Most embarrassing and lucky moment on the first week of job.

Me and my best friend were selected in the same company as developers. I was having some trouble with my system. So I mailed the description to our support department. Pop up was displayed from our chat client and person on the other end happened to be a lady. She wanted me to share a team viewer link with click access. So I did it and within 2 minutes of efforts she solved it. I thanked her, closed the chat conversation and started installing few packages. Meanwhile, I was curious to see her as she was really nice throughout the conversation. So I opened LinkedIn, searched for her name and found her profile. I zoomed in her photo and she was a pretty chick. I didn't stop and found her on FB too, and quickly saw all her DPs. I just copied her profile URL and sent it to my friend ( the one that got selected with me ) and told him about my conversation with her. Then I asked my friend
"She's hot. Should I send her a friend request or have to find some more troubles in my pc and talk to her few more times ? :P "
He replied "Dude what are you wanting for ? "
Out of no where, a pop up showed up. It was the girl we were talking about. The exact message was

"You can now close your team viewer session, and we can talk over FB :)"

Embarrassing AF!

Microsoft support: "Your antivirus software is causing problems with the memory management."

Me: "I use Windows defender"

Microsoft support: "Oh..."

Me: 🙃

Today at work, still laugh thinking back to it!

We were on lunch break but the linux support engineers who are on the phones as well have to pick up calls anyways (very small team).

*engineer walks to the table, sits down: Ahhh rest, finally!*
*tringggggggggg*
*engineer pulls a face like 'oh for fucks sake' and walks back to his desk*
*puts headphones on and clicks the answer button just as it disappears*
"really!?! Alright lets finally eat now"
*sits for literally one second*
*tringgggggggggg*
*Engineer seems quite pissed off now. walks to his desk again, puts on headset, clicks the answer button JUST as the call stops again*
"Mother of god, fucking really?"
*stays as his desk for a minute or so, walks back, stays hovering above his chair for a little and finally sits down again*
"Finall......"
*TRINGGGGGGGGGGGG*
"MOTHERFUCKER. THESE GUYS TIME IT OR SOMETHING!?!?"
*walks back to his desk very frustrated this time*
*puts on headphones very quickly and presses the answer button*
*answer works but the call is literally dropped the second he starts it (it was a real client)*

"OH FOR FUCKS FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING SAKE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK"

*walks back to table again and sits down. Takes sandwich and....*

*TRINGGGGGGGGGG MOTHERFUCKER*

"FUCKING COCKSUKING MOTHERFUCKING PIECES OF WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK EVER"

*gives a deadly look to another engineer: "I am NOT going to take it this time! En-fucking-joy."*

We laughed so hard xD

*computer fell, broken in pieces*

Me calling [Microsoft] tech support: hey can you check my warranty on this computer, I think I broke it?

Tech support: yes sir but we must first go through the troubleshooting steps,

Me: no, no I just-

Tech support: have you tried pressing F8 sir?

Me: umm… no, look I'm just -

Tech support: sir please press the F8 key sir

Me: okay… I pressed it, now can you just check my-

Tech support: sir please what happened when you pressed F8?

Me: it's broken, now if you could just check my warranty -

Tech support: sir I'm sorry sir I think you did it wrong. Please press F8

Me: no just check my-

Tech support: sir I think you do not understand, sir it is at the top-

Yup.

!Rant

Support Call:
”our PC stick isn't booting up! Come and fix it! (angry)”

Me:
”The PC are meant to boot up whenever power is delivered to them. Are you sure your TVs are powered on?”

Support Call:
”Yes! I just pressed the power button on both TVs and it didn't turn on the PC sticks.”

Me:
”So you can confirm the TVs are on? Can you change the input and see what happens?”

Support Phone:
”Stop wasting my time and send someone down to fix it now! I told you it isn't working!”

Me:
”Ok, we will get someone out to you as soon as possible.”

Then a support guy drives 2 hours to their store.

When he gets there he realizes that the TVs power is connected to a light switch and they has the switch off!!!

He said ”can we turn on some lights so I can see behind the TV?” and then all the fucking TVs came on.

These are times when I fully understand the concept of “firing a customer”.

The customer sent an email saying ”the downtime for your product was unacceptable.” even after it was explained to them that the problem was them turning off the power.

These fucking idiots actually expect us to deliver products to display on TVs without fucking electricity to run them.

"Turn it off and on again."

Great for Wi-Fi routers and office appliances.

Life support, not so much.

Amazon support guy: Oh its a Windows instance. I'm a Linux Engineer so...
Me: I know your pain. I'm in pain, too. Now help me.

Was irritated and annoyed because of a client.

Someone called the support line and I was ready for some temper-holding practice.

A very sweet lady was at the other side and she couldn't figure something out and was overwhelmed by all the options she had in her new hosting package.

Very calmly helped her and guided her to the right place, step by step. She did exactly what I said instead of playing a smartass.

She finally found it and said that she appreciated it and a ton of thanks 😊.

Now that's a good way to end a work day!

First time meeting girlfriends grandparents.

👴👵: So what do you do?
😎: I'm a software engineer ... So computers and stuff.
👴: Oh, can you have a look at my phone? There's that weird icon I don't understand ...

So within five minutes, I was their tech support. It was an icon for Android Nearby, btw and I didn't have an explanation ready.

That happened five more times this evening.

Such support! Much wow!!
Thank you very much CSS3 for such awesome feature

When your web app doesn't have to support IE...

// family tech support

Dad: *clicks something*
Dad: *something strange happens*
Dad: Hey son, come over here. What happened?
Son: Hm.. what did u click?
Dad: I don't know. Aren't you supposed to know that? You're our computer genius.

local tech support

This is Why I give IT support so much respect.

Friend: my computer stopped working can you help?
Me: (porn...again) fine I'll help.
Friend: come over when your ready
Me: Be there tomorrow bro

Next day.....

Me: where is your desktop
Friend: upstairs, I tried everything man
Me: look at the monitor... look at the hp piece of shit.. see green light on... look back at the monitor...no light... look at my friend.
Friend: 😕
Me:😪
Friend:😳
Me: look behind the desk...
Friend: 😰
Me: 😪your monitor is unplugged
Friend: 😅
Me: fuck you lose my number

!rant
A few days ago a friend of mine rang me up complaining about internet issues with his computer. As usual I did the "is it plugged in, turn it off then on again" sort of thing to waste time while my pasta was cooking. After a while he asked if I had another bogus solution, so I suggested flushing his toilet.

He runs off, I hear the flush, comes back and viola - it fucking worked.

The point of this is: if it don't work, flush the toilet. You're welcome, tech support out ✌️

How not to give support..

Me: Creates ticket on support site, letting them know their webservice returns "maintenance" page.
Support: "It works on our end."
Support: *closes ticket*

Euhm.. excuse me?

Me: Creates another ticket with a screenshot and the curl response information..
Support: Sends screenshot back that it works on their end. "Maybe check your firewall"
Support: *closes ticket*

I ain't playing these games..

Me: Creates new ticket with more curl responses from 4 different servers to prove it's not "firewall" related.
Support: ..

2 days later

Me: Sends *friendly* reminder.
Support: ..

6 days later

Me: Creates ticket again saying I'm still having issues.
Support: "I'm forwarding this to our technical support"
Support: *closes ticket*

10 minutes later.

Technical Support: "Here's the manual for our integration .pdf."

Excuse me, you say what now? I KNOW HOW IT WORKS, I'VE WRITTEN THE INTEGRATION ALREADY. THE SERVICE JUST SEEMS TO BE DOWN FFS.. pls..

Me: Sends mail to their project manager who manages the clients dossier with support history and such.
Him: "I'll check it out and let you know."

1 day later.

Support: "We had some issues this and that, wasn't publically availble, works now, .."

What a nice way to waste your time..

Tech support to my friend:

Friend: Root my phone!
Me: why
Friend: play store is not working
Me: why do u want to root for that?
Friend: is there any other option?
Me: give me ur phone

After 20 sec ...
Me: Sign in to ur Google account 😐😐

Anyone's company affected by sheer idiocy?

Years ago I was an application developer at a medium sized corporation and was also responsible for support for an HR department. This occurred early one morning shortly after I arrived at work.

User: My app doesn't work.
Me: What's wrong with it?
User: I just get a blank screen.
Me: A blank screen? What happens when you hit a key?
User: Nothing.
Me: Do any apps work?
User: No, I just get a blank screen.
Me: Is your monitor on?
User: Yes, I turned it on.

This type of witty banter went on for several minutes when the answer suddenly hit me.

Me: Is your computer turned on?
User: Do I need to turn it on?
Me: Did you turn it off before you went home last night?
User: Yes.
Me: And do you normally turn it on in the morning when you come in?
User: Yes.
Me: Then why didn't you turn it on this morning when you came in?
User: I didn't know I needed to.

It was at this point I heard the programmer over the cubicle wall from me burst out laughing. He had been listening to the conversation and couldn't take it anymore.

The really sad part is that this was not an isolated incident. This kind of stuff occurred on a semi-regular basis with this individual's department.

*calls grandpa I don't usually talk to that much to congratulate him for his birthday*

*grandpa picks up*

*congratulates*

Him: so, I know that you study CS and I was working on something [Word document at the moment] and my letters keep getting different sizes! Sometimes they're small, sometimes they're big, sometimes they're in between! I have to erase everything everytime because they just get messed up every time!

Me *sighing, but confused because upper-case and lower-case are the same with "big letters" and "small letters", respectively, in my native language: have you checked Caps Lock on your keyboard?

