Fridays in IT...

darthed1981

So today, one of my colleagues phones me says when I'm next over, can I have a look at his laptop, I ask what the problem is, he says it will only charge when you hold the cable in certain places.

I said sounds like the charger cable is damaged, has anyone accidentally yanked it, he said no, I said well its unlikely to have just happened could something have fallen on it, could the cleaner have done it etc.  It's very much the socket, not the charger btw - what was once a good solid fit is now very wobbly.

Anyhow, go over and the power cable is hanging on its own weight across the floor behind his desk to a distant plug, I said oh someone must have caught it, not a great place to run the cable really, he said its fine, it can be repaired under warranty and I said I expect they will claim accidental damage for a broken power socket and I'm not keen on ringing them and lying when I think it is accidental damage.

Thing is buying laptops is difficult in our business, this one is three months old, of a decent spec, and having the power cable hanging across the room puts weight on a socket, which is bad enough, but clearly someone has tripped and broken it, its not happened magically.

Anyway, simply by investigating how it happened I got "you're a right Sherlock Holmes today arent you" and I replied I was just trying to work out how it happened as its unlikely to have physically broken without being twisted or yanked.

Accidents happen, but simply treating not-inexpensive kit with contempt and then acting like im in the wrong for investigating how it got broken... well it really grinds my gears.

If someone rang and said "shit im sorry, i tripped over my power cable and i think my laptop might be broken" id never get cross or even a bit off - but i dont get the attitude of contempt for the equipment.

End of rant.

Simonh

Must be the week for it, had a complaint come through one of my team about a user whose mouse and keyboard are no longer working on her laptop. Turns out that one of the ports is absolutely screwed and mangled to the point that one of the contact tracts is missing. The laptop is almost a year old.

of course she claims no knowledge of how it happened despite being the only user of the things since it was bought.

Simonh

Just thought of another one this week, had a user complaining that her headset wasn't working last week, no problem we order her a replacement.

She raised a ticket again this week that her headset isn't working, we check the tracking and see her new one hasn't been delivered yet.

monquixote

A friend of mine bought his wife a Macbook within a few weeks she had got angry that you couldn't put a usb cable into the HDMI port and so furiously jammed it in until it snapped off.

This was apparently his fault for buying something that didn't work properly.

thecolourbox

You should do what our IT team do - issue everybody with brand new laptops, then not send anybody the BitLocker code you need to switch it on. Then there's three weeks of wear and tear prevented by the time they get around to sending you the code

EricTheWeary

thecolourbox said:

You should do what our IT team do - issue everybody with brand new laptops, then not send anybody the BitLocker code you need to switch it on. Then there's three weeks of wear and tear prevented by the time they get around to sending you the code

Two weeks today from collecting my new laptop and I’m still waiting to be able to use it. 

drofluf

thecolourbox said:

You should do what our IT team do - issue everybody with brand new laptops, then not send anybody the BitLocker code you need to switch it on. Then there's three weeks of wear and tear prevented by the time they get around to sending you the code

My Belgium based company once sent me a new laptop. It arrived on a Saturday, the day before I was due to fly overseas on a business trip. All well and good except I couldn’t logon. “No problem” said the IT guy, “it will work next time you plug into the company network”. Except at the time I was one of two UK based employees and  we had to use a vpn to connect to the network which I couldn’t activate until I’d logged on. 

To be fair he went straight home and a couple of hours later had found a solution. 

guitartango

thecolourbox said:

You should do what our IT team do - issue everybody with brand new laptops, then not send anybody the BitLocker code you need to switch it on. Then there's three weeks of wear and tear prevented by the time they get around to sending you the code

Hope that dont email the Bitlocker code

Snags

We get them all the time across a range of clients. Annoyingly since Covid we've had significantly more accidentsl/"spontaneous" damage than ever before. This year alone we've had 4 machines at one client improved by the addition of water, a couple of smashed screens and one where the key cap "just came off" ... on a chiclet keyboard. All of them less than 12 months old. 

guitartango

@darthed1981 We had a charger that started to smoke, no problem said the supplier we will send you out another charger

They sent out a USB Nic

Back to the supplier, Can you send us the correct part?

They sent out another USB Nic

Back to the supplier, Can you send us the correct part?

They sent out another USB Nic

Back to the supplier, Can you send us the correct part?

On the third USB Nic ... Can you send us the correct part ?

Charger turns up.. what about the three usb Nics you sent us.

Keep them its more paper work

dhaywood67

I used to be the IT manager for our smallish company and supported absolutely everything. We were then bought by a big group company and they insisted on taking over all IT responsibilities as it was a much cheaper way of doing things. That made things crap straight away (Like giving every user full access to the HR files lol). And last year they outsourced it all to India on a break fix contract and you can guess where we are now!!!

