Thank you for calling the helpdesk

[neckbeard]

Hey folks, methinks it is time for me to start a new thread. Not only is this an opportunity to introduce myself, I can also find out how many of you have worked in a call center. Alright, I should start off by stating that I am Nathan, otherwise known as Neckbeard, a few of you have already commented on how awesome the name is...my response, I like it. So anyways, I'm 21 and have been playing FL since almost the beginning. Oddly enough, I've never had a 50, highest I got was like 42. I have just recently started playing again after about a year or so away, it's fun, but so much has changed, oh well, I'll figure it out and be fodder in no time. Enough about that though, back to me. I enjoy playing various games, and have found a new love for drinking...in moderation of course, no one likes a drunk. Gawd, I'm horrible at this, I work for a particular helpdesk company doing mainframe support. It sounds a lot harder and important that it really is though, mainly I do password resets. The main question is, who else has worked or is working at a helpdesk, and if so, any funny stories to tell? It's nice being back, and hopefully I will be able to become an active member of this forum and a better player of the mud...cause I suck at it now. I need a 50 bad, maybe I will luck out and find me someone to hook me up with a good group, I would love to go from 1 to 50 in one night, that would be awesome.

[WarriorCleric]

I work at the University at Buffalo's University Residence Halls and Apartments IT Help Desk for Faculty and Staff. I don't deal with students, only people who work for URHA.

My favorite call:

'My CD drive stopped working, a post-it note broke it. Please fix, I'd like to use CDs.'

That was the ticket we got. (They submit tickets online and we call them, or they call us, whichever works for them).

We couldn't get ahold of her for a day, so we are trying to figure out how the hell a post-it note broke her CD drive. Our leading hypothesis was that she had placed a post-it note on a cd with information regarding the cd and inserted the disc in the drive with the note on it.

However, the call the next day confused us even more. We asked how it happened and this was her response. 'Well, I had a post-it on my desk and when I went out to lunch and came back, it was gone. Then I tried to use my CD drive, but it made a horrible noise and wouldn't work.'

No idea how the hell someone makes that leap, but that was the first, and apparently most rational thought she had for why her drive broke. We asked it the post-it was on a cd, but nope, it was on the wall to her little workstation, on the other side from the computer.

Anyways, we pick it up and check, the plastic gears inside were totaled, the culprit? No one knows. Nothing inside. The location of the post-it? Still a mystery to this day.

WC

[Kinicky]

Nice to meet you Neckbeard.

My name is Thomas. I enjoy long walks on the beach, and women that understand that my first priority has to be to FL. I have shaggy blonde hair and a finely toned body, mainly as a result of spending endless hours working out behind a keyboard. I'm a hopeless romantic, and can communicate my feelings with a highly effective use of emoticons. Sound interesting? Maybe you should find out more! Call me.

[neckbeard]

WC: I know all too well about the ticketing system, we use a program called service center, almost as much of a joke as Microsoft Works. Crazy what some people think at times. I'm just lucky that I don't have to deal with end users....technical term for people who don't know any better. My favorite call would have to be one for a Nuclear power plat user needing emergency access to the mainframe system, I would ask him which system he needed access to, and he would just tell me his name...did I mention that he was from India, I don;t think I did. Anyways this went on for a few minutes until I finally just gave him access to the one that is most commonly used, all I know is that it worked. So good for me.

Kinicky: Nice reply by the way, I too enjoy the occasional long walk on the beach, my hair is longer than shaggy, and communicate my feelings through text messaging, which I painstakingly punctuate properly, or at least as properly as I can. Just ask Talcian or Streetfighter, they know.

So far so good as far as the warm greetings go, now all I have to do is stay off of Chayesh's bad side, what with him being the god of death and what not.

[Chayesh]

I'm so photogenic, I don't have a "bad side".

[neckbeard]

So it's all bad then? Bah dum psh.

[Questioner]

To be the god of death is to be completely cuddly and sweet. There is absolutely nothing wrong with killing, and enjoying the anguished screams of the suffering and dying. Bad...nope..not Chayesh. The one and only Cuddly god of death.

[neckbeard]

Ha ha, like a bunny, or maybe a hamster...yeah a cute cuddly hamster god of death.

[Belegriel]

So far so good as far as the warm greetings go' date=' now all I have to do is stay off of Chayesh's bad side, what with him being the god of death and what not. [/quote']

You're really not doing a good job of that.

