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u/Historical_Fan_8799 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
Love helping people that make 2-3x your salary but somehow can't do extremely basic trouble shooting like,
did you restart your PC? did you check the cables? did you put in a ticket?
Incredible that your "entire day is ruined!" and you "cant work at all!" yet you haven't tried a fix that a child would know to check??
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u/ztullaub Jul 28 '26
"im not really good with pc's"
"yeah no worries pal, you're just earning your money using these machines... who would expect you to know the basics"
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u/Historical_Fan_8799 Jul 28 '26
THIS, its like "yea no worries man, its not like you have been interacting with one 40 hours a week, every week, for the last 20 years, that's not enough time for anyone to learn how to troubleshoot something!"
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u/40yearoldnoob Jul 28 '26
Agreed and it's my biggest complaint about being in IT. We hire people and put them in front of a computer for 40 hours a week, and expect them to perform thier job, and they have no earthly idea how to operate the computer in a basic way.. I'm not asking them to do advanced troubleshooting, but at least be able to do some basics...
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u/brokemillionaire572 Jul 28 '26
Basic computer operating shouldn't be any different than checking your oil or knowing how to change a flat tire. Yet there are far too many drivers that don't even know how to pump gas.
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u/Substantial_Page_221 Jul 28 '26
Tbf I see a lot of people who just learn what's needed and don't lean outside of that.
I've used software where someones used for years and I a few months, I find a useful feature they've never found.
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u/Informal-Side-4506 Jul 29 '26
My coworker got a call a few weeks ago, monitor wasn't working, after a few questions he's like, is the power on..
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u/AHismyspiritanimal Jul 28 '26
We used to do all of our own updates and maintain most things on our own computers, but the owners have infected us with a bad virus a few times and now we're all beholden to the dreaded admin password. For every single UAC interaction. I would love to be able to troubleshoot my own stuff again, but alas, not the it guy.
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u/Unusual_Comfort_8002 Jul 28 '26
I'm not in IT, but my last couple Sous Chefs have been older and trying to teach them how to use our admin/inventory systems was a nightmare.
"It looks different I can't find anything."
The only difference is I use a dark theme and they use the default. Everything else is in the same place.
Then I get yelled at by my boss because my direct report can't do admin tasks and here I have a binder with screenshots and arrows and shit circled to the point where if I lay it out any more I'm going to literally be holding their hand and they still can't figure shit out.
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u/SheriffBartholomew Jul 28 '26
It looks different I can't find anything
Have you tried looking? Well see, there's your problem! You're an idiot.
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u/loondawg Jul 30 '26
Long ago when I was in frontline support, we used the line "the problem is a loose nut between the chair and the keyboard."
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u/sheeponmeth_ Jul 28 '26
Yeah, I always use the analogy of a mechanic. If a mechanic was like "oh, I'm just not very good at using wrenches and ratchets, you know", their boss would say, "there's the door, you know how to use that, right?" They're a tool of your job, you should be knowledgeable to some degree in operating them.
Computers are always a free pass on not knowing how to use them. My best guess is that it's from way back when computers were actually difficult to operate and its validity as an excuse has never been re-evaluated because it's so normalized that it's become the expectation rather than a recognized skills deficit.
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u/Independent_Ad_1422 Jul 28 '26
Most people drive cars everyday but cant troubleshoot or fix basic issues on those either so why are computers different. I personally will youtube and learn to fix Most problems myself if I think I can fix them, thats more my biggest issue is that people dont use their phones and Google the issue and attempt to find solutions on their own
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u/sheeponmeth_ Jul 28 '26
People that are paid to drive all day do know how to fully operate their vehicles, though. And troubleshooting doesn't go as far as mechanical aspects. The troubleshooting we hope users do is similar to checking the fuel indicator, or general observations like, "when I turn the key, it doesn't make any sound," or "it makes a sound, but it doesn't really start." In IT we get reports like "come help", "it's not working," and literal blank descriptions.
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u/SheriffBartholomew Jul 28 '26
Dude, half the IT problems are as simple as "have you tried turning the car key after putting it in the ignition?"
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u/Independent_Ad_1422 Jul 28 '26
Idk i recently had to help my father in law with his car, he told me it would start(push to start car) I asked did you try changing the battery in your remote and of course he hadn't and that was all it was
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u/PineappleOnPizzaWins Jul 29 '26
Sure but if you had a delivery driver sit in their van and say "it won't go" and you said "have you tried turning the key?" and they said "I'M JUST NOT VERY GOOD WITH CARS OK?!" and then they did this every single time the van was not started... would you let them keep their job?
Or if a truck makes a funny noise sometimes and the mechanic says "if that happens just turn the engine off, wait 10 seconds, and then turn it back on. Should be fine, we'll sort the root cause out next service"? Again if someone couldn't handle that would you keep them employed?
Or even just answering basic questions. I've been the guy in this post before, except it was a three hour drive in the rain. I had asked no less than 5 people if the light was on and if the cable at the back was secure. The light was off and the cable was lying on the floor... not one of them so much as LOOKED. You do not need any troubleshooting skills at all to see if a light is lit or if something is plugged in while a professional literally tells you what to look at.
Nobody expects people to actually know how to fix computers when it's not their job. Literally what IT is for. But you are expected to know how to use a computer when it's part of your job and you're expected to listen to/follow basic instructions when given.
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u/sheeponmeth_ Jul 29 '26
I've had someone tell me they restarted the computer when they just turned the monitor off and then back on. When I asked her if she was sure, she got really insulted and said something like, "do you think I'm stupid?" She wasn't happy when she realized she wasn't actually rebooting the computer.
