Freshly Baked Chaos with a Side of Laptop

Sometimes I wonder why I bother!

It's the first lates of the new year, and nothing and no one prepares me for the evening ahead. And it started off so promising too.

It was all planned out, I had a pile of laptops to fix/image/configure and a phone ready to ring off the hook with stupid questions from idiotic users. Then it all went to hell. For some reason every idiot user chose tonight to show their talents at their very best.

It starts off with the usual innocent job that turns out to be a false alarm. I was asked to fix a faulty projector/computer situation that was magically working perfectly when I got to the room. WHEN I GOT TO THE ROOM!

The "Hacker"

A long time ago in an IT Office not too far away...

"We've been hacked." Our IT Manager tell us one morning as he stands on a chair to change the bulb in the alert light from green to red.

With the red bulb flashing and the alarm wailing, we all pluck up our ears and our then Senior Server Analyst frowns slightly and calmly asks. "Why? What's been hacked?"

"Oh, everything. Our entire network is compromised" our Manager panics, his glasses slipping down his nose. His thick grey hair seemed bigger than ever and he was clearly in a tizz.

Arrrrghhh, My Ears!

The worst type of caller is when someone rings with a simple request, and they have to complicate it, make a drama out of it. They have to complain about everything, tell you their life's woes and make out they are hard done by.

Generally I usually ignore the rants and carry on. But it makes me wonder what I have done to deserve the onslaught.

The phone rings late one morning and I answer.

"IT Support" I say, ready to be helpful.

Password Resets

Hundreds of times a week, we have the same conversation over and over with users. It usually goes something like this:

User: "I can't get my email."

Me: "OK, are you getting an error?"

User: "Yes."

Me: "What does it say?"

User: "Dunno..."

Me: "Well can you read it out to me?"

User: "The Logon Username or Password is Incorrect."