Working in tech support is not for the faint of heart. It requires patience, technical skills, and the ability to keep a straight face while a customer explains how mashed banana found its way into all of the crevices of their laptop.
To raise awareness for how horrific this industry can be, we took a trip to the Tech Support Gore subreddit and gathered some of their most shocking posts below. From electronics that look like they've been through wars to extremely questionable wiring, enjoy scrolling through this list that might trigger any former tech support workers. Be sure to upvote the pics that you find most amusing, and please remember to be kind to your tech support agents, pandas. They've seen some terrible things!
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I Wonder Why My Computer Is Overheating
“I Need The Data Recovered From This! Cost Is No Issue!”
I Was On Vacation And The Restaurant Was Complaining Why Their Wi-Fi Wasn’t Working. I Wonder Why
The Tech Support Gore subreddit has been around since February 2012, but it has somehow never run out of new content. According to the group’s About section, anyone who works in tech support may “cringe to the brink of passing out after a few minutes looking at this subreddit.”
From photos of laptops that have been left in the fridge overnight to devices that were set on top of hot stoves, tech support workers have apparently seen it all. This subreddit has amassed an impressive 607k members over the years, yet unfortunately, it seems to have made no progress in preventing customers from making questionable decisions with their electronic devices.
Got A Treat For You All
Guess What Happened When The Client Tried To Cook Again? Recipe Not Included
“The Building Is Pre Wired”
Calling tech support can be daunting, exhausting, embarrassing and frustrating. You might be on hold for 45 minutes before an underpaid employee simply tells you to restart your device, and then it miraculously decides to work again. But if this subreddit tells us anything about what it’s like to work for tech support, that experience is arguably more excruciating than being a customer.
People put their devices through hell, and then expect employees to magically repair them. Customers are impatient and demand quick fixes, and employees can only do so much when a laptop has been through a house fire. While I’m sure you pandas treat your devices gently, please remember that if something goes wrong, it’s not the tech support employee’s fault if they can’t bring your tablet back to life.
Astonishingly Enough, There Was Literally Zero External Physical Damage Once All Of This Was Cleaned Off
I Thought I Had Seen It All
This 3680w Timer Provided Power For Three Pioneer 65" Plasma Sets That Turned On At The Same Time
Bored Panda has been following the fascinating journey of Tech Support Gore for a few years now, and lucky for us, we were previously able to get in touch with one of the group’s moderators, Coffeechipmunk.
As an expert on all things gory when it comes to tech support, the moderator shared that some of the most popular photos in the group feature objects that look like they’re on the brink of exploding. “[It's] very dangerous, but very cool looking. They probably get so big because people post the pics and you think, 'Wow, that's just a bomb at that point,'" Coffeechipmunk shared.
User States "PC Runs Like Cr*p"
This Runs Internet For 4 Story Building
My Friend Payed 35$ For This Monstrosity
While you’ll find a wide variety of posts in Tech Support Gore, the community is not the place for everything tech support related. "A lot of the content on the subreddit does rather well, except for people coming for actual tech support, they get redirected to the right subreddit,” Coffeechipmunk explained. “For actual tech support gore, though, it seems like broken screens and slightly messy wires are the current posts that don't hit too hard.”
User Left Their MacBook In The Fridge Overnight Because It Was Overheating
From The Producers Of Fire Hazards And Pet Allergens I Present The The Worst Of Both Worlds
Opened My PC Today To Find Out Why It Suddenly Started Running So Much Quieter A Couple Of Days Ago, And Also Why My Office Had A Bad Smell This Morning. Mystery Solved... 🤢
As far as why Tech Support Gore has become so popular, Coffeechipmunk attributes the group’s success to how much fun it is. "In a time where most of the internet can be incredibly serious and most times saddening or angering, r/techsupportgore is fun because you go on it and you can laugh (and/or cringe) at the crazy posts,” the moderator previously told Bored Panda.
“Where else can you see a post like, ‘Wow, these cables really are messy’ to, ‘A lizard fried my motherboard’ back to back? I love our growing community. They're a bunch of people that just enjoy tech and to some extent, the worst of it,” Coffeechipmunk said.