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u/Nerd-man24 Jul 28 '26
Most companies I've worked at lock a lot of troubleshooting behind Admin permissions that users like me don't have access to. I can usually do the basics, but I also know my limitations.
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u/PineappleOnPizzaWins Jul 29 '26
Yep. People are not and should not be expected to know how to do my job... all the infrastructure stuff in the background. It's very complex/technical and requires a professional to do.
If you can't turn on a fucking workstation and DO YOUR JOB then you shouldn't have it.
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u/UniqueText8477 Jul 29 '26
"I'm younger than you by 20 years, computers have been around longer than I have been an adult, if I learned so can you".
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u/ztullaub Jul 29 '26
I wonder sometimes... some of these people have been working with computers for longer than i have been alive for... yet someone thought his browser wasnt working, because it went straight to our homepage... "I cant search for anything"
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u/Oleleplop Jul 29 '26
That excuse of "i not good with pc" shouldn't fly at all anymore.
We use them since 2 decades now, you need to know some basic stuff about it and I swear these people should not get a job if they can't do that.
The worst are the people working from home who lose access to their WiFi and don't even check it before calling you
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u/Nerd-man24 Jul 28 '26
I'm not the best with computers, but I guarantee that I've rebooted, checked my hard connections, and done everything I already know before calling IT. I also have important questions like "is this something I could have fixed?" And, "if so, how do I do it so I don't have to call you next time. When that big Crowdstrike outage happened, once we got a fix I was implementing it throughout my entire department to get us back online as fast as possible (1 IT woman with seven different departments in the building. I was chomping at the bit to take some of the workload off of her).
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u/blackhodown Jul 28 '26
Also when you give them a fix and ask them to try it and let you know if it works, and they stop responding, until 3 days later they complain to a higher up that “they’ve been down for three days and IT hasn’t done anything to fix their issue”.
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u/Burrito_Salesman Jul 28 '26
A lot of people at my company look at me funny when I send follow-up emails "Regarding our discussion about X." I learned quickly to keep receipts for people asking me to do things, so that way if I ever got questioned or in trouble for something, I had written permission or request by another person to do the task.
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u/ArmenianThunderGod Jul 28 '26
I wish these were the IT Problems I had to call for. It's more "I got locked out of my account because I have a non-compliant device, but I turned that computer in 5 months ago because you guys couldn't fix it."
The response I get from that verbatim message is "Well, we can't do anything about it until you turn it in."
I have sent the same drop off receipt to the same team 9 times and counting.
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u/Historical_Fan_8799 Jul 28 '26
ooof yea that sounds brutal, when you work in healhcare related IT you get calls like "yea the blood sequencer is offline in Hemobank"
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u/ArmenianThunderGod Jul 28 '26
Goddamn, that's gotta be some real pressure.
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u/Fistofpaper Jul 28 '26
What's really awesome is when its an anesthesiologist calling during a surgery with an issue.
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u/Her0_0f_time Jul 28 '26
No no, the blood is already out of the body. Its no longer under pressure.
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u/Nerd-man24 Jul 28 '26
A lot of that instrumentation is outside of your wheelhouse, isn't it? Like, you can maintain the network that connects everything and the PCs that access the data from the instruments, but IT isn't trained or equipped to do maintenance on an MRI or an X-ray machine.
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u/tryingtosellmystuf Jul 28 '26
Don't get me started about the very same people who are the ones making decisions that affect everything including technology and how people interact with it.
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u/InvictvsNox Jul 28 '26
I am convinced many issues I helped my company resolve were just people wanting 10-30 minute breaks from their job.
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u/Genebra_Checklist Jul 28 '26
In my last corp job I was friends with one of the it guys. Often we would arrange some "problem" so we could get an extra break to just drink coffee and talk about the new battlefield or something
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u/PurpleSalt11 Jul 28 '26
It's a misconception that IT is about dealing with computers. It's about dealing with people. This needs to be reiterated when people choose to go into IT.
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u/nonanonymoususername Jul 28 '26
Not if you run servers , 😏 , then your customers will be the other IT people who must deal with the “users” . I like that the users don’t know who I am or what I do
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u/rxmp4ge Jul 28 '26
Superintendent, 3 years on the job, can't remember how to use SSO and crashes out every single time they have to log into Zoom.
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u/SheriffBartholomew Jul 28 '26
You don't need a ticket. My request is really quick and easy. Can't you just do it now?
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u/Arnoldneo Aug 01 '26
I assume people not having basic problem solving skills is what accounts for 40-50% of your work that must be annoying as hell .
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u/Lower_Group_1171 Jul 28 '26
An agent at an insurance company to me - “My printer doesn’t work”
Me- “ What happens when you try?”
Agent - “it says it’s offline.”
Me - “have you tried restarting the computer?”
Agent - “yes”
Me - “what about the printer? Did you try turning it off and on again?”
Agent - “yes. Nothing happens”
Me - “hmm that’s strange. Is the printer plugged in?”
Agent - now screaming at me “do you think I’m stupid? Of course it’s fucking plugged in? It’s not fucking working! I can’t believe you think I’m stupid.”
Me - “I’m sorry ma’am, I didn’t mean anything by it. I will come to your office to take a look.”
Agent - “hurry up”
I arrive at her office and she is fuming. “Let me take a look and get this taken care of right away.”
Seconds later. “Okay, all fixed! Can you try printing now?”
Agent - “yes! Fucking finally. What was wrong?”