Him: What is that? I have Esc, 1, 2, 3,... (proceeds to read me the keys on the keyboard)

*explains where caps lock is*

Him *gets angry*: no, you don't understand, sometimes they're small, sometimes they're big and sometimes in between! Caps Lock doesn't solve it! *proceeds to read the keys from the keyboard again*

*thinking that maybe it's the font then, asks about the Word version, to know what to point him to*

Him: WHAT? Word? No! I'm using my keyboard! What don't you understand! I explain to you and you have no idea!

Me: well, I'd need then maybe to see the screen

Him: I'm so angry with you, you say you study so much but are not even able to help me with such a small problem. I'll just find someone else. Thanks for your wishes *hangs up*

And this is how I only tried to congratulate my grandfather for his birthday but turned into a "failing" tech support. I just wanted to be a good granddaughter

Wife : Lets try some other position tonight.

IT support guy : raise a ticket for change request

Support in the nutshell.

why programmers like cooking: you peel the carrot, you chop the carrot, you put the carrot in the stew. You don't suddenly find out that your peeler is several versions behind and they dropped support for carrots in 4.3

There's one kind of ticket I fucking love. Wait, YOU LOVE TICKETS?! No, except for one.

Tickets where people ask us to restore backups.

Why do I love them?

Because the only fucking thing I need to do is reply with a link to a helpdesk item on our website because backups aren't something within our support range because it's easy for customers to do.

So whenever a ticket about restoring a backup comes in, it's as easy as opening the ticket, pasting the link with "I'd like to refer you to the following resource: " and pressing fucking "reply"

😄

IT: Its controlled via SSO, everyone has access by default

Me: oh i'm sorry, you are correct, I don't have an error message on my screen saying I don't have access. I made it all up. Thank you, you may close the support ticket

/*The following dialogue is an excerpt from an actual conversation I had a couple of hours ago*/

Microsoft support:
Please check that you've installed the correct version of JavaScript in the Control panel.

Me: JavaScript isn't standalone software.

MS: Are you sure you downloaded JS from Oracles website then?

Me: *ended the chat*

When you type a shitload of instructions for someone in a support ticket reply and after a little you get a reply where they give you all the thanks and that they appreciate it etc.

That makes your day great as a support person 😍

Merry Christmas everybody!
For all of those poor souls that are family tech support today, here's a message from xkcd[627].

Me: my internet stopped working.
Support: Did u try plugging in your monitor?

We moved to a new office floor and got a brand new set up. My new extension monitor died just after 4 hours of use, it was showing a black screen a with couple of colourful lines running down the screen.

Got the IT guy to come and replace it. He says he must test it with a display cable even though the screen was dead without any input source. (Ok fine cbf arguing with you, just do it.)

*Magicarp used splash, nothing happened*

Realising I was right, he gave the ok for another guy to replace my monitor.

Second guy comes to my desk and realised he forgot the electric screwdriver. (Sigh, how long must I wait...) After he finally finished installing​ the new monitor he plugged the display cable into a random display port without looking.

*Magicarp used splash, nothing happened*

Since the monitor wasn't displaying anything, he jumped into asking me to restart my computer. I gave him "the wtf are you stupid face" and just said "NO". I looked over to where he plugged the cable and asked why he plugged into the "dp out" port.

I plugged the cable to the correct port and monitor was working.

Felt like I can do their job better without any experience in IT support.

PS. Don't play the "please restart your computer" card on me. I also work in technology.

When doing first level support....
[windows desktop software]

Me: How can I help you?
Client: I installed the latest update from your website yesterday, but the version number hasn't changed
Me: You downloaded version *** ?
Client: Yes
Me: And you installed it?
Client: Yes
Me: Did you get an error message during the installation?
Client: No, everything worked fine, no errors
Me: And the installation process was completed?
Client: I think so
Me: Hmmm... Lets try it again. I will assist you.
Client: Ok
Me: Start your browser and open the website.
Client: ..... did it
Me: Good. Now click on the link to the download page.
Client: .... did it
Me: Do you see the the update package at the top of the list?
Client: Yes.
Me: Ok. Now click on it.
Client: Why?

The Orange Juice Saga ....

I've just come off one of the stupidest calls ever.

Firstly, I am not in tech support, I'm a software developer - read the below with this in mind.

My client called up to say the system I created as been compromised. When he attempts to login, he is logged off his Windows machine.

He'd also apparently taken his PC to ***insert large UK computer superstore here***, who took £100 plus to look at the machine and conclude his needs to buy a new PC.

I remoted into his computer to see WTF was going on.

As he described, visiting my login form did log you out. In fact, whenever you pressed the "L" key you were logged out. Press the "M" key, all windows were minimized. Basically, all Windows hotkeys appeared to be active, without the need to press the Windows key.

Whilst connected to his PC I spent a good 30 minutes checking keyboard settings and came up short.

After asking all the normal questions (has anything changed on your PC, have you installed stuff lately etc.) without any useful answers I got nothing.

I then came across an article stating several presses of the Windows in quick succession will solve the issue.

I got the client to try this, pressed the "L" key (which would have logged me off previously) and the issue was resolved.

Basically, the Windows key was "stuck", which oddly makes your PC kind of useless.

I asked the client if they'd split anything on the keyword whilst working. His exact word were simply lol:

"Oh yer, yesterday, I was trying to drink a glass of orange quickly and split some in the corner of keyboard. I did clean it up quickly though".

Yep, the issue was due to the client spilling orange juice on their keyboard , which in turn made the Windows key stick.

Disaster averted.

A call that started with the client stating I made a system that was easily compromised (i.e. my fault), morphed into a sorry saga of cold drinks.

The client did ask why the ***superstore name*** charged him money for that and recommended a new machine. That is a good question and demonstrated some the questionable tech support practices we see nowadays, even at very large stores.

To be fair to the client, he told me to bill him for half a days work as it was his own fault.

When I'm able to stop myself involuntarily face palming, I'm off for a swim to unwind :)

Virtual machine wouldn't boot. Intern carried the actual pc to support.

A nerd often get to act support. I got this question about a year ago from a friend. (I've translated it into english.)

Wrote my friend Sam a letter when I was still working in support. I think it still holds up today.

---

Dear Sam,

I understand that you will join us in our overseas office. Congratulations on landing that job. It’s good steady work. I’ve been doing it for the last ten years.

Your still young so maybe I can give you some little wisdom that will help you in your working years to come.

Let me begin by shedding some light on phone calls.

I try. I really do try Sam. But it is getting so hard for me to hold back the rage that builds up during certain phone calls. Especially the ‘Sorry, I just don’t know anything about computers! -giggle-’ ones.

Those are the times that I have no access to what they see. I’ve no team-viewer, can not take over that screen in any other way. And why-oh-why can I not take over that terminal session dear Sam? It’s because the caller can not double-click an icon or find a terminal session number.

And what is the reason for this? Because they ‘just don’t know anything about computers! -giggle-’. This is a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card. Beware of these callers Sam.

There is nothing so nerve-wrecking then finding yourself at the mercy of people describing Internet Explorer (do not even get me started) as ‘the big ‘E’, if they use Chrome for their webmail then they most likely will say ‘Mail’ if they mean Chrome. There is no logic Sam. That is just the way these people work.

They will suck all enjoyment out of your work. They will make you want to hunt them down in dark office hallways and show them your tears Sam. Because cry you will.

Sure, I understand that not everyone can be tech savvy. Why, if everyone would be, where would that leave us? No. I love the technologically challenged. They put the fiber in my internet. They make me LOL for real. After the initial anger subsides anyway.

But just below that well-willing folk, on the other side of that border… there they dwell: Management.

Nice cars, suits and iphones Sam. First thing a new manager will require is a brand spanking new business-card. It will hold his/her new title. Then an iphone or overpriced android model will follow suit.

Then they will barge into your office, holding it like it’s the next best thing since sliced bread.

Any manager will automatically assume that you will drop anything you are doing at the present moment to acknowledge the presence of greatness. Failing to do so will result in awkward yet fulfilling situations. I recommend that you do not take your hands of the keyboard and give only the slightest of nods after 5 minutes of complete silence and glaring.

Well… you feel the glare. You do not glare yourself. You do not break eye-contact with the monitor. It does not even matter if you are typing for real or not. I once clicked away happily for 5 minutes. I just typed ‘he is still there’ over and over again. Do not break down Sam. This moment will decide your relationship with this individual.

After the nod there will be a flood of words aimed in your general direction. You can disregard anything that is said. It boils down to ‘can not operate device’.

You then take the device from this person and put it next to you on your desk. You’ll ask the name of this simpleton, write it down on a sticky-note, slap that on the phone. Then you’ll write a random date in the not so near future on another sticky and hand that to the bewildered person in front of you.

It will usually utter some incoherent words about ‘needing, time or but’ (I find that ‘but’is a word they like. They tend to use it three or four times consecutive before you usher them through the door).

Now you’ve won Sam. Well… not really. But it will feel good, I can guarantee that.

This must do for now. A new suit is glaring at me for the last five minutes.

Felt good to do something productive with this time.

Take care,

Baltasar

P.s. I just noticed that there is some foam around his mouth. So if you encounter this, don’t worry: it seems to be perfectly normal.

Client: I have a issue with my video.

Me: ok can you send me a link and I will take a look.

Client: I can't send you a link but here is a screenshot.

Me: FFS let me debug that screenshot for you.

devRant has been there for us devs, now we can be there for devRant.

First day on the phone as a support guy!
Before the first call came in I thought like 'please no email related issues as that's the one thing I suck at!'

Fair enough, first call:
Me: hello, how can I help you?
Customer: well, we've got this email problem...
Me thinking: MOTHERFUCKING FUCKING FUCK WHY ME 😭
Me: what seems to be the problem?

Damn, really?!

