For you IT HelpDesk guys

[oiprocs]

What is the worst thing you've seen?

Could be candy wrappers all over their cubicle, a nasty smell, something against company policy, something you found on the computer, etc.

 

[Exterous]

I've gone to people's houses = all kinds of horror stories

 

[imported_Imp]

Worst was a local IT Analyst whos keyboard was sticky with stains all over the desk. I had to use this guys desk for 3 days while he was gone. Luckily, I was there cause he wasn't doing his job cataloguing equipment, so most of my work was away from the desk.

Other was some guy who glued figurines and toys to his computer case, then bitched at me when I tried taking them off gently in order to get to the back.

 

[xSauronx]

Originally posted by: Exterous
I've gone to people's houses = all kinds of horror stories

seriously. i installed satellites and worked for a wireless ISP. some of the homes i worked in were terrible.

hell, one guy who made some serious money (had lots of expensive electronics, good cars for him and his SO) had this place that was a total pit. everything was grungy and there was this funky smell in the place. dirty laundry all over the place, dirty dishes all over the kitchen...it was awful.

 

[blurredvision]

Originally posted by: Imp
Other was some guy who glued figurines and toys to his computer case, then bitched at me when I tried taking them off gently in order to get to the back.

Do you know how long it took him to do that?!?!?! Insensitive prick!!

 

[trmiv]

I went to someone's desk and they were talking to a co-worker of mine trying to explain the issue. She goes to hand me the phone so I could ask my co-worker a question, and I kid you not, the frigging earpiece was coated in ear wax. If this would have been after lunch I would have lost it. As it was, eating that day was difficult.

 

[iamwiz82]

Back in my help desk days the worst was hermaphroditic porn. I did find a dead mouse in a PC once, as well.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I've seen too many crazy things, but to stir away from user stupidity as that's always a common one, lets go towards two bad incidents on how the company operates.

1: This internet customer kept insisting to use their own modem instead of the one we supply for free, but it did not work. We send a tech with one of our modems, plugs it in, it works. Regardless they refused. As a company we should of said "too bad, you're using our modem, it's what we support and it's what you're going to use" instead they turned around and got us (helpdesk) to try and get their modem to work. It was an old one, all command line. We ended up getting all the DSLAM settings correct so that it works. Guess what? Now we're stuck supporting it if something goes wrong.

2: One of our managed services customers decided to drop us for one of their sites and hired a 3rd party to do it. fine, but the process behind it is retarded. The help desk calls/tickets still come to us. We have to manually turn them into a PDF, then email them to 2 3rd party email addresses. When they finish the work we then have to manually go and close the ticket. WTF? This should be automated, no reason to do this manually. Really, there's a ton of stuff in our company that could be automated but they just refuse to. thats the problem when you're a company owned by a bigger company and that bigger company is owned by another big company etc... things get super disorganized.

 

[pontifex]

These are all at my previous job:

nudie calendars, like you might see in a mechanic's garage.

porn pics in the internet history.

Some of my work required me to go out to offices in the factory. There was this black soot-like crap all over everything, even in enclosed offices. Depending on what I had to do, I would literally come out solid black from fingertips to elbows and slightly above sometimes, this black shit all over my shirt and most times on my pants.

Soda bottles with chewing tobacco spit in them.

Mice running across the floor.

really grungy keyboards and mice.

 

[mxyzptlk]

There's always been this close family friend who ran a bakery. Honestly, she probably peaked well before I came of age, she was really in my grandmothers generation. In fact, IIRC, my mother always told me that it was her late husband who really got things started and things had been going downhill ever since he died.. again, before I was born. Anyway, I go to the bakery to fix her computer and when I open it up the inside is full of dead roaches. I don't me one or two or twenty, I mean hundreds of roach carcasses. in a layer at least an inch thick at the bottom of the case.

She was shut down for health code violations and had to sell the bakery not too long after that

Originally posted by: pontifex

Some of my work required me to go out to offices in the factory. There was this black soot-like crap all over everything, even in enclosed offices. Depending on what I had to do, I would literally come out solid black from fingertips to elbows and slightly above sometimes, this black shit all over my shirt and most times on my pants.

did they have propane powered forklifts? I did some work in a warehouse once that used those and after a while I started to notice that my boogers were all black from breathing in that shit

 

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: mxyzptlk
There's always been this close family friend who ran a bakery. Honestly, she probably peaked well before I came of age, she was really in my grandmothers generation. In fact, IIRC, my mother always told me that it was her late husband who really got things started and things had been going downhill ever since he died.. again, before I was born. Anyway, I go to the bakery to fix her computer and when I open it up the inside is full of dead roaches. I don't me one or two or twenty, I mean hundreds of roach carcasses. in a layer at least an inch thick at the bottom of the case.

She was shut down for health code violations and had to sell the bakery not too long after that

Originally posted by: pontifex

Some of my work required me to go out to offices in the factory. There was this black soot-like crap all over everything, even in enclosed offices. Depending on what I had to do, I would literally come out solid black from fingertips to elbows and slightly above sometimes, this black shit all over my shirt and most times on my pants.

did they have propane powered forklifts? I did some work in a warehouse once that used those and after a while I started to notice that my boogers were all black from breathing in that shit

I'm not sure. I think most were battery operated but some did have some kind of tank on them so maybe they were propane. it was also a factory where lots of welding went on too though.

 

[oiprocs]

Originally posted by: mxyzptlk
There's always been this close family friend who ran a bakery. Honestly, she probably peaked well before I came of age, she was really in my grandmothers generation. In fact, IIRC, my mother always told me that it was her late husband who really got things started and things had been going downhill ever since he died.. again, before I was born. Anyway, I go to the bakery to fix her computer and when I open it up the inside is full of dead roaches. I don't me one or two or twenty, I mean hundreds of roach carcasses. in a layer at least an inch thick at the bottom of the case.

