Tales from the IT world...

[StinkyPinky]

In my experience the worst jobs are the imaginary ones that users are never satisfied with. Such as "my pc is running slow" when it isn't and nothing you do will convince them everything is ok.

I used to get that crap a lot.

 

[Saulbadguy]

Originally posted by: lucasorion

Originally posted by: shoRunner

Originally posted by: lucasorion
We use a program for filling out expensesheets, which needs to be configured to point to an mdb file on our financial server before a user can use it. There is a text box for the path, with a browse button next to it. Every time I install this program I type in "\\server\share\database.mdb". Today I found out that my unofficial apprentice in the IT department, who makes only about $3/hr less than me (much to my consternation), has been mapping a Y: drive on people's computers to the \\server\share and then filling in that box with "Y:\database.mdb" because he couldn't figure out how to browse to the server and share, and apparently didn't know how to type in the full path (don't ask). Today I was remoting into computers and disconnecting these superfluous Y drives, and putting in the full path in that text box. I don't mind dumb stuff done by engineers and administrative assistants, but when it is done by fellow IT guys, it really bothers me.

not sure this is that big of a deal, it was working right?

it allowed them to open the program, sure, but they have this mapped drive to the directory on the financial server, which they really don't need, and it just bothers me because it betrays a certain level of dumbness that I hate to see in a fellow IT guy.
Logically, it is sort of like the software equivalent of the surge protector story above.

Mapped drives are convenient, I don't really see a problem with what he did. I suppose the only problem with a mapped drive is it requires a constant connection to the server.

Edit: Do they only need the path to the server once upon installation, or does the program require you be connected to it every time the application is run? If the former I could see why the mapped drive is annoying.

 

[Saulbadguy]

Originally posted by: StinkyPinky
In my experience the worst jobs are the imaginary ones that users are never satisfied with. Such as "my pc is running slow" when it isn't and nothing you do will convince them everything is ok.

I used to get that crap a lot.

I still get that a lot. The best thing to do is click around the screen for awhile, uninstall and reinstall an update of some sort, and then reboot. Tell them that you installed an update that should make things quicker and to have them let you know if it continues.

 

[shiner]

Originally posted by: child of wonder

Originally posted by: vshah

Originally posted by: Deviant Grasshopper
I'll start off with something that happened this morning - I'll add a lot more tonight.

A user made a shortcut to her departments network folder on her desktop. She opens the shortcut, and deletes everything she doesn't need.. <facepalm>

why did she have write access??

Probably because she bitched about not having it so told her boss, who told their boss, etc. until it got to the CIO/VP/whatever who then micromanaged the situation and made IT give her write access despite all warnings to the contrary.

That's how it works everywhere.

agreed

 

[meltdown75]

my IT dept FORWARDS malicious emails saying under no circumstances click the links or run the attachments...

WITH THE LINKS AND ATTACHMENTS STILL IN THE EMAIL

:facepalm:

 

[amddude]

Originally posted by: Saulbadguy

Originally posted by: lucasorion

Originally posted by: shoRunner

Originally posted by: lucasorion
We use a program for filling out expensesheets, which needs to be configured to point to an mdb file on our financial server before a user can use it. There is a text box for the path, with a browse button next to it. Every time I install this program I type in "\\server\share\database.mdb". Today I found out that my unofficial apprentice in the IT department, who makes only about $3/hr less than me (much to my consternation), has been mapping a Y: drive on people's computers to the \\server\share and then filling in that box with "Y:\database.mdb" because he couldn't figure out how to browse to the server and share, and apparently didn't know how to type in the full path (don't ask). Today I was remoting into computers and disconnecting these superfluous Y drives, and putting in the full path in that text box. I don't mind dumb stuff done by engineers and administrative assistants, but when it is done by fellow IT guys, it really bothers me.

not sure this is that big of a deal, it was working right?

it allowed them to open the program, sure, but they have this mapped drive to the directory on the financial server, which they really don't need, and it just bothers me because it betrays a certain level of dumbness that I hate to see in a fellow IT guy.
Logically, it is sort of like the software equivalent of the surge protector story above.

