One of my favorite parts of my job is that I’m not allowed to resolve firewall issues myself. IT ops frequently breaks my firewall config, preventing me from resolving any domain names or running dns queries in general even though I still have connectivity. So I call the support number. Remote Desktop icon appears in the corner of my screen.

“Hi I have connectivity but can’t resolve any domain names”
“Have you tried using your browser, maybe they just block pings”
“Well no because I can ping 8.8.8.8, see?”
“Hmm well have you tried from your browser?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe it’s just an issue with ping traffic”
“Well no because I’m not having issues with icmp traffic. I can still ping 8.8.8.8, see?”
“Hmm that’s weird”
*opens network config, renews dhcp lease*
“But I don’t think that’s relat...”
“I know!”
*opens my command prompt, flushes dns cache*
“But if this were a cache issue the requests wouldn’t take so long to tim...”
“I know.”
(Starting to think he doesn’t know)
“I’ll pass this on to the networking guys”
“Thanks”

Third time this has happened. Every time they claim they didn’t change anything and it fixed itself. Obviously this is not the case, because after networking guys “don’t change anything” it starts working again. Every time they talk to me like I have the technical prowess of an HR rep. Like somehow I’m the only software engineer in the world that doesn’t know what the ping command does.

I’m not upset though. They’re just giving me a great excuse to be completely unproductive on a Monday