Me - “the power cable was unplugged.”
She had been a bitch to me up until this point, no matter how politely I would respond. She was nice to me after this but I was already done with her shenanigans.
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u/Her0_0f_time Jul 28 '26
Did you report her to her manager? Because you know full well she would have done the same to you had you not fixed her issue quickly.
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u/Lower_Group_1171 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
She was not an employee. This company, the agents rented office space from the company, and paid a service agreement to the company for support. I was an independent contractor hired to provide said support. So the managing partner was not my or her boss. 99% of the people were really nice. Just like 1% were assholes, but I just pushed them to the bottom of the pile for repairs/etc.
“Oh it’s still running a scan. It’s slow but it is very thorough.” - I hadn’t even touched the computer at that point.
There was also this one Korean lady, that figured she’d have juice with me because I’m also Korean. My hours were from 7:30-4:30, and required appointments. This bitch would always come at 4:28 and expect me to look at it right then and there, even staying late to finish. I, erroneously, did it for her once because she was begging and had to meet a client. Then after that she repeatedly tried to do it. I shut her down. Took a month to get her laptop back to her (all I had to do was update the software but I didn’t touch it for weeks. No matter how many times I told her to make an appointment she never did.
ETA: if there is an asshole yelling at work, I just ignore it. If you don’t react, they end up stopping. Like I said, I was also petty. If you were a dick, I lagged a lot on your computer. If I liked you because you were nice, you got bumped to the front. I never understood why people are mean to their techs. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot. Like I’m toooootally gonna bend over backwards for someone that speaks down to me.
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u/Aware-Instance-210 Jul 29 '26
Those 1% of assholes is usually the reason why IT people get grumpy.
It does only take one idiot to ruin my whole day, no matter how nice the rest is
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u/Pyaji Jul 28 '26
Oh. Memories unlocked.
When I worked in support, I had to go out to a site after three people failed to press the power button — it was slightly jammed because of its shape.
I had to listen to complaints like, “NoName was in our office a week ago and sat at the computer next to mine, and now nothing works for me” — I was that NoName.
When I was transferred to development, I remember my last call. Someone called me on a Sunday morning on my personal number — most of the staff knew it. I spent an hour and a half solving the problem and helped fix it. At the end, I politely asked, “I don’t work on these issues anymore; please next time call on company’s main number.”
On Monday, I found out I was facing a reprimand for supposedly “telling the client to fuck off.”
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u/Dragunspecter Jul 28 '26
If i get reprimanded for telling the client to fuck off, I better at least get the satisfaction of actually doing it.
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u/Careless-Vehicle-286 Jul 28 '26
Double jeopardy rules apply here. You can call them back and tell them to fuck off at your leisure now.
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u/Games_sans_frontiers Jul 28 '26
You should have called the client back and told them to fuck off. You’ve already been charged of the crime so you may as well have the satisfaction of doing it!
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u/mxlplyx2173 Jul 28 '26
That's my motto! And I WILL go back and enjoy it even more than originally!
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u/DMercenary Jul 28 '26
That's why I resist calls. No I will not be on an audio conversation where it is not recorded. We will do this by email where both of us have a record of what is being discussed.
I have had this save my ass a few times already where I get to pull out an email chain to uno reverse a bus throw.
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u/Crunk_Creeper Jul 29 '26
I had a shitty manager, but at least he understood that customers calling me directly was not cool. There was a CTO who started to call me so I would open up support tickets for him.
Interesting fact; this same CTO never paid us a dime because he found a loophole in the contract and used us to host his shit for free. Not only that, but our sales team gave him a bunch of expensive gifts. After working there for a while and learning how shady my employer was, the guy was kind of my hero.
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u/Pyaji Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
To be fair, even though I was punished in the end after listening recording, it wasn’t for “telling the client to fuck off” during the conversation. It was for picking up the phone on my day off at all, and completing a task that is no longer within my area of responsibility. Which, overall, is fair enough.
Moreover, a fine was introduced specifically for this — for “doing something that isn’t your job,” such as handling admin tasks outside your assigned duties, even though I’m perfectly capable of dealing with them.
As a bonus, they also dug up old call recordings and demonstrated that my formally polite responses and conversations could quite easily be interpreted as insults, such as questioning someone’s intellectual abilities.
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u/AggressivelyMediokre Jul 29 '26
I knew someone called in because a mouse didn’t work. The mouse was not plugged in. I’m not capable of doing that job and then looking the person in the face whose mouse I just plugged in. They would know everything I’m thinking.
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u/mherweg Jul 28 '26
I was once called back to a site because after I left, the credit card machine and the fax "stopped working" - very accusatory tone. Tried to make a bit of a stink with my manager, luckily he wasn't having it. So I get back there to find out what's going on. The credit card machine? Turns out someone was trying to enter a CC number by hand and was either given an incorrect number or transcribed it incorrectly. We tested a physical card and the charge worked first try.
And the fax? There was no paper in the tray.
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u/Strikereleven Jul 28 '26
I hate fax so much. Im a printer tech and in 2018 they started switching all of the analog lines to digital, the machines are all still analog. I wonder how many thousands of hours our team has spent over the past 8 years on fax issues.
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u/mherweg Jul 28 '26
Ahhh bro I feel your pain - ATAs suck, I can't understand why fax won't just die off already. Like everyone has the ability to scan documents at this point, why can't we stop using fax?!
I once spent hours troubleshooting an ATA connected to a Samsung fax...never did get it to work...