Actual rant time. And oh boy, is it pissy.

If you've read my posts, you've caught glimpses of this struggle. And it's come to quite a head.

First off, let it be known that WINDOWS Boot Manager ate GRUB, not the other way around. Windows was the instigator here. And when I reinstalled GRUB, Windows threw a tantrum and won't boot anymore. I went through every obvious fix, everything tech support would ever think of, before I called them. I just got this laptop this week, so it must be in warranty, right? Wrong. The reseller only accepts it unopened, and the manufacturer only covers hardware issues. I found this after screaming past a pretty idiotic 'customer representative' ("Thank you for answering basic questions. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for repeating obvious information I didn't catch the first three times you said it. Thank you for letting me follow my script." For real. Are you tech support, or emotional support? You sound like a middle school counselor.) to an xkcd-shibboleth type 'advanced support'. All of this only to be told, "No, you can't fix it yourself, because we won't give you the license key YOU already bought with the computer." And we already know there's no way Microsoft is going to swoop in and save the day. It's their product that's so faulty in the first place. (Debian is perfectly fine.)

So I found a hidden partition with a single file called 'Image' and I'm currently researching how to reverse-engineer WIM and SWM files to basically replicate Dell's manufacturing process because they won't take it back even to do a simple factory reset and send it right back.

What the fuck, Dell.

As for you, Microsoft, you're going to make it so difficult to use your shit product that I have to choose between an arduous, dangerous, and likely illegal process to reclaim what I ALREADY BOUGHT, or just _not use_ a license key? (Which, there's no penalty for that.) Why am I going so far out of my way to legitimize myself to you, when you're probably selling backdoors and private data of mine anyway? Why do I owe you anything?

Oh, right. Because I couldn't get Fallout 3 to run in Wine. Because the game industry follows money, not common sense. Because you marketed upon idiocy and cheapness and won a global share.

Fuck you. Fuck everything. Gah.

VS Code is pretty good, though.

The other day I got a call from Windows Support about my computer being infected with a virus. I only have a Mac but knowing this was a scam call I played along for 15-20 minutes. Then I finally told the person calling that I don't have any computer running Windows and he got quite angry and wondering "why are you wasting my time?". Told him it was to prevent him from calling and scamming other people. He yelled "fuck off" and hung up. Made my day :)

How do you handle these phone calls?

Support guy: The page isn't loading
Me: can you show me?
Support guy *brings a fucking PRINTED SCREENSHOT, full colour*: here
Me *shocked as ever, sketching roughly page's UI on the paper he brought*: here. Fixed

We both laughed but myself only on the outside. I cried within. That's like the next fucking level.

The next one I think could only be taking a pic of a printed screenshot. Or printing a pic of a screen.

My boss just got a call from a client because he needed to install an outlook plugin for them.
In the call he needed to explain them how to install teamviewer like
Boss: just install the teamviewer software on your computer
Client: the what?
B: teamviewer. its a software giving me access to your computer to install the software
C. ok and how will i do that?
B: go to their website, download and install it

At this point he needed to explain them EVERY FUCKING 'next' button

in between they needed to switch to skype with a video call and my boss explained them 3 times to click the green phone to accept the call.

at ome point when there was a delay while installing the client really asked my boss (a senior web dev) to fix their printer.. I looked at him with a huge grin and never saw him with such a fucked up face.
At the end he ended the call telling them he has a meeting now and they need to call back later (then they will get a real support call they have to pay for)
btw the "meeting" is going to McDonalds for lunch

I really had to control myself to not laugh out loud while this call

Today someone called about issues with setting up email (they were hosting where I work) locally.

Fellow support guy spend half a FUCKING hour trying to explain it.

Throughout that half our, our activities existed of making gun-to-head gestures, sending meme faces back and forth (derps, fuckthisshitimout's, trololol's and so on).

It was hard to contain our laughter but damn he needed that badly 😆

// family tech support

Dad: *Opens Microsoft Word*
Dad: *Writes stuff*
Dad: *Saves the file as "Doc1.docx" (every time)*
Dad: Son, where did I save my file? I can't find it.

Someone managed to insert a micro sim into a mini simcard tray, support jobs aaaaaaaargh

Tech Support Cheat Sheet

Freaking tech support.
Freaking sparkhire.

Their 'one-way interview' bs only supports flash. Flash. in production. in 2019. Flash died years ago, and its support ends next year. What the crap?

Anyway, I finally decided I should do the interview since they already have all of my information anyway. Thanks, "privacy-conscious" third party. Totally appreciate it.

I spent half an hour and couldn't get flash working on their site (but all other sites were fine), so I contacted their support. I gave them all the relevant specs (inc. ofc browser), the steps to reproduce, and all of my attempts at fixing the issue.

To their credit, I recieved a response within a few minutes. To their discredit: their response was: "What browser are you using?" This question was followed by my report (including, ofc, my browser and all the other overlooked details), immediately followed by a "debugging info" section appended by their support service that also included my browser, os, and other specs.

Learn to fucking read.

Their suggestion? Use google chrome. Barring that: record your 20-30 minute video by holding your phone in front of your face the entire time. I am so not kidding.

They also asked what page i was having difficulty on. You guessed it: the page url was also included within that "debugging info" section.

It wasn't a form letter, either. I'd understand if it was all automated, but it was a real person who was really typing up the emails, and really didn't bother reading a damned thing.

I did end up getting flash working, but their "tech support" (script-reader) was entirely useless.

It's a shame that Adobe doesn't support Linux for their creative suit. I know lots of artists and designers that don't use Linux regularly because of this, since Photoshop and illustrator are the de facto tools for their work. Adobe xd seems to be awesome, but I can't use on my pc due the lack of support -.-

Friend brings over a Windows 8 all in one laptop.
Friend: Can you fix my laptop
Me: I'm a programmer
Friend: I thought you worked with computers.
Me: I do... but I'm not tech support
Friend: Please?
Me: (reluctantly) Fine.
*many hours later after attempting to get the PC to boot from a USB. WHY DOES THIS PC NOT HAVE A KEY TO ENTER THE GOD DAMNED BOOT MENU AND HAS NO BOOT ORDER SELECTION?????!*
Friend: Have you fixed it?
Me: No
Friend: You suck at computers
Me: ....

Never spoke to him again.

Welcome to devrant, the community where you can personally ask the devs what the fuck just went wrong AND get an actual answer! @dfox

Facebook, take that idea about only community support, chew on it, plant it, water an care for it a couple of weeks, and shove it waaaay up your butthole!

Me doing monday morning Support because all of our fucking support members were not available.

Me: Can you navigate to the Installation path of our Software.

Customer: how?

Me: with the Windows File explorer

Customer: i dont have That

me: Explaining how to navigate to the install location (thinking: fuck my life)

Oh boy, tech support scams!!

Story time:
Yesterday I wanted to go to the theater with my girlfriend. It was her idea because as a student you can get reduced tickets for the play, but only via the online store exactely two hours before the play starts. We had already tried two weeks before but with no success. So this time I said i want to be on my pc with a proper browser and not a mobile version like last time. So we are sitting at home me in front of their website on one screen and with a clock on the other screen. Two minutes realy i hit refresh and I get a selection for the reduced tickets, nice.

You would think.

After selecting the amount. ERROR: Can not get your tickets. I was like fuck they are already sold out because it's a popular play. But hey let's try again. I got one ticket but not the second one, okay strange lets try again, same ERROR again. WHAT the FUCK, no feedback what so ever. My girlfriend had then the idea that they maybe restricted the amount for reduced tickets to one (does not state this explicitly but hey lets give it a shot). Use second browser select one ticket. ERROR can not get you the amount of seats. Rage level near to a 1000 why did it work two minutes before but not anymore. Trying around for five more minutes finally got the second ticket.

Now the real fun begins.

Proceeding to checkout should not be that hard you would think, but you need to be registered for that. Okay so let's do that. The salutation is not required neither is the address for the tickets but you need to have a company name??!!!!! The fuck?? I am not self employed and neither are a most other people around here so why is this field mandatory? Beeing a little under stress I decided to found the "asdf" company with my girlfriend.

Now one would think checking out is easy. Not so fast.

After accepting the terms of service another ERROR, unable to accept your data. What data? I did not input anything new? Where does this come from? Ok never mind I am going to pay with credid card that must work!
ERROR: Internal paymentservice initialization failure! Sorry what? I thought maybe I was to long idle in this browser and they do not reserve the tickets for so long (which would be no surprise to me at this point). Let's try again. Nope same error.

Now my rage level was really over 9000 but we really wanted to go so I decided to call the customer SUPPORT. Or better to say I had a answering maching telling me for ten minutes how sorry they are that this takes so long, yeah you bet. Then and this is now really great: the support guy asks me: "What error do you see? Internal paymentservice initialization failure?" I was like, okay he knows this so they need to know how to handle it. FUCK NO. "Sorry I can't help you. This is our payment system maybe they (IT) are doing some maintenance I can't halp you. Call the theater directly good day." Sorry what just happened, you fuckers are the vendors for the tickets for nearly all big events around here and the theater explicitly states to call you for tickets but you can not help me? Like hell.

This process took 25 very frustrating minutes and I was really angry and wanted to quit, then I saw that there is also a paypal option which I had not tried. With very little hope i selected everything for the payment, registered with paypal and they told me I already had an account. So reactivated this five year old account payed with all the mobile passwords and tans to finally, after 30 fucking minutes, get a pdf file for a ticket. Repeated the last step for the second ticket and with some time left to get there we were off.

