I got a phone call today from a lawyer. She is complaining that she has a video link legal conference, and she can see her client, but can’t hear them.

Caller: “This fault has taken too long to resolve! I need to speak with my client!”

Her client has already had two techs come in on their end while on the conference and check the equipment, and even reboot.

I figure I will do the right thing and rule out any connection issues on our end, check the link (it’s got more than enough bandwidth to support audio and video).

Me: “Have you checked your laptop?”

She snaps at me:

Caller: “This isn’t my first conference. I know what I am doing!”

Me: “Other than checking your volume settings, I am not sure what else I can advise you on. Everything looks fine from our end.”

I then hear some volume in the background getting louder and louder.

Caller: “Don’t worry. It’s working now.” *Click.*

I used to work for a large Seattle-based software company in the mid-nineties. We had decent machines, Pentium Pro workstations, etc. 

One morning, when it started up, the CPU fan went into thermal runaway due to a motherboard issue.

As it passed about 10,000 rpm, I hit the power button and called up our tech repair folks. The tech listened to my description and asked:

Tech: “How fast is the fan running?”

Me: “Pretty fast.”

Tech: “Can you reproduce it for me?”

Me: “Sure, I can do that.”

I powered up my machine and held the phone up as the fan approached the limits of CPU fan integrity. I could barely hear the shouted voice over my headset:

Tech: “Turn it off. Turn it off!”

Three hours later, I had a new board, and everything was once again calm. The tech and I had a nice laugh about it…

One of the senior managers in our business waltzes straight into the IT department. This particular guy is known for doing this as he thinks he can bypass the ticket system and get special treatment.

Office User: “Why is my laptop being all… funny?”

Me: “Funny?”

He shows me a browser window showing all signs of malware pop-ups and other nasty stuff.

Me: “This looks infected.”

Office User: “That’s crazy! I never click on anything suspicious looking!”

Me: “Be that as it may, this thing needs to be cleaned up.”

Office User: “Really? That’s so annoying. How long will it take?”

Me: “Depends, is everything backed up?”

Office User: “…”

Me: “So that’s a no. This will take until tomorrow.”

Office User: “I need to use it today.”

Me: *Sliding the laptop back to him.* “Take it today and try to bear with it, then. Bring it back when I won’t be rushed.”

Office User: *Stares me down.*

Me: *Stares back harder.*

Office User: *Slides laptop back.* “Fine. I’ll come back tomorrow. I’ll use a coworker’s laptop today.”

I backup and clean out the laptop. The next day, the guy is back:

Office User: “I’m here to pick up my laptop, but my coworker’s laptop is doing the same thing now! These things are pieces of s***!”

This time, the guy has the laptop open to an email that’s a blatant phishing scam. It’s so obvious it’s bordering on parody.

Me: “You didn’t click on that… did you?”

Office User: “I did. So what?”

Me: “Didn’t you take that mandatory phishing and cybersecurity course we sent out last month?”

Office User: “That thing? I don’t have time to do all of that.”

Me: “But it was mandatory. You had to have passed it to be able to re-access your emails.”

Office User: “Look, all the senior managers are busy people. We just got the answers from one of the guys, skipped to the end of the training, and just selected the right answers from the multiple-choice questions. Now, fix this piece-of-s*** laptop!”

Today I went to the endodontist to get a root canal. As he was about to give me a numbing shot, he found out that the “internet was down”.

Dentist: “I can’t do anything until the internet is back up.”

So, I am patiently waiting for them to resolve the issue. I could hear they were trying to talk with IT support.

After some time, I told the dentist:

Me: “I am a software engineer. Perhaps I can help?”

Dentist: “Sure!”

He shows me the server where he stores patient data. He had three patient rooms with computers connecting to this server.

The internet wasn’t really down. The clients just weren’t able to connect to the server. He allowed me to touch the computers. I checked and was able to successfully ping the server from the client computers. So, what’s going on?

I watched the IT person remotely try to use the software. I notice they are trying to connect to it using a domain name. I checked, is the domain pointing to the right IP? No, it isn’t! I get the software to connect to the IP. This works!

The doctor happily thanks me and gives me the numbing shot. Then, a minute later, the software stops using the IP. Something in it remembered the old server name. They went back to their IT guy, trying to fix it.

With my numbed mouth, I went ahead and just updated the hosts file on all the computers to point the domain to the IP number. This worked. They did the root canal.

The dentist thanked me:

Dentist: “I was going to have to close for the day if not for you.”

They didn’t charge me the $250 copay for the root canal!

I left a note for the IT guy who was supposed to come the next day, about what I did, and my suggestions about what he should do next.

Wish every issue in life were this simple to resolve!

I work for a tech company in tech support. I often get angry or frustrated callers on the line, making demands and hurling insults, and then one time I got one like this:

Me: “Hi! I see you’re calling about [Tech Service]. How can I help?”

Caller: “Well, we’re just getting it set up. ”

Me: “Oh, okay, awesome. Is something not working right?”

Caller: “No, no. It’s all fine. Should I wait until there’s a problem to call?”

Me: “Oh, um. I mean, if you have any questions, I can answer them?”

Caller: “No, no. It’s okay for now. We’ll call back if something happens.”

Me: “Okay? Nice talking to you!”

I later realized that the equipment we send out has a big sticker on it saying “Want to talk to us? Call XXX-XXX-XXXX” and this guy did just that!