My Mil Was Due To Catch A Flight At 6.00am But She "Doesn't Trust Technology" So She Tried To Photocopy Her Digital Boarding Pass Off Her Phone. The Tech Support Question Was "What's Wrong With The Photocopier"
Guy Comes Up To Me At Work, And Says He Wants A Car Charger. Then Proceeds To Show Me His Little Hot Pocket... :|
Today Almost Got Very Spicy
Artist: "this is a custom design, created to make awareness of the destruction of the land based glacial ice." $32.000
When it comes to what makes working in tech support so challenging, customer expectations are likely to come in at the top of the list. According to Contact Services, 66% of customers expect an employee to engage with them immediately when they reach out to a company, and 54% expect all encounters to be personalized. There’s also a lot of pressure on employees to provide excellent service, as 76% of customers say they would rather do business with a competitor after having more than one bad experience with a company.
Someone Put A Banana In My Backpack That Made It's Way Into My Laptop
This Power Strip Chain Powering Conference Room Users
Found This Little Gem On 4 Chan
According to Indeed, the average salary tech support workers earn in the United States is $21.65 an hour, with $13.39 being at the lowest end and $34.99 being the maximum they can expect to earn. But unfortunately, many of these workers say they’re not being compensated fairly for all of the work they do, as only 46% say they earn enough to keep up with the cost of living in their area.
After Some Construction, Customer Complained About Poor Wi-Fi Signal
But why is it all burned? There is no major current going through these circuits. Lightning strike?
Goodwill Test Outlet Gore
Incompatible Mouse Knocks Out Internet
As you can see from the photos on this list, working in tech support can be an absolute roller coaster. One day you might be given a laptop that had a banana smashed into it, while the next day you might find yourself untangling wires for what feels like an eternity. No matter what challenges you’re met with on a daily basis, if you’re a tech support worker who needs to be reminded that you’re not alone, the Tech Support Gore community will always understand what you’re going through!
Its Still Running!!
Service Pack 3. The best. Windows 2000 wasn't that long ago. Find me a 3.1.1 that is still working.
Not A Surprise Any Repair Tech Wants
Who The Fsck Designed This Motherboard ???
Whether you’ve worked in tech support for years or you’re glad you’ve never had to, we hope you’re enjoying these photos, pandas. Keep upvoting the pics that you find particularly shocking, and let us know in the comments below what the worst issue you’ve ever brought to tech support was. Then, if you’d like to go even deeper down the rabbit hole of tech support gore, you can find our last article featuring the same subreddit right here!
Ladies, Gents, All Of The Above? None Of The Above! I Present: My Office's Ftp Server
Costumer Came In Today Almost In Tears Asking Us If We Can Recover Her 5+years Of Work Data
Surface Pro 1724 From 2015, "Poor Build Quality, Never Buying Again Microsoft Product"
PC Suspended In Staircase Hole
Mac Bench
30 Gb Partition (Oc)
This is normal when disping of a hard drive with sensitive information. It's hard for even IT to know if the data absolutely can't be recovered, so outside if professional disposal, it's not uncommon to physically destroy the hard drive in such a fashion.
I Wonder Why There Is No Internet 🤔
The State Of My Aunt's Laptop
My Asus laptop looks similar. I have a bulldog clip on the bottom right holding screen in place. It's down to them overtightening the screen to the main body of the laptop and it eventually breaking. Never ever encountered this before and I hope I never do again.
Someone Plugged A M.2 Sata Directly Into Sata Power (Found On Facebook)
Shopping Mall Visitors Gradually Pick Off LED From The Panel
Would You Remove It Or Leave It 😬
I Brought My Computer To The Repair Shop And The Tech Guy Let Me Keep The Problem Child Part. It Seems Fine, Should I Put It In Some Rice?
Boss Sent Me Down To A Clinic To See If Anything Was Salvageable
I Lost My Watch Charger
Floor Outlet And Ethernet Jack Full Of Water With Some Sizzle
Email To The Company It Guy: So This Is Bad Right?
We Have Pigeons Roosting In One Of Our Comms Cabinets
Today I Found Out That Our It-Guy Does The Spaghetti Too ... This Panel Is Brand New
My Friend Thinks His Phone Is Fine, What Do You Think? (And Yes It Smells Like Lithium)
End User: Idk It Just Stopped Booting
C/S “I Didn’t Want To Buy A New One”
Found This At My University
I have one like that in my house. it's cos there's a network cable in the walls that was originally connected in the wrong room. running a cable from behind the 2nd port through the wall to the right room was cheaper than getting the entire thing redone, and using a short port to port bridge like that makes it work.
