I used to work in tech support — warranty repair, to be specific. Got something broken and under warranty? We’ll come and fix it. Got a virus or software issue? We’re not coming out for that. However, if you’re nice, we MIGHT help you out a bit over the phone.

This inevitably involved a few diagnostic steps to prove to the satisfaction of those who oversaw on-site engineer appointments that it really was a hardware issue.

Many customers weren’t keen on cooperating with this. This was understandable, perhaps, given that by the time someone gives up and calls the manufacturer, they’ve already spent half a day pulling their hair out trying to get it to work and are sick of the sight of the d*** thing.

“I’ve tried everything” was a line some used to try to sidestep any attempt at diagnosis of a fault, presumably under the impression that these were magic words and that the tech on the phone would reply, “Welp, if you’ve tried everything, then it must be a hardware fault. I’ll get you an on-site engineer visit arranged.”

This tech on the phone didn’t.

This tech on the phone always replied:

Tech: “Okay, but just one thing real quick: have you tried holding down the Escape key and the number pad Enter key while turning the PC on?”

Customer: *With a verbal eye-roll* “Yes, I’ve tried that.”

Tech: “Okay, two questions. One: how? You’d need at least three hands. Two: why? It doesn’t actually do anything.”

The customer would then either hang up or become much more pliable and cooperative. Either way, it was a win.

Caller: “My computer is saying, ‘Can’t find the printer’!”

Me: “Okay, sounds like it might be—”

Caller: “I dun tried everythin’! I even turned the monitor to face it and yelled, ‘LOOKIE!’“ 

I managed to help her out… after I had stopped laughing.

I recently left a jack-of-all-trades type of position, where one of my jobs was to roll out new hardware on a five-year refresh plan.

I’ve been at the company for four and a half years, dealing with 250-plus colleagues’ IT issues all by myself, so you generally get to know most people in the company pretty well, even if only on a superficial basis.

Thirty new laptops arrive to replace those due, and two names appear that I’ve never heard of before. I have a search for them in my helpdesk system, and they’re not in there; they’ve never logged a ticket. I ask Human Resources, who says these two people definitely exist and still work for us.

Okay, then. I reach out to let them know. They’re both home-based salespeople from around 300 miles away. One of them is due at the head office in the next month or so, so he will pick up both laptops then.

So, the laptops are built and left on a shelf. Six weeks later, a random person knocks on the IT office door and introduces himself as one of the unseen colleagues. It turns out he’s a huge PC gamer, so he knows most stuff — so much so that my predecessor who’d built his last laptop just made him a local admin. He also sorts most issues for his other colleagues in the area, so he’s a local admin of that.

Me: “It’s good to finally meet you!”

Employee: *Jokingly* “I hope we don’t have to meet again!”

Me: “We probably won’t; I’m off to a new job in a couple of weeks.”

On my second to last day, a package arrived. It was a card, signed by [Employee] and his colleague, with a set of three whisky miniatures from their local distillery. It was literally the only acknowledgment that I got for four and a half years of service.

As part of my wrapping-up, I went through to check that there were no old accounts I’d missed closing or anything, and I found another — sales again, this time 200 miles away in a different direction. Again, he’d never logged a ticket and never emailed me. Somehow, he made it four and a half years at the company without asking for a single thing from IT. I was tempted to reach out and send him something, as well.

I work in an internal tech support call center. When we’re talking with techs onsite, we often give them our email address in order for them to send us pictures of the equipment and the like. Our email addresses are the standard for most companies: “first name dot last name at [Company] dot com.” Both my first and last names are super simple — four letters each. Although my first name isn’t super common, I do share it with a very famous African American Jazz singer and actress.

Me: “I need you to send a picture to my email. I can give you that whenever you’re ready.”

Associate: “Okay… I’m ready.”

Me: “Okay, my email is Lxxx dot Hill at [Company] dot com.”

Associate: “Hold on, you went too fast.”

Me: “Sorry about that.”

I spell my name phonetically, slowly.

Me: “L-X-X-X dot H-I-L-L at [Company] dot com.”

Associate: “Okay, so you said ‘O’, right?”

Me: “What?! No, there is no O in my name.”

Associate: “Oh. Okay, so it’s O-I-L-L, right?”

Me: *Flustered* “No, there is no O in my name. It’s L, like in ‘lion’ or ‘lima’.

I spell my name phonetically again.

Associate: “Okay, so what’s the rest?”

Me: “Uh, it’s H-I-L-L at [Company] dot com.”

Associate: “That’s spelled B-I-L-L-H, right?”

The whole office is now laughing at this.

Me: “What?! No. My last name is spelled like Hill, like I walked over a hill.”

Associate: “I’m sorry, did you say ‘bridges’?”

Me: “No. No, I didn’t. I said ‘Hill’, H-I-L-L.”

Associate: “Well, that’s a weird last name. So, it’s B-H-I-L-L?”

Me: “No. It’s H as in ‘Hotel’, I-L-L. There is no B or O in my name.”

Associate: “You’ll have to forgive me; I’m not a part of this twentieth century. I’m kinda stuck in the nineteenth century.”

