rSlash - r/Talesfromtechsupport IDIOT Karen Dropped a Speaker on Her Head

Episode Date: July 24, 2022

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Welcome to our slash Tales from Tech Support, where a Karen almost kills herself. Our next Reddit post is from Mammoth Warning. I used to work for a company that supplies overhead music to big business chains, thank Target, Starbucks, Hot Topic, etc. My department provides technical support to stores when their music isn't working. When something goes wrong in a store, we're not talking to some area manager Karen who's ready to scream at us for the music being down. Rather, we have to troubleshoot with the stores themselves.

So if we're calling a Starbucks location, it's going to be some uninvested barista or an assistant manager who couldn't care less that their system isn't blaring. All I went for Christmas is you 20 times a day. Mind you, that does mean that we have a hard time getting the people at the store to troubleshoot with us at all. And such was the case with the Starbucks that I called. The first three attempts when something like this. Hey there, my name is OP from company name.

I'm reaching out today regarding your overhead music. Is a manager available to talk? This is her. When is the technician coming out? Unfortunately, I'm unable to send a tech add unless I verify some things with the system first. Do you have time to remote troubleshooting? No, just send a tech. Click. This happened a few times over the course of two days as I tried to call it different times

to catch the store at a less busy time. Unfortunately, due to company policy, we can't send out a technician unless we've already tried remote troubleshooting. Eventually, on my fourth or fifth call, the manager finally relented. Once we get somebody to agree to troubleshoot, it generally only takes like five minutes. We have very simple setups. A music player connects to the internet for playlists updates and also feeds music to an amplifier. The amplifier sends the music to the speakers in the store. If you can hook up a video game console, you can also hook up one of our players.

And even the least tech savvy person can usually follow along with our instructions for troubleshooting. So we began. Great. Are you able to locate your music player in amplifier? No, I don't know where they are. Have you ever changed the volume of the music in your store? Yeah, there's a box with a little knob. That's the amplifier. Well, how was I supposed to know that?

I rolled my eyes and apologized for not being clear, but I continued anyway. It's up on a shelf that's too high. I can't reach it. Well, how do you reach it when you want to change the volume? I get a step stool, but I don't know where it is right now. I try my best not to sign an exasperation, and she tries her very best to insist that there's no way that she can troubleshoot. She just repeatedly asks if I can send a tech, and winds about not being able to reach the equipment.

Ma'am, I'm sure that you'll find the step stool if you look. Find in, I'll just use my chair. That's in up a huge red flag. I said, I'd advise against that, ma'am. It might not be stable. I think that I'm perfectly capable of standing on a chair. Thank you. Ma'am, some of that equipment is very heavy, and it's not safe to use a chair to reach

you for troubleshooting. Listen, why don't you just stick to your job and not worry about what I'm doing? Okay. After she says this, I hear some skidding noises coming from the other end of the phone. Is everything alright? I'm fine. I'm just rolling my office chair to the shelf. Ma'am, please don't stand on a chair with wheels. She completely ignored me and just asked, okay, so what am I?

She was abruptly cut off as I hear a loud thud followed by an even louder crash. Ma'am, are you okay? No answer. I try and vein for about a minute to call out to the woman on the other end, steadily getting more and more worried that she's seriously injured. Eventually someone else picks up the phone. Hey, so, uh, she can't come back to the phone right now. Her forehead is bleeding.

What happens? So not only did she fall off the chair onto her back, but she brought down the amplifier on top of her. Our amplifiers are about the size of an Xbox and the corners are not rounded. This thing had landed on its corner on her forehead while she was lying prone on the ground. After a few minutes of stun silence, not knowing where to go from here, I simply ask,

is the amp disconnected from everything else? The barista said, yeah, cool. Then this counts as an install. I'm sending a technician. Have a nice day. Click. I take a moment to recover before going back to making outbound calls. Luckily, the store never called to complain about that interaction and I continued on with my day, acting as if nothing ever happened. Our next reddit posted from Daven. So this happened about 15 years ago when I worked at a primary and secondary school.