If It Fits It Sits
The Critical Extension Cord That Runs The Main Office Internet At My Job
Is This A Fire Hazard?
Seems Fine To Me Why Are You Complaining
Our Switch For A Lan Party
48 ports switch. Seems legit, no need for cable management for just a LAN party?
The Rear Of My Desk
Hotwire Your PC
Battery Had A Meltdown And Grenade Itself
Solid Wax Does Not Conduct Electricity
Residential Client Says They Need Data Off Their Old Hard Drive… (Pen For Scale)
Not Today, Death
Saw This At My Work Today
What’s the problem with this one? The upside-down graphics card? That’s normal with this kind of case.
How Does It Get This Bad?
I Hope Nothing Happens
Grandma Finally Upgraded. This Post Is Brought To You By Winston Cigarettes
I Got A Gpu On Ebay From St. Petersburg, Russia Before The War Started And It Obviously Was Harvested From A Highly Secure (Ts?) Workstation
Good Ol Susan Complaining That Her Laptop Doesn’t Charge And That Her Docking Station Doesn’t Work. Well No Shit Here’s Why
I blame the computer companies for the power sockets resembling the others now. Computers were sold to appeal to the ordinary dunces. And now here we are.
My Job Fixes Oven Control Boards. This Is One We Couldn't Fix
Recharging A Disposable Vape (Please Don't Try)
Recharging a non recharging battery? 🤦♂️💥? edit: apparantly as some mentioned below, it has a rechargeable battery 👍
Kludge Soldering To Save Some $
Friend Said That His Ps4 Isn't Accepting Discs
Router Has Been Overheating And I'm Out Of Heatsinks. Plenty Of Thermal Paste Though!
Very High Quality Apple Charger
Nintendo Switch Charging Port
Ports which see a high user-interactivity rate really should be chunky thru-hole parts.
It's Always From The Least Assuming Colleagues
Made This Out Of A Old Broken Laptop And Broken PC Medion PC And Hp Laptop
What Do You Mean That An Ice Chest, Outside Under The Eave Isn't A Good Place To Store Spare Electronics?
My Cousins Cable In Their Car: “Yeah They All Do That After About A Year And A Half”
Customer States That The Wall Has Always Been There…
Is It Safe To Use?
Server Rack In The Middle Of A Shopping Centre In Zakynthos, Greece
As long as random people can't get into it an unplug things it isn't the worst thing on the list.
So I Unplugged My Headset
Do you always yank on the cable to unplug it? If so that's your problem.
More Abuse Of School Computers
A Monitor One Of Our Users Dropped Off
Dirt Dauber Nest In A Brother Laser Printer
Let me guess they had it in their garage for a while and just decided to start using it again.
“TV Display Not Working”
Potting Compound Can't Stop Me From Finding A Shorted Capacitor
Piece of s**t compound. Back in the old old days, the innards of Commodore 64 power supplies were coated in this muck, which was all then sealed in unopenable heavy plastic. Ooo no, why let them be serviced when you can force people to buy costly new ones! But the bigger problem was because this made them overheat, they seriously blew out the computer's circuits as the boxes aged.
Look Like My Laptop Is A Roach Nest Now
Roaches love nesting inside of machines. The warmth makes them happy. I worked at a specific chain coffee shop in jersey city and we had an infestation. They would live in the espresso machine, coffee grinder, and the underneath of the sandwich station. I fought as hard as I could but the owners wouldn't get a real exterminator and my spraying every night wasn't fixing the issue. I decided I couldn't work for those people anymore shortly after this....
My Friend's Current Gpu
They Called Us, Electricians, To Check Why Their Servers Were Really Loud
Gotta clean those fans. This is true for computers and laptops too. Just turn everything off, unplug the device, and use very small burst of compressed air. Do this every two months, and you'll be surprised how much better/quite things run.
Our Client It Department, Is Working On New Fluid Transfer Technology. Help With Some Name Or Improvements For Their Project. Curently It Is Called "Water Over Ethernet"
Help, My Docking Station Charger Gets Hot And Sometimes Shocks Me
S5 Started Bootlooping, Now I'm Wondering How The Hell It Managed To Turn On
There's High Voltage. Fire Alarm And Intercom In This Can. And They Wanted To Find Out Why There's Buzzing When They Call A Room
Cpu Was Overheating With The Dinky Stock Cooler So I Stuck 2 Heatsinks Together. Dropped 10 Degrees Under Load
Just Had My First Day Back In School Today. I Find This Outside Of My Classroom. It's So Tempting To Just Yank Out The Cable And Exchange It Atleast For A Shorter One. Please, God Help Me
Boss Told An Unsupervised Very Junior Tech To Open Up A Customer's 27" Imac
One Of These Devices Takes A 12v Adapter, One Takes A 53v Adapter, Guess Which Adapter Got Plugged In To Which Device?
