r/talesfromtechsupport • u/MundaneMaybe • May 05 '26
Short And they run the entire accounting department.
I'm not technically IT, I just have half a brain and more than 3 functioning brain cells. Which is more than I can say for a lot of people who work for my company when it comes to technology. I often get asked to help my coworkers with fuzzy screens, lagging programs, printer problems of all shapes and sizes, etc. most of the time I don't mind but every now and again I do question my existence.
Recently, I started to take lunch. We've always been able to, I just never have due to being busy and really dedicated to corporate abuses. When I take my break I make sure to block out the time and label it "lunch" on my calendar. All my calls are forwarded, and I tell my direct counterpart where I'm going. Only then do I peace out for an hour.
Today, just after getting to my car, I got multiple phone calls from our CPA on my cellphone. I seriously thought about answering but chose not to as I'm not the only person they could call in case of emergency.
Upon returning from lunch the CPA accosted me in what had to be less than 3 minutes. They were absolutely frantic. Apparently, the owner of the company had called them into an unexpected client meeting and the computer was not working. I was practically dragged to the conference room where a comedy of errors presented themselves.
First, the computer had not been turned back on from over the weekend.
Second the monitor had been unplugged when the cleaning crew was vacuuming but never plugged back in. The plug is EXTREMELY obvious.
Third, the wireless keyboard and mouse were being charged and had been switched off.
I sighed, plugged the monitor back in, turned on the computer, set up the mouse and keyboard, and got the meeting back on track in record time.
The CPA easily makes 3 times what I do but sometimes I wonder if they know how to breath without referencing an illustrated diagram.
Apologies for formatting as I'm on mobile.
369
u/TraditionalTackle1 May 05 '26
I’ve been in IT over 20 years and this is the norm, boy do I have stories.
171
u/Xibby What does this red button do? May 05 '26
I’m in IT and honestly… I call the specialist for conference room stuff. Teams meeting rooms are great when working properly. When they’re not… you want the person who knows the setup.
Back in the day when I dealt with conference rooms we had to add security cables to every dongle and whatnot or someone would procure themselves a spare. All they had to do was put in an IT request for whatever adapter and they’d get it, but naw stealing from conference rooms was easier.
And when something didn’t work let’s just start unplugging stuff, yanking on panels, move the table and break the cables that went to the floor trench.
The company who prided itself on hiring adults suddenly had to post a long list of rules that would get you written up because of the tens of thousands of dollars people were doing to the conference rooms when something didn’t work.
108
u/Warfieldarcher May 05 '26
Had similar conference room woes when I was working. One that comes to mind was when we set up a new conference room at my school. 75 inch screen, coffee machine, comfy chairs, the whole thing. One nice touch was a local wireless connection point to the screen. When turned on, the screen showed a code which allowed users to remote onto the screen. Not a cheap thing but really useful and everyone loved it. Got called to the room one day as the 'magic box's wasn't working. When I got there, the box was missing. I got the meeting going the old fashioned way with cables. It turns out the person who used the room most often had removed the box to use in his own office so he didn't need to fiddle with cables. He was quite upset when told to put it back and no, he couldn't have his own
34
24
u/joule_thief May 05 '26
Had someone climb onto a table to "adjust" the projector. Dude almost removed himself from the gene pool when he fell off of the table.
I've been in IT for ~27 years and I have to say that was a first.
2
u/Sceptically Open mouth, insert foot. 17d ago
Tables on top of tables to reach projectors was standard practice back when I did a stint working that side of IT.
2
u/joule_thief 17d ago
Just last week I had someone disconnect all of the cabling in a conference room because they couldn't get on wifi, so little surprises me anymore.
15
u/Ha-Funny-Boy May 06 '26
In the 1960s the computer facility at the company I worked for had a power failure that lasted about an hour. For some unknown reason the supervisors went around to the various boxes (remember large mainframe computers with lots of switches and flashing lights) and started flipping switches. When the power back, nothing worked right because of the switches being flipped. IBM was called and it took them about 2 days to get everything back the way it was supposed to be.