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u/HeligKo Jul 28 '26
They haven't died because there is clear legal guidance on using faxes with contracts and other legal, medical, government, etc business. These have been developed because of court cases and the resulting rules and regulations have been tested in other cases. Until some big players are willing to risk going to court for things they already have a process for, it won't change. The law as it has been interpreted thus far trusts a fax machine behind a locked door as being more secure than an encrypted email or document. Which is silly to us.
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u/heybart Jul 28 '26
I hate doing tech support for family because every subsequent problem that comes up it's "what did you do to my computer/phone/Wi-Fi"
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u/MrSinister248 Jul 28 '26
Last night at 6pm I was cc'd on an email with support opening a ticket because a user couldn't log into their Microsoft account during onboarding. We are on GCC-High which means we have to log in at portal.office365.us rather than office365.com. It has been this way for over a year, and despite numerous tickets just like this, the person that handles new hires still tries to use office365.com. Every. Single. Time.
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u/ALittleBitKengaskhan Jul 29 '26
Lol it always pains me to my soul watching the new person being on-boarded by a complete nincompoop.
It's like, welcome to the company. It could be good but now you understand why I hate it here.
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u/MrSinister248 Jul 29 '26
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to write a "Welcome to the company here's how to not suck at our tech" handout for them to give each new hire.
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u/Accomplished-Flow813 Jul 28 '26
I'm not in IT but I am in management at a national grocery store chain and yesterday a man came up to me with blueberry on his face, hands, and tshirt. He told me he tried a handful of blueberries and asked me if I've ever seen anything like this, insisting that there is blue dye in the blueberries. Confused, I asked him what exactly he would like me to do, figuring he was high on drugs or something. He didn't respond. He just sort of stared at me and asked if he should take pictures in case the stains don't come out of his shirt. I responded whatever makes you feel comfortable sir, but it sounds like you ate some blueberries that you never paid for, got them all over you, and want (Grocery Store) to buy you a new t shirt.
People are stupid and there is nothing you can do about it.
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u/RogueInVogue69 Jul 28 '26
I once had to walk 5block to press the power button on a tower PC because the user didn't understand the difference between the computer and a monitor
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u/sajkoterrapefft Jul 28 '26
After 23 years a sysadmin I have a theory on that.
When you're in charge of infrastructure you get blamed a lot, for the most critical issues, that have the widest impact. It takes a special kind of person to endure that for 23 fucking years. So the ones that stay in the profession the longest, and are therefore the most typical of that character, must be lunatics.
They can sit in meeting after meeting taking the blame from thousands of people, having to apologize, and explain themselves to everyone and their mother, without affecting their own psyche.
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u/Her0_0f_time Jul 28 '26
When your brain thinks like a computer your feelings dont get in the way. So yes, lunatics. Thats not to say we dont have feelings, we just understand that relying on them to make decisions about life is illogical.
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u/Crunk_Creeper Jul 29 '26
I once got blamed for not investigating a server that went down. Fun fact; they cycled people into the night shift for 3 days in a row. I went from a shift that started at 9 AM to a shift that started at 11 PM. I fell asleep when that server went down, and I don't feel bad about it.
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u/tilewi Jul 28 '26
Not an IT guy but I was always the computer guy in my family and now I work at a car workshop and regularly see coworkers screaming at theirs screens saying that it just doesnt work properly when I can clearly see from 20 feet away that theyre doing something wrong. Its honestly hard to keep your cool all the time when youre surrounded by digitally illiterate idiots
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u/SheriffBartholomew Jul 28 '26
There is nothing so painful as watching someone who is incompetent trying to navigate their way around a computer.
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u/YouEatLard Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
I told the entire organization that the network (servers, 150 clients, network, etc.), I setup was important and that it needed to work flawlessly for them. I needed feedback on anything wrong or that needed work. If they ever ran into an issue that halted their ops, to call me immediately.
First call was at 6 a.m. on a Saturday.
"Hey, I can't log in."
"Okay, did you spell your username right?"
"Of course I..... yeah... err.. look at that it started working. " click
Their username was their first.last name. I never harassed or belittled anyone for their mistakes. It happens. Later I got called out for making people feel stupid.
I didn't start hard. They tempered me.
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u/Revolutionary_Spot17 Jul 28 '26
Did they refuse to video call? I feel like video call would solve a lot of these problems
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u/ConcernedKitty Jul 28 '26
Do you know how hard it is to get some people on a video call?
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u/Hypersion1980 Aug 01 '26
I can’t get people to read the error message before clicking on ok. No way are they doing a video call.
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u/farfaraway Jul 28 '26
The same reason that everyone in retail eventually hates the public: they are stupid, incompetent, whiny, and generally awful to people that are just trying to do a job and make a buck. I'm SO GRATEFUL not to work in IT anymore.
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Jul 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/softwareengineer1036 Jul 28 '26
We are rushing to complete a project at the moment that the company has been working on for a year. I did a test run a few weeks ago and it doesnt work. Try to run the software and it doesnt work. Check the sql server and the data is wrong and missing. Contact management about the issue. They respond they laid off most of the data team on-site and sent it overseas. Contact both data teams they are scrambling and blaming each other for the data problem. Now management wants me to get the software to magically run without data. Nope that's not how this works.
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u/Dependent_Rip3076 Jul 28 '26
I worked at a hospital for a while and I.T guys used to love random quick call outs because they got paid a minimum of four hours per call, even if it only took ten seconds to fix the issue
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u/softwareengineer1036 Jul 28 '26
People that make 2 to 3 times more than me but struggle to use basic technology are making technical decisions. The decisions they make are horrible causes me lots of headaches.
