The Glade 4.0

Call comes through to my direct number (the first of three similar calls this morning).

Caller: "Yeah, Jackie, my Internet isn't working."
Me: "You should be calling the helpdesk. They escalate issues they cannot fix to me."
Caller: "I tried calling them, they can't fix it."
Me: "Of course they can't, we're having intermittent proxy server issues across the entire company."
Caller: "So how can I get on the Internet?"
Me: "You can't. I can't either."
Caller: "When will it be fixed?"
Me: "There is no ETA."
Caller: "That's not acceptable, can you escalate this? I need the Internet."
Me: "Ma'am, nobody in a company of 35,000 people can access the Internet. Don't you think it's already been escalated?"
Caller: "You should send out an email."
Me: "There's a front-end message on the helpdesk phone, perhaps you heard it when you called them."
Caller: "Yes, but perhaps an email to everybody would alleviate all the people calling you."
Me: "One, that's what the helpdesk is for, to alleviate people calling my team. Two, there's a front end-message on the helpdesk number so people will hear that there are problems enterprise-wide and hang up because they'll know there's nothing that can be done individually to help them."
Caller: "I'm just thinking of you. Your too busy to deal with everybody that calls. You should send out an email."
Listen, you *****, if you were that concerned about how busy I was, you'd get off the **** phone!
Me: *ahem* "That's not really up to me."
Caller: "So when will this be working again? I need the Internet."
Me: "..."

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Ah, so glad I don't do support work anymore.

I occasionally miss helping people who deserved it, but I sure don't miss the idiots like above.

Internet was out in all of Rio Grande Valley (for Time Warner customers at least) yesterday for 4-5 hours. I was glad that they put a front-end message on the customer service line because then I knew right away it was them, not some goofy setting in my computer getting changed somehow. I'd already been pretty sure that was the problem since the phone was out too, but I was also a little afraid the cable modem had gotten some setting change or something.

I would have gotten on the internet and asked Talya what she thought over ICQ but.. there wasn't any! Oh, the irony!

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm curious how she was planning to receive this email.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Internal network access was fine. And proxy issues typically don't affect exchange servers.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I swear to god this was a conversation I had with a co-worker a few years back:

Me: (getting off the phone with server ops) Ugh. Exchange servers are down across the board.
Co-worker: (hops over to his chair and starts unlocking his keyboard)
Me: Uhm. What are you doing?
Co-Worker: I'm going to let everyone know.
Me: And how are you going to do that....
Co-worker: I'm just going to send out an email....
Me: . . . You're going to what?
Co-worker: I'm going to send out an email to everyone letting them know that the exchange servers are down.
Me: .... One more time.
Co-Worker: (getting annoyed) I'm going to send out an email.
Me: And what are you going to say in that email?
Co-worker: (Now seriously pissed off) I'm going to let them know that email is offline.
Me: (fixing him with a pointed look)
Co-worker: What?!!
Me: *Sigh* so... you're going to send out an email...
Co-worker: YES!
Me: ...That email servers are down???
Co-worker: YES!
Me: .... Do you perhaps see an issue with that?
Co-worker: .... oh.

We had techs that would routinely email clients asking what cube they were in so they could fix their problem with inability to access email.

I just called the clients and reset their AD passwords.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Our incident tracking software has a "vendor" tab on every ticket, in case we need to get defective hardware replaced or call in the phone company or something. I recommended to management that they add Human Resources to the vendor tab (after all, we outsourced HR anyway), so that we can more easily replace defective users.

I said "Think how much that improves efficiency on the helpdesk! Next time someone calls in and says 'I can't load facebook from Outlook in my modem,' the helpdesk agent doesn't have to sit there scratching their heads wondering what the hell the user is talking about. Instead they can smile and tell the user not to worry, they'll send a replacement, and fire off the ticket to HR."

Management got a laugh out of it. They thought I was joking.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █