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30 Times When IT Workers Couldn’t Resist Face-Palming At The Requests They Got, As Shared In This Online Group
We all have that one IT friend or at least an acquaintance that we go to for help when our computers aren’t working. Even if it’s not in their competence field, because for non-IT people, they seem to be the same and know everything that there is with computers both on the inside and the outside.
They probably don’t appreciate that we bug them with problems that they were not trained to fix, so they need a place to vent. A perfect space for that is Reddit and especially when someone asks you for it. Reddit user NetworkMachineBroke was that someone and asked, “IT workers, what is the most ridiculous 'You're IT, you have to fix this' request you've received?” And the answers were quite obviously ridiculous even for people who don’t work in IT.
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One of my first jobs (was in the 90s ) i was senior IT admin for a medium-sized company, and on my day off, the CEO called, I had to get in cause the mail wasn't working and also the banking software didn't work
This CEO was primarily responsible for the financial department so especially this last part was hurting him.
When I came in, said CEO was really flaming, basically burning the entire IT department (of 3 ppl ) as being incompetent, overpaid f**kups. And all the loss of business revenue should come out of our pockets etc. etc.
So during this lovely tirade, I come in, and in a few seconds I realize we have a problem with the internet connection. Keep in mind, these were the 90s, so we had a dual ISDN connection and a dial-up modem connected to it. I run a few tests, and instead of the common modem sounds, i hear some low res voice on the line. I connect a regular phone to it, listen to it, and then gave it to the CEO saying: "it's for you"
After that, the CEO said nothing, and used his own mobile to manage the finances.
What did the ISDN Phone say? "Due to NOT PAYING YOU BLOODY BILL, this line is disconnected. If You want to reinstate this service you have to pay xx + admin costs etc. etc. "
I went home after that, with a very big grin, and started looking for another job.
Not me, and not the guy I knew, but someone he knew, a story from many years ago:
This other fellow is a photocopier serviceman. He gets a call from one of their clients about their photocopier not working. He goes through the short list with the person on the phone, including "It's plugged in, right?" The client assures him everything else is fine, so he grabs his stuff and heads to the client site.
First thing he looks at when he gets to the copier is the power cord. Sure enough, it's in the socket but not properly seated, so no juice. So with the client there, he stands over the copier in the right spot, lays his hands on the top of the copier, and begins chanting - as he reaches the crescendo, out of sight of the client, he lifts his leg up and kicks the plug into the socket fully, and the copier comes to life.
On the worksheet, in the area where he's supposed to describe what actions he took, he simply writes "I HEALED IT" and has the client sign in.
I can't tell you how many support requests I've closed over the years with the note. "I plugged it in."
Drove for 2 hours to replace a touchscreen monitor that had stopped responding; turns out they were wearing gloves.
We used to log these type of callouts as ID-10-T errors
Got a call the scanner in HR was broken. Thought to myself, we dont have a scanner in HR. Go the the office, the lady has word open and is holding a document to the screen hitting enter repeatedly.
I thought no one would believe me, so I brought about 5 other techs along to corroborate.
Lady called to report her monitor wasn’t working. After troubleshooting and asking her multiple times if everything was plugged in she finally pipes up that the monitor “doesn’t have the light on.” The monitor wasn’t plugged in and she wanted me to wake a guy up at 3am to do it because she was dressed to nicely to do it herself because she was preparing for a meeting at 6am. Told her to do it herself because I was not about to wake up the on call for that. She complained to our director and he literally laughed at her and her reasoning for wanting the on call sent out and she is now banned from calling in.
I was called to fix a point of sale issue for a small coffee shop. The computer was fine. The wall outlet tested negative for power. The owner asked how long till I could fix it. After explaining that she needs an electrician, she started screaming at me and demanding that I fix it because it is my job. After weeks of receiving phone calls from her screaming and vulgar emails being sent, we came by, took the computer system back and canceled her contract.
I'd have run an extension cord across her restaurant floor to another outlet.
I was a remote tech and had a woman call me and wanted me to drive 6+ hours to her facility to turn on her computer, because hitting the power button was 'not her job'.
