So this is the coworker I’m pretty much saving from being fired. He’s been having a lot of complaints against him from upper tier techs and partners, basically boiling down to him not doing his job. I’ve been speaking in his defense for literal weeks, because I liked the guy, and thought he has potential.
I was in the middle of something and noticed a ticket from a partner had been sitting for about 15min (we’re supposed to hop on them like white on rice), no one had touched it. I couldn’t grab it, so I asked my coworker if he could.
Important Note: We’ve had 1 phone call come in today. I took care of it. Of all the tickets we’ve had today, I’ve done all but 1, which my manager took. We’ve been on the clock for FOUR FUCKING HOURS. What have you been doing for FOUR FUCKING HOURS???? Certainly not your fucking job.
So here is the convo (I’m blue, he’s white):
He then “thumbs upped” my answer and said “no problem”.
Welp, guess who’s no longer speaking in his fucking defense and is absolutely bringing this up at my next meeting with the CIO (in 2 days). My petty ass. If this is how he’s gonna react when I simply ask if he can.. ya know.. do his job, then he doesn’t need to work here.
Problems in tech support #???/??? aka “Coronavirus is making people dumb” aka “how are you not getting this”
So, one of our clients uses VPN, which basically connects their PC to the internal network, even if they’re not physically in the office. Once everything is set up (we handle all the set up) all the user literally needs to do is open the app and click connect.
That’s it.
That’s literally it.
So, with fears from Coronavirus (as a family infected with it broke quarantine and may have infected a ton of people) many businesses around here are shutting down and having their employees work from home. So...let’s call her Susan. Susan is with one of said businesses who’s shutting down and having everyone work remotely. Prior to this, we got everyone who’s allowed to have remote access set up. So all that’s needed is to open the app and hit connect.
Call goes like this:
Me: *generic greeting*
Susan: I need instructions for the VPN
Me: You mean instruction on how to connect your PC to it, so you can work remote?
Susan: Yeah.
Me: Ok, well we already got all that set up on you guy’s PCs a while ago, so all that you need to do is--
Susan: *interrupting me* I just need you to send me some instructions!!
Me: There’s not really any instructions. All that you n eed to do is
Susan: *again interrupting me* SO HOW DO MY ATTORNEY’S CONNECT TO VPN?
Me: ... I’m literally in the process of trying to explain that.
Susan: Oh
Susan: *proceeds to interrupt me to yell and demand instructions no less than a dozen times*
Me: *FINALLY* Susan. All that you or anyone else needs to do is open the app on your desktop and click connect.
Susan: WELL HOW DO WE DO THAT?
Me: ... you click on it to open it, then click the button that says connect.
Susan: THEN WHAT?
Me: ... that’s it. That’s literally it.
Susan: *completely ignoring what I just said* So you’re not gonna send me instructions, so we can know how to do this?
Call goes on for maybe another 5 minutes, more of the same. Me saying “It’s not remotely complicated. Just open the app and click the button that says connect” and Susan complaining because I’m not telling her how to connect to VPN (she’s 100% ignoring what I said).
Eventually, cuz I’m tired of this shit, I just go
Me: Susan, are you telling me that you need instructions on how to double click on something to open it, then click a button?
Susan: *starts yelling nonsense, then I guess realizes how stupid she sounds, and calms down* Well, I’ll go and try it on [attorney]’s PC and I’ll let you know if it doesn’t work.
Problems in Tech Support #???/??? aka “Welp, your shits just not getting fixed then, Bob”
So I’m working with a guy who’s having some issues getting this website to load. Initially we couldn’t get it to load either but after making some tweaks to the firewall, it was working for us, so I called the guy.... Bob, we’ll call him Bob. I called Bob to ask him to test.
Bob does and says it’s still not loading. He tries a different browser, still not loading. Bob said he cleared his cookies and cache (which we had to do to get it to work on 2 of the servers) and it’s still not loading.
Weird. So I ask Bob if I can remote in with him, check out his browser settings, visually see what exactly is happening yada yada.
Bob mutters something I can’t understand, so I say “I’m sorry?”
Bob: SHORT ANSWER IS NO. NO YOU CANNOT REMOTE IN.
Me:...
Bob: What do you say about that??
Me: *literally beyond giving a fuck because I’ve done all I’m required to do* Nothing.
Bob: ... wat?
Me: Nothing. If you won’t let us access your workstation, then your workstation is not going to get fixed. If you won’t let us investigate the issue any further, then there’s nothing more we can do. So you’ll have to resolve your problem on your own.
Bob: ... I’m sorry what did you just say?
Me: If you won’t work with us, then your problem will not get resolved.
Bob: *now sputtering mad*
Me: Anyway, if you change your mind, please let us know. Have a good one!
And then I hung up.
Real talk, I find more and more as the years press on, the “the customer is always right” bullshittery fades more and more. We are waaay less tolerant of people being jerks these days, especially with more and more younger generations entering the work place. Boomers keep getting mad because they’re discovering that they just can’t scream and have us act like a slave to their whims. Nah B, if you don’t wanna act right, if you don’t wanna work with us, your shit is just not getting fixed.
My coworker, C (you know, the one who doesn’t work), asked me how many tickets I had open in my queue.
Since I get shit done, I only had 6 (2 of which are ongoing projects so they don’t count, 1 of which I was in the process of closing - and just did - and the other 3 I’m waiting on the customer to get back to me).