[BigMac]

I'm a Level 2 tech support agent for a fairly large company (~400+ employees, three offices). There are only two levels. Level 1 and Level 2. I was promoted 2 weeks shy of the company record. I do a lot of training and development on our VBScript-powered knowledge-base (mostly a hand-built ASP content and information/employee management system, but prettied up with fancy javascript and a beautiful css). I'm the go-to guy. I fix the interweb.

My brother crackwilly works there too; he's a Level 1.

The money isn't bad, but I'm thinking about going to work for Dell doing server support and almost doubling my pay (and they pay for school! woot!).

I've got lots of funny stories. From the "Woot! You kick *** dude, now I can get porn again!" guy to this really funny story that goes like this: I was talking with this asian woman with a very thick accent. I couldn't understand most of the things she said. I kindly asked her if there was someone else there who would feel more comfortable talking with me, and she said in the thickest asian accent in the world, "here my dorah (daughter). she fiteen (fifteen). She do wever (whatever) you want!" I had an instant FMJ flashback.

I do a lot of web development and I really enjoy the web development side of my job. Last week, two full-time trainers at work and the company linux nerd (very very smart guy) and I met with an agent from cPanel. If any of you guys are familiar with linux servers and professional webhosting, you'll be familiar with cPanel's control panel and WHM software. I learned a whole lot from that guy.

I dig my job. n00bs at work have hit on me because I'm so leet, but I see through it. They just want my megahurtz.

[WarriorCleric]

Some blow back happened today.

Friday I received a ticket:

Printer is not working properly.

Our helpdesk ticket system is setup so we can ask questions and use the ticket as a psuedo message board.

With that the only information from this ticket was that some printer was not working, I only had the submiter's name and location to go by to solve this problem. So I new she was from a certain residence complex on campus, but that was it. So the first step, is the printing problem a fluke? I respond with:

Have you tried restarting the printer?

Not more than 30 seconds later I receive.

Yes' date=' Everyday...[/quote']

Alright, well that's an odd answer with some unprofessional punctuation right there. I'll let it slide and give her a compliment to diffuse the situation.

While it's good that you are restarting your printer everyday' date=' my question was if you had since the problem started.[/quote']

Lots of people leave their computers on 24/7, leading to problems a simple restart fixes, so we try to get people to restart there computer every once and a while. First, it lowers the amount of calls we get about bad performance, and also it makes them feel more empowered about the computer they use. They feel they have some control, and thus some ownership on the computer, so they actually try to take care of it. Sometimes.

Anyway, the next response

Long Block of what must have been thought to be technical information. Informing me that she hadn't been in till Wednesday. Finally being told that this problem was dealt with last week by my Boss. Some more technical stuff she copy and pasted from my Bosses email to her.

if that answers your QUESTION~

It was not until that point that there was any mention of which printer it was that was having this problem, there was not any mention that this had been a previous problem, there was no mention as to the extend of the users having the problem. And my favorite was the ending, the perfectly reasonable capitalization of a word followed by the botched attempt of an exclamation point. And at that point I was no longer the SA (Student Assistant) working that day, I had become WC working that day!

EMAIL TIME!

The Goal: Explain myself, and Apologize.

Difficulty: Do not admit guilt, you were not wrong.

I understand that computer problems can be more than a little frustrating, and that the questions we ask can seem to be lax, insulting or unneeded at times, but these are questions that we must ask. It is very helpful for us to get as much information as possible in the description of the ticket, not only so we know if this is a new problem or a continued problem, but so that we have a base to start from and a direction to go.

It's the same as when a resident comes into the building and just says they have a problem with a roommate. You need to ask questions to have this fixed, otherwise you don't know where to go, and you also may not know if any other members of your staff had previously spoken to this person.

Now as far as the helpdesk, I'm just an SA, and I am not in everyday, nor am I aware of every problem that comes through the office, and it is hard enough just to remember the ones I do work on due too the volume of IT problems we work on throughout a week. So where you have to deal with that printer everyday, this is the first time that I have had to all year. Sameer left early today, and since there was no indication in the description of the previous problem I would have asked that question anyway.

And a petpeve of mine is the nonsensical use of capitalization, with online etiquette capitalization is akin to shouting or stressing a point, both of which are really uncalled for in a situtation such as this, as well as the trailing '...' . Now if you knew that or not I couldn't say, so I'm really not thinking much of it, but just letting you know for the future.

We SAs are here to help you, it benifits us to answer your questions and resolve your problems as quickly as we can. Some days are quicker than others, and some problems are easier than others. Printers tend to be quite difficult, and with the buisness centers it's compounded by the unique setup that they are in. I am sorry if the questions asked seemed condescending, or ignorant, but based on what was in the ticket, those were the questions that needed to be asked to start resolving the problem.