Old story: Back in the early 90s all of Alaska's comm. was via satellite. We would get notices from our providers when a solar storm was going to slow down our through-put. I went upstairs to our Finance and Accounting chief to tell her the nightly processes might be late due to the storm. Her response was "You're IT just fix it!" Never let her forget that she saw me as a god.
A couple simple ones.
I got called into repair a broken printer, the guy was pretty livid as he was trying to print in a hurry. Turns out it ran out of paper...
Even worse I had my boss lose his s**t on me that his computer didn't work and made the comment that "nothing ever works around here" (hinting that I failed at my job). I went into his office and found that he didn't turn it on.... I pushed the power button and all I got was an "oh".
IT support has to be one of the worst jobs. Stupid a** people, and anytime something like a mouse battery dies your a POS.
I work in web development/maintenance.
I got a call from a client who was absolutely livid when I told her that she could not take the hyperlinked text from her webpage, transfer it over to their print ad, and still have it function like a link.
I was asked to fix a cabinet once.
I don't mean like a server rack or anything, I mean a literal wooden cabinet with shelves and stuff.
I was once also asked to fix an old oscilloscope that was out of warranty. It was running embedded Windows so I could at least sort of see their thought process on that one, but it was still a no.
Our IT helpdesk (before it was renamed the support desk) eventually ended up keeping fluorescent tubes and whiteboard markers in stock because people would send complaints to the CEO that we were refusing to help when we asked them to contact the office manager for these things.
The flipside is that the CEO eventually created a new email address for people to send complaints directly to him. Very few people knew that this special CEO complaints email address actually got forwarded to the office manager.
People have the capacity for such unimaginable greatness, and such hard to believe stupidity. I was personally once reported for sabotaging a specific secretary by refusing to fix her printer. It was printing garbage. Turns out she installed an Epson colour printer driver (from the disk that came with her friends new colour printer) on her (Win95) computer so that her mono HP deskjet printer would also print colour. She reported me the third time I uninstalled the bad driver and asked her not to do it again.
The power went out in our building and the owner of the company wanted to know what we were doing to get the computers up.
Not necessarily an IT worker but a computer scientist (a lot of people get those confused) but one time I was at my sister’s house and she needed help getting her printer connected so she ask me “You know how to do this help me” and I tried to do it because it was a simple google search to fix this but she is breathing down my neck because I’m not getting this solved at the speed she wants me to get it done. She then drops a “Didn’t you go to school for this” on me and I respond with “No I make software that sometimes works”.
Moral of the story: If you are an IT worker(or a computer scientist), keep that to yourself.
My dad used to work in software development. One of his coworkers had to call IT because his computer wasn’t turning on. Turns out his power strip was plugged into itself. He never lived that one down
Our office had a new "catering kitchen" for executive functions. One of the first events it was used for was a fundraiser breakfast put on by the staff for some reason or another. They had to skip the hot food because they couldn't get the stove to turn on. After that, nobody used the stove because everyone thought it didn't work.
One day, it became an IT problem because the stove top was broken and they wanted someone to fix it, and, well, it uses electricity and has LEDs, so it must be IT, right? I figured out the problem. there was nothing wrong with the stove, other than it was an induction stove and they had non-ferrous cookware, which will not work with induction stoves.
I don't think most people know about induction stoves so can't blame them for that but expecting IT to fix a stove is silly to say the least.
I’ll see the stove and raise you an elevator. I understood the phone system, paging, and security cameras, but I never did understand why they stuck my department with the bloody elevators.
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"it uses electricity and has LEDs" was the argument someone used to tell me that the maintenance of a coffee machine was part of my IT-job. So I did what I had to do. Labeled it obsolete and defunct and had it removed.
Because IT guy knows the lost art of RTFM, or "Read-That-Fxxking-Manual".
We bought an induction-hob cooker, and the first thing I checked BEFORE buying, was what kind of pans you needed. I wasn't about to buy all new cookware!
When induction stoves were realtively new my sister had a party in her new home. One of her guests brought soup in a pot which would not get warm. I finally remembered my sister telling me proudly of her induction stove. When we put the soup in another pot it took less than five minutes to heat it up.
The stove shown is a gas model and an old one at that. Couldn't you find one of an induction model, that might be more appropriate?
