The Emergency
Chapter: Random
Today happens to be Systems Administrator’s Appreciation Day (it’s the last Friday in July!). Hats off to all the IT support folks for all they do.
And on that note, it seems appropriate for me to hear from IT folks on what their biggest tech support peeve is. Sound off in the comments below. One person will randomly be selected to win a signed copy of PC Weenies Book 1: “Rebootus Maximus”!
The winner will be announced on Monday!
-Krishna
These beautiful and intelligent people wrote
Tell me what you think!
Kurt Sasso
July 28, 2011 at 11:23 pmOhh.. Biggest support peeve… man, just one?
I think the ultimate support peeve is the person that knows just enough to be dangerous, they will do everything in their power to ‘fix’ the issue at hand and screw up five or six other things in the process.
Stoney
July 28, 2011 at 11:39 pmI agree with kurt, but would like to also add one, when the ppl around you that are below your paygrade that are non technical ppl insist that they know more about your job than you do. then again i rarely find myself having to work directly with clients, i do mostly backend stuff and fix the things my admins tell me are broken.
Tovias
July 29, 2011 at 12:01 amI loved it every time I received an emergency call because one of our senior officers was in a panic about their PC having crashed. I’d rush to their office and sure enough on the monitor would be “NTLDR is missing. Press any key to restart.”
What was the problem? Disk in the floppy drive. Every time. Eject, press a key for the restart and walk away mumbling about how this was the third time this month for the same guy.
Joshua
July 29, 2011 at 6:08 amI hate it when the power goes out, and I get 2 calls from people saying their computer won’t turn on. The sad thing is no matter how many times I explain to these two individuals that computers need electricity to work they still keep calling every power outage.
Dust
July 29, 2011 at 1:13 pmMy biggest peeve is people who decide that they need everything right that very moment. I love being expected to crap out brand new laptops on command or get parts immediately sent to me via ACME.
Send in your request and wait patiently people!
gefitz
July 29, 2011 at 3:54 pmUh, biggest pet peeve at work ? Stickiness. I don’t know why people’s work areas can POSSIBLY be sticky, and I don’t WANT to know.
Aljiro
July 30, 2011 at 3:46 amBiggest tech support peeve is when I get called up about a computer that won’t turn on. It turns out he forgot to plug it in. (-.-‘)
Hewholived
July 31, 2011 at 12:41 amI worked at a startup for a few days sometime ago. My biggest tech support peeve was to install software on a linux box whose root password was forgotten. The data and installed software was too valuable for my client, so I couldn’t reinstall the operating system. I had to compile every software from source and figure out the dependencies and compile them as well. It was such a pain.
kaitou
July 31, 2011 at 10:30 pmThe situation I’ve seen most often is someone comes into my office and asks, “How do I do X?” Sometimes it’s a legit question, but most times the bells go off and I ask, “What are you really trying to do?” Turns out that X is not what they want to do and, in fact, won’t help them at all; what they really want to do is Y.
Martin T.
July 31, 2011 at 10:42 pmHow about the person who calls their Tech Support / System Admin, states that they have a problem…and THEN gives (with EXTREMELY pompous attitude) the “…real and correct…” solution (one that a reasonably intelligent five-year-old knows would FAIL).
Never happen, I hear you say? Well, IT ACTUALLY DID (several times) to your not-so-humble-correspondent (i.e., me)!
Anvil
August 2, 2011 at 10:04 amMy biggest peeve is when people call me to have something fixed then vanish into thin air. I will tell them I will be right there, and when I get there (usually within a minute or two), they are nowhere to be found (and their computer is locked out). They usually come back some 30-60 minutes later from an errand or go on an extra long break. I don’t have time to wait, so I leave. Then when they do get back, they are upset it wasn’t fixed.