I’ve been an IT consultant for more than a decade now and make good money with my client portfolio, but occasionally, either the work slows down or I need some extra money. So, when this happens, I reach out to a recruiter friend who is happy to match me on a short-term contract.

About five years ago, I needed some extra cash for the holidays and decided to see if there were any desirable contract jobs in the area. After a few phone interviews, I got an offer letter for a sweet gig. It was three months as an overnight level-two tech, partially supervising the overnight shift at the help desk and taking the first stab at escalated tickets before holding them over for the day crew. I don’t mind overnight shifts; a few extra dollars in shift differential hourly pay and I can’t beat the traffic to and from work, all of which makes day work overrated in my book.

It ended up being a cakewalk of a job, mostly. The phones were dead quiet. I spent my time running server updates, checking backups, and keeping the few level-one techs honest. The occasional ticket that got pushed up to me was usually something that had to wait until a day shift systems administrator could work on it. But now time to get to the “mostly” part.

A level-one tech called me.

Level-One Tech: “[My Name], I need your help with this ticket.”

I transferred the call.

Me: “Hello! Give me a few minutes to review the ticket and I’ll see how I can help you.”

Caller: “Look, all I need is a password reset. I am locked out of my account, and I need to send this email before the office opens.”

Me: “Okay, can you give me your employee ID again?”

Caller: “It is [fifteen-digit number].”

Me: “Um, that is way too many numbers. Where are you getting that from?”

Caller: “It is right here on my employee ID card under ‘employee number’!”

Me: “Well, it should be like five digits. Are you looking at…”

I went over a few different cards employees have to access doors, etc.

Caller: “Nope, none of that. It is on my employee ID with my picture. I am staring right at it.”

He was getting really annoyed.

Me: “Let’s try this a different way; can you give me the asset tag on your laptop?”

Caller: “Okay, the sticker says [nine-digit number and seven-digit number].”

Me: “That isn’t in the format of any of our asset IDs. Are you sure you are looking at our company sticker and not, say, the manufacturer serial number?”

Caller: “Yeah, it is right here. Says ‘company asset’ right on the tag. I’m not some kind of idiot!”

Me: “Well, I’m pretty confused at this point, because none of the numbers you are giving me are formatted like anything we have on file. How about you just give me your name and department again? I’ll see if I can find your user profile that way.”

Caller: “I’m [Caller] from Sales, Director of Sales. Just like I said before!”

Me: “Hold on, let me check a few things.”

I put the guy on hold while I started scrolling through the users in Active Directory. I couldn’t find anyone with a name that even remotely resembled this guy. None of this made sense, so I decided I’d just escalate it to the day shift and be done with it.

Me: “Sir, I can’t find your account anywhere on the server and none of the numbers you are giving me are in our system. I’m going to need to get some info and escalate this to a systems administrator with the day shift.”

Caller: “All I need is my [string of profanity] password reset. You tech guys are completely worthless…”

He continued swearing for about the next ninety seconds.

Caller: “Look, the CEO needs this first thing in the morning, so you are going to need to get someone who is on call to take a look at this now.”

I did have an on-call systems administrator that I was told to only contact if absolutely necessary, but before I was about to do that, I just wanted to check something.

While this guy was berating me and swearing up a storm, I decided to see if I could find him on LinkedIn. After a few searches and wading through common connections, finally, I got his profile to pop up. And there he was, Director of Sales — NOT for our corporation, but for a very similar-sounding company in the area.

Me: “Sir, you are aware that you called tech support for [Company #1], right?”

Caller: “Umm… this isn’t [Company #2] tech support?!”

Me: “No, I work for [Company #1] and you called our tech support line.”

He swore again.

Caller: “I just wasted the last forty-five minutes talking to the wrong guys!”

Me: “It would appear so. How did you get this number?”

Caller: “It just did a quick search on my phone and must have mistyped a few letters.”

Me: “I think I found the number you want to call; here it is.”

I gave him the number.

Caller: “Oh… um… thanks. Um… my bad…”

And then, he hung up.

The story didn’t end with just a semi-rude hang-up and no apology. It turned out that the call got flagged for some form of audit or follow-up, so some higher-up ended up listening to the recording a few weeks later. One thing led to another, and I got called into the manager’s office at the end of my shift one day.

Manager: “We flagged a call you took a few weeks ago from [Caller] in Sales.”

Me: “Oh, yeah, I remember that call. Funny story, he called up the wrong tech support line.”

Manager: “Yeah, we know. We listened to the call as part of our ongoing training program, and we were really concerned about how he acted toward our employees.”

Me: “I seem to remember that he wasn’t that nice, but it’s no big deal.”

Manager: “It is a big deal to me. I don’t tolerate my employees being abused like that by anyone, especially the employee of another company.”

