A caller I got at my technical help desk in the late nineties still lives rent-free in my brain:

Me: “So the computer isn’t powering on at all?”

Caller: “No!”

Me: “Is it plugged into an outlet?”

Caller: “Kinda.”

Me: “What does kinda mean?”

Caller: “I couldn’t reach the outlet on the wall, so it’s plugged into a power strip.”

Me: “And the power strip is working fine? It’s plugged into the wall outlet, too?”

Caller: “Well, the power strip’s cable doesn’t reach all the way to the wall outlet either.”

Me: “So what is that plugged into?”

Caller: “The power strip.”

Me: “Yes, what is it plugged into?”

Caller: “I told you, the power strip!”

Me: “The power strip is plugged into… the power strip?”

Caller: “Yes. Is that bad?”

Me: “Not if you’ve invented perpetual energy…”

Caller: “There’s an error on the screen that says I need to restart to complete the update. What should I do?”

Me: “You… need to restart the computer.”

Caller: “Are you sure?”

Me: “Pretty certain.”

Caller: “This is always happening! Is there anything you could suggest I do that prevents these kinds of issues from happening in the future?”

Me: “Practice your reading comprehension.”

Got written up for that. Didn’t care.

A brief summary of the conversations over the last month:

Me: “So, how much of your data do you need to migrate?”

Client’s Head of IT: “Should just be some person records, some company records. That about right [Operations Manager]?”

Client’s Operation Manager: “Yeah, not even. Just a subset of that.”

Me: “So it’s just flat data? Like one row for one person, no linked tables?”

Client’s Head of IT: “Correct. And we don’t even need much there, just the basic name, address, phone number, etc will do.”

Me: “How clean is the data? Are you sending all of it and expecting us to clean it, or are you sending just the stuff you want to keep?”

Client’s Head of IT: “Oh, we definitely don’t want that in the new system, so we will just send over the parts we want.”

Me: “Are you sure? Are you absolutely doubly sure? Pinky promise, no take-backsies?”

Client’s Head of IT: “Yeah, but tell you what, let’s have a call next week with our data guy.”

Today:

Data Guy: “Yeah, so we have two unique databases we need to merge, one in India and one in England. Hundreds of thousands of people and client records, millions of contact log records. For each worker, there will be around a hundred unique fields that need to be mapped, and for each worker, around a thousand records for previous work history and communication logs, an unknown amount of documents, but let’s say at least 20 PDFs per person. There are around two hundred directly relevant tables, but a lot more that could be useful.”

Me: “Do you want some of this or all of it?”

Data Guy: “…yes? Obviously everything. We need this import so that you can perform a data cleanse, fix duplicates, fill in missing info, sort it properly, etc., as we don’t have the capacity to do it ourselves.”

I should know better at this point, I fall for it every time.

Tech Support Guy: *Explaining something to me.* “…do you understand what I’ve just told you?”

Me: “Yes. Thanks for explaining it so simply.”

Tech Support Guy: “I have to. It’s something you learn to do when you’re always the smartest guy in the room. It’s tough.”

Me: “Uh… I suppose.”

Tech Support Guy: “Yeah, it makes me feel like such a social piranha.” 

I was looking at him before (because we were talking, rude not to!), but now I am LOOKING at him. So are all my coworkers in the immediate area.

Me: “You mean social pariah?”

Tech Support Guy: *Turning red.* “Uh… yeah. That.”

Coworker #1: “I heard that social piranhas can consume a social cow in less than five minutes.”

Coworker #2: “That’s an urban legend. I heard that the social piranhas they used to show that had been starved of intelligent conversation for a long time.”

Coworker #3: “Yeah, the normal behavior of a social piranha would just be to nibble at social tidbits here and there.”

The tech support guy made a swift exit. He’s mostly a decent guy, but he does sometimes need to be brought down a peg or two…

I get a tech support ticket sent through.

Ticket: “Need help with the Outlook.”

That’s it. That’s the entire ticket. Most users are courteous enough to post screenshots or detailed descriptions. Not this person. Also, an executive.

Me: “I’m sorry, but your request is lacking in detail. Are you getting error messages? What are you trying to do exactly?”

User: “Outlook offline and spotty.”

Me: “Can you send a screenshot?”

A screenshot is sent. The issue, which he didn’t explain for crap, was that Outlook’s Work Offline toggle was enabled. Kind of important information to exclude, but whatever. That’s an easy fix.

Me: “Search for Work Offline in the search bar at the top of your Outlook window and toggle it under Actions. That will fix the issue.”

User: “No, it just returns results about offline emails.”

Fine. Maybe he didn’t notice it; the search results can be crowded. We can do the direct option instead.

Me: “Open the Send/Receive tab. The toggle is there.”

User: “I can’t toggle it.”

Me: “You click, and it does nothing?”

User: “Yes.”

Fine. Maybe Outlook glitches out. It’s happened to me.

Me: “Please open AnyDesk so I can troubleshoot.”

He opens it surprisingly fast, all things considered. I get connected, navigate to Send/Receive…and click it. It works without issue. Outlook returns to ‘Connected to Microsoft Exchange’ mode. 

Now, at this point, my blood was boiling because he had demonstrated a complete ineptitude at clicking buttons. Thank God this wasn’t a phone call, or my frustration would have been laid bare against my better judgment.

Me: “It’s fixed. Your mailboxes are updating.”

User: “No, it still says working offline.”

Naturally, that’s nonsense. I watched the Working Offline prompt switch to Connected to MS Exchange with my own two eyes. Maybe he didn’t see it yet?

Me: “It’s connected. It says so in this area.” *Hovers above the Connected text.*

User: “No, it still says Work Offline.”

That’s when I noticed. He wasn’t looking at the area I was POINTING TO, he was looking at the literal Work Offline toggle.

Me: “That’s just the toggle, sir. That won’t change in real time. The status below says Connected.”

User: “But why does it still say Work Offline? That means I’m offline.”

I’m fed up. I open my own Outlook. I sent him a message. Politely, of course.

Me: *Via Outlook.* “Your Outlook is working online now. This message would not have arrived otherwise.”

The user is still for a few moments.

User: “Thank you.”

We both disconnect. I’m still dumbfounded several hours later.