Now barring my poor spelling in places, I thought I did a fairly decent job there. I got no response from her on Friday, so I figured all was well.

Come Monday. I am sitting with my fellow SA who has to do the follow up on the printer problem. He calls down, asks to speak to the person in charge.

SA: Hi, this is [name withheld] from the helpdes...

SA: Okay.

SA: Well, I'm... sorry about that?

SA: Alright, well about this printer, okay so they will be by today or tomorrow?

SA: Alright, yes, well I'm sorry about that.

Hangs up the phone, looks at me

SA: Well she was 'just mortified' by that email. What the hell did send her?

Turns out she threw a hissy fit, forwarded the email to her bosses, my bosses and random people on her email list that don't have anything to do with this. And so a stupid **** storm occurs. My bosses told me not to worry about it, I didn't do anything 'wrong' that I just picked the wrong person to point fault out to.

So now around the office their are fliers up:

What the Critics are saying about WarriorCleric:

"I was mortified!"

[ignorant Woman's Name]

And various other jokes flying around now, and I am getting the evil eye from the rest of the non IT staff.

Fun little story, thought some of you would enjoy.

WC

[Deykari]

That e-mail response was golden. Good work, WC.

Dey

[Streetfighter]

Hello, my name is Streefighter and i'm addicted

to al..... oh wrong forum. nevermind.

Yeah I know this long haired freak. He sheds everywhere,

like a cat. And will always be second in Guitar Hero.

[Zrothum]

***

edit ...A S S

[Streetfighter]

No i'm not:o Shame on you.

[Fiere]

I think you handled the situation admirably, and your coworkers (or whoever put up the flier) are AWESOME....*cough* It really was pretty funny though.

[Streetfighter]

Yeah that flier was an awesome idea.

You'll probably never live that down.

[neckbeard]

Yeah, that's pretty fantastic right there, I'm fortunate to say that I don't really have to deal with people like that. Pity though, I would have better stories if I did.

[BigMac]

That reminds me of one time a co-worker of mine sent an email out to the entire company, complaining and crying because someone threw away the jar of mayo he kept in the break room fridge.

Mind you, there's always been a sign on the fridge that says 'THIS FRIDGE IS EMPTIED AT 5PM ON FRIDAY NIGHT!" in very big, bold lettering.

He never heard the end of it. about 10% of the company (big company) replied to the email and cc'd the entire company explaining the sign on the fridge in great detail.

Several employees got pens and wrote their own hilarious notes on the piece of paper attached to the fridge, such as, "Oh noes! Not mah mayos!" and whatnot.

He quit two weeks after sending the email.

[Dale]

Diggity DIzzity Dizale

[Dizz]

That's a thump yourself in the head moment for that guy. I'm Dizz, I've never worked in a call center. I am the resident computer whiz in my department, mostly doing unspeakables to our shared printer. It's amazing what gets people mixed up with these things.

I enjoy camping on the beach, hiking, computer games and helping kids. I have shoulder length strawberry blond hair and I smile a lot. Half the time it's because I'm confused.

[WarriorCleric]

So where I work this gentleman has been quite a problem for us, calling in with bogus complaints(his mouse is shutting off his computer?), being agruemenative over issues not within our control(campus network stability, Dell's replacement policies), and just being an overall, unrelenting pain in the *** for no reason at all. Oddly enough this guy has been very pleasent to me, he must sense we are kindred spirits, but anyway, the IT department took the last straw today, so we put a cellphone in his computer set to vibrate.

Remember folks, the help desk is there to help you, it's not a service desk, we are not there to serve you, we are there to save you, shower us with gifts and praise, not bitches and moans least your reap the just rewards!

WC

[Evangelion]

So where I work this gentleman has been quite a problem for us, calling in with bogus complaints(his mouse is shutting off his computer?), being agruemenative over issues not within our control(campus network stability, Dell's replacement policies), and just being an overall, unrelenting pain in the *** for no reason at all. Oddly enough this guy has been very pleasent to me, he must sense we are kindred spirits, but anyway, the IT department took the last straw today, so we put a cellphone in his computer set to vibrate.

Remember folks, the help desk is there to help you, it's not a service desk, we are not there to serve you, we are there to save you, shower us with gifts and praise, not bitches and moans least your reap the just rewards!

WC

HAH!

Assuming I read that correctly... you put a cell phone set on vibrate INSIDE OF HIS COMPUTER!

You are my hero!