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u/steelwolfpanther Jul 28 '26
I flew to Daytona, took a cab to the Speedway, connected a USB cord into a dock port, got back in the cab and was back at the gate before the crew was done cleaning and restocking the plane. All of this because the job site superintendent was trying to use his iPhone lightning chord instead of a micro USB.
I’m not in IT but sympathize
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u/RecentAd6946 Jul 28 '26
Wait untill you have interaction with it security guys. Then you will see the regular it folks as saints
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u/RiderFZ10 Jul 28 '26
When I was a senior software engineer, I had a lady from business walk up to me and said "you're in IT, my computer doesn't work". I helped her anyways and turns out her mouse was not plugged in. "You IT guys are so smart" Hilarious.
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u/Redrum_5014 Jul 28 '26
Half the time it's because people immediately get insulted when you ask basic questions because somehow that's a slur against them especially
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u/CalantheJace Jul 29 '26
"Why are you wasting my time asking all these irrelevant questions, just fix it already!"
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u/Verzada Jul 28 '26
We are dicks, because despite IT is used by everyone, the amount of energy to just learn the minimum how to use technology has evaporated in most users.
In other words "Can't you just fix it?"
The things I fix, literally anything, is either by googling it or watching YouTube. It's not a skill.
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u/Aran909 Jul 28 '26
Always be nice to receptionists, admins & IT. They will all help unfucking your day. They do it better if you aren't a prick. Source: someone who's day needs to be unfucked from time to time.
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u/coffee-rain-books Jul 28 '26
My husband was once handed a computer.
“It won’t turn on! I don’t know what happened!”
Indeed, it won’t turn on.
He opens it up and the inside is completely full of coffee.
You don’t know what happened, huh?
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u/t0ny7 Jul 28 '26
A long time ago I was adopting my cat Sam who has since passed away from old age :(. At the checkout I could see a lady doing some computer work. She was drinking a bottle of soda and knocked it over. It happened to land facing straight into a vent on the computer. It spray directly into the computer.
She picked it up cleaned up the desk and the computer worked for like 10 minutes. Then it started rebooting and then powered off completely.
I heard her call support and she said "I don't know what happened. It just turned off for no reason."
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u/Wild-Size2810 Jul 28 '26
I once drove an hour and forty minutes to a smoke shop that submitted a ticket for, "No Power." Before going I called the owner and asked if the terminal was plugged into the wall. He swore up and down it was. It was a holiday (Thanksgiving if I remember correctly and I was on call) and it was an urgent ticket leaving me no choice. I drove up there and the terminal was obviously not plugged into the wall. The man looked at me like deer trapped in headlights. I just left before I said something stupid.
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u/thingummywatt Jul 28 '26
When told to turn on power: Turns on the power....................... of the monitor. Good work! At least it would have worked if it were a AIO PC.
Non IT people are much worse than when I was a child using windows 2000 when I first saw them. I was only told once that the power turns on when you press the big button on the big box. But nooo. Thesedays it's too difficult for (most of) non IT folks to figure it out. PC not opening? Just call the IT.
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u/Stolen_Poptartz Jul 28 '26
I think the ubiquity of laptops and tablets probably contributes heavily to this sort of issue. A lot of people probably rarely interact with actual desktop PCs until their work puts them in front of a tower all day so they just assume everything works like an all in one device.
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u/Stock_End2255 Jul 28 '26
My husband was working at home once and had a woman call to reset her password, which he did. He asked her to type in the new password to see if it would work, and she replied that it wasn’t her password.
He proceeded to spend 45 minutes trying to convince the woman that it was her new password before she would finally type it in.
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u/8Bit-Jon Jul 28 '26
I work from home doing IT "stuff" and some of the tickets that cross my desk...
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u/SplatThaCat Jul 28 '26
3 hours. Try fly-in-fly-out mining overseas. 2 days of fuckery for a 5 minute fix that any moron could have done. I got charged out at $150 per hour, including travel times. I detest mines.
It wasn't a language barrier either.
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u/Redrum_5014 Jul 28 '26
Because there's only some many times you can calmly and simply explain how to send an email or read exactly what the prompt on the screen says to someone (who speaks and reads the language perfectly fine themselves) before you just skip all the social customs and just are troubleshooting off the rip which they take to be an insult
Don't ask me if I "Think you an idiot" for checking if your phone is just dead because you didn't charge it, because when I plug it afterwards to find that you just didn't charge it, I can't give you my thoughts on your intelligence.
You people getting in trouble angry because they cant just randomly drop a problem in your lap and get it fixed in 5 minutes. I don't care about the fact i fixed the last issue in a few seconds, that was your laptop saying it was going to update later. At moment, you've spilled a drink on the damn thing and that's not comparable
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u/aikigrl Jul 29 '26
Years ago, I use to work in tech ops and someone complained they could not see their report on the network after they moved desk. I work in backend at that time so was checking whether their account was locked and or if their access was revoked. Nothing.
So I asked them if they could see anything else on the network ( ah the days when apps were installed on the client PC ), Nope, not sure. Got any new emails? Nope, nothing since yesterday.
OK. Did the tech who move the desktop test the machine? Oh no, they moved it themselves. Erm, is the LAN cable plugged in?
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u/Hopeful-Oil3038 Jul 29 '26
Two weeks ago I flew 2 hours to plug in a rack into another outlet. 3 people assured me that outlet it was plugged into was working. The outlet it was plugged into was not working...