Me: “The guy came off as a jerk, but—”

Manager: “I had a nice long conversation with his boss over at [Company #2] and was assured that they don’t tolerate that kind of behavior, either. Seems like [Caller] will be looking for a new job soon.”

Sure enough, when I got back to my desk, I looked up the guy on LinkedIn again. He was now looking for work. What goes around comes around.

I work in tech support. We have all had it happen. We are the technology janitors and should always be available to clean up ALL messes having to do with technology at any time of the day or night.

At about 11:30 pm, my mobile phone goes off, waking me from a very well-deserved slumber. I see that it is a work number.

Me: “Hello, this is [My Name].”

User: “Hey, [My Name], this is [User] down at the office, and I just wanted to let you know that the main printer is out of ink. Can you come fix this?”

Me: “Okay? Is the backup printer on the other side of the department broken?”

User: “Well, no.”

Me: “And this is an emergency because…?”

User: “Well, I was told to call this number.”

Me: “This number is my mobile phone, and while I will respond to emergencies after hours, it is to be used for emergencies only.”

User: “Well, this is an emergency to me. I cannot print.”

Me: “Okay. Since you are declaring an emergency, I will call [Her Manager], wake him up, let him know, and be down there in about twenty minutes to change the toner cartridge out for you.”

User: “Wait. Why would you call my manager?”

Me: “Because you said that this was an emergency and are requiring me to respond to this immediately. I am required to inform the manager of the department when emergencies happen.”

User: “But—”

Me: *Cutting her off* “Oh, it is not such an emergency to wake your boss over, but waking me up is fine and dandy? Tell you what, then. You have two other options that I have painstakingly planned for to handle just such an occasion. Either you can, one, print to the backup printer on the other side of the department, which I requested purchase of and your manager approved the cost of for this exact reason; or, two, you can look in the cabinet labeled supplies under the printer and find and replace the new cartridge into the printer yourself. It was placed there four weeks ago by me when I changed out the last toner cartridge during the day, during normal business hours, just in case the printer needed one when I am not around. I will leave this choice to your professional expertise. Good night.”

I hung up the phone.

My auntie’s friend struggles with using computers and technology. She tries her best but finds it very difficult, so she will sometimes ask me for help. Sometimes her requests are quite simple, but she tries her best so I don’t mind helping. She has recently been upgraded to Windows 10 which reminded her of this story that took place in the early 2000s.

She had bought her teenage son a new computer for his birthday but was having difficulty setting it up. She managed to get it plugged in but struggled with creating accounts and setting up a new user.

So, she decided to ring the computer company for help. During the call, the advisor asked her what Windows she had. Wondering why that had anything to do with the computer, she happily replied, “Double glazing.” 

She told me the tech guy explained what “Windows” meant in terms of technology. But nonetheless, they had a good laugh, and she now has a funny story to tell.

I work IT for a bank. My name is comparatively common, with a couple of different similar-sounding variations. I’m fairly used to people almost never calling me by my actual name but one of the variations because they hear it just right/wrong through the phone.

I’m on the phone with a user and they’ve had to set the phone down for some reason. They’ve come back to the phone but aren’t quite speaking fully into the mouthpiece.

User: “Okay, Crystal, I’m back.”

Crystal is nowhere close to my name, other than they start with the same letter, so I think they are possibly talking to another teller and don’t respond. The user shifts the phone and starts panicking.

User: “Crystal! Crystal, are you there? You shouldn’t have hung up on me! Oh, tell me she didn’t hang up on me!”

As they get ready to launch into full-fledged panic mode, I clue in that they’re talking to me. Admittedly, I probably should have picked up on it sooner but I am still new enough that getting called a name that is nothing like my actual name is still surprising.

Me: “Oh, sorry! I didn’t realize that you were talking to me.”

User: “I said your name several times!”

Me: “Um… you didn’t. I thought you might have been talking to a customer.”

Bear in mind, I answered the call with, “[Bank], this is [My Name],” and they said “Hi, [My Name], I’m having this issue.”

User: “Yes, I did! You shouldn’t lie to me, Crystal!”

Me: “My name’s not Crystal.”

User: *Brief pause* “Are you sure?”

Me: “Yes.”

User: “Um… Well, uh, can we fix the computer?”

I can’t exactly remember what the issue was, but we got it resolved pretty fast. While I was still at the bank, I kept getting called by the most random names. I started keeping a list just to see. By the time I left, I think the list had something like twenty names on it and there were maybe two that could possibly (if you stretched) be confused with my name.

I received a help ticket for an employee in our office. “Desktop keeps overheating and shutting down. I am behind on work and missing deadlines because of this repeating issue that has resulted in lost work!”