Computers And Monitors That Had Been Submerged In The Basement Of An Abandoned Juvie For 10+ Years
Just Saw This On Tiktok. Do You Think It Will Help? Lmao
Upgrading The Unupgradable
Wyatt A Difference 5 Years Makes
I still use discs but keep masters on the home network now. DSCF6942-6...3a2443.jpg
My Workplace
Found At A Mcdonalds
My Phone Caught On Fire
Blue/Green Pcb Oxidation Inside An Old Dell Thunderbolt Dock
Screen Protector Residue
Behold, The Mighty Mouse™, Covered In Mighty™ Amounts Of Schmoo. People Are Frickin Disgusting
Doesn't Fit Right? Just Torque It Down Harder. Direct From The Factory
Network Switch Pulled From A Factory Floor Near A Plasma Cutter. And, It Still Works! And This Was After It Was Shaken Out
This is why electronics really need to be in filtered enclosures. For all their limitations I still like the Dell Optiplex XE machines. They were designed to be run permanently overheated. One chock-full of carboard fibers has been happily humming away in my shipping department for 13 years. We had a bar Mitzvah for it in September.
Network Cabinet At A Place I Work
Hqrdwqre Tutestio Shows I Got 2 Dicks In The Dicks Menu
Customer Doesn’t Want To Pay For Back Up Internet Service
What In The Exact F**k
Ah, I Could Just Sleep On Them
Land Lord Special
Hey, Can I Get Help With Plugging In My iPad?
Is It Supposed To Come Out Like That?
Was really common on some of the old AMD sockets - I had a phenom2 that did it.
Found This Mess In My Hospital Inside Bedsheets Storage
If It Works It’s Not Stupid
Cpu Fan Not Working
Isp Replaced Damaged Fiber But The New Setup Is Just Horrific
I Think Dell Is Smoking It’s Own Thermal Paste
I Found This At A Friends House In Their TV
Gee, Wonder Why It Was Overheating
Tech Hasn't Been Installed But Stored In The Non-Ventilated Outdoor Box For Months... Never Seen Cardboard That Moldy
The More You Look The Worse It Gets
The Soldering Job On This Bose Soundlink Revolve…
My Own Gore. Hand-Bored A Vga Mounting Hole By Accident When Setting The Laptop Up For Wfh Right After Getting Out Of Bed
Who Needs Dp Adapters? Just Splice Your Own!
Well, That's A Dead Dvd Drive
Ant Got Behind My Monitor, Thought It Was In Front. Lets Hope Msi Will Warranty It
Friends "Gaming Laptop"
Old Microphone Port At My Old Elementry School
PC In A School Hmm
Moving A Switch In A Rack Was Met With Some Resistance
Broken Because 2 Pins
Found Some Bad Caps. Wonder Why They Died?
Y'all Like Your Iphones Boneless? 🤤
Someone Insisted That I Put Their Glorified Optiplex Into A "Gaming Case"
Apparently It Was Easier To Cover Up Part Of Their TV Than It Was To Just Change The Image…
One of my old jobs was working for a tour operator. All the hotel accountants got new laptops. They needed laptops so they could download the till information to see how much had been taken etc. At the end of the season (7 months)they came back in various states of wear and tear but the worst one was one laptop that had something spilled over it, a number of keys missing from the keyboard and one of the hinges was snapped completely but interestingly no-one from that hotel could tell me what happened.
Ahh, yes. I had hoped to see a puffy packet of doom on here.
One of my old jobs was working for a tour operator. All the hotel accountants got new laptops. They needed laptops so they could download the till information to see how much had been taken etc. At the end of the season (7 months)they came back in various states of wear and tear but the worst one was one laptop that had something spilled over it, a number of keys missing from the keyboard and one of the hinges was snapped completely but interestingly no-one from that hotel could tell me what happened.
Ahh, yes. I had hoped to see a puffy packet of doom on here.