Tech support to family member:

Mom: "App just goes black after 30 seconds"
Me: "remove it and install again"
Mom: "how?"
Me: "tap the icon and hold till icon wiggles"
Mom: "doesn't do anything"
Me: "did you tap and hold?"
Mom: "hold what?"
Me:"Tap and and don't pull your finger up"
Mom: "Nothing... oh wait, yes it jiggles"
Me: "lift finger, tap the x that appeared on the icon, follow instructions"
Mom: "ok did that so what do I do now?"
Me: Grrrrrrrrr
Mom: "ok it's deleted"
Me: "Go to app store, and search for the app. after you tap the appstore icon, in a moment or so you should see a magnifying glass icon with the word search, tap that"
Mom: "nope no magnifying glass"
Me: ggrrrrrrr "yes their is one"
Mom: "nope"
Me: "yep"
Mom: "nope, it isn't their, I'M NOT STUPID YOU KNOW JUST BECAUSE I'M OLD!!! WHY DO YOU ALWAYS THINK I'M SO STUPID? THERE IS NO MAGNIFYING GLASS!!!"
Me: Deep, deep deep breath to the point of bursting my lungs (which is the preferable outcome)
Me: "top right corner or bottom right corner"
Mom: silence.... a few crickets in the background then some giggles followed with "Oh yea, their it is "....

20 minute call. no hi, how are you, how's your day. Just hello, I have a problem, it's fixed, bye.

Sometimes, and I don't want to sound mean BUT I wish we could pick our family.....

Dear customer,
as our services are completely free and we do not get paid for working, we beg you to understand, that there are some things you have to tolerate.

1. We are DEFINITELY not going to work 24/7 for you and answer immediately anytime. Only because it's 3pm in your country doesn't mean it's 3pm in our country!

2. We will NOT waste any time figuring out your gibberish and translate your language to our language or whatever, you have to be able to understand English anyways because our website and rules and everything is English!

3. Speaking of rules, READ THEM, I'm sick of explaining to you why you are banned, what do you think FAQs are made for?!

4. STOP SPAMMING AND TAGGING ME FFS. First we have a support chat so you can leave a message there and somebody will read it eventually AND SECONDLY I'M NOT THE ONLY SUPPORTER SO STOP BUGGING ME.

5. READ THE FUCKING MESSAGES I WRITE!

geez.. I just lost it for a second... okay.. gotta go now, I got 20 new messages since I started writing this rant.

This is no meme, this is an actual customer support ticket we got :)

Internal support article to get access to a tool:

"To get access click 'NO' in the 'was this article helpful section' and open a support ticket, making sure to mention the tool you are looking to get access to"

What fucking fresh hell is this? Why not have the article, contain the fucking link to open the ticket.

You have intentionally put up a useless article, in order to hack your way around this stupid system.

Tech support: we need to install backup software on your laptops.
Devs: what for?
TS: to backup all your important files, like word docs, excels, etc.
Devs: we don't use those. everything is on git/confluence/etc
TS: my boss told me to install it everywhere, so I have to do it.
Devs: well just disable it. uses too much tam, disk time and such
TS: whatever.

So he installed it on each laptop separately, took half a day, then we just disabled it and proceeded with our tasks. Now we get a question every other week why nothing is being synced from our computers. "We paid for the system and we want you to use it".
yeah..

I feel sad for some of my officemates. They are required to go to office today due to client support stuff, and it's a Sunday. They should be resting, be with their family/love ones/pet/bed, playing games, or whatever they want to do on a rest day. :(

I was called over by a colleague. She needed help because her computer kept telling her that she did not have permission to run certain programs or access certain files.

She logged in to Windows in front of me. The first thing that I noticed that the username was her office email address. I asked her about it.

Me: Why is your username your email address?
Her: It was this way when I got it.
Me: That is impossible. I made every Windows installation here and I always use the same username which is [companyname] as it is our policy.
Her: I'm telling you, this is the way it was when I got it.
Me: Are completely sure?
Her: Well.... someone else must have renamed it.
Me: So someone fired up your laptop, used your password to log in and changed the username to your email?
Her: I don't understand it either. Is it possible that it happened accidentally, on its own?
Me: ...

Then I explained to her that changing the username on Windows 10 may result in problems with file permissions.

I am not mad because she didn't know about this. I am mad because of her idiotic lies.

Tech support for Friend...
Again...

Ok...
A friend ran down the hallway to my Appartement, I opened the door for him and asked him "What The Fuck... Is wrong with you?!" He was just coughing like...
My... Laptop.... Is... Slow...
When he then eventually came to the point where he could Breath normally again I asked him to login into his by then super with shitty software bloated PC... It was a mess... A Desktop full of Shit... only Shit... I
then opened Chrome and Task Manager...
and holy shit... EVERYTHING! Literally ANYTHING was under 100% Load... Yet his shitty Fans werent spinning up... Shutdown the Laptop and opened it... not to my surprise it was full of Dust... I cleaned it and booted it again... still 100% Load... I couldnt do shit without being bombarded with porn and Hentai Ads... So... I asked him "Did you make any backups to this machine?" He was like.. "*Really long explenation* No *Really long Explenation*"
Great... i thought to myself... Then I said to him his PC was so trash that i only could Reset it to 0... He was like DO ANYTHING YOU CAN LITERALLY ANYTHING!
I then explained him, Resetting this PC Means literally 0 A Fresh start, nothing of your data will be there literally nothing...
He again Was like DO IT!
So I did... When it was done i showed him the result... He FREAKED OUT LIKE THE WORLD WAS GOING TO FUCKING END, HE SCREAMED AT ME WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE? REVERSE IT! REVERSE IT NOW!
I Then said to him, I reset it to 0, I said this would happen...
He then took his now perfectly running Laptop and Ran away...

tl;dr
Tech support for friend, Reset PC to 0, Freaked out AF...

long && scam && rant?

At my parent's: phone rings..
Me: hi this is XYZ (in German)
He: hi this is ABC from Microsoft tecnical suport (strong Indian accent, sorry toall Indian devs who might feel offended, no intention)
Me: hi... (I'm learning for my exams and don't have a VM with Windows installed currently, so no time to "play")
He: we got some worrying data from your Windows computer. You might have a virus and we need to run a few tests to verfy it. Do you know what that is?
Me: yeah, a scam.
He: sorry, sir I didn't understand you, could you repeat?
Me: yeah, I know what " this" is. It's a scam, and we only deploy Linux here. (lie, we have Windows, Mac and Linux, as well as an iPhone, iPad and Android devices in the house, guess who is "support"...) But good luck with your next call.
He: (kind of friendly) oh. I see. Well have a nice day too.

Okay, so I was helping an elderly woman with her laptop + internet today (with payment). Problem: Laptop connects to WiFi, shows internet connection, but you couldn't even go to google.com.

The router wasn't the issue as my phone worked on the same WiFi. After a lot of troubleshooting steps, I noticed that Windows forced IPV6 for all WiFi connections for some reason. The router doesn't even support IPV6... So I disabled it and everything started working again.

WHY THE FUCK DID WINDOWS NOT TRY TO LOOKUP A IPV4 ADDRESS IF THE IPV6 FAILS? BOTH WERE ENABLED! WHO AT THE FUCKING WINDOWS 10 DEVELOPMENT TEAM THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA?

I recently got mailed by our support department.

A customer using my program experienced performance issues after updating the whole system; attached is a video recorded by the customer clearly showing the difference.

I watched the video: the old version took 20 seconds to load. The new version 26. After querying the data, it's shown in a list.

The updated version showed 61 datasets instead of 6 in the old version.

I asked the supporter if he even watched the video and he answered: sure, and I'm able to see the performance issue!

So called my ISP because of slow internet
Me : Hey , slow connection
Him : Could you open up CMD
Me : I'm on linux
then the dude hangs up :/ another guy called later , I guess the tech support needed tech support , FML

Worst support email ever?

Subject: Error!
Message: What's broken?

N: Me
M: Mother

M: Can you help me? I can't update pages.

N: Sure *Checks problem* it looks like you installed it with the old apple account, you just need to reinstall it using your new one.

M: What about all my pages documents on icloud?

N: *Compares documents on mac to her other Apple devices that never had the old account* See? The documents would have to be on the new account.

M: Are you sure? I don't want to lose any documents.

N: I know, don't worry their on your new iCloud.

M: *Calls apple support*

N: *Talks to apple support who after an hour of chatting to her through me because I translate customer support to mother confirms what I was telling her*

N: Reinstalls pages and everything is fine.

I was originally going to make a post talking a bit about how people love to second guess anything I say but thought this story provides a decent example. When it's something of a personal nature or someone is asking for my opinion in genral then it's perfectly reasonable to ask multiple people. It doesn't bother me when someone asks for my help, it bugs the shit out of me when someone asks for my help and then doubts everything I say in this case even after providing some evidence to back up my claim and wasting a solid hour. If you ask for my help your trusting that I have the knowledge necessary to assist, if I don't know for certain I'll try googling the problem but even in that case calling support doesn't bother me because I clearly don't know how to help.

P.S. This was my first story, how did I do?

Fuck I hate it so much talking to any of the hosting support chats, seriously questioned if it's some brainless bot talking, after I literally just answered his question (and ~3 times before that) and he asks it again

I have just thought of the perfect solution when support for fucking ancient IE versions creaps in the requirements (and asking the assholes to produce numbers to support the crazy does not help)

Just do browser detection and if IE < 9 Replace body with one of those winXP alert boxes that tell them there Computer is infected and that they can get a free scan (it's what they are used to anyway). Put a link to the installer of your favourite browser over the entire image.😎

Good news is 100℅ code reuse! Works on every outdated IE and every website that requires IE support.

THE RULES OF TECHNICAL SUPPORT
Rule #1: The Customer Lies
Rule #2: Rule #1 still applies when the customer is your coworker
Rule #3: Customers following instructions is like characters dying in a movie: if it didn't happen on-screen, it didn't happen.

