The tech support company I work for has a lot of issues retaining employees, and the few that do stick around are pretty good at their jobs. One day, an opportunity comes up that they are looking to train someone to be the floor manager of the call center since the manager that was there recently left. (Yep, due to upper management and ownership; this is the reason they have issues keeping people.)

A couple of the senior techs suggest that I put my name in the hat to do it, but having been friends with the last floor manager and knowing everything that went on with him and why he left, I want nothing to do with it. Plus, I managed a small crew at a warehouse job I had, and I don’t like managing because of all the stupid people you have to deal with. It’s like being a babysitter for grown people and it sucks.

One of the other guys, who never managed before, takes them up on the offer and he starts out overseeing first, second, and third shift techs. On the third shift, there are sometimes two people working, but more often than not, it’s just one person.

The new floor manager has been working for a week now, and when I get in one morning, the guy on third shift is pissed. My work hours overlap third shift by an hour so he can pass off any important tickets to me or relay any important information or so I can help him with issues he doesn’t know how to fix. I get time to chat with him in the morning.

Third Shift Guy: “[New Manager] yelled at me last night because I wasn’t answering the phone while I was on my lunch break. He kept calling back, and when I got off break, I answered his call, and he yelled at me that I need to always be manning the phones and that I can’t take a lunch break.”

Me: “That’s not okay. You’re allowed a thirty-minute, unpaid lunch break for an eight-hour shift. You don’t have to answer the phones or do anything. You can take a break. I’ll let him know he can’t say that. But, I would strongly suggest you speak to Human Resources about it so your side of the story is on record. It is illegal for them to tell you that you cannot take a break. We have a voicemail system in place to handle any missed calls while you are on break, you get email notices if any voicemails are left, and you follow up on them when you’re off break. We have a system in place.”

The guy from third shift takes my advice and speaks to HR about it.

Fast forward to a few hours later when the manager and lead tech’s weekly meeting takes place.

New Manager: “Who told the third shift guy to talk to HR about being told he can’t take breaks? We need the phones covered at all times.”

Me: “Doesn’t matter who spoke to him about going to HR. You cannot tell people they cannot take a break. That’s going to get you into trouble. Employees here that work eight hours receive a thirty-minute unpaid lunch break. All employees get that.”

New Manager: “He cannot leave the phones. Period. If he needs to use the bathroom, he’s got to run and use it quickly and get back fast. If he wants to eat, he needs to eat at his desk and answer any call that comes in. He cannot just leave the phones.”

Me: “We have a system in place to handle missed calls. You cannot tell employees they cannot take a break, period. There seems to be something about this that you’re not understanding. Have you ever managed people before?”

New Manager: “My managing experience is not the issue here. He cannot leave the phones. He cannot take a break.”

Me: “I’m just trying to keep you from getting fired because if this issue continues, that’s what is going to happen. Upper management will just wash their hands of you and be done with it if you wish to keep acting the way you are. You cannot tell someone they cannot take a lunch break. There’s nothing more to discuss. You clearly don’t understand the repercussions of your actions, and you aren’t willing to listen to someone that used to manage people so you don’t get fired.”

New Manager: “You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

Me: “Fine. Be stupid, get fired. I tried to help you, but if you’re too ignorant and stubborn to take the help, then that’s on you. I’m done talking to you about this.”

[New Manager] sits there for a moment before saying anything.

New Manager: “You still shouldn’t have told them to go to HR. That’s the issue.”

Me: “Stop talking. You’re going to get yourself fired for saying stupid things.”

I didn’t work there much longer after that, and I heard that the new manager didn’t last in his position, but that’s not just on him; it’s also on upper management for not training him.

I work in tech support. Early Tuesday morning, I’m sitting with a few workmates who are in remote in our daily standup before the actual standup meeting. Suddenly, I get bombarded with Teams messages by a user.

Employee: “I need you to come upstairs and check on my computer. It’s acting up again.”

Me: “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, after my standup.”

Employee: “That won’t do. I have a very important meeting to attend! I need you now!”

I just sigh, excuse myself from my colleagues, drink the remainder of my coffee, and head up.

She’s already standing at the doorway of her office, gesturing for me to hurry up.

Employee: “None of the programs respond. Everything is acting weird. Nothing works!”

Me: “Have you tried restarting the laptop?”

Employee: “No, I can’t do that. It won’t let me!”

I then try to restart the computer and indeed, it is acting weird. Opening the start menu only immediately opens the search query and then shows a constant space being input.

