I work in internal IT for a retail company. I’m on a team that grants access to specific applications. We’re the only ones that have access to grant these permissions, although we do have several KB (Knowledge Base) articles that were created when we first took this over.

One day, I get a direct message from a coworker.

Coworker: “Hello, I’m talking to [User #1] and she says you approved access to [System], but I’m seeing that a group needs to be added. Can you help me understand what you did?”

Me: “I didn’t approve anything. We just grant the permissions after the user’s managers have approved the request. And that request was completed last week. What’s her issue? If permissions are missing, she’ll need to resubmit the access request because we grant what’s in the request at the time it’s submitted.”

Coworker: “No, for her, it’s working fine. But she just did the same thing for two employees and they weren’t added to the right group.”

Me: “What group? Who are the employees?”

Coworker: “[Group #1].”

Me: “Who are the users? You won’t have access to add them. They should be added automatically.”

Coworker: “I know I won’t, so I’m having them add themselves.”

Me: “Please don’t have users request access to the group; it will be denied. They should be automatically added, and if they aren’t, we have steps to follow when we grant the permissions.”

Coworker: “[User #2].”

Me: “She’s in the group.”

Coworker: “I searched and she’s not there.”

Me: “She’s there. And I also double-checked and she’s got [System] permissions based on [Record #1].”

Coworker: “[User #3] was the other.”

Me: “Same thing for her. I also confirmed her permissions.”

Coworker: “Oh, wait, the KB says it’s supposed to be [Group #2] that you need to add them to.”

Me: “[Group #2] is only needed if they aren’t in [Group #1]. Are you looking at [KB]?”

It should be noted that in the steps about adding the group, there is a giant red note that points out they only need [Group #2] if they aren’t in [Group #1].

Coworker: “Yep.”

Me: “That’s actually only intended for [my team].”

Coworker: “I don’t even know what that is.”

Me: “It’s my team. We’re the ones who grant the access requests. You’re not the intended audience for that KB, so you won’t be able to follow the steps.”

Coworker: “Well, all I know is that they don’t have permissions, and [User #1] called asking why not. Now I’m stumped and frustrated that I gave misinformation.”

Me: “I double-checked permissions for all three of them, and they have access based on their requests. Are there any errors? I’m on a call right now, but if you can give it a minute, you can call me at [number] and I can try to see what’s going on?”

Coworker: “Well, she hung up.”

She thanked me and went on to her next call, but I had to wonder why she: a) looked at a KB and realized she didn’t have access to it but still tried to follow the steps, b) somehow missed the giant red banner of “only do X if Y isn’t met”, and c) actually decided that users would know better than IT what the problem was and didn’t bother to get more information.

Without any further issue/information, I knew of two things off the top of my head that could have been causing the issue. And one of them was PEBKAC.

I’ve worked in an ISP call center before, and even though I was in billing, I heard horror stories from the techs when we spent time complaining on our smoke breaks. As a result (and I’m fairly technically inclined to begin with), every time I have any sort of connectivity issue, I write down a detailed log of every single troubleshooting step I take BEFORE even calling. I also know that the only thing worse than a neophyte is someone who “thinks” that they know about any of this stuff.

Right now, I’m unfortunately stuck with the half of a broadband duopoly that is slightly less awful than the only other one that can provide service.

My last two times dealing with their support staff were less than helpful.

The first time, I start reading off my list of things that I’ve already attempted, and the tech minion interrupts me with:

Tech Support #1: “Go to [blah blah blah] [Windows system setting].”

Me: “The only computers connected here run Linux.”

Tech Support #1: “You have to go to [Windows setting].”

Me: “That’s impossible. There are no Windows machines here, and the traceroute I ran shows the connection dropping somewhere outside the local network.”

Tech Support #1: “Go into [Windows setting]…”

Me: *Lying* “Yeah, yeah.”

I pretend that I do everything they ask, and only then does it get escalated to someone competent who actually admits that there’s an outage.

The most recent time, I’m interrupted once again when going through the list of things that I have already done.

Tech Support #2: “Do you have another cable that you can use?”

Me: “I already checked to make sure both ends are plugged in; I’ve knocked out cables before.”

Tech Support #2: “You really need to try it with a different cable.”

Me: “Look, I know that you need to make sure that the thing is plugged in. I checked both ends, and I do have a cable tester. It’s a known-good part.”

Tech Support #2: “We can’t proceed until you use a different cable.”

Me: *Lying again* “There, new cable. Still nothing.”

They continued to interrupt when I went off the list of things that I had already done. My pings stopped at the router, a fact that they seemed to ignore, even after a factory reset that wiped all of my settings. After half an hour, they finally sent someone to replace the piece of crap that I was forced to rent because their service is designed to only work with their crap.

What I wouldn’t give for actual choice in terms of connectivity, where maybe I could deal with people more capable than an Eliza bot.

If this didn’t happen to me, I wouldn’t have believed it. 

Customer: “Your computer isn’t working as it should.”

Me: “What’s the issue?”

Customer: “I can’t drag and drop the icons.”

I witnessed this customer click on an icon, unplug the mouse, plug it into another computer, and then let go of the mouse.

She tried dragging a file from one computer to another with a mouse.

I worked for a major computer company doing tech support my freshman year of college, around 1998. I get a call from a lady who purchased a $4,000 laptop setup, including a full-sized docking station, monitor, extra hard drive, scanners, etc. It was painfully obvious that this lady was oversold big time.

Caller: “Hi. My pastor says that Microsoft is evil and we should not use it. I need to know if this computer has Microsoft on it.”

Me: “Yes… it has a Microsoft operating system.”

Caller: “Oh, my God! What can I do? I need a computer, but I don’t want to burn in Hell for using Microsoft!”

Me: “Well, ma’am, at this time, we don’t officially support any other operating system other than Microsoft.”

She promptly returned EVERYTHING, and I am pretty sure she paid the 20% restocking fee.

Many years ago, I was working in IT Support for a major manufacturer. I needed to call someone who worked for a software company. I don’t remember why, but I only had an 800 number, not an address.

Employee: “Hello, this is [Employee] at [Software Company].”

Me: “May I speak to Mr. [Contact]?”

Employee: “He’s at lunch. He’ll be back at 1:00.”

Remember, I only had an 800 number, not a location.

Me: “What time zone are you in?”

Employee: “I don’t know what you mean.”

Me: “What time is it right now?”

Employee: “12:30. Mr. [Contact] will be back at 1:00.”

Me: “Thank you. For future reference, you’re in the Eastern Time Zone.”