She was shut down for health code violations and had to sell the bakery not too long after that

:shocked:

 

[Hacp]

Originally posted by: mxyzptlk
There's always been this close family friend who ran a bakery. Honestly, she probably peaked well before I came of age, she was really in my grandmothers generation. In fact, IIRC, my mother always told me that it was her late husband who really got things started and things had been going downhill ever since he died.. again, before I was born. Anyway, I go to the bakery to fix her computer and when I open it up the inside is full of dead roaches. I don't me one or two or twenty, I mean hundreds of roach carcasses. in a layer at least an inch thick at the bottom of the case.

She was shut down for health code violations and had to sell the bakery not too long after that

Originally posted by: pontifex

Some of my work required me to go out to offices in the factory. There was this black soot-like crap all over everything, even in enclosed offices. Depending on what I had to do, I would literally come out solid black from fingertips to elbows and slightly above sometimes, this black shit all over my shirt and most times on my pants.

did they have propane powered forklifts? I did some work in a warehouse once that used those and after a while I started to notice that my boogers were all black from breathing in that shit

So you shut down a perfectly functional small business just because of some pesky government regulation? This is why we need less government, not more. If businesses are shutting down because of a few bugs, our economy will never get better.

 

[SampSon]

I'm not an IT professional any longer, but in my job I've seen plenty of houses of squalor. Gross.

 

[Crusty]

Originally posted by: Hacp

Originally posted by: mxyzptlk
There's always been this close family friend who ran a bakery. Honestly, she probably peaked well before I came of age, she was really in my grandmothers generation. In fact, IIRC, my mother always told me that it was her late husband who really got things started and things had been going downhill ever since he died.. again, before I was born. Anyway, I go to the bakery to fix her computer and when I open it up the inside is full of dead roaches. I don't me one or two or twenty, I mean hundreds of roach carcasses. in a layer at least an inch thick at the bottom of the case.

She was shut down for health code violations and had to sell the bakery not too long after that

Originally posted by: pontifex

Some of my work required me to go out to offices in the factory. There was this black soot-like crap all over everything, even in enclosed offices. Depending on what I had to do, I would literally come out solid black from fingertips to elbows and slightly above sometimes, this black shit all over my shirt and most times on my pants.

did they have propane powered forklifts? I did some work in a warehouse once that used those and after a while I started to notice that my boogers were all black from breathing in that shit

So you shut down a perfectly functional small business just because of some pesky government regulation? This is why we need less government, not more. If businesses are shutting down because of a few bugs, our economy will never get better.

Way to assume.

 

[mxyzptlk]

Originally posted by: Crusty

Originally posted by: Hacp

So you shut down a perfectly functional small business just because of some pesky government regulation? This is why we need less government, not more. If businesses are shutting down because of a few bugs, our economy will never get better.

Way to assume.

Way to assume indeed. She got shut down because she failed an inspection. It had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the fact that she kept the kitchen nasty. I just happened to discover that fact just before the officials did. I didn't tip anyone off.

 

[Spineshank]

Have a guy at work who has real bad dandruff. I do telecommunications as well and have seen some real nasty phones.

 

[Ramma2]

Co-woker at my internship had to do the 4 year replacement on a PC, turns out that the primary user was some lady who was out of the office because she had scabies. He refused to touch the keyboard and mouse, and dragged them back from her office to the IT area by the cords. Was rofl funny, but I'm glad I didn't get stuck doing that replacement.

 

[alkemyst]

not help desk but I support the hardware...

During a post-hurricane timeframe one of our associates called to say her computer didn't turn on that morning. I get to her area and proceed to get a shock. She didn't tell us that the PC was also smoking, arcing and the roof drain ended up flowing into her cube.

The best was when I finally got power off and went to grab the box only to have my hand smush into a cupcake or donut that was stuck to the side and molding.

 

[imported_Imp]

Originally posted by: Ramma2
Co-woker at my internship had to do the 4 year replacement on a PC, turns out that the primary user was some lady who was out of the office because she had scabies. He refused to touch the keyboard and mouse, and dragged them back from her office to the IT area by the cords. Was rofl funny, but I'm glad I didn't get stuck doing that replacement.

ROFL... Just get some gloves.

 

[DieHardware]

Fix PC in morgue.

/thread

 

[techmanc]

I did a job in a heavy smokers house the place stank everywhere including the inside of the computer. Also ashes all over place and the whole computer keyboard monitor and mouse was covered with yellow nicotine stains. Couldn't wait until that job was over.

 

[JDMnAR1]

The worst has to be the standard black Dell keyboard in the pathology lab that is now indelibly red - and the little pieces of tissue on it didn't leave any question as to why it is red.

 

[OUCaptain]

Porn .avi's right on the desktop (crappy ones no less), lotion and tissues 2ft away. I swear to fucking god this is true. I was working service not help desk at the time. It was this douche bag of an insurance agent that we finally had to fire as a client. He would call us to remove a virus then dispute the bill because we deleted his infected files after cleaning the rest of the OS.

It took all I had to touch that keyboard and finish the job.

 

[oiprocs]

Originally posted by: OUCaptain
Porn .avi's right on the desktop (crappy ones no less), lotion and tissues 2ft away. I swear to fucking god this is true. I was working service not help desk at the time. It was this douche bag of an insurance agent that we finally had to fire as a client. He would call us to remove a virus then dispute the bill because we deleted his infected files after cleaning the rest of the OS.

It took all I had to touch that keyboard and finish the job.

Maybe a portable keyboard would be handy for any help issues. It seems like a nasty keyboard happens often.