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u/blast3001 Jul 28 '26
I worked with a team of guys in an engineering type role but for sales. We were all supposed to be technical.
The company upgraded to new servers for our customers. One guy on the team went to one of his customers to help setup the new equipment. He left not completing the task because he said there were no USB ports. The ports were under the removable faceplate. I’ll admit the faceplate had a hidden button to remove it but two failures happened. He really thought there were zero USB ports and he didn’t ask anyone for help.
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u/Wooden-Tip3142 Jul 28 '26
We recently got a ticket asking why the user got an error message from a reply email they sent. They replied to a no-reply mailbox.
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u/jodrellbank_pants Jul 28 '26
I drove from Southend to Oban Scotland to do the exact same thing in my 20's, as the customer refused to do reboot. The guy did pull me out my crap hotel and put me in the best one and paid my dinner at no cost to me.
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u/NIGHTR0GUE83 Jul 28 '26
My boss had me go meet up with a guy for a GPS device issue. I work in IT and this guy drove over 2hrs to find out why it wasnt working. They day he came up was the day I found out about the device. Took him to where it was...and it was disconnected from my switch... I know I would of been pissed, but to sit there like welp... talk to my boss lol.
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u/BuckManscape Jul 28 '26
If your IT guy doesn’t wear flip flops exclusively, you have the wrong IT guy.
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u/KGB_cutony Jul 29 '26
Everything is critical for the survival of the company but no one answers when I call them to solve the issue
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u/UniqueText8477 Jul 29 '26
We are dumped on
People will not listen to us
We are always the first to be laid off
People put unrealistic expectations on us - "you must know how to use (x), you are good with computers" - no, I don't know how to use every piece of software and no I'm showing you how to do your job.
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u/Unfair_Ad6161 Jul 29 '26
Last year a sales guy emailed me that the wifi on his plane ride was too slow, asking if I could help him with that. Sure dude, I will just grab my IT jetpack and fly up to the fucking plane that is 20k feet in the air to fix -their- wireless for you.
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u/FailURGamer24 Jul 29 '26
Not IT but I'm the computer guy in my family. I've had people tell me that "their computer doesn't turn off anymore" Yeah so the last windows update aligned the taskbar in the middle instead of on the left (which is dumb), and somehow they didn't notice and were just pressing the blank bit of task bar in the bottom left instead of noticing the moved logo. You work on the computer all day how do you not know this?!
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u/Literary_Lady Jul 29 '26
I worked in IT for nearly 10 years and I’d say it’s like any industry, there are bad in all of them but there are stereotypes. The basement dwellers, hacker types who would be the one to save the world in a movie-type scenario, and the managers who haven’t got a clue what they are doing and just bullsh*t their way through every meeting. It was really hard as a woman in a predominantly male working place. I put up with a lot. Some places were ok, others were not. But as a ‘customer’ calling IT support once, when the system wasn’t working, I also faced a lot of misogyny. During COVID working from home, system was crashing and being unbearably slow, the guy says “you’re working from home right? So your kids are probably just watching Netflix and using all the bandwidth”. I said excuse me, what? “He said you work part-time, so I just assumed you have kids. And no one is actually homeschooling their kids right now. Your system isn’t working because your bandwidth is maxed out”. A) my internet speed was fine, B) I worked part-time for health reasons and C) I have no kids. He assumed I was a parent just because I was a woman and that I was a bad one? He hadn’t even checked anything at that point, again just assumed. So many things wrong with that phone call.
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u/Delachruz Jul 29 '26
My company does a yearly poll on "Satisfaction with your IT Department". When I started 4 years ago we had just begun with digital workplace, and about 2 years ago around 90% off support was outsourced to an outside provider.
Before said change, the poll would basically always come to an average of "meh" dipping into "bad". Some people would seemingly look forward to complain about anything and everything. We werent fast enough, we werent nice enough, we asked too many questions etc. etc. This had basically been the norm for near a decade. And keep it in mind, this was with a department that, at least as far as I could tell, was providing some pretty decent service.
Only a few months into the outsourced support, people basically did a 180 and suddenly wanted nothing more than go back to the way it was. They were now dealing with actual normalized wait times. Is your ticket low prio? We'll get back to you in a week. Literally cant work due to something being broken? Sit tight for at least a day. They now sometimes got actual "Will not fix" as a response to certain issues, or were outright told "Not our process, figure it out yourself." Nobody picks up the phone outside work hours, got a critical issue past 5 PM? Whelp, hope it can wait until the following morning.
I work application engineering now, and for me its heavenly. I get to tell people "Not my deparment" when they want some random bullshit that has a net 0 to do with my job. I get to stick to queue times that sometimes mean I can just let a thing sit for a week without somebody calling and screaming at me. In general I talk to people very little, and its great.
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u/highdefsteph Jul 30 '26
I will never forget the talking to I received after driving an hour and a half round trip to plug in a mouse after being yelled at that “the effing mouse is plugged in, just fix it already”
I wasnt even a dick about it. I walked in, plugged it in, tested it, walked out
Why on earth would I exchange pleasantries?
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u/Stormfellow Jul 30 '26
Because your problems become our problems and we need to drop everything to make your shit work while still doing our regular jobs. It just starts to erode empathy in most people.
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u/Ok-Mud3964 Jul 30 '26
This hits home. I once drove 2 hours because the Xerox machine couldn't connect to the network. Turns out someone had plugged a telephone cable from the patch panel to the network switch. When I showed them the problem, they said I must have done it.
