Working in IT

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Excellent Spark, excellent

 

Interesting thread Sparky,

At NHS there's over 4000 users and only 6 engineer's
Our IT manager keeps telling the Finanace director "that you don't need to be an accountant to work out the numbers just don't add up and we need more staff"

But he say's we need to work smarter? Because there's no money in the budget - He also drives a new Bentley

This is what I have learn't talking to the help desk and Network Boys!

User type1: Have no idea what a computer does or how to switch it on. When they ring in with a complaint, they say it's not working, we ask is it plugged into the wall and they say OH is it surpose to be?

User type2: Basic knowledge of computers, but panic when they can not get into their email.

User type3: advanced know it all's - who unplugg network cables install software and generally put virus on the computer but don't own up to it.

We had the other day a user who decided to put a cat5 network cable into a network point, both ends of the cable were in different network points with no connection to a computer. It knocked out the entire network!

When asked why he did this - the cable looked untidy so I thought I would plug both ends into the wall

User type 4: ECDL level, know's everything there is to know about office, usually PA to doctors or consultants. The want everying done yesterday, they are important and expected to be treated like a god and won't give out their location.

Why? because they are important everybody know' who they are and why should they need to tell people where their office is?
They have no idea what happens in a IT dept and think we all sit around playing comuter games and talking about star trek!

 

We were told next time he does this use a cattle pod

I can't believe how stupid people are. Today I saw a user with a plant on top of their PC and they were watering the plant.

What is the most stupid thing you've come across in your job?

 

That's fascinating, I've never heard of that before. What's the explanation for it and what's the fix? I'll keep it in mind if I ever get the sack!

We get asked all sorts of loony stuff. "Can you give me write access to the spreadsheet you just put on a CD-R for me?", "Can you make the server run any faster?" - Yes we make it run at half speed just so we can look impressive when someone needs it to run at full speed - and my favourite "I created a shortcut to a spreadsheet and altered it, but the figures have been altered in the original file as well." And people try telling me IT departments will be defucnt soon because everyone knows how to fix their own computers!

 

Well they certainly try and when they fail, they let their kids try, and when their kids fail, their kids mates have a bash and then, their uncle has a poke around, their neighbour installs Norton, the gardener installs some crappy anti-spyware app that corrupts the winsock and his brother re-sets the router. Then as a last resort, they call me. Usually the home PCs that I see are configured completely differently to how I last left them and it is a nightmare to try and get them back into a working state again. Oh happy days

 

You forgot to mention the things that get lost in translation from the IT dept to other departments in work :

• IT : Can you log out of your pc so I can sign in remotely?
• User hears : Can your turn off your machine completely.
  ----------
• IT : Can you make sure when you come in tomorrow not to log in to windows as I need to amend your profile.
• User hears : Nothing...or come in tomorrow and log in as normal.
  ----------
• IT : Can you make sure to clear the area around your pc base unit as I need to replace it.
• User hears : Do nothing...leave all your family photos, make-up, post its, books, spare shoes, sandwiches, the kitchen sink on top of your pc and see if IT can find it !!!
  ----------
• IT : If you bring your home pc in then maybe I can have a look at it for you to see if I can get it working.
• User hears : Bring your pc in on a random day in 3 months time, leave it on my desk with no note as to who's pc it is, what's wrong with it or anything, IT love a challenge !!

There's just a few of them.. can't remember others but I am sure they are the same as all other IT people experience.

I still think the best one is the reply to the old chestnut
'Turn it off and turn it back on again.'

This never fails to inspire one user to reply
'I could do your job turn it off and turn it back on again!'

To which my reply is always
'Well if you could do my job then why aren't you working in IT?'

The normally makes them be quiet...!!

 

Right, I'm going to add to this list as a user with a stupid question. What dioes 'ping' mean?

 

User: Can you reset my password?
Me: Yes, lets see what can I reset too?
Me: Ok, you might want to write this one down.
User: Ok
Me: It's I D Ten T, thats Ten as in One Zero.

Some of them get it, but some of them just stare at me blankly.

I now know of at least 10 kids who have had their passwords fixed with the above!

 

Why would it be stupid for a user to ask what ping means?

We must bear in mind that as IT professionals we work in the service industry, and it is our responsibility to provide a role to our users, not just rip the crap out of them
i imagine we would be looking just as stupid if we went and asked the legal department for help with a legal matter, lets bear this in mind, or its no wonder users thing the IT department are a bunch of cowboys!

 

Whoah, keep your allens on mate. Unfortunately, it is a truth that in IT (I am saying this as a user and now as a learner) that you do get some gumbo's who do exactly that, rip the p!ss out of some poor sod for asking a question which is everyday to them but nothing to a user, I've had that before and most people I know have. I've had someone helpdesk knobhead before ask me to 'call up my OS configuration screen via runconfig' which meant sod all to me at the time, and when I told him that I was greeted with a hefty sigh as if I just told him I'd crashed his car. I'm not making this as a general sweeping generalisation, but you do get greeted with a wall of superiority from some IT professionals who are quite happy to sneer because someone doesn't know a coaxial from a USB.

Anyway, I still don't know what 'ping' means

 

The classic one that I over a couple of weeks ,whilst trying to resolve problems with a intermittent broadband connection.

user > "You can surf faster on the PC's on the left hand side of the room than those on the right hand (Users) side)"

me> there is no difference between the left hand side and the right, they are connected to the same switch

user> no, there is a difference look (page with DNS error now loads)

me> (drags user to switch), please feel free to swap any cables that you wish

user> (Now more quiet), I'll prove it one day...


and yesterday I had the old chestnut of mis-interpretation. Scenario, backing up data from a group drive, archiving it to a read only network drive and then mapping the drive to a folder, for a "Seamless" user experience. Reason, run out of storage on tapes and a lot of the files aren't used.

me> (in e-mail and verbally, just for the dim ones/non-believers) Please don't store any files on the network drive until further notice, save them onto your desktop.

me> starts normal backup, restores backup and moves data to new loaction. Then deletes copy of data on network drive.

users 1& 2> (following full backup) save important files where they shouldn't

me> (data migration complete, second e-mail) All old files are kept in location x (1 folder away from where they were before), you can now re-use the network drive. Only copy back files which you really need.

users 1&2> where are my files

me> in location x

users 1&2> no the ones that I saved last night on the group drive

me> which part of save them on the desktop didn't you understand (in a more polite manner)

user1> (My line manager who asked me to do this!), well I'm just going to copy everything back anyway

which was absolutely fine by me as I'm leaving in 22 days and they can pay me £500 for the privelege of doing it again after I'm gone. Though I did consider beating him to death with a switch.

dc

p.s. no I couldn't take the network drive off line as it handles quite a few other tasks that they are too cheap to give me a decent budget for. Foolishly I though that an e-mail and an one-to-one chat with each person explaining exactly what they should do would surfice.

 

I was lucky at my last place when I did part time IT support, everyone used thin clients, so it was basiclly dealing with thin clients that had reset themselves to factory defaults because the power to the building was unreliable at times. So nothing much could break apart from the printers

 

That post is brilliant, it really is what I have to deal with day in day out.. nice to know im not alone lol

 

If you want an overload of these stories try www.techcomedy.com.

Harry.

 

Ping

A utility to determine whether a specific IP address is accessible. It works by sending a packet to the specified address and waiting for a reply. PING is used primarily to troubleshoot Internet connections. There are many freeware and shareware Ping utilities available for personal computers.

Aren't I clever, MCSE, here I come.......

 

I D IOT - that's classic! I think I will try that at work

 

Only use it on the persistent offenders though!