What support means to us!

* Urgent support ticket comes in.
* Switches to working on it.
* Urgent support ticket comes in.
* Switches team member to it.
* Urgent support ticket comes in.
* Gets dev team to help with it.
* Urgent support ticket comes in.
* Asks CEO to help on ticket.
* Urgent support ticket comes in.
* Cries.
* Urgent support ticket comes in.
* Prays to Mecca.
* Urgent support ticket comes in.
* ...

I then find out two more urgent support tickets are about to come in.

And then another one.

Help.

Me: *reading work order* Customer states Mac does not have sound

*Me turns on Mac, it makes the signature "BONNNNG" sound*

Me: Uh huh...

Coworker: Rule No. 1 of tech support: The users always lie

Me: True, but still! How do you miss the start up Mac sound?!

And it happened... Family(grand parents) printer support...
FML!

Support elevates a ticket.

Ticket: customer is getting a weird error uploading photo.

Can’t recreate. Tell support to call them back. I’ll sit in on the call.

Watch the process. Noting extraordinary...

Hmm.

Me: can you get the customer to open the pic in photo viewer?

Support asks as much.

Support: uh, he says he gets a similar error opening this photo in the photo viewer.

Me: 🤦‍♂️ that is a corrupt file!

Today I noticed that my first name on my Apple Developer Account was totally wrong, even though the name on my Apple ID account was correct. Trying to fix the wrong name sent me to the Apple ID Account page with the already correct name. I contacted support.

It turns out the developer accounts pull info from your Apple ID at creation time, AND NEVER AGAIN. WTF? So you can not make changes to your dev account, because they are non-updateable..

The fix? Sending a copy of a photo ID to the supporter BY FAX?!?!? This is Apple we are talking about.. in 2017.. I don't know anything anymore

apparently being in vacation doesn't exempt me from working.

So, I found this :

Dear Tech Support:
Last year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0. I soon noticed that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a lot of space and resources. In addition, Wife 1.0 installed itself into all other programs and now monitors all other system activity. Applications such as Poker Night 10.3, Football 5.0, HuntingAndFishing 7.5, and Racing 3.6. I can't seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background while attempting to run my favorite applications. I'm thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0, but the uninstall doesn't work on Wife 1.0. Please help!

Thanks ...Troubled User
-------
REPLY:

Dear Troubled User:
This is a very common problem. Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0, thinking that it is just a Utilities and Entertainment program. Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM and is designed by its Creator to run EVERYTHING!!! It is also impossible to delete Wife 1.0 and to return to Girlfriend 7.0. It is impossible to uninstall, or purge the program files from the system once installed. You cannot go back to Girlfriend 7.0 because Wife 1.0 is designed not to allow this. Look in your Wife 1.0 manual under Warnings-Alimony-Child Support. I recommend that you keep Wife 1.0 installed and work on improving the configuration. I suggest installing the background application YesDear 99.0 to alleviate software augmentation.

The best course of action is to enter the command C:\APOLOGIZE because ultimately you will have to do this before the system will return to normal anyway.

Wife 1.0 is a great program, but it tends to be very high maintenance. Wife 1.0 comes with several support programs, such as CleanAndSweep 3.0, CookIt 1.5 and DoBills 4.2. However, be very careful how you use these programs. Improper use will cause the system to launch the program NagNag 9.5. Once this happens, the only way to improve the performance of Wife 1.0 is to purchase additional software. I recommend Flowers 2.1 and Diamonds 5.0, but beware because sometimes these applications can be expensive.

WARNING!!! DO NOT, under any circumstances, install SecretaryWithShortSkirt 3.3. This application is not supported by Wife 1.0 and will cause irreversible damage to the operating system. 

WARNING!!! Attempting to install NewGirlFriend 8.8 along with Wife 1.0 will crash the system.

(see Wife 1.0 manual, Apologize, High Maintenance & Secretary with Short Skirt)

"PLEASE COME QUICKLY OUR INTERNAL NETWORK IS FUCKED!
-Uh, mam', could you describe the problem?"
Spent an hour, trying to fix this "network issue". Basic level 1 and 2 support. Can't connect using RDP on the server. No teamviewer either. Unplug, replug everything. Restart the server, the router, the switches. I knew that it was something dumb. I spent 3h on the highway.
To find.
That the fucking.
Ethernet cable.
Was plugged oN THE MOTHER FUCKING ILO PORT! FUCK HP, FUCK THIS, FUCK ME BECAUSE I SHOULD'VE ASKED FOR A PHOTO.

"It's fixed, mam'. Did you touch something when it was working?
-Uh, no, I swear. Also, could you please take a look at our printer? It's not working. It was out of ink so I changed the cartridge yesterday, but today it's not working!"

The cartridge was not inserted correctly.

Then she nicely made me a coffee, thanking me for the fix and asking what the problems were.

Just kidding.

Dear companies of the world.

If you offer customer support over Intercom, and the officer is a cute boy, I am gonna flirt like hell.

Keep this in mind.

Or maybe you do... maybe the photos are thirst traps designed to make us more forgiving... 🤔

At least they have humour.

TL;DR: stepmom, who is slightly nervous and impulsive at times, refuses to accept help after she asks for it, because she knows better.

The characters:
$sm = stepmom, who is currently finishing her second degree (don’t ask)
$f = father, a sysadmin
$me = yours truly

Enter stage, a living room, $me is eating lunch while $sm, a fairly tech-illiterate woman, is finishing up a PowerPoint presentation for a course of hers.

$sm: *slightly nervous tone, as always* “I’m collaborating with $friend and I need her to fix this! She is taking the file to Uni tomorrow and I can’t edit the file. What should I tell her to do?”
$me: “show me what you want to have fixed”
$sm: *points at monitor* “here, look, it’s inconsistent here! What do you call that?”
$me: “tell her to make the formatting consistent. It’s called formatting”
$sm: “No, I want her exactly to know what she has to do!”
$me: “but I’ve just told you. Look, the formatting is all over the place. Bold here, italic there, Times new Roman here, [some other font] there, font sizes are inconsistent. That’s a formatting problem.”
$sm: “No! I demand that you tell me how you call this for real! I don’t want her to get confused”
$me: “It says that right here, there’s a button called apply formatting, that’s what you call it.”
$sm: “I don’t understand! You’re telling me wrong things!”
$me: “aren’t you supposed to know our way around MS office? How do you write your papers and stuff?”
$sm: “you’re so incompetent! I will ask your father!”
*cue the same discussion with my father*
$sm: “I thought you were both good at this, I’m just gonna google it up! If we get a bad grade, it’s gonna be your fault!”

It seems like my bloodline is cursed and destined to be the family tech support, as I share this destiny with my father.

Edit: how did this end up with the “random” tag??

To my horror I've been asked to cover some small jobs for support whilst he's away.. First tap on my shoulder, can you look at my laptop? it's not charging...
Is it plugged in and switched on at the mains..
Yeah, I'm not silly.
It was neither plugged in or turned on.
I made the long and hard transition to DevOps, I now know it was worth it.
Rant Over

!rant !dev
True story. Some years ago I worked, for a network manufacturer in the support department. One of me jobs was to help end-customer (private people) over the phone, who could not get online.

One day a 60+ year old woman called the support line, because se could not get on the Internet. And because our name was on the router, she called our support.

A colleague of mine took the call, and we could quickly see by his expression the it was "One of those calls". The minutes went by and they had gotten no closer to a solution after 45 min.

That was when I herd my colleague say "Well from what you tell, all the settings here are fine. Can you please close all the windows, so we can look at other settings". My colleague the looked weird and said, "She just told me it takes some minutes to close all the windows, so please hang on.".

After 2 min time the woman came back to the phone and said "I have now closed all the windows in the house, except one ceiling window that only my husband can reach. Hope it doesn't matter".

You know you've called customer support too long when you enter 133421 before you are prompted

Just finished dinner and the phone goes:"hello I am phoning from Microsoft support" *cracks knuckles* let the games begin

To people who have done tech support:

Shoot me. Do you know what it is like to teach kids to use a mouse? Or even type in a keyboard? They don’t even know how to double click. Gotta call google chrome the circle of colors for them to understand. Some think the video that is giving the instructions is actually them doing it. So when it ends they are like alright done.

FYI: working in an internship currently where we teach kindergarten up until 5th graders from scratch to Minecraft modding. Btw it is an unpaid internship.

First year at university, prepared to set up multiple electronics.
rPi, arduino Ethernet shield, laptop, and desktop.
Brand new netgear switch to satisfy my internet surfing needs....

After setting up my devices, I realized none of them have internet. Hm. The feed port on my switch wasn't blinking either. So I tell the front desk, and a short 7 days later the port is back on. Yay, problem solved.

One morning I arise to see the port dark and inactive. Furious I use my laptop to share an internet connection while my actual port is "broken".

Support ticket is reopened and this time I get an email saying the port was disabled due to a security issue.

Me: what's the issue?
IT: there was more than two devices connected to the port

(OnLy TwO dEvIcEs PeR port???)

Me: oh okay I will only connect two.

The next day the port is disabled, again.

Me: can you tell me why it was disabled?
IT: a switch was detected being used, security error.
Me: how do I connect more than one device to the port without a switch???
IT: ...
IT: Please only connect one device.

🤔

Programming is like sex:
One mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life.

Been a while but I'm back with fresh rants.

If you look in my history you will see support wanted us devs to start paying for writing bugs. Now the release presentation has passed but we're still in crunch time because we can't put clients onto the new version yet. And in the meantime our coffee machine broke. So support has started to manually pour coffee, which was actual real nice of them.

