rSlash - r/Talesfromtechsupport "My Computer is Literally on Fire"

Episode Date: July 21, 2021

r/Talesfromtechsupport Welcome to the world of tech support, where we have idiotic users, angry customers, and douchebag bosses. We've also got a computer on fire! Life as a tech support worker just wouldn't be complete without a few exploding computers on your hands. We've also got a really sweet and wholesome story involving an older gentleman who can't get his TV working. If you like these stories, be sure to subscribe for more daily Reddit content! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to R-Slash, a podcast where we read the best post from across Reddit. Today's subreddit is R-Slash Tales from Tech Support, where OP gets a stupid co-worker fired. Our next Reddit post is from CopperD. A call comes in. A user is reporting that our keyboard is becoming erratic. It's possessed. I grab a replacement keyboard and head down to our office. I get there, and I begin to make sure that she does, indeed, have a faulty keyboard. Until I move the tower and notice a second, wireless keyboard sitting on the side of it, laying flat on the floor with a stack of papers and a tissue box sitting on top of it, I pull the wireless keyboard out, and I notice the in barrage has stopped on the screen.

I press the in key once, and the letter in is added to the word file. Exorcism performed. Demons banished. I am now a priest. Our next reddit posted from weaponized origami. I spent three horrible years working in a call center. Two of which I was roped into acting as tech support, despite the fact that I was originally hired to sell insurance.

The calls that I got made me way for humanity. After my son was born, I decided not to return from maternity leave. I just couldn't handle staying up all night with a screaming newborn, and then coming into work and calmly asking people how the hell they couldn't see a huge red, create an account button, smack dab in the middle of the page. But somehow they could still find our phone number in tiny font up in the corner of the website to call and demand that we do it for them. Well you guys, my baby is now a toddler, and I just had that misty-eyed, hand-on-hard,

proud parent moment that you always hear about. My son was playing with his brilliant baby laptop, which is basically a bright plastic lamb shell that plays music when the baby mashes the keyboard. Suddenly, the music stopped. The baby was confused. Further button mashing had no effect. I watched from the sofas my son frowned, then experimentally smash the buttons harder. Then, as I looked on an amazement and pride, he turned it off and on again. Welcome, it announced the screen lighting up in a joyful display. My son contentedly returned to his button mashing, and I shed a proud tear. So what if your kid can say mommy and daddy knows how to use a spoon?

Mine can troubleshoot. So while we're on the story of bragging about how great our kids are, just recently my baby Lily hit a new milestone. She grabbed my fingers. She grabbed my fingers, stuck it in her mouth and started gnawing on it, which is something she'd never done before.

My wife saw this happen and while she was impressed that baby finally did something that actually required coordination, she said, you really shouldn't let her do that because you haven't washed her hands. I said, yeah, you're right, I'm sorry, and I pulled my hand away. Within two minutes, the baby had once again grabbed the exact same finger, stuck it in her mouth and started knowing on it. My wife saw this happen the second time and she said, what are you doing? You can't let the baby suck your finger unless you've washed her hands. I said, oh, don't worry on it. My wife saw this happen the second time and she said, what are you doing? You can't let the baby suck your finger unless you've washed your hands."

I said, oh don't worry about it, it's the same finger so she already sucked all the dirt off of this finger the first time. It's clean now. My wife was not thrilled about that answer. Our next reddit post is from Guitar's Don't Dance. So my story starts in what was a normal day taking calls on the front line for a large cable company. The job paid well, and for the most part the people that I dealt with are fairly nice to talk to. Quite often we get calls from seniors who are having problems with their TV. Now my heart does go out to some of these folks, because up until

recently we would supply straight analog cables to many homes. However, nowadays we use more advanced digital equipment and this has caused a lot of frustration with older people who don't know how to operate that equipment. For example, having to switch your TV to video or HDMI to get the picture. So oftentimes, we get customers who are repeated fenders with long ticket histories on these types of issues. So anyway, I get a call from an older gentleman who's quite bitter and mean right off the bat. He did not like that I had to ask for his address and phone number to verify the account, and he hated that he had to speak with a machine before

reaching an agent. I have some experience handling these types of customers, however, this call was going to be a little different. Let's call this customer Mr. Smith. I spent over 45 minutes with this guy trying to get his TV set connected to the digital box so he could receive a TV picture. No luck. He was clearly getting frustrated by the whole ordeal, and he started blaming me for not being able to do my job properly, how I was useless, etc. Whatever. Like I said, I dealt with this type of customer before, so I tried my best not to take it too personally. But eventually, I had to ask him if we could book a service tech to come to his home to get his TV working correctly.