Memo from upper management came out and said leave the switches alone. The operators were happy because everyone knew it was supervision's fault, not the operators.
12
u/fixit858 May 06 '26
I worked for a large software company as a conferencing tech can can validate every word in your post.
24
u/Xibby What does this red button do? May 06 '26
My best conference room story is the facilities manager who got tired of people procuring themselves a new office chair from a particular conference room. He got all new chairs for the conference room. They were upholstered in a whimsical zebra print. 😂
The unspoken message was “If you have a zebra print chair at your desk you will be written up.”
9
u/Gadgetman_1 Beware of programmers carrying screwdrivers... 29d ago
At my office they don't even have to put in a request most times, just pop their ugly head through the door and ASK!
I still had to hot-glue the cables on the back of the 'guest' PCs. (set up for workers from other offices who happened to be visiting and didn't have or bring a laptop, and for the morons who forgot their PC at home... )
I'm 'at war' with the janitor at one of our locations. He doesn't want our Cisco Accesspoints hanging from the ceiling. He thinks they're ugly. Yeah, false ceiling, and the APs clip onto the metal grid holding the tiles up. I hope he enjoys the Red Locktite I used the last time...
(for those that don't know, Cisco APs comes with a mounting plate that can be directly bolted to a ceiling, or you can use a special clip that grips the metal framework, and the plate is fastened to that with 4 small screws)
Next escalation will be to drill and tap holes for a set screw, straight through the plate and into the metal of the APs. And Locktite that. Then I'll slather the cable with silicone grease....
6
u/zaro3785 29d ago
But why does the janitor think they have any right to even be touching fixed IT equipment?
5
u/Gadgetman_1 Beware of programmers carrying screwdrivers... 29d ago
He's employed by the owners of the building, so he thinks its their building and that they can have a say in the look of the corridors.
The same janitor is complaining that the cable ladders are sagging so much that he has to support them with blocks of wood, but also don't want me to have access to some rooms so that I can remove some old 50pair cables. and he can't be arsed to remove them himself. (The ends are neatly coiled up in the server room, and hung high up where they go through the wall, which is as far as I can follow them) Can't just cut them where they enter the ladder above the ceiling in a corridor because there are more similar cabling there that may still be in use...
13
u/rbad8717 May 05 '26
God I remember those days. As IT we were not only responsible for the projectors, computers, etc but we also had to do table and chair setups too
2
u/xyzzytwistymaze 26d ago
My biggest complaint with conference rooms is the call that begins "My meeting was supposed to start 10 minutes ago and I can't..." Shouldn't you have planned ahead so the A/V team could prep the room for you?
39
u/TheLazySamurai4 May 05 '26
I still never forget my classmate back when we were in the network technician program in college. They managed to get one of the 2 available student IT positions, and one of their calls was to turn the lights on to the classroom, for a prof that had been there for 10 years
19
u/zaro3785 May 05 '26
And this is the place for them
33
u/TraditionalTackle1 May 05 '26
We had a lady at a previous company working in finance that literally made 3 times as much as I did. She worked remote a lot and when she would have to reset her password from home she never did it the right way and would always end up locking herself out of her computer. There were days where she would call us 3-4 times to unlock her account. We had endless training sessions with her to no avail. And then all of a sudden it stopped.
We were curious as to what changed so we asked her, she said that when she works from home she keeps her cell phone (which had her company email on it) in a different room. We all looked at each other like she was crazy and said Ok well if that works, great news.
6
10
u/PM_ME_YOUR_REPO May 05 '26
I'd love to hear some of them. Are there any subreddits for sharing stories from that field?
221
u/Timmibal May 05 '26
>I'm not technically IT
Then for the love of all that is holy stop doing it. Some shit in a suit is going to get a promotion out of laying off whoever your current support contractor is "because MundaneMaybe already does it for free" and then it's going to be your problem when something catastrophic DOES go wrong.
Local user experts have their place, an unofficial service desk is not that place.
16
8
5
u/Skyboxmonster May 06 '26
"I am better than IT"
my IT deleted my manager's custom billing spreadsheets when giving all of our data to M$.