Now yesterday I'm in a hurry and the coffee is out so I decide to pour a quick cup for myself with the leftover grounds. When I'm back at my desk I get a call asking if I just made coffee. I'm like yeah something wrong? Proceed to get chewed out for being selfish and that they see how it is with me, then get hung up on before I can even explain.

So yeah not only is my company too cheap to get a new machine, the lack of one causes drama.

Today however our network guy, who was present when my colleagues asked what was with the weird phone call, brought in his own machine and let me have coffee from it. Meanwhile suport can keep their crappy manual pouring. And I don't need to go into their office anymore.

Doing occasional first & second level support besides my actual job of coding can be fucking annoying and time consuming.
Just let me code in peace and listen to doom metal!

"Blabla our 17 years old plotter does not respond blabla fix it please"
"My computer is so slow, make it faster"

Go die in your filthy office chairs by being pierced through the stinking butthole you ignorant endoplasmatische retikula!

Fucking Amazon rant again...

TLDR: Amazon specializes in “the last mile”. They are repeatedly allowing a 3rd party shipper (Purolator) destroy their main value proposition. Thoughts at the end.

Me on the phone with their support...

Me: so it says my package was attempted to be delivered today. I did not get a call or notification or anything and I have been working from home all day to wait for the package.

Support: -Sigh- yes, I can see it was Purolator we have been having trouble with them lately.

Me: ok, so are you able to see what happened?

Support: let me put you on hold.

.......

Support: So they said they will not call for a delivery, did they use your building buzzer?

Me: Nope, just stood outside the building and then left I guess.

Support: -sigh- Well you can pick it up at their depot. Let me get you the address.

Me: The one by the airport?

Support: Yes it looks like it is about an hour away from where you are. And they are only open during work hours.

Me: So, after working from home to get this package you advice is to take 3 hours off work and go there to pick it up?

Support: Well, we can refund it? If thats what you want.

Me: No, I would like the package I ordered please.

Support: There is nothing I can do sir.

Me: So before I hang up let me see if I have it straight. When I order a package from Amazon, do I have an option of who ships it?

Support: No, I’m sorry but that is decided on our end.

Me: And I have had this problem before with this shipping agent. So, your telling me that when I ship things to me with Amazon that I have no control of wether I even get the package? Your telling me it is literally a coin toss as to wether or not I ever get my package?

Support: yes sir, I’m sorry but that is all I can do.

Me: So you realize that, for example, if I went to my local grocery store and it was a coin toss that I could take my groceries home (even after I paid for them) then I will always go to another store....

Support: yes, I know. There is nothing I can do.

Me: So from now on I have to order items, wait for them to be shipped, check the shipper and then cancel the order of it is them?

Support: -sigh- you cannot cancel an order after it has shipped...

Me: wow. Sure is great being a prime and audible member. I get fast delivery of 50% of my packages and no delivery at all of the other 50%. Sorry for the sarcasm...

Support: I’m sorry I can’t help more.

Me: So just to clarify. I can expect NOT to get the package I ordered?

Support: sorry

Me: have a nice day.

————

Here are my thoughts as a student of business...

Amazon specializes in “the last mile” (in their delivery service anyway) and when they deliver the package they also deliver on that value proposition.

However, now it seems that one of their shipping providers is failing at getting packages that last mile, which is resulting and destroying the idea of their value proposition in a customers eyes. (Affecting more than me as the rep said)

Now, instead of believing that Amazon will get things to me, saving me that last mile trip to the store etc., I firmly believe that it is a toss up as to wether I will ever receive my package (based on carrier)

I know that if I was in Amazon’s position (a carrier hurting my overall value proposition with consistently unacceptable service) that I would come down on them with a force they have never seen or drop them entirely.

But of course, every company reaches a point where they have such market share and sway that they take their eye off the ball when it comes to their value proposition to customers.

A friend of mine who works in tech support at a college gets this call. The guy on the other end (a college professor) asks how to open an application on his computer.

Tech Support: "There should be an icon on your desktop."

He then hears this strange rustling noise over the phone.....
Tech Support: "What are you doing?"

Professor: "You said to look on my desktop."

Tech Support: "Ummm, hang on. I'll be there in a few minutes."

Saw this on Facebook and couldn't help but share here! 😂

A young woman submitted the tech support message below (about her relationship to her husband) presumably did it as a joke…
The query:

Dear Tech Support,

’Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slowdown in overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.

In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as: Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, and then installed undesirable programs such as: NBA 5.0, NFL 3.0 and Golf Clubs 4.1.

Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and House cleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.
What can I do?

Signed,
Desperate

The response (that came weeks later out of the blue):

Dear Desperate,

“First keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an operating system. Please enter command: I thought you loved me.html and try to download Tears 6.2 and do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.

However, remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1. Please note that Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Farting and Snoring Loudly Beta.

Whatever you do, DO NOT, under any circumstances, install Mother-In-Law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources.)
In addition, please, do not attempt to re-install the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend: Cooking 3.0.Good Luck!’

Good Luck!

So I was talking to the support engineer at PayTM regarding their integration in my app. Idiots!

Many users in my app want PayTM as the payment option. I am using their API and after trying for a few hours, when it was just not working even though I followed their guide and docs, I decide to call the support. After I described him the errors I was getting, he asked me to follow the docs which, being a developer myself, I already did. When I told him that I have done everything exactly as mentioned in the docs, he asked me to hold the phone. Came back after 1 minute and said, "Sir, I discussed the issue with my TL and he says that our API does not work in PostMan."

I hung up.

I managed to make it work by trying evening I could possibly do. But I am amazed what kind of people are running such a giant company. PostMan is made to test APIs. Idiots!

Me vs Facebook support

Me: I'm having trouble with xyz even though I followed your instructions. You have problems with the Arabic language*insert very detailed and professional explanation here with links*

FB Support: please follow the instructions here *insert link*

Me: I already followed those, that's why I'm asking for your help. Please provide detailed instructions.

FB Support: We can't help you, we don't provide detailed instructions, please follow instructions provided in said links.

Why the fuck are you called support then huh? I can read the damn documentation.. Hell I get paid for reading the motherfucking documentation!!

Got to speak with Indian tech support today for the first time. Guys asked me to talk because they could not understand the support guy.

Oh boy, he talked fast. 😞

Yeey, my mom just called me that when I got home I'd have to fix the neighbour's TV. Because after 10 hours of school the only thing I want to do is fill in the role of a free tech support.

I called customer support for an unnamed site.
I: I don't seen it when I refresh page
Support: press CTRL + f5
I: I tried, I still bad
Support: remove memory from your computer and reinsert it. Then it will go.

Wtf, Best support ever :)

As proud as I am of getting GameMaker studio functioning properly under a VM and then being able to automatically push the games to the Linux desktop... It still pisses me off that some people just refuse to support Linux because of 'no one wanting it' or 'it's not worth supporting all the different distributions', when people are using 20+ GB of storage just to run your application on a Linux desktop clearly proves that people actually want this... (That's also ignoring the thousands of other users who keep asking for it)

I love it when people make a mistake and break something on their website then act as tho the are losing millions of pounds every second like they are going to have to remortgage their house "life is over", if it's not fixed in 30 seconds the world will end!

Then you look at their website and you think they probably have about two users every week, and the website looks like it has been built by a one armed monkey. Delusional

I work as the entire I.T. department of a small business which products are web based, so naturally, I do tech support in said website directly to our clients.

It is normal that the first time a new client access our site they run into questions, but usually they never call again since it is an easy website.

There was an unlucky client which ran into unknown problems and blamed the server.
I couldn't determine the exact cause, but my assumption was a network error for a few seconds which made the site unavailable and the user tried to navigate the site through the navbar and exited the process he was doing. It goes without saying but he was very angry.

I assured him there was nothing wrong with the site, and told him that it would not be charged for this reason. Finally i told him that if he had the same problem, to let me know instead of trying to fix it himself.

The next time he used the site I received a WhatsApp message saying:
- there is something clearly wrong with the site... It has been doing this for so long!
And attached was a 10 second video which showed that he filled a form and never pressed send (my forms have small animations and text which indicates when the form is being send and error messages when an error occurs, usually not visible because the data they send is small and the whole process is quite fast)

To which I answer
- It seems that the form has not been send that's why it looks that way
- So... What an I supposed to do?
- click send
It took a while but the client replied
- ok

To this day I wonder how much time did the client stared at the form cursing the server.

!wk66
Maybe?
If we (Web makers) stop making [ie,safari,android native browser] compatible websites... Maaaaybe, just sayin' maaaybee THEY will take some time to support web standards ?? maybe ?

I get frustrated when I get reports from the support team/clients

"[insert application name here] is not working"

thats all no information on which module or segment ... 😭😭

then I just waste time getting all the information ...

🙃😶OK then fuck not judging support people......

Told support to "Put 5em in the style"

Today in the tech store I asked an assistant where to find the CAT6 ethernet cables.
He said he didn't know and ended up in asking me for technical support.

The moment a support tells you they won't fix the bug, because it had existed for so long that it's a feature now.

I swear to God if “Microsoft testicle supprt” calls me one more time I’m going to flip. I think it may be time to set up a sandbox and get the fucks to “fix my computer.”

It would be a shame if instead of payment for their “support” their computers became infected with ransomeware...

I know what I’m doing today.

Company calling for support. Printer in machine room makes unusual noises. There are 5 loud 90 dB machine roads forming metal. And the first thing they hear through the hearing protection is....... a printer making silent squeaky noises...

Well, everytime I build a pc for a friend I'll always end up telling myself "this is the last time". Not bc I have a problem with building pc's, I love it, but its the "free of charge" 24/7 IT-support my non techy (techii?) friends expects from me after the build is done I hate.

