#helpdesktales — Public Fediverse posts

I have a recent help desk story to share! tldr I do a lot of random stuff that ranges from keeping our servers functional and online to various levels of helpdesk.

Anyway, a customer calls and says that she needs a new printer because her printer isn't working and she's "clicked the thing three times and nothing happened."

So I say I'm sure we don't need a new printer, and I ask which computer she's using so I can look at what she's doing. She tells me so I connect and ask her to show me what's happening.

She says to me she wants to print an eBay page so she intentionally mouses over the image of the item being sold, right clicks on it and the clicks on "Copy image" while saying "copy image" to herself and then she goes "Look see, nothing! My printer isn't working!"

I suppress a long sigh and explain to her that's not how you print, and after getting past her insistence that what I say is wrong and she's printed that way forever, I have her right click on text on the page and she can see the "Print.." option. Which brings up the print prompt which is the most amazing thing, apparently. She makes a comment about wondering if the page will actually be sent when she clicks print on the prompt and I can hear the printer working over the phone..

Well, she's happy she doesn't need a new printer and tells me that she's learned something today. I want to believe she just forgot, but then again I'm not entirely sure how exactly one forgets you need to click on "Print" to print a page or how one thinks in the first place you need to click on "Copy Image" and not "Print" to print a page..

#helpdesktales #managedserviceprovider #managedservices #msp

A network engineer from Systems asked me to find and plug in a WAP and now I’ve got a song in my head and I’m giggling just a little bit. #HelpDeskTales

Maybe my conclusion is the result of a cognitive bias but I would swear that people with titles like "project manager" or "project coordinator" are the hardest people to troubleshoot a technical problem with.

I would think, right, that they'd be thorough, detailed, and logical. But my experience argues against them being those things.

#HelpDeskTales

Dear user,

I could probably help you if you have me literally any information at all about what you’re trying to do.

Strangely, “It isn’t working” isn’t enough for me to troubleshoot your issue! Weird, huh?

Much love,

The Help Desk

#HelpDeskTales

User: Please help me with this unsolvable problem! It’s affecting my work! I’ve been trying to fix it for weeks!

Me: Happy to help! Here is the top link to the instructions I found on a simple online search using the exact phrase you used to describe your✌️unsolvable problem✌️

#HelpDeskTales

User: I’m setting up my docking station and I can’t get it to recognize the second monitor.

Helpdesk: Can you provide pictures or a description of how the monitors are connected?

User: Monitor 1 is connected to the dock using HDMI. Monitor 2 is connected to Monitor 1 using VGA (I also tried HDMI but that didn’t work either.)

Tech: OK that’s creative! Never would have thought of that. Sadly monitors aren’t able to be daisy-chained like that.

#HelpDeskTales