I was happily typing away at my computer when a student knocks on our basement office door. IT Mrs. X can't get her mouse working. Okay, let's go check it out. I quickly go with a student to Mrs. X's classroom. Mrs. X says, it's about time. Internally, I am already pissed off because I came the moment the student came and got me. I try to just get to her desk to look at the issue. She has an Acer computer on her desk that's connected to a screen and projector.

The mouse was wireless, so most likely it was just a battery issue. The mouse on this student computer isn't working, so my smartboard isn't working and it's costing me valuable teaching time. Your systems are terrible. I'm sorry to hear that. I want to tell her to shut up because this always happens. Call me up, complain that I'm late, and then make me wait so you can complain so I can't fix the problem. Don't be sorry, just fix it.

And next time you upgrade systems, make sure they work better before you leave. Okay. I had long since given up trying to explain to people when and how we upgrade. Her last upgrade had been about 6 months prior, but if I had told her that, she would have either refused to believe it or complained the issue was that she hadn't been upgraded since then. I took one look at her desk and I instantly saw the issue. The mouse is that we use were dark blue and wireless, and, annoyingly, the

whiteboard erasers were also dark blue. I quickly switched the eraser for a mouse and hide my action so the students don't see it so she doesn't look too bad. I then flipped the mouse over, turned it on, and then put it back to show that it's working. All fixed, just needed to be turned off and turned on. Why? But before I could come up with an answer, a student shouted, Mrs. Axe, you were using an eraser! Ha, then all the kids started laughing. I say, I'm sorry, I tried my best to hide it. Students, quiet!

I tell her that it's all fixed and to feel free to let me know if I can help any further. She simply nods and lets me go. I get back to my office and tell my manager what happened. I also write her an email apologizing for not being able to hide the swap of the eraser and the mouse better. It may have been funny, but I try my best to protect staff from being laughed at by students. The next day, I come in to work with a meeting request from her, the head of junior and my manager. It turns out Mrs. X made a formal complaint that I made her look bad. day, I come in to work with the meeting request from her, the head of junior and my manager. It turns out Mrs. X made a formal complaint that I made her look bad.

My manager tells me to refuse the meeting and that he'll go in my place. I don't know what was said in there, but my manager basically told me that she was complaining that I didn't just go and get a spare mouse to save her from looking bad. And that by doing what I did, I undermined her ability in the classroom and ruined her credibility with the students and parents. She was furious that my manager had stopped me from coming. My manager said that if she pressed the issue, he would happily take this up with the principal. And he will make it clear that I had done everything I could to hide her stupidity. She dropped the complaint

and she was friendly with me from then on, though I could tell that she didn't like me. So using an eraser as a mouse is bad enough, but I'm imagining the teacher coming up to the white board with a wireless mouse in her hand trying to erase what she wrote while the mouse is like clicking. I don't understand why isn't this like clicking? Like, I don't understand. Why isn't this erasing? Also, I have a pretty good sense that the students already knew that this teacher was an idiot, because my guess is that the students intentionally swapped the mouse in the eraser and they expected her not to notice.

So don't worry Mrs. X, your students already thought that you were an idiot. You just confirmed it. Our next reddit post is from Ravencrow. I'm a web developer, and I had a client whose name is also a woman's name. The client opened a new ticket with me. When I searched for my company's name on Google, our products don't show up. I immediately knew that this was going to be something that I couldn't help him with, but I waited to discuss it in our next meeting.

However, I was not prepared for how amusing it was actually going to be. When I do a Google search for my company, I would expect to get the images that are on our website, but instead, it shows a bunch of images of anime girls. I searched his name on Google, switched to images, and sure enough, it was all anime girls. I said, right. So if I search for your company name plus the product type, I do see images of the products on your site. But if I just search for your company name,

you're gonna get results for anything that shares the same name. And since your company name is a person's name, you're gonna get lots of results for things other than your company. How can we improve this? Well, you can add more meta tags to your images to make them as detailed as possible in search engine optimization to improve their relevance.