So here's the deal.
A week ago I built a brand new pc for a friend, as usual (bc he's a good friend) I told him that my "fee" would be a couple of beers and the train ticket up. So I got there, built the pc and we hooked it up to his monitor. About 5sec in to windows the screen went black. My friend started to panic, and I started to check if all the components and cables were hooked up right (tho I've done this a couple of times, shit can happen) but found nothing was wrong.
I had to take the train home, cause it got late AF and I live in another city, but I told him to try another cable. Felt bad AF for not being able to help him.
Flash forward 2 days, my friend started messaging me late in the evening, complaining about how he had tried everything and ultimately had to leave the pc at an (as he called it) "proffesional" who charged him 100$.
I felt even guiltier about that one, asked him if he tried to change the hdmi, but he said that's in The hands of this guy now.
Two days later this PC God gave him an answer.
Guess What he told him?
CHANGE THE ***** HDMI CABLE.
Well, shit..
Afterwards he wanted help installing drivers over fb-messenger.
I love my friends, but man why do I do this to myself.

I'm of Indian descent and I just stepped into a meeting where some American project managers couldn't understand tech support 's accent. it wasn't them though, because I couldn't understand the guy's thick Indian accent either.

My hosting support are derping again!!!
>_____<

I prompted / bumped them on an open issue.

"A user got this error, can you help?"

Can you at least tell me WHERE you got the issue? How you got to that point? Anything??!?!?!?!?!?!?!

My coleague's story

- before leaving after long day at the office final look at support cases (after official support hours)
- sev1 ticket logged an hour ago, noone called us (although should have; after support hours)
- angry manager calls and demands to get in touch with the client immediately (we're already after support hours, FTS should pick the case, not us)
- we reach out. Customer has business-impacting case
- after initial info gathering: some cert got expired, they got a new one and placed it in the app's directory. The app still does not work
- the first question we ask: "are you sure you have placed it in the right directory?"
- "yes, we are sure. No problems there" - answers a voice with indian accent
- noone finds the root cause for hours.
- It's already 1am
- someone from client's specialists comes up with an idea: "are we sure the cert is in the right place? Let's try to move it to the same directory the old one was in the first place"
- .................................................
- production is working again
- "Why didn't anyone from support suggest this?!?!"
- .................................................
- 2am. Case solved, manager is informed everything's allright now.
- In the morning we get yelled at by the manager bcz we supposedly missed a sev1 ticket and were incompetent during the conf. call

This reminds me why I stay away from support. And why I started hating people. And why I do not work with indians (our ways are too different for me to stay sane and not to kill anyone).

Our new IT support college (I've been the support for like almost 2 years into the company and then I moved onto another project) asked me about how to configure a printer over LAN. I explained him the whole procedure and after he asked me what does the gateway IP means, I explained him that it's a router, switch or another device that know how to forward packets on to other networks and gave him an example like 192.168.100.1 and told him that usually is the router's/switch IP address and is the same IP address as the static IP of the printer but with .1 at the end instead of the last number set. After that he asked me: "Like this? 192.168.100.25.1?"

When your call connects to overseas technical support...

I once had to deal with GoDaddy customer support telling me their servers only support putty for SSH.
Well, fuck you! I use Linux and I SSH with a single command in terminal, no doubt putty is great but get your senses straight that putty is not the only way to SSH when you are being customer support for a tech company, don't just fucking recite a phrase list. Besides, they should understand Windows with putty is not the only way to SSH into servers, juicessh via Android, openssh via Linux, etc...

*btw, before you all rant about me buying from GoDaddy, I was lead dev for a startup few years back and they had already bought it from GoDaddy. Ofcourse they also provide free offers along with an order, which often includes email addresses, annoying support, gut-wrenching quality of service access...

me: *starts receiving emails of clients having technical problems and errors and asking for help* wat, im being flooded with all these mails!
me: *sends email to boss* umm... i think im receiving the wrong mails...
boss: nope! from now on, you'll be in-charge of tech support for our clients. good luck and merry christmas!
me: *dies internally* happy holidays to u too

I freaking HATE, HAAAAATE support some times let me explain let's begin with my ISP.
So I didn't get full broadband speed a while back ( Full speed 18 Mbit/S) called my ISP and they thought the router was a issue. So they sent two NEW routers and dsl cable that worked (Bridged routers.) for a while but it got worse a while after called ISP again

You got two routers, that is the issue you're only supposed to have one (Well don't friggin send me two) so I sent one of them back, then I noticed this dsl cable doesn't work with the router they told me to keep, they send me a new one that has different cables and stuff and they told me this one, this one will do the trick. NOPE Then a support personal came to their senses and decided to send out a technican in two days.

Next day I get another call from them from a other support person and they said they wanted us to try another router, HOLY CRAP they sent us four different routers and they all SUCK, get it together ISP. Now they want us to try another router if that doesn't work well they're finally FINNALY going to send a technican.

But who knows maybe they want me to try 50 more routers.

Just no

Just freakin no.

When you get a ticket saying that a user can't see a record so the system must be broken, then after an hour of looking into it; said record never existed... Please stop wasting my time -_-

I guess im a pretty soft guy, but my boss keeps asking me to be rough with our clients because they are abusing our support service(me).

Im just not that guy..

what do?

working in IT support sometimes makes me wonder if people are really that stupid or they try to test me if i am really stupid.

Hit a snag with Grommet UI library. Fired an issue and Alan Souza, the creator, replied in just two minutes. He also caught me typing to Slack, told me that he'd already seen my issue, apologised and promised to fix this.

That's what I call "great support".

Remote server software installation support is great!
You can watch them trying to understand where what is on the file system, they repeatedly switch between windows without doing something on either of them and they set your IE browser policy to allow all kinds of domains & sites which are preventing them from downloading their software.
Todays guy did not know how to transfer a file between the local machine and one in remotedesktop. 😄

(If you do support like this, then don't get me wrong, I'm not making fun of you personally, it is just funny to watch if you have to actually sit there and wait for the support to finish.) 😉

I'm pissed off as fuck. By far these were the worst fucking 2 weeks in a very long time.

My grandma died. At work I had to do shitty tasks and IT support for stupid end users, like an overpayed PC technician. I couldn't find any time to write a single line of code on any of my personal projects.

And I still can't find a fucking developer job. I feel like I'm stuck in this IT hell forever.

Kill me

Why am I sad, depressed, demotivated, you ask?
Because I was asked to create-react-app with nodemailer, it worked well on heroku, YAYYY MEE, "

"NOTHING GOES WRONG IN DEPLOYMENT FUCK YEAH"

Little did I know that was a "demo" for the business people, My superior / manager/boss wants me to deploy on 1and1 service provider,

> Okay 1 and 1 service provider does provide Nodej, so it shouldn't be hard.
> Turns out it is a Windows hosting server IIS 10 without URL Rewrite.
> *INTERNAL SCREAMING*
I went up to him to talk about this issue and requested to let me talk to 1 and 1, and get this sorted

> But bro, if we cannot fix it, I think they also cannot fix, probably.

*INTERNAL SCREAMING AT PEAK*

I just want URL Rewrite installed on IIS10 so that I can move on to the next project.
A little background for this project
> No support from him during development.

> I personally used HD Images, because why not?

> Website seems slow because of HD Images, and now he complains about it.

You fucking (managers) want a website to be scalable and fast and yet you choose to focus on B U S I N E S S instead of support the real guy.

I'm fucking sick and tired, it took me 24 hours figure out the issue because there is nothing on 1 and 1 support/ forum/help center.

Another 24 hours to try and fix, yet no luck.

I'm gonna finally point the domain name to heroku. Fuck, I'm so fucking done

Client: my video player has two play buttons.
Me: ok that's weird let me check yes it does have two play buttons your right so turns out the client has taken a screenshot of another video player with the play button still on it and used that as their poster image hence two play buttons.

Finding it impossible to explain this to them arrrrggggghhh why why why

Fuck StackOverflows a shit show of support.

I post a question asking what the best practice of achieving a certain function would be, only for it to be down-voted to high hell and marked a duplicate. Yet the duplicates it refers me to have very little to no help on the situation.

And then there’s that one twat who has to edit your post, the most pedantic of changes. Why don’t you actually help!?

Thanks, rant over. Breathe... 💆‍♂️

Raised a support ticket with an api provider about unclear error messages. They were as confused as I was and as the thread continued I essentially ended up debugging thier application for them!

Web development is the worst!
I still cannot understand why it is not possible for browsers to correctly support all official specs... Exceptions here and there, dirty fix for this one, add a little margin here, hide this...
The daily struggle never stops.
Don't even get me startet with PHP!
Next round is on me ;)

Today I bought some parts at Conrad Electronics (they have a blue logo) and wore a blue shirt.
I got asked for technical support a total of five times.😅

Customers are so fucking stupid.

You're already on the page with a form with a "password" field and a fucking "save" button. WHY ARE YOU STILL ASKING ME HOW TO CHANGE YOUR FUCKING PASSWORD???

FUCKING STUPID CUSTOMER WHY DON'T YOUR FUCKING KILL YOURSELF???

FUCK!

When customer support calls with a complex issue and wants a guaranteed fix date for a defect you haven't even investigated because "they need to get an answer back to the customer TODAY."

So a couple of days ago we noticed a strange behaviour with a playment plugin for an online shop of a client. We opened a ticket in the support center and got a response that basically said "Nobody ever reported this behaviour. Therefore this is not a bug."

Hurray got my avatar thank you guys for all your support

When an employee has a problem and calls tech support and you ask them to switch off their computer and they proceed to turning off the screen 😑

Several years ago I joined the company I currently work for, as a software support person, with the intention of eventually moving toward the development team.