I've just come off a call to one of our users who took delivery of a new laptop with pretty much nothing but the domain logon configured. A call to our friends in India to get the rest of the configuration completed and they allegedly couldn't even connect to it - not even with Teamviewer despite the laptop having a full internet connection. As usual I get the call to sort shit out even though I have no admin rights any more. Needless to say I was connected within 30 secs.

I know, not so much stupid users as its the crap outsourced support, but bloody frustrating as I'm again getting as many calls as when I used to do the job.

Bod

I used to repair laptops for my company.  I was once passed a laptop to repair that had a circular melted patch on the underside that was clearly from placing it on an electric hob that hadn't fully cooled - "I don't know how that happened!?" I was told.

Another time was an overheating laptop that, upon disassembly, I found a large amount of chocolate melted in the heatsink fins and lower section of the case.

Bod

Bod said:

I used to repair laptops for my company.  I was once passed a laptop to repair that had a circular melted patch on the underside that was clearly from placing it on an electric hob that hadn't fully cooled - "I don't know how that happened!?" I was told.

Another time was an overheating laptop that, upon disassembly, I found a large amount of chocolate melted in the heatsink fins and lower section of the case.

Oh, I forgot the pubes stuck in the heatsink.  So many it looked like they'd been deliberately stuffed in there.

darthed1981

It's probably fair to say that, ranting aside, I'm pretty fed up with this place at the minute.  Stuck in a rut because ultimately money is ok, and they never wind me up quite enough that I snap and genuinely look for something else.

Also spent the week arguing with the wife as well.

Not my best week ever!

Bod

dhaywood67 said:

I used to be the IT manager for our smallish company and supported absolutely everything. We were then bought by a big group company and they insisted on taking over all IT responsibilities as it was a much cheaper way of doing things. That made things crap straight away (Like giving every user full access to the HR files lol). And last year they outsourced it all to India on a break fix contract and you can guess where we are now!!!

I've just come off a call to one of our users who took delivery of a new laptop with pretty much nothing but the domain logon configured. A call to our friends in India to get the rest of the configuration completed and they allegedly couldn't even connect to it - not even with Teamviewer despite the laptop having a full internet connection. As usual I get the call to sort shit out even though I have no admin rights any more. Needless to say I was connected within 30 secs.

I know, not so much stupid users as its the crap outsourced support, but bloody frustrating as I'm again getting as many calls as when I used to do the job.

I've been through that outsource cycle a few times.  They all come in, offer barebones service, and just milk the contract for additional stuff that's not covered under contract, then walk away after the contract, leaving it for someone else to clear up.  Good IT service and profit are mutually exclusive in my experience.

scrumhalf

Bod said:

I used to repair laptops for my company.  I was once passed a laptop to repair that had a circular melted patch on the underside that was clearly from placing it on an electric hob that hadn't fully cooled - "I don't know how that happened!?" I was told.

Another time was an overheating laptop that, upon disassembly, I found a large amount of chocolate melted in the heatsink fins and lower section of the case.

If you could invent a PC that dispensed chocolate you'd be able to retire within a year. 

guitartango

We had a sales director who lost his laptop on the train, so he we sent him a new one. When he moved to another job he brought back the original laptop and tried to pass it off as his new one. We soon sussed him out and he agreed to rerurn the second laptop.

When he returned the laptop he asked if he could copy his son's University project from the old laptop.... your be lucky I wiped the hard drive (company policy) using Dod disk wipe

SD: What about my son's data ?

me :Have you got the Police report number  

SD: Makes phone call to son ....

me: Bye

Never piss off your IT Department

mrkb

darthed1981 said:

It's probably fair to say that, ranting aside, I'm pretty fed up with this place at the minute.  Stuck in a rut because ultimately money is ok, and they never wind me up quite enough that I snap and genuinely look for something else.

Also spent the week arguing with the wife as well.

Not my best week ever!

Is she tired of dressing up as your youtube fantasies.... 

Snags

darthed1981 said:

It's probably fair to say that, ranting aside, I'm pretty fed up with this place at the minute.  Stuck in a rut because ultimately money is ok, and they never wind me up quite enough that I snap and genuinely look for something else.

Also spent the week arguing with the wife as well.

Not my best week ever!

By the amp! May as well send it right into the shitter!

darthed1981

Snags said:

darthed1981 said:

It's probably fair to say that, ranting aside, I'm pretty fed up with this place at the minute.  Stuck in a rut because ultimately money is ok, and they never wind me up quite enough that I snap and genuinely look for something else.

Also spent the week arguing with the wife as well.

Not my best week ever!

By the amp! May as well send it right into the shitter!

Dangerously likely to maybe cheer me up!

darthed1981

mrkb said:

darthed1981 said:

It's probably fair to say that, ranting aside, I'm pretty fed up with this place at the minute.  Stuck in a rut because ultimately money is ok, and they never wind me up quite enough that I snap and genuinely look for something else.

Also spent the week arguing with the wife as well.

Not my best week ever!

Is she tired of dressing up as your youtube fantasies.... 

She's not a huge fan of my youtube crushes, funnily enough...