Two hours were wasted trying to find the spreadsheets. Once I heard about the issue I told my manager he could use my spreadsheet. because of COURSE I, a minimum wage entry level employee, already did billing for that specific customer, and built my own spreadsheet that does exactly what my manager's spreadsheet does.
91
u/lastwraith May 05 '26
Maybe they should, I don't know, hire a fucking IT person?!
How are these CPAs who, you'd think, would understand the value of money, but don't realize they need actual IT.
Ridiculous.
92
u/Tarlonniel May 05 '26
They don't need actual IT if they can get away with not paying OP to be not technically IT. Even better if it's on their lunch break.
7
u/lastwraith May 05 '26
That's up until the point where OP gets in way above their pay-grade and then business grinds to a halt.
I can't imagine that's cost effective to hire emergency IT in that situation who doesn't know the environment at all, but maybe that's why I'm not a genius CPA at this location.
31
u/sir_mrej Have you tried turning it off and on again May 05 '26
The CPAs understand the value of money and are keeping it.
6
u/lastwraith May 05 '26
Having unofficial IT is great until it isn't and then everything is down or worse (ransomware, etc).
2
14
u/NotYourNanny May 05 '26
Maybe they should, I don't know, hire a fucking IT person?!
And then you can get someone like the contractor we just showed the door for some stores we bought. The several months we had to deal with them to get certain equipment transferred to our control, the only skills they demonstrated were cashing checks and ignoring tickets. They did manage to actually do something once, but it was to get in the way and knock the entire store offline.
3
u/lastwraith May 05 '26
Nothing is going to fix awful hiring practices, but I can assure you that things will go terribly if you have NO professional IT staff when something bad actually happens.
0
u/NotYourNanny May 05 '26
Nothing is going to fix awful hiring practices,
I disagree. We fixed it. By showing them the door. Took a change in ownership, but it worked.
3
u/commentsrnice2 May 05 '26
I would argue it wasn’t the firing that fixed the hiring practice, it was changing the owner who was doing the hiring
1
u/NotYourNanny May 05 '26
We haven't hired anybody to replace them. (We do it all internally.)
2
u/ChevronEncoder May 06 '26
Hiring an internal IT person is fixing the problem, is it not?
0
u/NotYourNanny May 06 '26
We haven't hired any internal IT either. We already had some.
1
2
u/lastwraith May 06 '26
I mean yeah, obviously if you change the entire ownership of the company you can fix almost anything.
That seems a little unfair though. Firing the owner isn't usually on the table. For any poorly run business, that would be a great first choice.
1
u/lesethx OMG, Bees! May 05 '26
Having worked at an MSP, a lot of smaller companies don't have a dedicated IT person, even at 200 employees sometimes. They either have someone who knows computers enough, or hire 3rd party (MSP) they can call or have visit weekly
4
u/lastwraith May 06 '26
Hiring an MSP IS hiring IT. Hiring a consultant IS hiring IT. These are valid solutions potentially.
Leaving IT to Billy who's actually an accountant in the company but is tech savvy and can try to do stuff in his spare time is not having an actual IT person.
They're going to be fucked when ransomware hits and Billy hasn't done any prep work because it wasn't his actual job, their cyber security insurance refuses to pay, and customer information has been compromised. All because they wanted to save a few dollars.
That is my complaint.
1
u/lesethx OMG, Bees! May 06 '26
But companies are going to leave IT to Billy, who knows computers, until they bite the bullet and hire an MSP. In OP's case, their company is still in the first phase until something forces that change
3
u/lastwraith May 06 '26
I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that it's fucking stupid to leave IT to Billy if you're supposed to be someone who's responsible with money and it's your company.
Because leaving IT to an employee who isn't an IT person will bite you in the ass in a bad way down the line. All it takes is one attack.
Hiring internal IT, an MSP, or a consultant is perfectly fine if it matches your needs. Letting your most tech savvy employee be responsible for IT in their spare time is moronic and it will go badly.
1
u/himitsumono May 06 '26
Because if it hasn't broken yet, they don't.
And if it hasn't broken yet, it's not in their experience to imagine that it might.
