A user submits a ticket because the Wi-Fi signal near their desk appears weak when they look at their laptop. The actual performance is fine, but they want to get ahead of the issue. Their desk is directly below a router and should have full bars.

I grab my laptop and my cell phone and head over to the user’s desk. I imagine it’s not going to be long before other users in the area start complaining, and I’d better be prepared to open a war room if needed.

Me: “So, can you show me what’s going on?”

User: *Pointing* “Look, the Wi-Fi is weak!”

They point to the Wi-Fi icon on their screen. Except it’s not the Wi-Fi icon. They’re not looking at one signal bar as they claimed; the Wi-Fi is working fine.

Me: “Sir, that’s the volume icon. It’s set at 10%.”

They were very quiet after that — ironically.

I get a ticket from an employee.

Employee: “My hard drive is almost full. Can you help?”

Me: “Okay. What have you been doing lately on the PC that is taking up so much space? For example, have you been downloading a lot of files lately? When did you last clear your cache?”

And so on.

I remote in, go into the browser, and clear the cache, but [Employee] is still uncomfortable with the free space on their drive. I clear the %temp% folder. [Employee] is still uncomfortable with the remaining free space.

Concerned something might be wrong, I start running a security scan on [Employee]’s PC. For a while, the filenames being shown are all similar. They go like file1.txt, file2.txt, and I think it stops at around file5000.txt. I then check the files, and yup, they take up a lot of space.

Me: “Why do you have 5,000 copies of the same file?”

Employee: “I was trying to back it up.”

Apparently, keeping 5,000 copies of the same file was a good way to do so, and they didn’t get the meaning of “have multiple copies of your data”.

Trying not to laugh over the call, I simply told the employee that they could upload the file to the network drive. [Employee] then uploaded the file to the drive and deleted the 4,999 copies of the same file.

Now, they were comfortable with the free space on their drive. I ended the call and closed the ticket, and hopefully, they won’t make the same mistake again.

I work in internal IT for a retail company. A coworker related this call to me one day from a user who was working from home.

Coworker: “Thank you for calling the service desk. How can I assist?”

User: “My Internet’s running really slowly on my computer.”

Coworker: “Okay, are any of the other devices in your house having the same issue or is it just your company computer?”

User: “Nothing is working! Why can’t this stupid thing work? You need to fix my Internet!”

Coworker: “Okay, let’s try rebooting your router and see what happens.”

User: “What’s that?”

Coworker: “The box where you get your Internet?”

User: “I don’t have one of those.”

Coworker: “How do you get Internet?”

User: “I use my neighbor’s Internet.”

Coworker: “Can you ask them if they’re having any interruptions?”

User: “They don’t know that I use it.”

Coworker: “…Um, sir, that’s… that’s stealing. I can’t do anything about that.”

User: “Just fix my Internet! It’s not that hard! Do whatever you have to do to make this work!”

Coworker: “Sir, we are not an ISP, and even if we were, I can’t make something work that you don’t own. You’ll either need to talk to your neighbor or call your local Internet provider and get your own setup.”

The user then apparently yelled about how it was such an easy fix and hung up.

Related:
Taking It Down To The Wire

A client came to me with a problem.

Client: “I’m having an issue with my emails. I can’t find them anywhere!”

After several minutes of her attempting to articulate what her problem actually was, it became clear that she was attempting to save her emails to her computer and then be able to find them again later.

Me: “Okay. Walk me through the process you use to save the emails.”

Here were her steps:

1. Open the email on her computer.
2. Print the email.
3. Run a software suite for an all-in-one printer.
4. Scan the document.

That’s when I found a “Scanned” folder containing 438 scanned email messages!

I am a network engineer working on an Air Force base. I am not an NCO (Non-commissioned Officer) or an officer; I am a contractor from an outside company. My assignment is to write new access control lists and do a bunch of other tasks to about 200 network switches to make sure they are in compliance with certain rules. It’s tens of thousands of changes overall, and I have been putting in a lot of (paid) overtime to try and get it done sooner.

It’s early in the day when one of the senior Airmen comes over to talk to me.

Senior Airman: “We have an outage over at [Site], and I’ve been asked to take you there in case any of the changes you made caused it to go down.”

I get the IP address from him and type it into my terminal. It does not come up in my session history, so that means it is the first time I have ever used this IP address. I attempt to access it and the connection fails, showing that the IP address is not found on the network.

Me: “I don’t have a session for that node saved in [Application]. It does not look like I made any changes to it.”

Senior Airman: “They still want you to go with me to check it out.”

So, I pack up my laptop and brave the heat of the Nevada desert in June, and he drives me out to a remote part of the base. This location is used to store missiles, so it is not someplace that even my senior Airman companion can enter unescorted. We have to wait for someone to drive us up and walk us into the affected area.

When I get there, I find that there are a number of small buildings, each with their own computer stations, printers, phones, etc. Only one of those buildings is affected by the outage, and no critical or security systems are down. All it means is that the handful of people there have to walk next door to get on the network or make a phone call. It’s annoying, sure, but not a critical issue.

When the Airman and I get to where the switch is, we immediately see the problem. There are no lights at all from the switch, and it is plugged directly into the wall! You never plug enterprise-class networking equipment directly into power outlets without something to insulate it from power surges.

Senior Airman: “Uh… where’s the uninterruptable power supply?”

I trace the power cables to confirm.

Me: “Why is your switch directly connected to your power outlets?”

The recruit who was left with us has no idea what we are talking about. I try to turn on the light in the area to see better, but it won’t turn on.

Recruit: “We had a power surge last night and that light doesn’t work anymore. Totally fried our printer, too.”

Me: “I think it fried more than that.”

Senior Airman: “That might have been something you guys should have mentioned in your call.”

I unplug the switch’s two power supplies and test the outlets with my laptop.

Me: “Looks like power on this circuit is still good, but your switch is dead.”

Recruit: “Can you fix it?”

Senior Airman: “No, we’re going to have to return it. We’ll see if we can get another one out here… and an UPS to make sure it is protected from power surges.”

So, that is half a day of my time wasted. When I am done for the day and it is late in the evening, I fill out my daily report — a report read by government representatives, a higher-ranking NCO on base, and three of my bosses — and I am so annoyed that I must admit I lose a touch of my usual formality and it contained the following bullet point in the middle.

Report: “I was taken out on site to examine a down switch that was suspected of being disabled due to the changes I have been making to the network. Upon examination, it was discovered that improper installation has allowed a power surge to cause the switch to be downgraded from ‘critical network access device’ to ‘$11,000 paperweight’.”

I get back to my hotel pretty late and go to bed. The next morning, I call into a scheduled phone meeting. The only other participant who has arrived so far is one of my bosses. We exchange pleasantries, and then…

Boss: *Poorly trying to contain his laughter* “So… $11,000 paperweight, huh?”