Mapped drives are convenient, I don't really see a problem with what he did. I suppose the only problem with a mapped drive is it requires a constant connection to the server.

Edit: Do they only need the path to the server once upon installation, or does the program require you be connected to it every time the application is run? If the former I could see why the mapped drive is annoying.

Unmapping the drives sounds like micromanagement. Relax.

 

[lucasorion]

Originally posted by: Saulbadguy

Originally posted by: lucasorion

Originally posted by: shoRunner

Originally posted by: lucasorion
We use a program for filling out expensesheets, which needs to be configured to point to an mdb file on our financial server before a user can use it. There is a text box for the path, with a browse button next to it. Every time I install this program I type in "\\server\share\database.mdb". Today I found out that my unofficial apprentice in the IT department, who makes only about $3/hr less than me (much to my consternation), has been mapping a Y: drive on people's computers to the \\server\share and then filling in that box with "Y:\database.mdb" because he couldn't figure out how to browse to the server and share, and apparently didn't know how to type in the full path (don't ask). Today I was remoting into computers and disconnecting these superfluous Y drives, and putting in the full path in that text box. I don't mind dumb stuff done by engineers and administrative assistants, but when it is done by fellow IT guys, it really bothers me.

not sure this is that big of a deal, it was working right?

it allowed them to open the program, sure, but they have this mapped drive to the directory on the financial server, which they really don't need, and it just bothers me because it betrays a certain level of dumbness that I hate to see in a fellow IT guy.
Logically, it is sort of like the software equivalent of the surge protector story above.

Mapped drives are convenient, I don't really see a problem with what he did. I suppose the only problem with a mapped drive is it requires a constant connection to the server.

Edit: Do they only need the path to the server once upon installation, or does the program require you be connected to it every time the application is run? If the former I could see why the mapped drive is annoying.

Every time they launch that program, it would have to be able to resolve y:\, so they would have to keep that y drive permanently. All he had to do was type in the path once or successfully browse to it, he had to do one or the other anyway to map the y drive to that path. There is no use for having that mapped drive on any computers, they have enough mapped drives already to shares that they actually access.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: brtspears2
I get stuck with the fun battles with high resolution displays and small text and icons. A fun battle where dropping the resolution lower than native screen size results in blurry complaints. Setting the monitor to native resolution and turning up font sizes, large icons results in "well, this thing here (some obscure button in an ancient app like Eudora) didn't get bigger at all, I thought a larger monitor would let me see things larger and clearer!"

That's actually a really annoying battle. I really wish LCD's could scale well.

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: child of wonder
Actual ticket.

(names altered to protect the stupid)

NOW WHAT'S GOING ON WITH MY EMAIL???

Yesterday afternoon I tried to send an email to Bob Johnson with scans of two letters to the FDIC, one was 2.33mb and the other was 2.17mb.......I got an error message and had to send TWO separate emails to get the letters to him.

Now I'm trying to send an email to Wendy Williams with a Notice of Levy......she needs to get this TODAY! It's 4.95mb and the error message says it exceeds my limit of 2.44mb. This just started happening yesterday afternoon after Tim Meadows said he changed the capacity of my email account because I'm constantly getting that message about exceeding capacity.

THESE THINGS NEED TO BE RESOLVED! THIS IS HOW WE COMMUNICATE WITH STAFF AND OTHERS...BY EMAIL AND ATTACHMENTS. THESE CONSTANT ERROR MESSAGES ARE A TOTAL WASTE OF MY TIME AND PREVENT ME FROM DOING MY JOB. I WORK FOR THE REGIONAL PRESIDENT, I'M CONDUCTING THE BUSINESS OF THE BANK. PLEASE GET THESE ISSUES RESOLVED ONCE AND FOR ALL.

