The Empty Mailbox

It's the umpteenth attempt at calling her; I have been trying to get in touch with a user for over a fortnight after a fault was passed on to me from our helpdesk:

"A huge chunk of my emails are missing". It had claimed in big bold capital letters; providing lots of useful information to go on as usual.

The problem is urgent, and absolutely must be fixed immediately (apparently). As urgent as is may be, all attempts to contact the person who reported the fault have been in vain.

I hang up the phone again after the about the twelfth ring, and with everlasting regret, I send the user another email explaining that I was looking into their fault, and needed to speak with them about it. Finally a few hours later I get the returning phone call:

The Software Engineer Strikes Again

The World's Worst Software Engineer - Part 2

Heeee'sssss Backkkkkkkkkkkk.....

Yep, lock up your servers, changes your passwords and take the phones off the hook. The world's worst software engineer is back to perform an upgrade and it's not going to be pretty.

It's eight months later and a new version has been released. They don't know what they are or what they do, but the staff have decided that it's new features are essential to the company and must be installed as soon as possible. Lucky us!

Another Dissatisfied Customer

We get a few disgruntled people come up to our office from time to time. Some have legitimate reasons, most don't. One in particular was rather rattled the other week when he came in with his laptop. He wasn't out right nasty, merely high and mighty with a volatile nature, and a sense that all should bend to his will. He obviously hadn't been up to see us before.

It was early one evening and I had just managed to get my dinner out of the microwave before the first phone call broke the silence of the office. I answered between mouthfuls.

"My laptop has a Trojan" a blunt voice informed me with a 'don't question my diagnosis' type tone. "I have phoned by brother, and he has confirmed that is what it is."

I can't log on and other sign language

"Can't log on." A woman says quietly as she balances the door on the end of her shoe and leans into the room waving her ID at us.

I try to ignore her bobbing about as she tries to hold the door open with her foot and pass her ID to me at the same time. She wobbles slightly, realises that the door can support itself and gives it up. She steps into the room and looks at me expectantly as the door slams.

I check her account out and all seems ok, I reset the password for good measure. I tell her what I have changed it to and that she can setup a new password when she logs in.

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.

New Laptop

"I have an appointment" a rather rude woman tells us as she barges through the door, laptop bag hugged to her chest.

There were three of us in the room and that's the first we had heard of it. Still, ever eager to satisfy the masses we all smile and offer our assistance.

"My laptop has loads of viruses" she says. "I spoke to someone yesterday."

We all have blank looks on our faces and we are all thinking the same thing about the "loads of viruses," format c:, die, viruses die!

Customer Service Hell

A colleague of mine was telling me about an incident a while ago with a user.

It was a Monday morning and the department was extremely low on staff for various reasons. Ofcourse when you are short of man power, as Murphy's Law states "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."

With only a few people to solve the IT mysteries of the workplace, several crisises hit at once with not enough people to cover them all. It ended with only one person in the office dealing with the telephone complaints and the queue of requests coming through the door.

Just as my colleague was wishing he had never turned up for work that morning, things got a whole lot worse. It started with a phone call.

The Corrupted Hard Drive

So one morning we have a chap (widely known for his giant lack of common sense) come through the door to our office carrying his laptop. He explains that the laptop was not booting and asked if we could take a look at it.

I asked what was happening and I got a vague explanation that the Windows XP installation was cycling at boot up. At least thats what he said.

I switched on the laptop, but instead of watching the laptop attempt to start up XP I got a "NTLDR is Missing" error and nothing else.

The guy mentioned that there were several "important files" on the c: drive (a big no-no in our company, everything should be saved to a network drive and/or USB, making hard drive failure a doddle.)

The Disappearing Emails

Knock! Knock!

A lady walks in to our office, for some reason knocking after she has entered and holds up her laptop for all to see.

"Can anyone help me?" She asks.

"I am sure we can." I reply (Just don't ask us to perform a medical procedure.) "What's the problem?" (You'd think I'd have learned NOT to ask this question by now, wouldn't you.)

"All my emails have disappeared." She tells me.

Somewhat sceptical I get her to boot up her laptop. After three attempts and a password reset I finally get her logged in.

How does it "Logon?"

It's that time of year again when we recall staff laptops and re-issue with new ones, with new more up to date software installed.

Today two of my colleagues had to go and swap out a few dozen laptops at one of our sites. About halfway through the morning they were dealing with a Gentleman and had just finished the transaction when he asked "How does this laptop log on?"

One of my colleagues explained that it was exactly the same as before where as the man replied with condescending superiority. "Don't be stupid, how on earth is it going to work like the old one?"

My colleague, a little taken aback by this tried to explain that all he had to do was log on the same as he did on his old laptop. The man shook his head again, refusing to believe him.

"It's a different Laptop, it won't logon the same as before, now tell me how I get on to it."

Software "Install"

One morning we get a knock on the door and a man comes in with his laptop.

"I have brought my laptop up as I was told if I did, you guys would install some software for me." He tells us.

"No problem" we say. "Which software would you like installed?"

"Oh, anything you have got." He says "Throw it all on."

"We have dozens of pieces of software" we tell him. "Is there anything in particular that you needed?"

"No not really. I was just told to come up and get it installed. Just install it all and it'll be there if I need it."

Multiple User Access

The most annoying users that report faults are the ones that don't believe the explanation you give them. They call us up asking for technical help, because they don't understand, but end up telling us we are wrong and then asking the same question elsewhere: Only to get the same answer.
One day our helpdesk took a call from a woman over in another building. She and two of her colleagues had an Excel spreadsheet that they all had access to and modified on a regular basis. On this particular day, all three had the file open, but only the first could edit it and then save the file. The other two had the file in "Read Only" mode.

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."