It’s Been A Hard Day

I used to work IT for a bank. One morning, I got a call from a user about her workstation and, based on the troubleshooting we did and the information she’d given me, I came to the conclusion that, unfortunately, her workstation had died and needed to be replaced. I ended the call as she was going to talk with her manager to get the process started.

The day went on, and I got another call from her telling me that she’d gotten someone more technical to swap out the hard drive and the issue had been resolved. That was followed by a five-minute, mildly panicked conversation as I tried to figure out what she’d done. For various reasons, end users weren’t supposed to touch equipment or take it apart like that without being expressly told to do so by one of us. So, I was trying to figure out what she’d swapped, as well as the potential security risks associated with it, since she said they’d just had one lying around.

I finally asked to speak to the person who’d assisted her and found out that they’d swapped the monitor with one from one of their training stations. Cue my huge sigh of relief and my explaining to the original user why I’d panicked, because telling me they’d swapped the hard drive meant they were taking the computer apart.

Her response? “Oh, well, I didn’t do that.”