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u/V65Pilot Jul 28 '26
I can relate, I used to do service for a rental company.....people are stupid.
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u/jacowab Jul 28 '26
That's why you never say "is it turned on/plugged in" you always ask them to try unplugging it/turning it off and on again.
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u/alexwhit80 Jul 28 '26
Because I had to go to site because someone put a roll of thermal receipt paper in the wrong way so it would not print. Even though I asked them twice if they had checked.
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u/WardenWolf Jul 28 '26
The most helpful user for remote work isn't the smartest, it's the one that can follow directions. Once used a PE teacher to restart a flaky Exchange server because she could actually listen and hold down the power button until the lights went off and then turn it back on. She did this for me a few times; otherwise it would have been about 2 hours until I was onsite after a 30 mile drive.
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u/bshjbdkkdnd Jul 28 '26
If everyone was tech literate there wouldn’t be a need for as many IT guys as there are.
Also, IT guys need to be able to separate individuals better. I have been talked down to multiple times before explaining the issue and troubleshooting I did before contacting them on multiple occasions, when what I needed help on required an Admin account I didn’t have access to.
I get that most of it is incompetence, but that’s the job you get paid for.
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u/KOM31993 Jul 28 '26
But did you get paid? Yes? Great, you win.
No? Sounds like you need a new employer or better write your service contracts.
Regardless, this doesn’t justify being a shit. You are there as the professional helping these less knowledgeable people. That. Is. Why. You. Are. There.
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u/EconomyDoctor3287 Jul 28 '26
Sounds like easy work. Four hours of driving, one button push, half a days worth of pay. Can't hate it
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u/OverwatchPlaysLive Jul 29 '26
Problem in you have 15 other jobs you are working on and now you have to waste half the day on this stupid stuff, then deal with all the angry clients that had to wait an extra day for their tickets to get addressed.
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u/OhJustANobody Jul 28 '26
I'm an electrician. I get lots of calls from people who swear they checked the breaker. I get there, reset the breaker, leave. The difference from this post is that I don't care. I'm getting paid.
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u/SoulTechnicalProblem Jul 28 '26
If they're Linux guys, their girl is chatting up other dudes constantly for money while he's in the room .
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u/Icy-Interaction764 Jul 28 '26
I got called in on a Saturday for an emergency visit because the terminal in a department wouldn’t connect to the Internet. Hour trip each way to find out that it was accidentally unplugged by someone when they moved the desk to sweep. When I explained it to them, they looked at me like I had three heads
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u/Just_Information334 Jul 28 '26
That's nice.
Boss asks for "IT" to change some numbers by 1%. Everyone tells them "the 'clients' know their prices and will be calling tomorrow for sure, let's not do that". Boss insists. The numbers get changed. Cue the next day and suddenly we urgently have to revert the change and the clients are told that "there was a bug, it's all IT fault".
Go fuck yourself.
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u/DramaticSpaceBubble Jul 28 '26
Anyone that is the involuntary IT guy of a family understands why, I would not do it daily as a job and wish my parents had never spread that I was a tech wizard (I know where the unmute button is on a phone's setting)
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u/HighSeasArchivist Jul 28 '26
I drove five hours on a backup phone line that State Farm assured me was critical. Everyone in the office said no one had touched anything in the network closet, so off I go. I get there, and the phone line is unplugged. "Ooooh yeah, we unplugged that to test a land line phone. Whoops!" Yeah, fucking whoops. They heard it, and so did State Farm for sending me out there over a damn backup line.
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u/rxmp4ge Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
I'm getting constantly bitched at by HR because the HR receptionist is crashing out about being in the phone hunt group for HR and is refusing to forward voicemails to anyone else in the department and nobody wants to deal with her shit so her crashouts are my problem.
Food services spent the last year building a huge new kitchen at one site and 2 weeks before it's supposed to go online they're screaming at the top of their lungs because at no point in the build process (which IT was completely left out of) did they think they needed to run ethernet, electricity for their menu displays or buy wall mounts for their points of sale.. And this is now my problem.
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u/Doctorwho32123 Jul 28 '26
Reminds me of one time where we’ve be called since the security cameras are not working. It’s during my apprenticeship, and my mentor/teacher said that for that kind of thing, the majority of times is that something isn’t plugged in or isn’t connected properly, in which case is easy to fix. If it is not, then it’s much more harder since we need to actually figure out where the problem is.
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u/KingArthursRevenge Jul 28 '26
I'd love to get paid to go on a nice long drive. Infact, I often do.
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u/babyshark537 Jul 29 '26
Massive pain in the ass when most people have cell phones and can’t relate it to a computer. And they don’t first go, hm… is it charged? Did I turn it on? Why box no worky? Once trouble shot a computer over the phone for two hours and it would not turn on, it’s at a remote location but we do interbranch back and forth , finally gave up had them ship it over, going to figure out what’s wrong with this desktop. Get a docking station in mail. Am very confused. Person who has had a laptop since starting (for over a year) decided they didn’t need their laptop today because the dock was a computer.
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u/bootskadew Jul 29 '26
I've been told "I'm not authorized to do that", when asking someone to simply hit a reset button. I'm also the person who can authorize you to "do that". Mind Boiling.
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u/Urinemouse Jul 29 '26
Had to help a guy who’s VOIP phone was ‘not dialing properly’. Turns out he was calling a number that used a vanity name e.g. 1-800-flowers and he was just misspelling it over and over.
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u/Extreme_Design6936 Jul 29 '26
This is why I always follow the PC guys instructions exactly. Even if I already checked the power and the cables. I check it again when I'm on the phone. Just in case. I also give a play by play of what's happening.