I look down and see that [Employee]’s headset is resting on top of the spacebar of the external keyboard. I remove them.

Me: “Hey, look. Your headset was resting against the spacebar.”

A look of mild panic settles on her face.

Employee: “That can’t be it! I just set those there before you came over!”

Me: “Can you tell me about some of the issues you’ve been having?

Employee: “When I opened Outlook, it kept scrolling through the mails on its own!”

I ask her to open Outlook, and then I hold down the spacebar, and to nobody’s surprise, the “error” she reported replicates.

Employee: “Huh. That’s weird. It does the same now.”

She’s trying her hardest to look surprised.

Me: “Yeah, that’s crazy. Anyway, whatever caused it, it’s gone now. If you’ve got any other problems, let me know.”

As I left, she was opening Teams to join her “extremely important meeting”.

It was her daily standup.

A user opens a ticket about her laptop being slow. Her laptop is the same model as mine, issued roughly around the same date, same amount of RAM, everything. I’ll be the first to admit I have some really, really terrible habits when it comes to keeping tabs open. But I remote into this user’s machine and… it’s really slow. Like, I start Task Manager, and I have time to go get a glass of water before it’s started.

I spend some time checking out the machine. She has 8 GB of RAM, but she’s got like fifty Chrome tabs open across five windows, about ten PDFs open in Acrobat Reader, and a dozen or so different Word and Excel documents open, and none of it minimized. Task Manager reports that her RAM is capped out, in addition to about 5 GB of page files. My final check is the CPU uptime.

I’m disappointed in myself normally for having a CPU uptime on my personal PC that’s right now at five days. But this woman? Try twenty-five days. I don’t think she’s ever shut down this machine in her life. No wonder it’s slow; she’s basically torturing the d*** thing.

After I’m done with my check, I wait for the user to get back to her laptop because, of course, she basically said, “I’m going on my break; remote in and fix it, thanks.”

She calls when she gets back.

Me: “I’ve had a look at your computer, and I’ve identified three possible reasons your PC is slow—”

User: “Have you fixed it? It’s still slow.”

Me: “Yes, it’s still slow. I was just about to explain why it’s slow and how you can prevent it from being slow in the future—”

User: “But you are IT, not me. Can’t you fix it?”

Me: “I can fix it, but you’d need to save your work first. Firstly, you have too many tabs open in Chrome—”

User: “I need all of them.”

Me: “Do you need all of them right now? Or could you close some of them and reopen them when you need them?”

User: “No, I need them all. Just fix it.”

Me: “Okay, well, the other thing is that you only have 8 gb of RAM. You can’t have this many things open at once with only 8 gb of RAM.”

User: “Can you increase the RAM?”

Me: “Perhaps, but you’ll need to get your manager to approve it, and it’ll come out of your department’s budget. And they’ll contact me and I’ll tell them that you keep fifty tabs open, and that if you stop that, it might speed up.”

User: “Then I’ll get more RAM. Is that it?”

Me: “Well, there is one last fix that I can attempt. You haven’t shut down your computer in forever. If you reboot your machine it might speed up.”

User: “I close the lid every day. Is that not enough?”

Me: “No, it isn’t. Here’s how you shut it down properly.”

I remotely show her the shutdown button in the Start menu

Me: “Do this every day when you leave for home. When you next use the machine, press the power button on the machine to turn it back on. Your laptop will be faster then.”

User: “Okay, thanks, then.” *Hangs up*

I never did hear from the manager, so I’m guessing she decided to close some tabs?

A job I liked and hated at the same time was the tech support help desk job. I enjoyed the busy work and dealing with hardware/software, but I hated the customer interaction because 75% of the time, the person on the other end of the phone had issues following basic instructions, making the work frustrating.

On the other hand, some of my coworkers made the job frustrating because of how they treated the people on the other end of the phone.

I had been with the company for about eight months — not a long time, but more than enough to have a great handle on speaking with those that call in and be able to handle the entry-level issues with ease. Sitting at the desk behind me was a coworker who was a bit harsh with customers. He had been working at the company for about a year and a half, so he had more experience under his belt.

This day wasn’t much different than other days. A new hire was brought on the floor and was tasked to sit with my coworker so he could see how things were handled from inbound calls to opening a ticket, to closing a ticket, and everything in between.

We hit a lull, and the inbound calls were low, so I wasn’t actively taking a phone call. As I was going over open tickets, I could hear my coworker talking to a customer on the phone with the new hire sitting there listening.

