I was on the phone with our ISP after our internet service went out. The rep asked me if the box had a green light on it - yes - then asked me to plug a light into the same outlet and confirm the power was on. I said, “Look, I understand you have to follow a script, but you literally just asked me to confirm the power light on the box was on. Clearly the power is working.”
Same ISP sends me an email whenever we have a power outage letting me know that our internet might not work when the power is out. (I’ve joked that this email arrives before the ceiling fans have come to a stop.) But when my internet goes down, they’re completely clueless. “Ohhhh it must be that your power is out even though we monitor that closely and aren’t showing a power outage right now!”
Back during the real estate frenzy of the late 2010s I would get calls all the time asking how much I would sell my house for. I’d say “I could probably let it go for 2 million dollars.” (Even at the ridiculous peak, it was never worth more than 750k.) There would be a few seconds of silence on the line while they actually looked up my house. Then they’d say “oh.” And hang up as fast as humanly possible.
The other day I was having a bad day and had a call from an unknown number, so I decided to pick up but let them talk first. They just hang up and have not called again.
I don’t think it was a good idea to pick up in the first place, but it was curious in the end.
I work in our service department myself (not as support tech though), but obviously, all tickets are supposed to go through 1st level. I don’t wanna be the dick skipping queue, so I did then one time I had an issue.
There’s a unique feeling of satisfaction to submitting a ticket with basically all the 1st level troubleshooting in the notes, allowing the tech to immediately escalate it to a 2nd level team. One quick call, one check I didn’t know about, already prepared the escalation notes while it ran. Never have I heard our support sound so cheerful.
Still riding the high of RMAing my Index. Included all the steps I did and the reply was essentially, “Thanks for troubleshooting, confirm your address and we’ll ship your replacement.”
My favorite little story was while working short-term at a company. Had some issues, did my normal troubleshooting steps and Google searches, identified what I felt the issue was and knew I wouldn’t have enough access to fix it. Reached out and got a response “Blah blah blaaah schedule blah blah Remote-In.”
Later on he sent me a message and remotes into my computer. I take control quick, open up notepad, and type out “Hi!”
To this day I swear that little show earned me more difficult fake phishing attempts. Which I mention because he specifically told me one day he had experience in the information security sector. Lo’ and behold!
While I loved PropertyCity while I lived there, my early years in RuralTown showed that’s where the real Country really is. We had a herd of FarmAnimals and would always go down to the WaterBody on the weekends where the LargeMammals roamed free and wild!
Recently, I decided to install arch linux on an old laptop my sibling gave to me. I’m not new to Linux, I’ve been running a debian server for a year now and I have tried several VMs with different systems. But this was my first time installing arch without a script, and on bare metal.
Installing arch itself wasn’t that much of an issue, but there was a bigger problem: the PC didn’t recognize the pendrive for boot in UEFI mode. It seemed to work in the regular boot mode, but I didn’t want to use that. I made sure to deactivate safe mode and all the jazz. Sure enough, I could get UEFI boot working.
I install arch, works fine, I reboot. Oops! I didn’t install dhcpcd and I don’t know how to use network manager! No internet, great!
In my infinite wisdom, instead of trying to get NM to work, I decided to instead chroot back into the system and install dhcpcd. But my surprise when… The boot menu didn’t recognize the USB again. I tried switching between UEFI and normal boot modes on the bios and trying again, after all it appeared last time after changing it, right?
“Oh it doesn’t appear… Wait, what’s this? No boot partition found? Oh crap…”
Turns out, by changing the setting on the BIOS I probably deleted the nvram and with it the boot table settings or whatever they’re called. I deleted GRUB.
Alas, as if to repent for my sins, God gave me a nugget of inspiration. I swap the USB drive from the 3.0 port to one of the 2.0 ports on the other side and… It works, first try. The 3.0 port was just old and the connection bad. And I just deleted GRUB for no reason.
Usually, I would’ve installed everything from scratch again, but with newfound confidence, I managed to chroot into the system and regenerate the boot table or whatever (and install dhcpcd). And it worked! I had a working, bootable system, and an internet connection to download more packages.
I don’t know what the moral of the story is I just wanted to share it :)
I like to imagine an IT person telling someone that story to see whether they understand it or get a stroke, as a way to check if they were telling the truth about being good with computers and having tried everything, or something.