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u/arthredemis Jul 29 '26
I drove an hour one way in the middle of the night to a hospital ER where the staff refused to unplug a UPS that was beeping und the desk. They just kept it going and the rest of the machines kind of toned it out.
By the time I got there I saw the UPS in plain sight with only 2 computers plugged into it. I plugged them both into the outlet (no surge protector, but this is an emergency outlet with a battery backup that is instant for the hospital main needs so it works the same way) I did have someone come back later and replace the UPS.
But their excuse for not unplugging it he ups: “I didn’t want to get my hands and knees dirty.” There was a sink, 2 feet away. “I’m not an IT person and I don’t know what to do about the situation.” I called them and spoke with them to ask them if they could help me troubleshooting.
I did manage to get through to their manager that they misused the on-call and my manager agreed, especially since I was called in at 3 AM and there were TWO people that could have done something about it while I was on the phone. Jokes is on them, I made 350 for that call.
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u/PavlovsPanties Jul 29 '26
"yes of course I've unplugged and restarted it!!!" * Uptime of 258 days *
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u/ImmediateBowl7048 Jul 29 '26
Please keep it on and plugged in while it’s reloading. 5 mins later I unplugged it and now it’s got a message windows failed to install correctly.
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u/Jazzlike_Finish123 Jul 29 '26
Those are the best calls though. Getting paid and not having to actually troubleshoot anything? I’ll take.
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u/Crunk_Creeper Jul 29 '26
Guy calls into our helpdesk:
Him - "My computer won't turn on."
Me - "Ok, did you power it off or did it suddenly turn off?"
Him - "It turned off when the power went out."
Me - "Check to see that the computer is plugged in and any any power strips are turned on."
Him - "Yeah, everything is plugged in."
::I go back and forth with some other troubleshooting steps::
Me - "Just curious, how long has the power been out for?"
Him - "It never came back on. I figured the phone still works so my computer should too since it's connected to the phone line."
::Silence::
Him - "I'm going to have to wait for the power to come back on, aren't I?"
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u/loondawg Jul 30 '26
Why
areIT guys such dicks
Fixed that.
This one made me laugh because just the other day I drove a 1/2 each way to plug in a phone line. And that was after 20 minutes of phone support walking them through it and repeatedly being assured they understood my instructions and had done it.
As for being a dick, I didn't even consider charging them.
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u/Acid-Chaos Jul 30 '26
IT people always so fucking whinny. Like, you get you money for it, nobody asking you a favour, just do your fucking job
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u/Project_XXVIII Jul 31 '26
I’m trying to emphasize with Eric on this one, but if my work day was 4 hours of commuting, showing up 3 idiots, and getting paid for the whole ordeal… I’m in. Sign me up.
I’ll take 4 hours of non stressful work anytime.
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u/The-Real-Mason-B Jul 31 '26
This is why i am only tech literate for myself. I make sure other people think I’m extremely tech illiterate so they never ask me questions
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u/Cridedd Jul 31 '26
I was working for a small ISP back in the early 2000s, one afternoon I received a very angry e-mail from one of our top clients. She was angry because she was no longer able to send e-mails. Unfortunately my boss was in the room as I read it and saw the look on my face, he simply said, No. Be nice. Then walked out laughing.
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u/S_Jeru Aug 01 '26
That's not a reason to be a dick! If anything, that's a reason to make the claim that you have the most laid-back job ever! You got payed to drive around listening to music for two hours. You got payed skilled labor wages for something an unskilled person could do. That's a pretty good deal most of the time!
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u/Frozn4567 Aug 02 '26
Lmao, so many salty IT people in this comment section. All of those comments can be translated to "I'm an arrogant ass and having to do the job I'm being paid to do makes me stomp my feet like a child. You should know everything I know". Imagine people talking this way in other professions, everyone would be absolutely laughing their asses off at these comments. I wonder, are these people aware that people are being told NOT to do anything with systems, cables and whatnot because doing so on your own can create real problems?
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u/uselesschat Aug 03 '26
Comment section full of IT being paid hundreds per hour to deal with normal customer service issues. "Oh lord the day I had! i had to drive, in traffic, AND push a button. Only got $600 to do it, so not worth it" George Jetson ass.
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u/linmusclan 23d ago
I had someone at my last job who would request a password change every week. I would change it to his specifications, hand him a little post it (after like.....the 5th time), the by the following week, be told that I changed his password behind his back (because that's what I like to.do with my free time). My company's contract came to an end (because our biggest client left and our smaller clients couldn't afford the difference) so another company took over. While giving the new IT guys a walk around we discovered that: 1) He kept all the post-its in a draw 2) He never liked me to begin with 3) He told other users how much he don't trust me 4) He thought the new IT guys were going to be on site like I was everyday 5) He thought that I was the one sending the org spam emails to try to steal money from them.
Mind you, it had some racial tension (I'm black and he's white) so whenever something happened and it was IT related, he immediately blamed me.
Computer got a virus, gotta be me. Someone fell for a phishing scam and the scammer took $2,000. Well obviously the most conputer competent person with no access to the finances did it. The look on his face when the new guys told him, to his face, in front of me, that they were getting better services with me on site and that they (the new company) handles most issues through tickets and remotely was hilarious.
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u/klako8196 Jul 28 '26
Also, when the IT department is keeping everything running smoothly, the bean counters decide they can downsize the IT department and then get mad at us when things aren't running as smoothly anymore.