I did support for inexpensive, but commercial grade network equipment. I’d just been promoted to a senior support engineer 2 days earlier. My boss came to me and said “we have a customer who just deployed a over $250k of equipment and it doesn’t work. The customer, sales person and account rep are on the call, we need you to figure it out”. After an hour or so going over their setup we found out our new switch connects to a 3com switch over a fiber line. 3com was out of business at this point, but I managed to find documentation on the product online. It’s fiber ports were FDDI. Our switch only supported Ethernet (No one really supported FDDI at this time.) At which point the sales person said “we’ll just have to replace the rest of the hardware” and the customer agreed.

I was on a call once where some guy initially wanted to like block channels or something. After like 2 minutes it turned into some crazy Trump-esque rant about basically nothing. Some of my favorite quotes:

• These people out here talking like they no what’s what. They don’t know shit. But big daddy… he knows.

• I see these fools running around here playing games. I don’t play games. I play real life.

I worked for an MSP that merged with a copier company. Copiers got more and more capable, and so of course people wanted to use their “advanced” features, hence the merger with an IT company.

When they sold a copier, they would sell limited IT engagements. Things like handing information and help to customer IT, or if they lacked IT, limited help like placing it on the network, installing the drivers to use it as a printer, setting up scanning to network. This was done remotely by a level one technician, Joe this time.

Well, install day came, and after Joe helped out the customer claimed that some computers could print, some couldn’t. And some computers couldn’t access anything else on the network. They hired a local IT guy that threw Joe under the bus, and the customer yelled at my boss. As one of the level 2 techs, I was told to “fix what Joe fucked up” right in front of Joe. Shit boss, different story.

I travel out there, look at their problem, but was told I couldn’t touch anything until their IT guy showed up. So I used the time to ask questions, and tour around since I had a hunch.

Local IT guy strides in 15 minutes late, smug as hell. I talk and lead him to the basement, following the signal strength of a weirdly named wifi signal, and get a solid full strength connection in front of a locked closet. I ask them to unlock it, and ask about the router I see on the shelf, and point out that I believe it’s their issue.

Local IT guy installed a router as an access point, and did it so wrong that it was acting as a 2nd DHCP server on their network, handing out different addresses. In layman’s, their computers had 2 bosses with differing orders. Therefore local IT guy broke it, and blamed Joe cause he didn’t understand what he did.

I praised Joe from that day for being the first technician I knew capable of physically installing gear remotely. He was an excellent tech, and a good colleague.

I had changed into scrubs, booties and hair cover to go into an operating theatre and repair a printer. I didn’t want to have to come out and do all that again if someone had forgotten to charge the electric screwdriver, so I revved it a couple of times while standing in the charge room, which was fully visible from the hallway. A passer-by glanced my way at the noise, did a double take at what might have been a surgeon testing off-the-shelf power tools before starting a procedure, and walked into a trash can. 😁

Before I was officially in tech support but I was the unofficial helper in my office. I don’t recall the exact issue this person was having on their desktop but I went over to help and said “have you tried restarting?” This person, a millennial, probably younger or the same age as me, then pressed the power button on the monitor to “restart”. I’m still reeling.

I had a user ask us to solve her problems slower because it made her feel stupid when we solved them immediately.

I accidentally wiped a column in a police department’s evidence database 😁😅

Me: Here’s the URL for the web service I’ve just deployed. I’ve set up users and permissions so just copy it into your browser and you should see a very similar system to what you’ve been trained on with all your data in there.

Customer: All I’m getting is a blank screen.

Much panicking and headscratching later…

Me: Waaaiiiiittt, did you press Return/Go after copying the URL?

Customer: That was not in the instructions.

I worked at a global internal helpdesk, my company had offices all over the world.

One day I get in to the office for night shift and the day shift was laughing.

Aparantly a guy in the main office, located on a different continent, called the global helpdesk for help with their computer, can’t remember the actual reason, they were rude and dismissive, and while the tech was trying to help them they found games installed of the computer.

This is not allowed, so they told the guy, who said that he had admin access so it was fine.

The tech kept pushing that this was not allowed, but the guy would not accept it and even told us that his team mates also had these games installed on their laptops, so while talking with the guy the tech reached out to the global head of IT on Lync and explained the situation.

The global head of IT was pissed and briefed the head of the local IT team at the main office to collect the computer and completely reinstall it.

The tech was still on the line with the guy, and was told to tell him that the local IT team would help him, and to expect them shortly.

I don’t know the exact exchange in the main office, but the next day we got word that the entire team was required to have all of their computers reinstalled, this was a global team across mutiple continents, even some in our own office, who sheepishly came down to us to have us reinstall their computers a day or so later.

The guy who got caught can’t have been popular…

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I worked for a different company a few years after the above incident, this was smaller, much smaller, but it was a fantastic place to work.

Anyway, I got the task of being the VIP technician for our partners in addition to my normal duties.

This wasn’t that bad, it mainly consisted in helping partners with remoting in and giving them higher priority.

Now, at the start of the pandemic, the main VIP wanted to make sure that his dedicated office computer at one of his holiday homes was updated and ready for the summer.

So I had to get up there, I was given a preinstalled desktop computer and had to fly to the town where the holiday home was located.

This was in May 2020, right when the pandemic shock was at it’s absolute peak.

The flight was domestic, but what I didn’t expect when I got to the airport was how completely empty it was.

In the departure hall that would be packed normally, it was just… empty…

Well, five other passengers was milling around, and maybe two or three staff that I could see.

I get checked in, and walk to the gate, there sre about 8 passengers there, my flight is called and I get down to the transfer bus and the doors close, and… I am alone…

The bus starts heading out across the tarmac and stops at an unmarked plane, a completely white Fokker F50, no branding or anything.

There is a cute stewardess who tells me that I am the only passenger on the flight and that I can just pick any seat.

I do so and we take off, and throughout the flight I can’t just stop thinking about how I am the only passenger and how odd it felt.

So I get to the airport, collect my bag and my taxi is waiting for me, and after and hour or so we have arrived, the holiday home is a farm, and the farm hands greet us, I get let into the office and start doing my work.

After hours of setting up every little detail, testing and testing and testing again then documenting everything, I am ready to leave and get driven to a nice hotel, that is completely empty.

I stay the night, and the same taxi that collected me from the airport the day before pick me up again.

We get to the airport and this time there is a 100% increase in the number of passengers on the flight, that’s right, we had one more passenger!

The flight back is uneventful, I get back home, remote into the office and upload my notes and debrief my manager.

Years ago I worked for a healthcare IT company that had its developers, IT administrators, and help desk all reporting to the CTO. The CTO was an MD with a computer science degree from a prestigious university.

I was in a different department entirely but I was invited to a presentation he was giving and came to the conference room a bit early. I walked in to him in a full panic trying to connect his laptop to the projector. I plugged in the HMDI and hit Win + P and he reacted like I had just defused a bomb. Really made it hard to take seriously his five year strategic plan for all of our IT projects.

A year later he took extended leave to travel internationally and came back to work with a full perm and added the word “tree” to his last name. He lasted about 6 more weeks before he announced he was leaving. He is now the CIO of a large university.

Apocryphal: user reports laptop frequently crashing. Tech is putting it through paces, can’t make it crash. Tech slides it over and asks user to show them what they do differently. User touches the laptop (before they can do anything with it) and it crashes. I was told about this, I didn’t see it happen.

A long time ago had an attorney call in looking for help dialing internationally. I said “sure we can help you call abroad” and he said, “well first I’d have to get her number.”

…I think about that shit all the time and its been like 12 years.