This was a free service, by the way. Unfortunately, our booking calendar was showing the earliest appointment three days out. That's when Mr. Smith dropped this on me. Don't bother sending out a technician because I'll be dead by then. I'm 94, and TV is the only thing that I have left. Are you really going to make me wait for a tech? I instantly felt bad. I mean, I've heard every complaint in the book as to why people don't want to wait for a tech, but this one kind of got to me. I'm in my mid 20s, so honestly, I can't even imagine how it must feel to utter those words.

So, I spoke with my supervisor who said they see if they could get someone out earlier. So I let Mr. Smith know, and he was predictably not very happy with my answer. At that point, it almost sounded like he started to cry, and he started talking about how he has no family left, and no friends who come visit him either. Man, I felt terrible! So, I took it upon myself to ask Mr. Smith if I could pay him a visit. He lived in a small city one town over from where I was, so not a very far drive. He was a little shocked that I was willing to do this, but he sounded thankful that I was willing to personally come out and help him. So I drive over to his residence and meet him. Within 30 seconds I had fixed his issue,

and I even brought him a simplified remote to avoid this problem in the future. That's when he started crying. He started talking about how he hadn't actually spoken or really interacted with anyone for years. He gave me a hug and he told me how thankful he was that I had come out to help him. And he told me how sorry he was for being so mean to me earlier on. I said it was no problem and I was happy to help him and that was it. I left. Three weeks later, my supervisor came to my desk and asked me if I could come speak to her about Mr. Smith's account. Turns out, Mr. Smith had sent the cable company a handwritten letter outlining how thankful

he was for helping him with his issue, and how it really made an old man happy again for once in a really long time. The company framed that letter and put it on the wall in our front entrance to retail. I guess the moral of this story is that no matter how nasty someone is to you over the phone, sometimes they're not always a terrible person and they're just going through something. I still think about Mr. Smith occasionally when I get those nasty customers and it makes me feel a little bit better. Anyways, thanks for reading. I just thought I'd share how this one call changed my outlook on life.

Man, OP, when your manager came in to talk to you about Mr. Smith's account, I was pretty sure that you were gonna say that Mr. Smith was dead. So I was pretty relieved to see that wholesome outcome instead. Good job, OP. Our next reddit post is from Universal Binary.

This is my all-time favorite interaction with tech support. Late one December evening a few years ago, I got an unexpected call from my boss. He said there was a fire at the office, and I might want to come in and see what was going on. So, I did, and by the time I got there, the fire was mostly under control. A couple dozen people and I were standing outside in the parking lot waiting for the firefighters to give us the all clear to enter the building. We had internet service through an awesome local

internet service provider at the time. It was kind of a small company that really cared about service. While I was shivering next to a fire truck, my cell phone rang. It was one of the text from that company. We used to share an office at a different company years ago, so I knew the guy well.

Hello? Hi, this is Sush and Sush from your internet service provider. I just wanted to let you know that our system notish your internet link is down and we're working on fixing it. Uh, that might be because it's on fire. Did you just say that it's on fire? Yeah, there was a fire in the building.

I'm standing next to a fire truck right now. They're not even letting us in yet. Then, without missing a beat, the tech said, oh, whoa, okay then. I'll assume the problem is on your end. Click. Despite the cold and the crazy situation, I couldn't help laughing at the absurdity of it all. Our next reddit post is from PCX. We have a pretty simple system. You ask for something and you get something. With me so far, it really is that simple for the user. We do have to do some crazy work on our end depending on what that something is, but that's an entirely different story. There's also a big button that says, click here if the thing that you want is for someone else. That button has a giant red warning underneath that says, Hey, if you don't use that big button right

above, then the thing that you ask for will be for you, not someone else. Also, if you're asking for item X and the system detects that you already have an item X and the system will say, Are you sure that you don't want it for someone else because you already have that item? So anyways, interuser A. This user supports many other users. Their department might get a lot of turnover because every month they get at least one new person. Or maybe they're expanding? Who knows, that's not my problem. Like clockwork, on the second Monday of every month we get the same ticket. I asked for

item X for a new hire, but they never got it. Please fix. I am not kidding. Literally every second Monday of every month for the last year or so we've gotten that same ticket. Can you guess what went wrong? Let me give you a hint. It has something to do with someone not using the giant button and not reading the two different warnings or pop-ups. I had gotten really tired of sending that same user the same email every month. Please click the button when you're asking for an item for someone else. We'll send the ticket over to the Finance Department to swap the charges. That email that I write that user also contains very detailed step-by-step instructions. The rest of my team had also got tired of hearing from user A, so we decided to not

