this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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Working in tech support be like
Except they don't tell you that they did something different and you have to spend half an hour just figuring that out.
Yeah. You would have had to triangulate your way around to getting the information that is exactly the information that you knew already that it was.
"Sir, I need you to go to the oil that you used and check if it is non-hydrogenated or hydrogenated. It should be printed on the back of the label."
"What do you mean, I never had this problem before"
"Yes, I'm aware, they have changed the oil constitution recently. I'll be able to resolve this problem for you, I just need to know if the oil is hydrogenated or not."
"I don't see what that has to do with anything"
"Can you just check the back of the bottle, please? Then I'm sure we'll be able to get your recipe working again"
"Okay, well I didn't actually use oil, I used toothpaste because it was expired and I wanted to get rid of it"
"Aha! Okay, I understand sir. I'm glad we were able to get to the bottom of the issue you're having. So, if you make the recipe with toothpaste, it definitely won't taste the same or have a good consistency. I think if you switch back to using oil you'll find that the pancakes still taste the same as they used to"
"But I think I should be able to use toothpaste."
"Absolutely. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"
Fuck this is painfully on point. Both as someone whose worked in customer service and IT.
Flashbacks to trying to get the user to admit they unplugged the monitor
Yeah, Rule 0 of tech support is “users lie.”
Oh, you already rebooted? Okay, well maybe your power cable is loose. Go ahead and shut down for me real quick, so you can unplug that power cable and plug it back in. Great, now that you’ve power cycled your computer, the problem is fixed? Glad I could help.
I'm the last stop for my help desk and I legit feel like Dr House some days.
Yeah. Users lie. They also misremember or straight up don't notice.
To be fair tho, some of L1 can't write for shit, and some of L1 likes going well beyond the scope of the KB and breaks more stuff in the process. Those guys usually make good L2 since they are proactive and accept feedback, they just lack discretion.
I used to work in a 3rd line tech support. Whenever we got escalations from tier 2 I'd read their notes and then start from the beginning. More often than not they would say they have checked something and not found the fault when indeed that was the fault.
Dude, ages ago when I did tech support. A simple question like: "are the lights on your modem on?" was met with a yes. Then after an hour of troubleshooting you find out, in fact, no they weren't on the entire time and the modem was unplugged. Like, you lied, you never even checked. The real questions then become: why was the modem unplugged? Who unplugged it? What reason does one have for unplugging their modem?
@USSEthernet @Murdoc why we used to ask them if one was blinking fast or slow, it made them actually look at the modem
I just want to say, as someone who is quite tech literate, these kinds of questions are incredibly annoying to get through. I called my ISP, and they tried walking me through restarting my router when I could ping their gateway already, but not the outside world (e.g. 1.1.1.1).
But then again, I've worked tech support and have been on the other end with tech illiterate people, so I get it.
I just wish "shibboleet" was a real thing.
Oh man that would be amazing. My ISP at some point stopped giving out modems with the internet contract and instead only offers these shitty routers with integrated modems. I read somewhere that you can still get a modem if you asked. So I called and spend 15 minutes trying to describe the difference between a router and a modem and gave up.
When I had DSL, I bought my own modem and connected it to the same router I used at a previous place. They when to charge ~$10/month, so I spent about $20 and got a basic modem.
My current internet is Ethernet at the wall, so no need for a modem, and AFAIK the company doesn't even provide routers (didn't ask, I just used the one I had). All I needed was the gateway, netmask, and our static (CGNATed) IP. They wrote that in a piece of paper, which I keep in my safe so I don't need to call them just because I reset my router or something.
I think they know who I am by now because I call pretty much every time the Internet goes out. It's a small company (only serves my town of 30-40k people), and I'm probably the only one with a ln enterprise-y router (Mikrotik) with a separate AP (Ubiquiti). Yet I still need to do the basic troubleshooting before they'll actually look into the traffic on their end.
I would like to just buy a modem but somehow I can’t find any cable modems in Germany. There are a few I could import from Amazon US but they apparently don’t support EuroDOCSIS. I used to have one from Cisco, provided by the ISP, that worked perfectly but with a contract change they demanded it back (a condition they did not tell me about and I’m still angry about that).
I don't know anything about modems in Germany, but I found this. I got it from this Reddit thread.
Thanks, it looks like it could be something but it only has DOCSIS 3.0, I will need to check if that’s enough.
Unfortunately if shibboleet were a thing tech illiterate users would quickly learn it and use it every time.
Maybe a rotating key, like with TOTP?
Yup. Many people have a tendency to tell someone what they think they want to hear. "Is the light on?" hmmm I think they want me to say yes so... "yes".
So you always have to make an effort to ask questions in a way that gives no indication of what the "correct" answer should be. Don't ask "is the value in that field set to xyz"? Instead ask "what is the value you see in that field?"
some people are so very afraid of being anything but perfect they will just lie about things and insist you're not doing enough to fix a problem with your service
I know someone who, when it's having a panic attack and is asked a question, it asks the person asking what the correct answer is. Even if they have no way of knowing.
And this is exactly why I always humour tech support when they're asking me which lights exactly are on, which colour, and their blinking patterns. I've already made the diagnosis yes the problem is on their end but it's not like they have a way to know I'm not full of shit.
Click the start button. The start button. It's on the bottom left. Yes, click it. You already clicked it? Don't click it again! You clicked it again? Okay, click it again. Now on the fly out click control panel. Wait, you clicked the start button again? Okay click it again. You know what? Fuck this shit, I quit.
I remember one call where the customer didn't know where the Start button was. I told them that it was the button on the lower left-hand corner of the screen. She said that she clicked it and everything went black. Turns out she hit the power button on her monitor.
Haha! It's so ridiculous that I wouldn't believe you if I hadn't encountered similar issues myself.
After you click it, the Start Menu will appear. While the Start Menu is showing, there are some icons all the way to the left, and one of them is called Control Panel. Oh, you pushed the power button and it's off now? Okay... Push the power button to turn the computer back on. You already did? You pushed it again and it powered off? Turn the computer back on please.
"Please unplug your computer and never touch it again."
I legit had the following interaction.
Me: Please close all windows you have currently opened. Costumer: Ok, one moment. leaves phone, comes back 2 minutes later. Me: It will take quite long if you are not sitting in front of your computer, can you relocate there? Costumer: I am in front of the computer, i just closed all windows just like you told me. Me: dies internally
I had another client with ADSL, asked them what modem they used: Client: "My modem is colorful and full of lights!"
seriously, tech support is funny shit if it doesn't happen to you.
I used to work in tech support for a pharmacy chain.
One day I ask the pharmacist to unplug for 10 seconds. He tells me he doesn't know how to count to 10, just 30. Sometimes he has to count to 60, or 90, or even 180...but he doesn't. He just counts to 30 until it looks good.
I'm sorry, what?? Are you leaving something out, or was the pharmacist mixing their own samples?
In the US, most retail pharmacists do little compounding. They mostly check for drug interactions (since most prescribers don't talk to each other unless you're a patient of a holistic care team) and make sure the techs and the software don't screw up.
The joke is that most pills are dispensed in multiples of 30.
People are crazy.