While I agree that the user's tone is terrible, in all honesty, it's rather ridiculous to limit attachment sizes to 2.44mb today. A simple expense report with scanned receipts can be larger than that. I understand that you may not set policy, but whoever set the 2.44mb limit is living in the past.

ZV

 

[lucasorion]

Originally posted by: amddude

Unmapping the drives sounds like micromanagement. Relax.

until I start getting calls from people saying "what is this new y drive in 'my computer'? Am I supposed to do something with this?"

 

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt

Originally posted by: child of wonder
Actual ticket.

(names altered to protect the stupid)

NOW WHAT'S GOING ON WITH MY EMAIL???

Yesterday afternoon I tried to send an email to Bob Johnson with scans of two letters to the FDIC, one was 2.33mb and the other was 2.17mb.......I got an error message and had to send TWO separate emails to get the letters to him.

Now I'm trying to send an email to Wendy Williams with a Notice of Levy......she needs to get this TODAY! It's 4.95mb and the error message says it exceeds my limit of 2.44mb. This just started happening yesterday afternoon after Tim Meadows said he changed the capacity of my email account because I'm constantly getting that message about exceeding capacity.

THESE THINGS NEED TO BE RESOLVED! THIS IS HOW WE COMMUNICATE WITH STAFF AND OTHERS...BY EMAIL AND ATTACHMENTS. THESE CONSTANT ERROR MESSAGES ARE A TOTAL WASTE OF MY TIME AND PREVENT ME FROM DOING MY JOB. I WORK FOR THE REGIONAL PRESIDENT, I'M CONDUCTING THE BUSINESS OF THE BANK. PLEASE GET THESE ISSUES RESOLVED ONCE AND FOR ALL.

While I agree that the user's tone is terrible, in all honesty, it's rather ridiculous to limit attachment sizes to 2.44mb today. A simple expense report with scanned receipts can be larger than that. I understand that you may not set policy, but whoever set the 2.44mb limit is living in the past.

ZV

and why 2.44 mb? seems like an odd number. ours here are set to 5 mb.

 

[Aikouka]

We got a call from a building across campus that their PC wouldn't start. So we decided that we would replace it. So I get the PC and sling it under me arm ( *flex* ). I get up the stairs and look out the door to see... it's really fucking pouring outside. Faaaaaantastic! Since I have no umbrella and obviously by my strength, I am all that is man... so I decide to man it up and just walk. Well, I walk over there and get inside... I'm literally dripping wet. I finally find someone to tell me which PC is having problems and I go in there and get under the desk to start unhooking it when I notice a wire. "Hmm, this looks like a power cable... this is a power cable... an unplugged power cable" So I plugged in said unplugged power cable, push the power button and ta-da, they were idiots!

So yeah, I then had to walk back over cursing their name and ended up quite wet by the time I got back .

 

[Pheran]

Originally posted by: Deviant Grasshopper
I prefer to work for smaller companies (100-500 employees) and have gone through the change from 'small company mindset' to 'large company mindset' about 4 times. One of the more interesting issues is whether or not a regular employee can send an email to the distro group for everyone in the company.

At my last place the president sent an email to all. An employee opened it and hit 'reply to all' instead of forward, and added his buddy to the To: field - and then made fun of the pres, VP, and a few directors. Sometimes that's what it takes to make the owner of a company realize that this stuff needs locked down.

NOTE: All names changed to protect the guilty.

Hehe, that reminds me of a story from an old job. At one place I worked, it just so happened that the director of HR's first name was similar to the company name. For example, let's call the HR director Widgets and the company Widget Inc. The HR director's email is widgets@widget.com and the company distribution list is widget@widget.com. Some poor sap tries to email the salary and stock option info for a VP to the HR director, but gets it wrong. Out it goes to the entire company. After that fiasco, the distribution list name was lengthened, it was locked down to certain users and the HR director's email address got changed to include his last name.

