Me in tech support.

Customer calls: "Internet is not working!!"

Me: "Router lights status?"

Customer: "Can't tell."

Me: "Why?"

Customer: "Router still in box."

Me: "..?"

Me (pretends it was just an error of communication): "Can you please describe the lights on your router?"

Customer: "I can't. It's still in the packaging. The box is on my table."

Me: "...??!? ... You ... need at least electricity to power this device."

Customer spirals into rage and madness: "I ordered wireless internet!! I won't plug any cables in! I did not want any wires!!!"

Makes me glad that I don't need to look at user reports.

"This bug happened"

"Ok, can you tell us the things you did to make it happen?"

"You're the developers, figure it out"

Works both ways.

• Raise bug with as much info as possible following template
• Did you try reboot, clear cache?
• You did? Ok, duplicate
• Never fixed.

Me: Contacts tech support while providing detailed information about the issue and what I've already tried.

Support: Tells me to try what I've already tried without fully reading my ticket.

I hate this, especially when you wait several days for reply.

https://m.xkcd.com/583/

Used to do outsourced IT for a lot of different companies including some large law firms.

Literally had one asshole lawyer put in tickets every time which consisted of something like:

"There's something wrong on my computer. I'll be away from my desk from 6:22 to 6:27, have it fixed by the time I get back."

Queue nothing getting fixed and this removed trying to leverage that as a reason why their law firm of 250 people didn't need IT services.

Having worked as a phone monkey and letter monkey previously, this is painfully accurate. The first skill you have to learn is effective questioning, as you only get a certain number of question attempts and the number is different per user.

My first tech job was with a place that did net security mostly marketed to fast food places. Some of the evening shift calls had me questioning reality since most of the people I talked to where fry cooks first, shift managers second, and by default of seniority the tech for a site as needed.

Countless 'the computer won't turn on' calls which ended up being them pushing the power on the monitor.

The one that called up just to listen to our hold music until I answered, which was actually pretty good, sort of an industrial/techno thing.

CS: The system just crashed, can I turn it back on? Me: Sure go ahead and let me know if there are any errors. CS: Hold on I can't see the button, the power is still out...

CS: Our internet is being really flakey. Me: What lights are on at the gateway? CS: It's hard to tell, it's underneeth the pop machine, by the way the pop won't stop spraying, how do I fix that?

And the one who got so frustrated with trying to fix things they hucked the firewall/gateway into the deepfryer and asked for a RMA.

Had a 1st level rep call me once about a ticket I'd submitted (apparently they're required to initiate contact at least once?), say "Right, I see your ticket notes here, does the issue persist? Alright, I'll escalate it to the 2nd level, have a nice day!" and I'm pretty sure I've never heard any rep so cheerful.

That’s when you install Google Ultron and call it a day

Works with some values but not with others.

So which values work and which don't?

Also, submit ~~daily~~ hourly progress reports providing a detailed accounting of the steps you are taking to work on this. But please, no more than half a sentence, bc I won't be reading them anyway.

Took me ages on info to figure out Mortal Kombat 1 crashes on startup because Denuvo

As someone who’s team has to go on 1st line support rota every few weeks; The ticket queue has a metric shit-ton of these reports that just never get “fixed”. Can relate.

Me every fucking day with our testers.

Yeah, I bought a phone from a brand popular in a... very populated country, so all I can't say is: "sir please fix the problem immediately"

https://ittavern.com/troubleshooting-asking-the-right-questions/