Induction stoves are soon more common than "regular" ones where I live, so most people here know about having to replace some cookware when switching stoves.
Induction requires magnetism for it to work. Aluminium wont work unless it is mixed with something a magnet can interact with :)
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1-CEO called in and said “my cupholder is broken can you get me another one?” He used the CD Tray as a cup holder.
2-Internet was down throughout the country due to Bandwidth cable getting cut during a heavy storm - CEO: “You're IT, if you don't fix the internet I'll fire you and find someone who will., it took the head of IT calling the ISP, put em on loud speaker in front of the CEO and say that the cables been cut off and that it is a national problem.
Finally, i get to tell my Singing computer story.
I worked IT Help desk for the Air-force for a short time. I get a call one day from a woman, telling me her computer was singing to her, baffled and somewhat quick witted i asked the women "Can you put the computer on the phone for me?"
Sure enough I'm hearing the POST beep being repeated over and over again, So i ask I her "Is there anything covering your keyboard?"
I hear the flop of a book hit the desk, followed by the windows welcome screen sound. At this point i just hung up the phone.
I was working as a developer at a Navy contract. One morning, a Navy Captain walked up to my desk, "You're Roman?"
"Yes, sir! How can I help you?"
"I got a virus in my email, so I forwarded it to you."
"But.... but, why?"
"Well, I didn't want it in my inbox."
"But... but... ..."
"Was it supposed to go to somebody else?"
"You *could* have deleted it or notified the IT guys across the hall who deal with that type of stuff... sir."
"Well... you're IT, right?"
*sigh*
Congrats. Now the virus is in the server and now it's everyone's problem!
I had a lady who brought her laptop in for a simple software repair. I fixed it and get it back to her. She calls me directly two days later and is absolutely irate that her camera isn't working. I explained to her that I never touched her camera but if she wanted to come back in I would gladly take a look. She didn't want that, even though my location is all walk up and no remote support she absolutely wanted me to "remote in and figure it out because it was working before you (I) worked on it". I put her on hold and as I was looking up her machine name I remembered she had electrical tape over her camera so I picked up the phone and said "I seem to recall tape over the camera. Is that still there?" She promptly hung up.
Once had a person call in to the IT desk because the soda machine stole their money.
I'm an application architect for medical record software. My primary users (I REFUSE to call them customers) are physicians and nurses in a clinic setting.
There's one specific doctor who will call and give a very vague description to the helpdesk. She refuses to do a shadow session, refuses to let us get screenshots, and the person from the helpdesk isn't an application expert so they're trying to write down her issue and she's using the wrong words.
By the time we usually figure out her issue, we could have resolved it in half the time if she just would have taken 2 minutes to speak with us.
Vague tickets that give no clue as to what's wrong beyond "computer broke lol". Then you ring them up asking them to fill it in properly, and they get annoyed, "I thought you guys knew what you're doing".
Or when the Karens at work drop off their personal laptops or phones, and expect us to fix it. That's not what we're here for.
That's when you need a form for them to sign agreeing that they will pay the standard rate of $200/hour for any non-company equipment, there is no expectation of privacy, and waive all liability if something goes wrong
Years ago I worked for a rather large ISP as a tech lead. A residential DSL customer called in demanding to speak to a supervisor because his internet was down and he was going to miss out on some multi-million dollar deal of he couldn't get on the internet. He kept yelling at me throughout the call and demanded I fix it immediately. While troubleshooting the issue I could see that I couldn't reach the DSLAM his connection ran through. I advised him I would have to reach out to a dispatch center to have a tech go take a look at it. At some point he informed me that on his way home he saw that a vehicle had run off the road into one of our boxes and it had caught fire. He still said he was planning on suing our company if he wasn't able to be online to make this supposed deal of his. I passive aggressively suggested he go to a Starbucks and wished him well with the lawsuit.
Got a call to to remove a plug on a radio and push the wire through a small vent in the cabinet because the wire was "unsightly."
I did this while 15 executives watched. None of them knew how to change a plug, and had never even seen the inside of one; but because it had a wire it was ITs responsibility.