Me: *Mumbling* “We’re in the twenty-first century.”

Associate: “I think I got it! So, it’s L-X-X-X dot H-I-L-L at… What was the company name?”

Me: “Sir, we work at the same company, so it would be [Company].”

Associate: “Oh, that’s right. I just sent the email.”

Me: “Great! I’ll give it a second to show up in my inbox.”

Ten minutes later…

Me: “Did you ever send that picture? I still don’t see it.”

Associate: “No, I was waiting for you to tell me to send it.”

Me: *Deep breath* “Sir, please send me that picture. Without it, I won’t be much help.”

Associate: “Well, I can’t send it. I have no email.”

Me: *Pauses* “Sir, you have a company email, just like I do… You know what? Is there anyone else there that can send me the email?”

Associate: “I can check.” *Screaming* “ANYONE THERE?!”

This call went on for fifty-seven minutes. In the end, the picture that was finally sent to me wasn’t even of the same equipment type that I needed him to test.

This was almost ten years ago when I was contracting for a VERY large financial services provider. The team manager was promoted to a new division, and the team (eight of us working across two shifts to cover international, as well) was left with two “team leaders” to run the s***show until the new manager was hired. (A new manager joined six months later.)

My job, in a nutshell, was to onboard new employees into all the required systems for their daily functions, as well as setting their email and Active Directory accounts for server access (which was dumped on my lap a month into my job “because I had prior experience”, so said [Team Manager #1]). I didn’t mind the email and Active Directory because it was literally two minutes per account, and it didn’t affect my central function by more than twenty minutes a day. And audits were thirty minutes a week. This all happened from a centrally-shared mailbox. It was by request, so I couldn’t determine how busy I was.

Almost before the door hit the previous manager on the way out, [Team Manager #1] and [Team Manager #2] called us into a meeting room and stated that we MUST do no less than ten requests a day, ALL to be logged on their call logging system, and here were the contract amendments we must sign or be fired.

The actual verbiage of the contract is lost to history, but the scope of the mandate was strongly worded to do “no more and no less” than ten a day, not “at least”.

Being a contractor, you’d think I would shut the h*** up, but nope, I just can’t do being kicked in the balls, so I piped up.

Me: “I don’t see how it’s possible to guarantee eighty requests a day minimum for every team member to meet the requirement. Why not scale the ticket count and see who did what?”

[Team Manager #1]’s face turned a deeper colour.

Team Manager #1: *Shouting* “Mind your own business! You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Cue my malicious compliance, which included calling my contract house manager, a sassy and funny gal, and explaining what was happening. After she could breathe again from laughing so hard, she told me not to get her fired.

I headed back to my desk, knowing full well that audits were about to start in a week, and I got multiple requests to make amendments to accounts to test Active Directory security.

And LO, here it began! I got an email two days later telling me to prep for a massive test. I was tasked with amending nearly 6,000 accounts with new settings and then changing them back on request — with minimal impact on the users, during working hours, so I needed to do this quickly.

Now, any tech worth his measure out there will know that almost ANYTHING is scriptable. I set it all up and called my mate at the service desk, and here’s the “funny thing”: he ALSO had a script to log multiple tickets.

Roll on D-day. I took the auditor’s call at 8:00 am to make the change. I sent the email to my deskmate, and he logged the tickets in a record thirty seconds. My mailbox BOOMED with 6,000 opened tickets. I ran my script, and ninety seconds later, bam, job done! I carried on with my core function.

Three hours later, the auditor called me to revert. I ran my second script, and everything was back to normal. I called my mate to close the tickets, and a minute later, my mailbox frazzled for a bit getting 6,000 closure tickets. It was at that point that I smiled, sat back, and started browsing all my meme sites. (Yes, the joys of AD control — I gave myself unrestricted Internet access. A nice perk.)

In less than an hour, [Team Manager #2] came to me to ask what was happening.

Me: “The contract amendment you forced on us clearly means I don’t have to work for 600 days. So, I’ll be sitting here enjoying my time off — or I can do it from home. Either way, I’m ahead of the curve.”

She walked away, and [Team Manager #1] stormed over demanding I get back to work. I repeated what I had said to [Team Manager #2], he spluttered for a while, and he huffed off.

True to my word, I sat at my desk doing nothing, but sadly, it didn’t last two days before the head of the department called me in. After an initially aggressive start to the meeting on his part, I got to explain the sitch. I wasn’t even to the good part, and he dropped his head into his palm, calmly listened to the story, asked me for a copy of the amendment, and thanked me for the time.

Two hours later, he called me back and asked me, with [Contract House Manager] in the room, what would it take to get me back to work. I decided to keep it simple.

Me: “Formally retract the stupid amendment, and pay me out for the time spent on the audit, which is 600 days, as per the contract amendment.”

He blowfished for a few seconds and then agreed, and I left for the day.

I woke up the next morning to a HUGE jump in my bank account, with an email confirming I’ll be back in the office, “please?”

I AM a man of my word, so I was back at my desk, working as usual, and for some reason, [Team Manager #1] and [Team Manager #2] never came near me again, even when I shifted to another department.