms, they are the spawn of the devil. Reload and the thing decides to format bootflash so I am now growing a beard whilst waiting for it to netboot via tftp. :(
 
I'm glad I no longer support users. In the last place I worked, they were the biggest whingers ever and even the most tiny thing not working, they would moan to their boss that they couldn't possibly do their job that day and it would go all up the management chain and back down to my department. And no matter how professional and how fast you fixed the issue, there would be no thanks. It's amazing how much your 'customers' influence the IT support experience, making it either fun or horrible.
 
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oldbag said:
I'm glad I no longer support users. In the last place I worked, they were the biggest whingers ever and even the most tiny thing not working, they would moan to their boss that they couldn't possibly do their job that day and it would go all up the management chain and back down to my department.
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Can I ask how you managed to get out of this role? Was it moving to a new job ?
 
mrbell1984 said:
Can I ask how you managed to get out of this role? Was it moving to a new job ?
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lol, I did exactly this - released that nothing would ever change and left. Took me a while (a few months to find work) but now I'm in a job I completely love, working for a great company. Best thing I ever did.
 
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