I learned how to change a plug at the age of 8, because I went to an extracurricular club called Badgers (St John equivalent to the Brownies or Cub Scouts). I refuse to believe not one of 15 executives were underprivileged enough to not attend such a club and learn these basic skills. How do they manage in their own homes? Do they have Tech on call to change lightbulbs for them too?!
I'll start. One time somebody at a company asked me "Why isn't the microwave working? You're in IT after all! Fix it!"
I thought they were joking, but after a bit of deliberation, they were either serious or very committed to the role.
Assembling the office furniture is a good use of IT time.
Someone refused to believe that computers need power and won’t work in a black out.
One of the first offices I worked in was in a rural area and we had regular powercuts. This was an absolute pain when we were all on desktops, but we could at least get some work done when we got laptops. We only had a small UPS that would shut the servers down gracefully, so unfortunately there was no Internet. There was a pub across the road that we could retire to if it went on too long!
Work in networks and used to share an office with people who just basically took situation reports. So when they were out of the office for lunch or called in sick we'd answer their phones and take notes for when they got back out next shift came in.
So our guy calls out one night and I take a call that some generator somewhere went out. Ok cool write it in the log and pass it on for the next shift. Then boss ends up questioning me on what I did about the generator. Like what do you expect me to do, ping it? Would you like me to get it's Mac address? It literally has nothing to do with my job.
I worked for an online college and a student wanted me to change his username. It was goatbugger
That looks like the sort of combination an idiot would have on his luggage!
Note: this post originally had 42 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
I had a monitor that stopped working after a power blip today. tried every, the computer just would not detect the monitor. Reluctantly contacted the poor IT guy. He comes back testing the cord, the monitor, the ports, what have you. I had already rebooted etc. He slid the computer on the dock as he was unplugging and replugging, and lo and behold, monitor works. I felt like such an ahole. I can't believe I didn't think to unseat and reseat the computer on the dock. I didn't even know that was a thing.
My favourite story has to be a few years ago, a Sargent brought a blackberry to us from the unit Commanding Officer because it wouldn't receive e-mail. I took it, turned on the wi-fi connection and handed it back to him as it started to ping and e-mails came through. The Sgt was not happy the CO wasted his and our time.
AS a copier tech i was called to a small town to fix their printer because it wasn't "printing right." I found the reports they wanted printed full page were reduced and printing on the page. After a few test determined it was the form was formatted to print that size. I told them that they needed to call the software manufacturer and have them walk them through changing the format since I am unfamiliar with the software and don't want to accidentally mess anything up. The problem was that the IT guy they used blamed it fully on the machine we sold them so they would not listen to what I said. So 45 minutes later I figured out which format was correct set it and charged $200.
few years ago i worked in a hospital and they had a problem with the printer somewhere and it was urgent it was the printer who print the sticker for the pills bottle. 2 tech goes there and nobody was able to fix it. i go in and i saw they were boxes of cartridges. i open the printer and took back the cartridge and saw they forgot to withdraw the ink protection tape on it. 2 IT tech goes in before and forget this simple task.
It sounds to me that many people just do not know the basics of computer operation, could not a very simple, short instruction manual be produced?
Problem with that idea - Nobody reads instruction manuals
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Stories like these would probably help explain why the guys in my workplace's IT department are so crabby sometimes.
I was headed to an office to install their new Mac. I get there and they take me to an empty room with a new Mac and a new unopened O'Sullivan L shaped desk. Those things are real wood, real big and real heavy. I asked where I should set up the Mac, and she said on the desk. I said who is setting up the desk, and she said you are. I said, well, I'm really an Apple technician, I don't think you want to pay my rate to have me set up office furniture, and she said, well if you don't set it up, I don't know who is. So she gets a bill for 4 hours, 3.5 setting up the desk and 30 minutes setting up the computer.
I did not work in IT but they fell under the group I was responsable for. Had a manager buy a large expensive display system for a board room. Did not even ask IT if it was compatable with our systems. First we found out about it was when I called to the boardroom, shown a pile of large boxes and asked to have IT install it as all you have to do is "run a few wires to it". From that point on, the standing joke was that any problem was an easy fix and all you had to do was "run a few wires to it".