I couldn’t hear what the person on the other end of the phone was saying, but I could hear my coworker’s end.

Coworker: “Sir, we do not support that device. There is nothing I can do for you.”

He muted the phone, gave an annoyed sigh, and told the new hire:

Coworker: “This isn’t uncommon. These stores call us when anything goes out at the store and expect us to fix everything for them. It’s so annoying.”

He unmuted the phone and started talking with the customer again.

Coworker: “Sir. Let me ask you this. Is your refrigerator running?” *Pause* “Is. Your. Refrigerator. Running?” *Pause* “If it wasn’t, would you call us to fix it for you? We don’t service your refrigerator, and I already told you, we don’t cover or support the system you’re having trouble with. There’s nothing else I can do for you. I’m closing this ticket. I cannot help you.”

[Coworker] just hung up on the guy and proceeded to close the ticket.

The new hire excused himself. He returned about five minutes later and pulled a chair up next to me.

New Hire: “I was told I could sit with you and see how you handle things.”

Me: “Okay. Here’s what I’m doing right now since there are no inbound calls.”

I went on to explain what I was doing, and I asked him what he knew about the system for setting up tickets and so on. He sat with me for the next ninety minutes or so as I took phone calls, resolved issues, and closed out tickets. I had him walk through opening a few tickets and handling an inbound call as I helped him through it.

Eventually, the floor manager came over and got the new hire, and they walked off to his office. That was the last I saw of the new hire for the rest of the day. For the next couple of days, he sat with a couple of other guys and with me. On that Friday, we came to find out that the new hire wasn’t a new technician to work the phones, but the new floor manager (since the current manager had been promoted), and his first task was to decide who to keep and fire.

[Coworker] and one other employee were let go.

The new floor manager and I actually became good friends, and after a couple of years of working together, he asked me if I remembered the first day he was in and how he sat with the guy behind me and then with me. He then went on to tell me that his first task at being the new floor manager was to let me go because I was the low man on the totem pole. However, after sitting with the guy behind me for an hour and listening to how he talked to people and treated them like crap, he fired him, instead.

Right after the Y2K nonevent, I was working at a help desk for a fairly large company — 15,000 employees. The company had a surprisingly kind corporate culture and thus had pretty good morale. People were allowed to decorate their cubicles pretty much as they saw fit (with the obvious exceptions like offensive posters, etc.).

One employee in a prestigious department called on a Monday and told us that her monitor had failed.

Flatscreens were a lot more expensive back then, so nobody had multiple monitors. I grabbed a spare and was at her cubicle within five minutes.

Her cube was like a greenhouse. She must’ve had thirty different potted plants in a modest cube. Flowers, spider plants, little bamboo… it would have driven me nuts to work in this crowded little grove, but it smelled like a clean forest after the rain and she was obviously proud of it.

The monitor was dead as disco. It wouldn’t even show me a power LED. I carefully moved four or five plants and swapped in the new one. Happy user, closed ticket.

One week later…

The ticket reopened the next Monday morning. Statistically, it is certainly possible for a beat-up spare screen to fail, but it isn’t likely. I grabbed a shiny new monitor, tested it at my desk, and installed it. As I swapped cables, I asked her what had happened.

Employee: “It just shut off! I didn’t even touch it.”

Two monitors failing at the same time on the same day of the week for one user? This is not a coincidence. I longed for a previous job where we had a hardware guy who loved to dig into dead equipment and figure out the forensics.

I verified that she didn’t have a heater in her cube (power surge, thermal issues) and that no other users had seen any issues or heard anything. I Googled the model of monitor that had failed to see if it had a bad reputation. I talked to the rest of my team. Nothing suggested a reason.

So, the next Monday, early, I was camped out in her cube with iced coffee and suspicion. [Employee] came in.

Employee: “Did this monitor fail, too?!”

Me: “I’m here to make sure it doesn’t.”

She was pleased with the level of attention on her issue.

I watched her start up the PC, turn on the monitor, and head out for her own coffee. All good so far. The PC booted properly and loaded up the series of apps that she needed at about the normal rate. They connected to servers across the country, so boot up took ten minutes or so from power on to ready for calls.

She came back with coffee… and a watering can.

I looked at the three potted plants on the shelf above her monitor and stopped her.

She’d been slightly overwatering those plants once a week. I don’t know why it hadn’t killed the monitor before this, but she didn’t use a power strip, and apparently, the main circuit breakers weren’t sensitive enough.

User educated, problem solved, ticket reclosed.