help this time. Our manager backed us up. So we disabled user A's ability to submit tickets. That person now has to call the help desk for tickets. We also didn't forward the current ticket to finance. We sent user A a strongly worded email that basically said, look, you do this every month. We've told you how to do this the correct way for over a year now. If you still can't figure it out, then you're on your own, and all these charges will

fall on you. Then we attach to the last 12 months' worth of tickets, and we CC'd user A's boss. User A must not have noticed that her boss was CC'd on that email, because she sent us back a nasty email. What do you mean I can't open tickets anymore? And why am I getting charged for it? Do you know who I support? He will fix this now, or my boss will hear about this. Her email included other comments

about how stupid our system is, how incompetent my team is, and other non-professional language. Her email was also largely in caps. We didn't get around to responding until after lunch, but as it turns out, we don't need to respond anymore. User A's boss had apparently responded. I apologize for user A's behavior.

Please don't let her behavior affect the wonderful support that you provide to our department. User B will now be responsible for interfacing with your team to get items for new hires. Please grant user B the permissions that user A previously had. I read through the instructions you sent user A and I tried it out and it worked as expected. User B will be using those directions to complete our work. Also, please see ticket numbers such and such for terminating user A's network access. We killed user A's network account with pleasure. Down in the comments we had this story from JJ Bombadil. I had to terminate a user once, and it was the best day. That particular user was a giant butthole and deserved to get fired.

The best part is that he was writing an email to the CEO after he was terminated. It was strongly worded and he was doing it on his company computer. I got to reset his password and then forcibly reboot his computer while he was typing the letter. The rage I imagined this person having gave me so much pleasure that it was kind of scary. Our next credit post is Seconds. Hello IT. Hi, I need your help. Okay, what's the problem?

I need you to incubate something on my computer. I think to myself, oh what fresh hell is this? Incubate, what do you mean? Look, if you can't help, can you just put me through to a senior tech? It's not that I can't help, it's that I need more information about your problem before I can help you. It's simple, there's something on my computer and you have to put an incubation for me. What type of file is it?

I don't know, I can't do anything because the program needs admin rights, that's why I need you. Have you downloaded a file or been on a dodgy website? I don't need the fourth degree here, I just need to get this incubated so we can both go about our day. If you right-click on the green w at the bottom right of your screen and select Scan now, it'll run a check for anything bad and we can go from there. I can't do anything with that because when I click it it says, please contact the network administrator to access blah blah. I need you to right-click on the icon, not left click. I know what

I'm doing, it says I can't. At this point I'm thinking, clearly I have to escalate this to the help of Moron Division. I say, there's no need to raise your voice. I'm trying to help you. It's simple though, I need your admin right so I can move something to incubation. It's not hard. Okay, I'll remote in and have a look. Please click the rescue me icon on your desktop. Finally you're going to do what I asked for in the first place. I am done with you. When I get into this guy's computer, I spot something, so I wave down my manager.

I tell the guy, there's no such thing as incubation or an incubator on your computer. You mean quarantine. You believe that you downloaded a virus or opened a malicious website and you got yourself some malware, and this doesn't happen on its own. You have all the tools needed to diagnose and hopefully remove the infection. You have two buttons on your mouse, one on the left and one on the right, but you refuse to click the correct one in the correct place. I've taken over your machine and I'm currently running the scan for the issue.

I can also see from your open internet pages that you've been trying to access a number of torrent websites. There are many malicious advertisements and links on those websites that are designed to trick you and get you to visit a listed sites or download questionable files. You're in breach of company policy by using company property for questionable and illegal activity. This will all be logged and reported. I can see from my console that your system is automatically

blocked over 20 threats a day, so this is clearly an ongoing issue for you. Oh, what? I'm now going to escalate this to the IT manager who's been monitoring this call and would like to have a word with you. Click. The user was quickly summoned to a meeting with HR and then fired on the spot. The user then tried to sue for unfair dismissal.

The IT manager actually laughed out loud when he was told the reason was unfair and phasued of my privacy. So back when I was working my previous office job before working at YouTube, I had a problem with my computer. I don't remember what the problem was, but I had to call IT to fix it. And IT remodeled into my computer, and they had to do something that required admin access. You know that little window that pops up that's like, you need admin access, put in the admin name in the password.

I literally watched a sky typing the administrator name and the password which actually showed the password. So I quickly grabbed a post at note and just wrote down the administrator name in the password. Then after the IT guy signed off, I tried out their credentials, and they worked. So I spent the rest of my work day downloading a bunch of programs onto my work computer that I guarantee you I wasn't supposed to have on my computer. So thanks for giving me the administrator password, random IT guy.

Getting through long boring work days was a lot easier when I could just boot up video games and play it on my work laptop. That was our slash tales from tech support, and if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new rite of podcast episodes every single day.