I still can remember the times when people used to bring their private computers to our room expecting that we would upgrade the hardware and install the latest versions of Windows and MS Office for free. And were offended when we told them no.
Best not to bring up the satellite internet installation guy who installed the dish right in the middle of the British Official Croquet lawn. His excuse was it was a large flat space that would get no interference. That was a dooozy of a complaint when I worked at a huge internet provider.
In my support years, I once had a call from a finance colleague to report an oil leak. With suitable open mind, I attended and yes, there was a dark black viscous fluid leaking from a keyboard. After swapping out the keyboard another colleague piped up, "oh, is that where you skilled cola last week?"
I worked tech support for internet for a cable company for 9 years. I have some doosies, but my personal favorite is a customer who called in, received the recoded message for an outage in her area and wanted to speak to someone because she is "wireless" and could not figure out why the outage was affecting her. Took some time to explain that she was accessing internet wirelessly but the modem is plugged into the cable outlet and it was the cable signal that was out due to a serious accident in her area that involved a fatality that took out our pole.
I heard that these are called PEBCAK errors: Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard.
It might be an unpopular opinion but in my experience often the IT guys are "the entitled ones". I really hate calling our IT department for help so you can be damn sure, if I had any idea how to fix the problem myself I would definitely not contact you! Mocking customers because it was such a "simple" thing to fix is really bad taste. It is your job and you are paid for it - it might not be simple for Mike from housekeeping who has never worked with a computer before or for Adele from HR who knows sh!t about anything technical. I am sure they know a lot of stuff in their field where you would be completely lost... Complaining that the problem description is not good? Yes, because I have no idea what the problem is! IT asking questions on the hotline using lots of words I have never ever heard in my whole life? Been there, done that! Some of these customers were jerks, yes, but I guess they always are, not only towards the IT guy so these cases are irrelevant.
I’m pretty computer savvy, but sometimes I’ll have to bug my partner to help me fix something. A bribe of beer or Pocky usually works :)
Had a user call in once and say to me, "Yeah, our stuff isn't working and I have a red light on my thing." They didn't know what their id was or anything. Took a while to figure out who they were.
I managed an IT unit servicing 400+ Apple computers plus printers and servers etc. Had one user whose computer shut down or seriously malfunctioned at least 3 or 4 times per day. Got to be that half our service calls were to her workstation or adjacent printer or scanner. This went on for a couple of months - just couldn't fix the problem. Then one day I bumped into the telephone tech coming out of her office - he was having the same problem with her phone malfunctioning several times per week. We compared notes and decided to check the power supply - but all was OK there. A couple of days later he called me to say he had fixed the problem by putting a large anti-static mat under her office chair. It solved our issues too. It appeared that she somehow was generating a large supply of static electricity. Synthetic underwear? genuine silk stockings? no idea, but no way was I going to ask her.
I had a monitor that stopped working after a power blip today. tried every, the computer just would not detect the monitor. Reluctantly contacted the poor IT guy. He comes back testing the cord, the monitor, the ports, what have you. I had already rebooted etc. He slid the computer on the dock as he was unplugging and replugging, and lo and behold, monitor works. I felt like such an ahole. I can't believe I didn't think to unseat and reseat the computer on the dock. I didn't even know that was a thing.
My favourite story has to be a few years ago, a Sargent brought a blackberry to us from the unit Commanding Officer because it wouldn't receive e-mail. I took it, turned on the wi-fi connection and handed it back to him as it started to ping and e-mails came through. The Sgt was not happy the CO wasted his and our time.
AS a copier tech i was called to a small town to fix their printer because it wasn't "printing right." I found the reports they wanted printed full page were reduced and printing on the page. After a few test determined it was the form was formatted to print that size. I told them that they needed to call the software manufacturer and have them walk them through changing the format since I am unfamiliar with the software and don't want to accidentally mess anything up. The problem was that the IT guy they used blamed it fully on the machine we sold them so they would not listen to what I said. So 45 minutes later I figured out which format was correct set it and charged $200.
few years ago i worked in a hospital and they had a problem with the printer somewhere and it was urgent it was the printer who print the sticker for the pills bottle. 2 tech goes there and nobody was able to fix it. i go in and i saw they were boxes of cartridges. i open the printer and took back the cartridge and saw they forgot to withdraw the ink protection tape on it. 2 IT tech goes in before and forget this simple task.