 

[pontifex]

yeah, the "slow computer" stuff sucks ass. also, the person who always has the same problem and no matter how many times you fix it or tell them what to do/not to do, they still manage to fuck it up again and again.

our ticket system allows users to enter a "needed by" date. i routinely get tickets for stuff thats needed by a date that is impossible to do.

for instance, the latest one is a supervisor's request for a 2nd monitor for one of his employees. his needed by date is 3 days. It'll take a day or 2 just to get approval, and with my supervisor lately, it can take a week or more to get a PO from him so i can order the stuff. then you have to add on shipping and handling time. i can't just pull this stuff out of my ass.

 

[wheresmybacon]

Originally posted by: child of wonder

Originally posted by: vshah

Originally posted by: Deviant Grasshopper
I'll start off with something that happened this morning - I'll add a lot more tonight.

A user made a shortcut to her departments network folder on her desktop. She opens the shortcut, and deletes everything she doesn't need.. <facepalm>

why did she have write access??

Probably because she bitched about not having it so told her boss, who told their boss, etc. until it got to the CIO/VP/whatever who then micromanaged the situation and made IT give her write access despite all warnings to the contrary.

That's how it works here.

This happens all the time. Best part is forwarding the higher-ups the email thread of them approving the write access request when the "OMFG who approved this?" e-mail which invariably follows in the aftermath.

"HOW THE @#$& DID THIS HAPPEN?"
"um, you approved it sir."



It's for this reason that I have a massive sent items archive dating back to my start date in 2001.

 

[wheresmybacon]

Originally posted by: pontifex
yeah, the "slow computer" stuff sucks ass. also, the person who always has the same problem and no matter how many times you fix it or tell them what to do/not to do, they still manage to fuck it up again and again.

our ticket system allows users to enter a "needed by" date. i routinely get tickets for stuff thats needed by a date that is impossible to do.

for instance, the latest one is a supervisor's request for a 2nd monitor for one of his employees. his needed by date is 3 days. It'll take a day or 2 just to get approval, and with my supervisor lately, it can take a week or more to get a PO from him so i can order the stuff. then you have to add on shipping and handling time. i can't just pull this stuff out of my ass.

We don't have a "needed by" date, but we do have a priority level. Some of the phones people assign "URGENT" priority to something like no audio, while others don't even bother setting the priority, so "low" gets stuck on work-stoppage issues like dead drives or BSOD loops.

The field techs (me) quickly came to completely ignore whatever priority is stuck on a ticket since the phones folks are almost all entirely inept.

 

[zixxer]

After reading these I've concluded that ATOT has a bunch of sorry dumbarse IT staff forum members.

You don't map drives unless there's a reason for an always-on connection (i.e. a program needs a drive and won't take a server name). You'll end up with a ridiculous amount of unneeded mapped drives and that server will always have an active connection.

2.44mb attachment limit? WTGDF?

Your datacenter doesn't have any kind of battery backups? The power for your datacenter is controlled by an easily accessible switch in a warehouse???




I guess this is what an industry that is dictated by certs rather than experience will end up being like. Shameful.

 

[ultimatebob]

Just today, I had a user screaming at me about how his warehouse invoice printer hasn't worked properly for over a week. I asked him if he had power cycled the printer recently, and he said that he did. I logged onto the printer's remote management interface, and found that it had been online for the past 11 days straight. Grr. I asked him to unplug the printer and plug it back in, and (surprise, surprise) it worked fine.

Amazingly, that ticket somehow made it past the first level service desk TWICE without anyone actually checking that it was power cycled. They even sent out a technician out to the site earlier that week, and even then they never bothered to power cycle the printer. :|

 

[child of wonder]

Originally posted by: pontifex

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt

Originally posted by: child of wonder
Actual ticket.