After a few years doing that, I gradually realised that working in the development team for our products didn't seem that appealing after all, so I went for a more technical support role (essentially debugging all the really complicated problems and reporting the bugs to the devs) which I find fascinating - trying to solve these puzzles is an interesting challenge. It can take days, sometimes weeks to get to the bottom of something really inexplicably weird.

As part of this I get to do some internal dev work on the teams projects (nothing that gets used directly by external users though) and have learned loads of things from my boss over the years (even before I joined this team).

It has its frustrating moments of course but I am definitely glad I didn't follow my original intentions of just being a developer on our main products.

Sometimes what you think you want isn't actually what's ideal for you :)

!rant

What are people thinking when they are building datepickers (or any type of angular/jQuery plugin for that matter)?

Lets put all of the code in one file, place everything that should be dynamic and optimizable in constants, provide no localization support, finish it all up, publish it to bower and npm (so poor devs won't have to struggle) and last but not least don't accept pull requests with useful features for months!

Me: Can you Double Click on the Google Chrome Icon?
Customer: Left or right Button?

story time:
I use onedrive for sharing some files and shit. So one day one of my folders, which I got from a downloaded zip, caused an error "files couldn't be synced because of unallowed character in the title".
Turns out there was a space at the end of the folder title. I change the name, I get some error.
"Okay, no problem, I don't need that folder anymore anyway" So I delete it, doesn't work, the error message reads "Can't delete folder because it no longer exists.". "What the hell" try deleting it some more. Emptying it before deleting. Deleting the parent folder. I try formatting it before deleting. Nothing works.
Deleting from the online onedrive client causes it to briefly disappears but refreshing places it back right where it came from.

So I resort to my last hope, customer support.
I explain the whole thing.

I get a reply. Oh boy.

I get explained that if the recycle bin is full, the file will be placed back.
After that, I get an explanation on how to remove a file xD

Thanks OneDrive Team, really helpful.

Pro tip. How to cut down on those pesky support emails? Break the only email link in your app I can find.

Genius.

Joined a development team.

Work as a support guy ...

Damned

It does give you that cold rush feeling, when a low level support agent can just use some sort of "user impersonation" feature and literally send you screenshots of your conversations or other, what seems private information and should be only used for actual escalated staff, for when there's a need for an actual middleman (ie. client not paying - logs review) and for everything else there should be a test account they can do screenshots from, e.g. for general website use questions

So I work for a VPN company as the Info Sec manager long story short I'm not usually the pleb who does customer support.

But today I ended up having to do this. I spent over 1 hour helping a client that a support agent escalated the request for to me. So I figure out that his network adapters are sharing incorrectly.
I fix problem.
He tries to connect.
Denied access so I check our servers for the request and he's blocked.
I think that's odd.....

I check active subscription and this person ISNT A CLIENT THATS ACTIVE....

WHY IS SUPPORT SO IGNORANT.
UGH.

I am in love.
I am in love with all the guys and girls working at Microchip support.
I am the kind of user that does not really understand what he's doing/what he wants to do, so I am constantly stuck in stupid configuration errors or looking for impossible solutions, yes I am THAT kind of a user...

Here is a PWM working, a support guy spent some minutes telling me that I have to connect to the right pin.
Ok, he had to tell me twice.😳
Thank you, it may have taken me days to find out this.

They does not know, but there is a HUGE amount of decreasing dumb question incoming 😈
Please be kind with me, and don't get mad when things will get serious, I will probably bring hell in your office, I am very sorry for that...

Still, thank you for helping the dumbest learner-by-mistake that doesn't know how to recognize a mistake.

I can't write this in the ticket system, I hope someone of you use devRant! (atsame54 office, I am talking with you!)

You are my stack overflow, and the project I will develop with your help is quite the only thing left before my graduate.

I will owe you so much beers, love you guys!!!

I forgot how exhausting being tech support can be. I tried helping my dad update his WhatsApp earlier. He barely knows how to even use a smartphone, let alone how to update apps. I ofc auto-enabled updates through WiFi, but for some godforsaken reason he isn't connected anymore. So yeah, I've been trying to remotely troubleshoot a phone of someone who doesn't understand there's a difference between an app and the Google search bar, and that you can swipe on phones. ~.~
And if you read this until the end, have a cookie 🍪 and / or a beer 🍺- I'm having one myself now, after this, cheers!

Client: my website is down

Support: can you just google my ip and let me know your IP

Client : OMG google is down!!! Oops router was'nt plugged.

**Client is on call just incase you wonder :p

var _self = Object.create(Rant);

Hello devs I'm back

A few months ago I joined a software development company and I was pretty specific that I wasn't going to do support or maintenance only feature development, well, this past 3 months I've been doing dev helping stablish good practices and a better architecture for the app, but guess who is joining a support team tomorrow, they sold me the idea of a refactor team, I was trilled and accepted, now they tell me it's a legacy bug fixing team, damn I hate this crap, hope y'all doing better

I didn't realise just how retarded people are when they call tech support.

Working combined line 1/2 tech support and people just describe shit in the most unhelpful way ever.

The IT policy at my company is down right ridiculous. You’re required admin rights to fucking move desktop shortcuts to the trash, all chrome extensions and almost anything you download from the internet is a ‘virus’, good luck getting driver support for external devices.

!dev but tech related...

Got a device configured in a location that is fairly far away from me. It operates only through a cloud service specifically for these devices, with one of the most unreliable web interfaces and smartphone apps I have ever used.

I email my issues to the tech support who don't seem to understand the problems and can't fathom the difference between "reset settings" and "restart device".

Eventually they need to log in to my account to find out whats wrong. I explicitly state that under no circumstances should any settings be changed.

Today I find that the device has been removed from the cloud account. I physically must be near it to register it on the account again. Tech support don't seem to know what happened and the best explanation is that it is "a glitch". They have no way to add it back themselves. I have to travel to the device.

Funny how this happened after I let them access the account...

@dfox and @trogus I was just wondering how do you support yourself and devrant? Do you have a day job or are you freelancing or is devrant making money to sustain you and itself?

His long do you think it will take for Google to come up with a true replacement for Java. A replacement, not an alternative like Kotlin, but a complete "go f**k yourself, Larry" replacement that anyone can port their Java app over to. On January 1, if you are a for profit, Larry had said if you want to update to the next version and use Java SE to code with, you need a support license. It's a brill move, because Java is everywhere, and at least for a little while, it will generate a respectable profit for Oracle. But I'm sure Google is working on something to stick it to Larry. Wonder if EU competition chief Vestager will threaten am investigation. This should be fun to watch.

Going back home for the holidays means becoming tech support for pretty much the whole family, unluckly.

As soon as I enter my grandparent's home, my grandpa says "Could you print some emails?". I open his laptop, and I start sweating as soon as I see the Windows XP logo popping up. He (obviously) doesn't remember his password, and the only way to access his (mostly defunct) web mail service is Outlook 2003. For some reason, the web mail provider's POP3 server dies, and i spend half an hour trying to explain it. I ended up leaving with him saying "Why are you even going to a computer engineering university."

Ah, family.

!rant

One of the downsides of my job is that I do User Support at three levels...

Sometimes they can with a valid support request, and sometimes it can be a easy one, sometimes isn't.

But there are times when they came with an idiotic situation that (most of times) it can be avoided if they can read the fucking message that the application in question show to them.

In those times, I already knew the problem they have by the time they already finished to describe it... In the meanwhile my thoughts go down into a rabbit hole and forgot the whole point of the call 😂

Oh... Well, at least I can fake that I was passing inside a tunnel 😂

Someone stole my CC number and paid a bunch of spam ads on FB with it tonight. When I woke up and blocked it, there's been already 400€ worth of transactions done with it :(

But the real rant is that it took 3 fucking hours before I managed to get in contact with someone at FB who could actually help me. Fuck those AI chat bots & "Tenk yu kom agan" support guys!

!rant

Neighbours asked me to help them setting up their new printer.
Bug: Installation of the driver fails.
Fix: The printer has to be turned on during installation.

I earned 20 bucks for this single press of only one button.

First-Level-Support in the neighbourhood: Annoying but pays like hell.

Three days ago my focus was shifted from a development role to a support role. I was shifted to replace another support guy who had used fraud to get the position. I have no experience with this role but there was decent KT and I'm catching on fine. During onboarding and KT I'm serving as the first contact for new tickets and whatnot...

Today I got a ticket with an error on our production instance that no one had ever seen before. It prevented the guy from using our service entirely. I tried to reproduce it and... I couldn't use the service either. No one could. Everything was down. I could see the sweat building on my manager's forehead.

Thankfully another member on my team has done a bit of support before, so we collaborated with each other and other teams throughout the day to figure out what's wrong and how to fix it. I'm listening to them chat remotely as we speak - so far I've been working on it 9 hours straight.

This service is used by everyone - it's a business critical service with due dates on actions and escalations to managers... Imagine if the support ticketing service for your company crashed. That means a lot of people are asking what's wrong, requiring extensions, etc. I've been answering to managers and seniors in the business throughout the day.

The best part? We figured out why the server went down, and the reason is fantastic: someone updated the server's code without telling anyone, and all they had done was remove critical parsing code. Just took it right out, pushed, redeployed. We don't know who did it or who even has access to do that. I guess I have some detective work cut out for me after we've fixed everything that was broken by that.

I miss coding already.

The technical incompentency of the people I try to help with their tech problems, is utterly astounding. Especially family members. For the love of God, if somebody is offering you tech support, put in at least some minimal degree of effort!

"I can't download the images when I'm offline" - Customer asking for support..