But as for searching just the company name, images from your site aren't going to take priority over other images on the internet that include the same name and are more relevant. So there's nothing you can do to make our products show up instead of anime girls? Nope, you'd have to talk to Google. Opie, that's not your fault at all. If this guy named his company, Diva Rule 34, then he's just asking for it. Our next reddit post is from Dinochius, some background information. I work for a corporation where users handle enough information

that they could commit at least 2-3 felonies for every single little query they touch. As such, they have a lot of policies that seem like extreme overkill, but on some level, I agree with the attempt. The actual application of the rules, I think, borders on insanity, but the attempts aren't all complete failures, so for some other info you need to know. There are internal USB connectors inside of each computer case. All external USB ports have physical blocks super glued in, so they're not usable. So it's Friday morning at 8 a.m. and I'm just sitting around waiting for a ticket or

something to do. I get a call that a computer can't log in, and there's no ticket because, well, they can't log in to start a ticket. It's entirely understandable. The computer is a network log-in, so there's like a thousand different things that it could be. Heck, it could just be unplugged and that's why it's not turning on. You all know how users can be. I head up to their cubicle and start checking it out. Everything's plugged in, the computer turns on, there's just no internet. I switch her network cord with her neighbors, and her neighbors computer connects with the jack.

I log into the local admin account, and there's no internet connection or network connection at all. I check the device manager, and there's the problem. The driver for the onboard network got corrupted, something and I can't roll it back either. Great. This means I need authorization from Cybersecurity to use a flash drive. Then I'll have to tear the computer apart to get to the USB port inside the case that isn't super glued.

On top of that, the key for the case requires my supervisor to sign off at it and give me the key for the case lock. Also, I have to write up the ticket and put it in the system. I run down to my office and download the driver for her computer and email it to my boss, with a note that I stuck it on a thumb drive. Then I walk over to my boss's desk. I said, hey boss, I emailed you a network driver that I need on a thumb drive. I also need you to submit my authorization form to Cybersecurity for the use of a portable storage device. Yes, that is really two separate forms. So we sent the forms off to cyber security to have them authorized. Half an hour later, we get no response. So the hit of IT calls down to cyber security to

get an ETA. Ten minutes later, the request is denied with the reason just email the file. So we got the biggest idiot ever to review this request. She has this tendency to just completely drop the ball. Before she took the job in cybersecurity, she had neither experience in cybersecurity nor any basic understanding of IT. But it's okay, she can have passively enforced rules that she doesn't understand and she spends her day helping idiots reset their passwords using the password reset tool.

So my boss has to call her and explain the situation. He can't email the file because that computer doesn't have internet, which is the problem in the first place. After five minutes on the phone, he has to go upstairs to the boss of cybersecurity and explain why she's an idiot today. Half an hour later, the approval comes from cybersecurity, and my boss texts me to grab the form from him and his spare keys in USB drive. So now, finally, I have both authorization forms and I return to the woman's desk. She'll have to note for me that she's making a Starbucks run and she'll be back.

So I power down her computer and turn it on its side so I can get it open to plug in the USB. I'm standing there fiddling with the flash drive. When someone yanks it out of my hand, tosses it on the floor and starts stomping on it. I said, what the hell are you doing? USB devices are banned," he replied. Whoa, whoa, whoa. First of all, I have authorization from Cybersecurity. Second of all, that's company property. And third of all, you just destroyed evidence. So now I have to call my boss, who's still

in Cybersecurity's office and explained to him what went down. Cybersecurity overhears this exchange, and they decide to open a file on mishandling suspect data. AKA smashing evidence. Around 11 a.m., my boss came down to the user's desk with another flash drive and more forms to fill out. I spent an hour with Cybersecurity filling out paperwork about the destruction of a $5 flash drive. Then I had to give my statement on data mishandling and my statement responding to the accusation of using a USB storage device. So this took 3 hours and 15 minutes of two text time to reinstall

a network driver. And now they have to pay a data recovery specialist, god only knows how much to try to recover nothing of value on a $5 flash drive, just to prove that there was nothing malicious on it. Oh, and I'm on paid leave because they don't know for certain what's on the flash drive. Cybersecurity told me that as long as a data recovery finds what I said was on it, or if they can't find anything, that I'm in the clear. If the drive hadn't been smashed, then cybersecurity could have just looked at the USB drive to see what was on it.

It would have taken like 8 seconds. Instead, I get to collect paychecks for doing nothing until the data recovery experts take a few cracks at the USB drive. But the good news is that I got to go home early on our Friday. That was our slash tales from TechSupport. And if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day.