(names altered to protect the stupid)

NOW WHAT'S GOING ON WITH MY EMAIL???

Yesterday afternoon I tried to send an email to Bob Johnson with scans of two letters to the FDIC, one was 2.33mb and the other was 2.17mb.......I got an error message and had to send TWO separate emails to get the letters to him.

Now I'm trying to send an email to Wendy Williams with a Notice of Levy......she needs to get this TODAY! It's 4.95mb and the error message says it exceeds my limit of 2.44mb. This just started happening yesterday afternoon after Tim Meadows said he changed the capacity of my email account because I'm constantly getting that message about exceeding capacity.

THESE THINGS NEED TO BE RESOLVED! THIS IS HOW WE COMMUNICATE WITH STAFF AND OTHERS...BY EMAIL AND ATTACHMENTS. THESE CONSTANT ERROR MESSAGES ARE A TOTAL WASTE OF MY TIME AND PREVENT ME FROM DOING MY JOB. I WORK FOR THE REGIONAL PRESIDENT, I'M CONDUCTING THE BUSINESS OF THE BANK. PLEASE GET THESE ISSUES RESOLVED ONCE AND FOR ALL.

While I agree that the user's tone is terrible, in all honesty, it's rather ridiculous to limit attachment sizes to 2.44mb today. A simple expense report with scanned receipts can be larger than that. I understand that you may not set policy, but whoever set the 2.44mb limit is living in the past.

ZV

and why 2.44 mb? seems like an odd number. ours here are set to 5 mb.

Our outgoing limit is 100MB but the message she was getting was from the mail server of the person she was sending the message to.

That was fun trying to explain to her.

 

[ric1287]

Originally posted by: zixxer
After reading these I've concluded that ATOT has a bunch of sorry dumbarse IT staff forum members.

You don't map drives unless there's a reason for an always-on connection (i.e. a program needs a drive and won't take a server name). You'll end up with a ridiculous amount of unneeded mapped drives and that server will always have an active connection.

2.44mb attachment limit? WTGDF?

Your datacenter doesn't have any kind of battery backups? The power for your datacenter is controlled by an easily accessible switch in a warehouse???




I guess this is what an industry that is dictated by certs rather than experience will end up being like. Shameful.

you realize all the things you used as examples were not done by ATOT members, right?

 

[SandEagle]

sadly this thread is not as amusing as the retail one. just like real world IT, tales from the IT world is booooooring /faceyawn

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: SandEagle
sadly this thread is not as amusing as the retail one. just like real world IT, tales from the IT world is booooooring /faceyawn

You obviously don't work in IT. This thread DELIVERS. *CONFIRMED*

I've read every post and gotten smiles out of all of them.

Here's what happened to me TODAY. (condensed for reading ease)

We have two sites, a main (about 800 users) and a remote site (20 but sometimes 100+) users. Sometimes people work from the remote site on the way to/from trips...usually higher-ups. Part of my job (SysAdmin) is to take the data from that site and incorporate it into our main site's system. We have a 1MB pipe b/t the two sites, so remotely transferring data takes a LONG freaking time. :roll:

Got a trouble ticket from the helpdesk (user's point of contact) to delete 8GB worth of files from a shared drive on the local site. Here's what it said, basically. Ticket put in by a department head.

"We have confirmed that the files in the "Important Remote Site Folder" have been transfered to the "Local Network\folder." You can go ahead and delete the files on the remote site."

So I did. Two hours. TWO DAMN HOURS later that department floods the helpdesk with phone calls saying "The files we need are not in the data! OMFG! My spreadsheet! My XYZ data!!"

The department head said it was all good...obviously he was told that by underlings....didn't anyone actually f'in CHECK to see if what you wanted was in there?