I feel like there’s a specific peak between total technical ignorance and a weary understanding of how fickle technology can be. On this peak is the height of arrogance, where you believe you’ve really got everything figured out. Part of learning is understanding that, yes, sometimes you really did just forget to plug the modem in.
Yep, that one where the person on the peak starts lecturing you in abstract terms about trying the simplest hypotheses and such, while you are trying to solve their problem.
I know the philosophy part that asshole is talking about, only he has no bloody clue which part is simple and which is not here.
Contacting IT is always my last line of defense and I get unreasonably frustrated when they refuse to help without walking me through basic troubleshooting. It’s like, I’ve already figured out the cause of the problem, just tell me where the button is to fix it. The worst was when I had to RMA my Pixel phone and they made me go through every step I’d already been through just to come to the same conclusion I initially came to them with.
Me to Google support for a problem with my brand new pixel 3 back when the 3 was the new hotness
Me: my camera only works for one photo, then doesn’t work again until I reboot it. Then it again works only for one photo, then it gives the error “camera [number] is locked” (screenshot)
Support: that sounds like a fault. Could you reboot your phone and tell me what happens?
Me: ok. … Right I’m back. Just like for all the ten photos I took before contacting you, it worked for one photo then that same error. That makes eleven times I rebooted my phone today.
The worst for me was with the Nexus 6P, the last phone before they rebranded to Pixel. There was a known issue with the battery, where it would die when the phone said it was at like 50%. I jumped through all their troubleshooting hoops when it was obviously a hardware issue. They eventually agreed to send out a replacement and I was assured it wouldn’t have the issue. Lo and behold, it did the exact same thing as soon as I got it. I went through all the trouble shooting again and they sent ANOTHER replacement that still had the issue. I was so fed up and just kept requesting to talk to someone higher up and they eventually just sent me a Pixel 1 to shut me up.
Google support is a joke, I had to RMA a tablet, obviously went through all the troubleshooting before (factory reset included). The dude on the Hotline was like: “fantastic you did everything I would have told you. Unfortunately our system doesn’t accept that way of working I need to send you an email with the same troubleshooting steps you already did and you need to call again in a few minutes and confirm to a new support agent that you followed what the email told you”
To their credit it was accepted afterwards with no issues but that whole process is more than braindead
Having worked in IT about 12 to 15 years ago I can honestly say I just stopped believing people when they told me they did things or checked things because 99% of the time it was just a flat out lie.
And taking them at their word meant wasting my own time because usually it was just a quick fix that I suggested in the first place.
It quickly, quickly taught me that 99% of people are fucking idiots, and that even the smart ones who actually knew what they were doing with a computer could be idiots too.
My buddy had google support tell him to send a screenshot of his phones screen burn in. They took a good amount of convincing before they admitted that that wouldn’t work.
To be fair even the most technically adept person can have tunnel vision where they start digging before ruling out all the simple stuff. Yes it can feel tedious and a little condescending to follow all those steps, but you get humbled the first time it really is just an unplugged cable.
Any time you’re working with somebody who has to deal with the general public(or general workforce) though, you gotta be understanding.
They have to sort through the clueless people who turned off their monitor, and they have to deal with the Dunning-Kruger people who lie about what they did because they think they’re so damn smart.
And if it’s the first contact level 1 type support, they may not have the expertise to tell the difference and have to rely on the scripts.
Yeah, for sure. As frustrating as it may be, I’m always understanding with the support agent. They’re just doing their job, it’s not their fault there’s a procedure they need to follow.
Depending on what you’re needing done, a lot of times IT has to cover their asses. If it didn’t happen on that phone call, it didn’t happen. I always appreciate the gumption, you probably saved us like, 30 call just from figuring out other issues yourself. If it’s anything that will cost the company money, though, like replacing hardware - if I don’t take due diligence in making sure those earlier steps are done, it’s my ass on the line.
You know you’re smart enough to do the troubleshooting, but that technician has probably 1000+ users that rotate weekly, they can’t keep a log book of which ones are good and which ones will land them in the shit. I totally get the frustration, but the ones who lie about doing simple troubleshooting ruin it for everyone.
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