She had a space heater under her desk pointing directly at the desktop “because her feet get too cold in the air-conditioned office.” I removed the unapproved heater and ran tests, and the desktop was fine. I checked the event logs and it had only ever shut down or crashed once from overheating. I explained this to the employee and told her that you can’t expect a PC to not overheat when heated. I made notes in the ticket and delivered the space heater to the facilities manager.

The employee raised a big stink with her manager, who talked with the facilities manager and had the heater returned with a facilities approval tag. They didn’t involve me at all, and the unit was placed exactly back in the same spot.

I received a second ticket for the employee the very next day. “Desktop is overheating again. I cannot continue to work like this. Fix it or replace my desktop with a laptop.”

I showed up and saw the heater right back where it was. The desktop was off, and actual hardware damage was done to the motherboard this time. I replaced it with a spare desktop of the same make and model. I routed all cabling and placed the computer on the desktop so it wouldn’t melt from the space heater.

The employee complained that the desktop took up too much room on her double-sized cubicle desk space and she should have a laptop. I explained that I didn’t have a laptop available, and it actually took up less space than a laptop anyhow once you factored in the docking station. I explained again that the space heater had killed the previous machine, and it should not be placed next to a heat source. I CC’d her manager on the ticket. I also let my manager know about the whole deal because both cases were totally avoidable.

The third ticket for this employee arrived two days later on a Friday. “New desktop is overheating and shutting down just like last one. I am weeks behind on project work at this point. Please give me a laptop that won’t have this type of problem.”

I showed up right after the ticket was created. She was packing up her stuff to leave and looked put out that I even showed up so soon to deal with the issue. The desktop was on the floor next to the space heater. I asked her why she had moved it back there after killing the previous desktop, and after I had clearly explained that it caused the problem. She wasn’t having it; she said it took up too much room and she should have a laptop anyhow. This time the desktop wouldn’t even post.

I noticed the heater was on the highest possible setting and was aimed directly at the PC this time. There was something about how visibly annoyed she was that I was going to fix it, like she was ready to take an early weekend since “she couldn’t work anyway.” I explained that I would have a replacement ready within thirty minutes (more to gauge her reaction than anything) and she looked even madder.

“Is it going to be a laptop?” she demanded. “I don’t see a replacement being worth it if it’s just going to melt under my desk again.”

I agreed that under your desk is probably a bad idea. If she wanted a laptop, she would have to get her boss to approve the purchase of one. I took the dead desktop and brought back a replacement desktop — we had loads of spare used stock — within twenty minutes. She was gone. Her cube-mates said she had left for the day since IT wouldn’t have a replacement ready.

I documented everything in the ticket and called my manager.

The manager didn’t seem to care at all. He did stress that I was not to give her a laptop replacement unless her department approved and paid for it, though. I was busy enough that this pissed me off. I walked over to Human Resources and explained the situation so far to the representative. She said she would talk to the user’s manager about it. I didn’t expect much.

Sure enough, the following Monday, I had a ticket to deploy a brand-new laptop to the user. The way the cubicle desks were built, there was a space behind the tops for cable routing. This meant the majority of hot air from the heater, still under the desk, would vent right up that space, which would feed directly into the air intake on the docking stations. Since that was the case, I deployed the docking station, laptop, etc., to the right of her monitor instead of the left where it would get hit with the heat.

Once again, she complained. “It’s taking up to much room there. Can’t we put it on the other side?”

I explained that heat would kill a laptop twice as fast as the two desktops she had already killed.

After closing out the ticket, I sent an email to her and CC’d her manager, my manager, and the Human Resources lady. I explained the problems the space heater had caused and that it was the employee’s refusal to listen that had caused damage to multiple pieces of company property. I told them that I’d let her know that moving the laptop to the other side of her desk would very likely damage the brand-new laptop, it should not be done, and it would result in further delays in her ability to finish her projects.

The fourth ticket came two days later. “Laptop will not turn on. Leaving for the day, please fix or replace.” It was 10:00 am on Wednesday. She wasn’t there. The laptop was moved to the left side of the desk and the space heater was still on full blast… pointing backward.

Without touching anything, I called the facilities guy. He agreed that the heater shouldn’t have ever been returned. He also agreed that this woman could have burned down the whole d***ed building. The brand-new laptop was toast.

We took photos of everything and emailed her boss, CCing Human Resources and my manager. Apparently, her manager didn’t even know she had left for the day. She was two weeks behind on a big project and kept blaming IT for messing up her schedule with PCs that didn’t work. I pulled the drive and dumped all the data, and I was able to easily show that she hadn’t done any work for said project at all in the last month.

I never saw that employee again. Much stricter rules were put in place for space heaters after that, so at least I dealt with fewer overheating issues.

This story is part of our Best Of August 2021 roundup!

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