This crap happens to my shop so often it's not funny. The original data was still intact on a backup...at the remote site. Know how long it takes to transfer 8GB over a 1MB pipe? I'll tell you: A LONG DAMN TIME. :roll:

But, these are the IT Tales...and we, the IT Warriors live for this shit.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Originally posted by: SandEagle
sadly this thread is not as amusing as the retail one. just like real world IT, tales from the IT world is booooooring /faceyawn

Yeah, but IT people don't get robbed at gunpoint

 

[JJChicken]

Originally posted by: StinkyPinky
In my experience the worst jobs are the imaginary ones that users are never satisfied with. Such as "my pc is running slow" when it isn't and nothing you do will convince them everything is ok.

I used to get that crap a lot.

This.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Originally posted by: child of wonder
Actual ticket.

(names altered to protect the stupid)

NOW WHAT'S GOING ON WITH MY EMAIL???

Yesterday afternoon I tried to send an email to Bob Johnson with scans of two letters to the FDIC, one was 2.33mb and the other was 2.17mb.......I got an error message and had to send TWO separate emails to get the letters to him.

Now I'm trying to send an email to Wendy Williams with a Notice of Levy......she needs to get this TODAY! It's 4.95mb and the error message says it exceeds my limit of 2.44mb. This just started happening yesterday afternoon after Tim Meadows said he changed the capacity of my email account because I'm constantly getting that message about exceeding capacity.

THESE THINGS NEED TO BE RESOLVED! THIS IS HOW WE COMMUNICATE WITH STAFF AND OTHERS...BY EMAIL AND ATTACHMENTS. THESE CONSTANT ERROR MESSAGES ARE A TOTAL WASTE OF MY TIME AND PREVENT ME FROM DOING MY JOB. I WORK FOR THE REGIONAL PRESIDENT, I'M CONDUCTING THE BUSINESS OF THE BANK. PLEASE GET THESE ISSUES RESOLVED ONCE AND FOR ALL.

I can't stand when people send tickets with tones like that. I wish we could just tell them to F off and ask nicely, or just ignore it totally. We get lot of those.

What I can't stand too is someone sends a ticket about some obscure program that we have no clue about but yet we're supose to support and ask "why wont it work" or any other "why" question. Yeah, we're supose to just "know". they wont provide a computer number or anything so we can even troubleshoot, they just expect us to know and fix it just like that.



Here's a few hilarious calls I took:

This lady calls in wanting to configure her outlook express for an email (why can't people just take 5 minutes to figure this out themselves?) so I'm going through the steps and it seems to be going well then out of nowhere she blurts out "OHHHHhhhh, so I have to turn it on?" *mute* laugh hysterically. That call went on for about an hour. We use gotoassist but just setting up a remote session is like trying to build a nuclear reactor out of toothpicks for some people, they just don't get it. When i say go to www.site.com, you don't type www.site.com in google search, or in an email, you type it in your address bar! People just don't get it. (these are all businesses that we deal with too, we don't do the residential customers) Then there's the people that think that as soon as they call you, you can see their computer. Was trying to establish a remote session with gotoassist then the user got frustrated and is like "can't you just remote in and do it?" dumbass. That's what I'm TRYING to do, now just LISTEN to me. One of these days I'll lose it with people like that.

Another:

This user calls in wanting a password reset. So I ask her for which system (email, dialup?) and she just keeps refering to "the page that you have to log in to". After about 15 minutes of trying to figure out what she wanted, turns out she thought we could reset her password on the Oprah website. I had to explain to her that just because we're the internet help desk it does not mean we have access to every single server on the internet. She was mad and hung up.

Oh and this happens all the time. People send in a request to move a computer to a different location or a different room. So we go to do it, only to find out there's no ethernet jack, no power. What do these people think, the jack is just a sticker on the wall we can move too? dumbasses. Get new jack installed, get plug installed, THEN put request to move computer.

I could go on... see I like IT field, it's the people I can't stand. One thing people don't realize is that in IT we're taking care of 1992394837 different customers with different systems, we can't dedicate our time to fix an issue instantly like people want.