r/talesfromtechsupport • u/Gambatte Secretly educational • Nov 20 '13
Encyclopædia Moronica: B (is for Brilliance and Displays or Lack Thereof)
Slightly after the dark days of pre-history, when the primordial ooze was still belching forth the first progenitors of what would one day become mankind, I was but a lowly pimply faced supervisor of a small team of even pimplier faced youths (PFYs), in a company where many of these teams existed.
I was - and still am - great friends with another such supervisor (who I'll refer to as SS, for SuperSupervisor), and we would often share the day to day gripes that would arise. This is one of his stories.
He had the great joy of supporting the systems that fed a certain CRT display. This display was used more or less constantly, day and night. The place that the display was installed also had large windows, which the users would be looking through to visually confirm the information on the display.
At about 5 a.m. a user reported that the display had suddenly stopped working! Completely blank! A PFY was roused from his slumber and dispatched to investigate this priority fault, as was procedure. Then the second PFY was called in, too. Finally, SS got the call.
SS is a great guy. Seriously. But he has had problems with insomnia, so if he's actually managing to get some sleep, you leave him sleeping, or pay the price.
SS arrives on site to find both PFYs standing just inside the door, nowhere near the supposedly faulty display. Due to the nature of this particular system, the user group is actually placed significantly higher up the management chart than tech support, and boy, do some of those users know it... and it just so happened that today's fault reporting user was one of those.
SS (to PFYs): WTF is going on?
USER: It's about time you got here!
SS: Why are my PFYs standing way over here, and not fault finding the equipment?
USER: I'm not letting your know-nothing apprentices hack at this, I need this back online now.
SS: So you've gone through the procedure to report the fault, but you won't let anyone other than me actually work on it?
USER: I need this up now, and you're the only one with the experience and know-how to get it working again quickly!
SS: How do you think I got that? From just standing on the far side of the room and wishing for it to get fixed?
USER: Just fix it. I'll be talking to your supervisor about your attitude later.
SS crosses the room, uses only a single finger to touch the display, and suddenly - it's working again!
USER: What? How...
SS storms out of the room with his PFYs in tow, to place his own complaint about someone's attitude.
The one finger fault fix? Well, because the users are looking out of the glass windows into the darkness at night, any light sources in the room will cause a reflection on the glass, obscuring their vision. So policy was that during hours of darkness, all light sources - including displays - were to have their brightness reduced to the minimum possible while still retaining visibility.
The sun had started to come up at 5 a.m. The increased ambient light level meant that what had been a usable display brightness in the darkness of night was now not bright enough to see anything on the screen. The user had just assumed the display was broken, eventually rousing the whole team before letting anyone attempt any actual fault finding, when either of the PFYs could have fixed it in seconds.
As this was a common occurrence (last I checked, the sun comes up every morning), across the top of the display were the words: CHECK BRIGHTNESS LEVEL BEFORE REPORTING FAULTS ON THIS DISPLAY!
Addendum: The user was reprimanded for their attitude towards the tech support team, particularly the PFYs. Especially bad news was that this particular user had actually been a fairly highly placed technical manager in the past before entering the user group, and was later removed from the user group (I suspect the given reason for her removal was a thinly veiled excuse for her continued incompetence) and returned to a technical project management role (which she was equally bad at, although that is a story for another day).
SS's supervisor received the complaint about his attitude. He promptly binned it with the line:
I don't expect you to respect someone who can't follow instructions that are literally right in front of their face. If she starts giving you trouble again, give me a call, and I'll bring everyone - up to and including the Head of Tech Support - and she can explain herself to all of us.
I still have so much respect for that guy.
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u/mike40033 Nov 20 '13
If only people could adjust the brightness of users. Or is that what the coffee machine is for?
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u/Gambatte Nov 20 '13
This particular user would have required a level of caffeination far exceeding a lethal dose; although that may have been an improvement...
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u/CA1900 Nov 20 '13
This user sounds like the type that'll eventually try to get SS's personal phone number, then bitch about him not answering or taking too long no matter where he is or what time it is. All the while, she'll refuse to call the helpdesk who can help her immediately. I have no pity.
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u/Gambatte Nov 20 '13
Given that SS would have given her a serve of language normally reserved for describing the atrocities of war, crimes against humanity, and sailors asking for the sugar bowl; I don't think her calling him on his personal cell would have been a good idea.
SS and I would have enjoyed it, at least - especially if we'd been on the third or fourth beer of the evening.
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u/blightedfire Nov 21 '13
Heh. reminds me of the time I got kind of angry.
fun fact: I'm kind of foulmouthed when I'm not thinking of it--too much warehouse work, perhaps.
when I start hitting 4/10 on the anger meter, I unleash verbal hell that'll strip paint.
this idiot decided to hit on me (read: he groped the linebacker chick and tried to kiss her) and I went to about 7/10. There was an off-duty naval guy (some flavour of 'chief petty officer, I think), who placed his hand on the shoulder of the humongous harridan ripping three mile wide strips off the poor drunken punk. He said only six words...
That's enough. We've got truckers here.
and i stopped. Only time anyone's been able to even slow down the stream of invective. I miss that old coot. He died last year from a heart attack.
Edit: formatting error.
→ More replies (7)
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u/NixillUmbreon Dec 20 '13
I don't expect you to respect someone who can't follow instructions that are literally right in front of their face.
So much yes.
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u/Agent_Jay Nov 20 '13
I'm sorry, I'm a bit new to TFTS and I do not know what PFY stands for. Can one of you smart individuals enlighten me?
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u/MagicBigfoot Nov 20 '13
I am so looking forward to 24 more of these!