He has like well over 20+
C straight up asked me: What am I doing wrong?
UHHHH YOU DON’T FUCKING WORK, HOMIE. THAT’S WHAT THE FUCK YOU’RE DOING WRONG YOU DON’T DO ANYTHING UNTIL SHIT PILES UP THEN YOU ACT SHOCKED AT HOW MUCH YOU HAVE TO DO.
I just said: Welp! That’s a great question! Could be that you’re not working consistently enough, because my queue is generally practically empty and yours is generally well over a dozen tickets.
He just kinda hemmed and hawwed and AGAIN GOT UP AND LEFT HIS FUCKING DESK.
Problems in tech support #???/??? aka “This is ‘Brenda’. Don’t be like ‘Brenda’”
So, “Brenda” calls in and goes
Brenda: I’m getting errors. I ran a repair on Office but it’s still happening
Me: *thinking this is an MS Office issue* Oh, which program were you in? Outlook? Word?
Brenda: I don’t know
Me: ... I’m sorry?
Brenda: Anyway, is there anything you can do?
UHHHHH... fuck... maybe???
Me: So you were having an issue with Office?
Brenda: No.
Me: ?????????
Brenda: Anyway, I ran a repair on Office, but I’m still getting errors.
WHY DID YOU RUN A REPAIR ON OFFICE WHEN YOU WEREN’T HAVING ISSUES WITH OFFICE???
Me: Ok, let me remote in with you. *gets remoted in* Ok. What were you doing when you got the error?
Brenda: I don’t know
Me: What program were you in?
Brenda: I don’t know. I had a lot of programs open.
Me: But which one threw the error?
Brenda: I don’t know.
Me: Ok. Well, do you remember about what the error said?
Brenda: No.
Me: Alright, well do you think you can get it to pop up again?
Brenda says she’ll try. I watch her click around and open and close a bunch. She eventually mentions 2 different programs, but doesn’t remember if those were the programs that gave the errors, what she was doing when she got the error, or even anything resembling what the error said.
Brenda: So, what can you do to fix it?
Me: ... fix what?
Brenda: The error.
Me: *trying to get her to understand* What error?
Brenda: The ones I’ve been getting.
Me: Well, I need to know what error it is, or at the very least what program, or what you were doing, etc
Brenda: Why?
?????????????????????????????????????????????
Me: Well I have to have some idea of what to troubleshoot.
Brenda: *skeptically* So you’re telling me, that if you do’t know what an error is, where it came from or what it said, you can’t fix it.
Me: Yes.
Brenda: *goes quiet, obviously expecting me to say more*
Me: *doesn’t*
After a minute or so of silence
Me: Well, you mentioned you were working in (programs) at the time, do you wanna try working in them to see if you get the error?
Brenda: *annoyed* Fine.
I watch her work for a bit, everything is fine, no errors.
Me: Ok, so why don’t you give me a call back when it pops up again, or better yet, take a screenshot or picture and send it in, so we can research it some
Brenda: I guess
Brenda: But so, me running the Office repair didn’t do anything?
Me: Was it an issue you were having with any of the Microsoft Office programs?
Brenda: No.
Me: Then no. No it didn’t do anything.
We go in circles for a bit, Brenda acting as if I’m saying something absurd for explaining that I can’t troubleshoot an issue when neither of us having any clue what the issue is, where it came from, what actions might’ve caused it, etc. Eventually, I just get annoyed and stop trying and end the call
TL;DR A user called in because she was getting errors. Could not recall what program threw the error, what she was doing when she got the error, or what the error said, couldn’t recreate the error, ran a repair on an unrelated program and is upset because I couldn’t fix her issue.
Problems in tech support #???/??? aka “... yep, it’s just gonna be one of those kind of days”
Customer: My laptop isn’t booting.
Me: What exactly happens when you power it on?
Customer: Well, it boots, but then there’s these lines that appear across the screen and I can’t click past them.
Me: ... lines?
Customer: Yeah, a bunch of lines. I tried CTRL ALT DEL but I can’t even get to the login screen
Me: ....
Me: Send me a picture
Boomers have zero fucking critical thinking or problem solving skills I s2g (yes not ALL boomers but it’s a - in my experience - mostly boomer problem). So I just hung up with a customer... Todd. Let’s call him Todd. Todd’s laptop was upgraded to Windows 10 yesterday and he couldn’t get connected to VPN. When we do upgrades, all the software and files get re-added so he shouldn’t be missing anything.
To connect to VPN, we use Mobile VPN software, and typically we put a shortcut on the user’s desktop for easy access. It auto fills in their info. So I ask
“Are you missing your shortcut?”
Todd goes on to say that he never had a shortcut and normally accessed it through the Start menu. Cool. Ok so I assume he knows how to go look for a program since the start menu is in alphabetical fucking order. And I figure the program got uninstalled somehow..
I remote in, go to Start, type in “VPN” to see if it’s still installed and BAM it pops up immediately. Todd is fucking baffled. “How did you get it to look like that???!” He asked. I said “I literally just typed in ‘VPN’” and he was just befuddled.
So what I gather, is that most likely he had the VPN shortcut pinned to his start menu previously. Now, had he even attempted to look for it, he would’ve found it. But, because it “looks different” he just... couldn’t understand what to do. It never occurred to him to simply search for the program in the fucking alphabetical list of programs.