It sounds to me that many people just do not know the basics of computer operation, could not a very simple, short instruction manual be produced?
Problem with that idea - Nobody reads instruction manuals
Load More Replies... Stories like these would probably help explain why the guys in my workplace's IT department are so crabby sometimes.
I was headed to an office to install their new Mac. I get there and they take me to an empty room with a new Mac and a new unopened O'Sullivan L shaped desk. Those things are real wood, real big and real heavy. I asked where I should set up the Mac, and she said on the desk. I said who is setting up the desk, and she said you are. I said, well, I'm really an Apple technician, I don't think you want to pay my rate to have me set up office furniture, and she said, well if you don't set it up, I don't know who is. So she gets a bill for 4 hours, 3.5 setting up the desk and 30 minutes setting up the computer.
I did not work in IT but they fell under the group I was responsable for. Had a manager buy a large expensive display system for a board room. Did not even ask IT if it was compatable with our systems. First we found out about it was when I called to the boardroom, shown a pile of large boxes and asked to have IT install it as all you have to do is "run a few wires to it". From that point on, the standing joke was that any problem was an easy fix and all you had to do was "run a few wires to it".
I still can remember the times when people used to bring their private computers to our room expecting that we would upgrade the hardware and install the latest versions of Windows and MS Office for free. And were offended when we told them no.
Best not to bring up the satellite internet installation guy who installed the dish right in the middle of the British Official Croquet lawn. His excuse was it was a large flat space that would get no interference. That was a dooozy of a complaint when I worked at a huge internet provider.
In my support years, I once had a call from a finance colleague to report an oil leak. With suitable open mind, I attended and yes, there was a dark black viscous fluid leaking from a keyboard. After swapping out the keyboard another colleague piped up, "oh, is that where you skilled cola last week?"
I worked tech support for internet for a cable company for 9 years. I have some doosies, but my personal favorite is a customer who called in, received the recoded message for an outage in her area and wanted to speak to someone because she is "wireless" and could not figure out why the outage was affecting her. Took some time to explain that she was accessing internet wirelessly but the modem is plugged into the cable outlet and it was the cable signal that was out due to a serious accident in her area that involved a fatality that took out our pole.
I heard that these are called PEBCAK errors: Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard.
It might be an unpopular opinion but in my experience often the IT guys are "the entitled ones". I really hate calling our IT department for help so you can be damn sure, if I had any idea how to fix the problem myself I would definitely not contact you! Mocking customers because it was such a "simple" thing to fix is really bad taste. It is your job and you are paid for it - it might not be simple for Mike from housekeeping who has never worked with a computer before or for Adele from HR who knows sh!t about anything technical. I am sure they know a lot of stuff in their field where you would be completely lost... Complaining that the problem description is not good? Yes, because I have no idea what the problem is! IT asking questions on the hotline using lots of words I have never ever heard in my whole life? Been there, done that! Some of these customers were jerks, yes, but I guess they always are, not only towards the IT guy so these cases are irrelevant.
I’m pretty computer savvy, but sometimes I’ll have to bug my partner to help me fix something. A bribe of beer or Pocky usually works :)
Had a user call in once and say to me, "Yeah, our stuff isn't working and I have a red light on my thing." They didn't know what their id was or anything. Took a while to figure out who they were.
I managed an IT unit servicing 400+ Apple computers plus printers and servers etc. Had one user whose computer shut down or seriously malfunctioned at least 3 or 4 times per day. Got to be that half our service calls were to her workstation or adjacent printer or scanner. This went on for a couple of months - just couldn't fix the problem. Then one day I bumped into the telephone tech coming out of her office - he was having the same problem with her phone malfunctioning several times per week. We compared notes and decided to check the power supply - but all was OK there. A couple of days later he called me to say he had fixed the problem by putting a large anti-static mat under her office chair. It solved our issues too. It appeared that she somehow was generating a large supply of static electricity. Synthetic underwear? genuine silk stockings? no idea, but no way was I going to ask her.
