So, like… Did any one else say “dickbutt” before this visual representation was ever created? It was a popular insult among my friends and I when we were like 10.
Somehow, my phone number got printed on an ISP provided router that services like trailer parks in Arizona. So I get calls randomly asking “Hey is this ____ Internet?” & I go “No sorry, this is just some dude. But hey, where did you find this number? I just wanna know why people are keeping calling me”
And fuck if it isn’t like pulling teeth. I literally just want to know where it’s printed.
“Uhh, so this isn’t Blank Internet?” Click
“It’s the Internet number” “yeah but like where are you reading it from?” “The internet” “Oh like a website?” “No, like the internet… so you can’t fix it?”
Voicemail: “Hey this is Joe Oldman. I live at 113 blank drive. My social security number is 0000005. Can you send someone down to fix my internet? Thanks”
Finally someone under the age of 40 called me and finally said “this is the number on the back of the router” but even when I asked “So what router is it? Like where is it printed?” “Idk”. Like dude, you literally just read this number and typed it in your damn phone. What are you looking at.
For every “I’m the bottom 10% of tech users” there is another 70% of the user base bitching about inept prioritization and service desk people who couldn’t troubleshoot process issues if their life were dependent on it.
Googling problems with Windows I find the majority of the results are MS support telling them to reset the OS. No attempt to debug the issue just nuke it and see if that fixes it. Then you read the next comments and inevitably they say “Nope, didn’t fix it”. I really dislike scripted responses like this.
Yeah the MS support forums are very hit or miss. And even the hit ones usually start with a response that doesn’t appear to understand the question very deeply, followed by a “that didn’t work”, “I said in my post that I tried that and it didn’t work”, or maybe a “that’s not what I’m trying to do, I want to do x”, and then a reply with useful links.
Though to be fair, problems can come from software the user installed or fuck ups they’ve made to settings along the way. Or quiet sabotage from another user.
Once upon a time I provided phone support for Comcast and had a caller call in unable to access Facebook. I did the usual script and found her internet was otherwise working. Narrowed it down to a dns issue. I was aware of the hosts file because I was using it for ad blocking at the time so had her open that up on a whim (which I would have gotten in trouble for since it was off script). Sure enough, it was there. Someone didn’t want her accessing it.
Who knows what kinds of methods people have used to discourage other things on shared PCs. Is edge really broken or did the user’s kid get tired of everyone clicking “make it the default browser” when it begged each time it was opened so they wrote a small program that kills it as soon as it starts?
My first fucking thought. I’m still waiting on helpdesk to respond to an issue I’ve already chased down to a registry key because I’m not allowed workstation admin privileges. 🙄. Which I’m fine with but more than a week to respond to a ticket? Come the fuck on
That’s because IT management theory currently holds that the more processes/workflows you standardize and consolidate the fewer things there are that break. Which means you can hire fewer help desk personnel.
Unfortunately the people usually tasked with performing this standardization is the help desk, so they don’t have the time to decrease their own workflow through standardization when they’re already filled to the brim with a backlog. At that point you’re just giving them more of a backlog.
As someone who works in IT support, I have yet to find any significant number of support people who can’t troubleshoot process issues. What I have found in spades is management making it impossible to make any meaningful process improvements.
There’s a nontrivial number of management type folks that just want it done a specific way, regardless of how that impacts worker performance or how difficult it makes my job.
The number of times I’ve suggested improvements only to be told that the existing methodology works, is too damn high.
Fun story, I worked IT for an American Telecom company. One day I recieved a phone call from a guy who was setting up his router. We were maybe five minutes into troubleshooting. He asks if he can eat his dinner while we troubleshoot and I say “no worries”. Within thirty seconds, I hear a bang and panicd screaming. He informs me he dumped soy sauce and rice all over his router and work space. I sent a field tech to replace the router and set it up.
I worked at an office once where the wifi legitimately got worse when it rained. It was because the buildings internet used an antenna instead of being wired, and the building was just barely in range of the source signal. When it rained, it was enough added distortion to make it noticeably worse.
I have to constantly explain to my wife that if she can’t reach a website it is likely on their end and there is nothing I can do until they fix it. I explain there is a chain of connections involved and me sitting and staring at her laptop for an hour isn’t going to fix it.
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