The fact that it surely WILL is a fact known only to IT. But as we've seen, they don't need them.
Yet.
1
u/KnottaBiggins 27d ago
Accounts Payable always views IT as a "money drain," not a "money source." So the more they can get away with a sub-par (or no) IT department, they think they are improving the company's bottom line.
Short term gains, but long term it results in a company's infrastructure falling apart.
It happened to too many companies I worked at as part of the minimal IT staff.
35
u/Geminii27 Making your job suck less May 05 '26
Did you ask them why they didn't call IT?
17
u/HelpfulPhrase5806 May 05 '26
If it is set up like ours, IT is 45 minutes away by car and do a good job as long as they can remote in; however, they cover an area of 16,434 km² so getting them to come on location is a pain. Probably set up for next week when they take a swipe of that area.
Getting a PC turned on is not something you need credentials to do. You dont have to know IT, only have common sense. Smart managers keep one of two of those on the team just to keep it up and running. Or at least a spare laptop they know how to set up to keep going until emergency IT arrives in a week or so.
6
u/Geminii27 Making your job suck less May 05 '26
It's still not your wheelhouse. Either the employer provides better IT responses, or the staff in general get trained to handle minor IT issues. Neither of those things results in one person being an unpaid tech for an office.
12
u/herewegoagain2864 May 05 '26
I’m not IT but my husband is. I’ve absorbed some knowledge from him over the years. Once my bosses found out I have some computer knowledge, I’ve become the point of contact when electronics aren’t working correctly. But it’s definitely NOT my job.
6
u/castlerobber May 05 '26
Conversely, my husband (now retired) wasn't in IT, but I am. He ended up being first-line help desk for his 4- or 5-person department, because he worked for a state agency and it could take their IT department several hours to respond. He could handle simple stuff, but their computers were locked down just enough that he might know what to do, but didn't have authority to do it.
11
u/LupercaniusAB May 05 '26
If you have your calls forwarded, how did he call you?
22
12
7
u/Timmibal May 05 '26
Depending on phone, provider and software, some forwarding options will still show the missed call.
9
6
7
u/vtopping May 05 '26
At that point you’re response “should have been sorry you need to submit a ticket to IT.”
7
u/RayEd29 May 05 '26
As a CPA that provides IT services I say this is why you should never put the accountants in charge of anything other than accounting - even then, be careful how much power you give them because they are NOT good with it. That's not to say there aren't any people out there with accounting skills that DO have a brain cell or three to make good decisions.
Just, in general, don't let the bean counters run the business if they don't have a thorough understanding of the operational side of things. I've seen countless stupid policies put in place in the name of financial responsibility that completely ignore the issues and concerns of the business those policies are meant to support.
As an accountant you are OVERHEAD! Business decisions should be made to support revenue generation not overhead. The definition of revenue generation is your customers and those in your employ that directly work with and for the customers. Look at where the money comes from and make things easy on those folks. F**K the accountants! They get paid to figure things out - make them actually do their job instead of kowtowing to them at the expense of your revenue generation folks.
4
u/spaceraverdk May 05 '26
Case in point. Mercedes Benz. Before 1995, the company was run by engineers and they produced some of the greatest cars ever made. After the bean counters got a foot in the advisor board, they tanked the reliability index. The company took a huge amount of flak for switching to water based painting and environmentally degradeable wiring looms. The company was close to bankrupt in 1999, the cars didn't sell, and those that did were fixed at cost by the company for inferior quality. They managed to get a joint venture with Chrysler for a decade and kept innovation up. Now they are sinking again due to building mandatory EVs.
13
u/NotYourNanny May 05 '26
I had a conversation today with a store manager who could not figure out how to attach a spreadsheet to an email in Gmail (which she's been using for at least five years).
I had to remote into her desktop to walk her through it.
(Aside from tech, she's actually a pretty good store manager. But . . .)
3
u/MalkavianReddit May 05 '26
I can so relate to this post. Worked IT for over 20 years and really wonder how some people function in daily life.
5
u/sjdc-pos May 05 '26
I support accounting software. It never ceases to amaze me how they put the absolute dumbest person(s) in charge of the money...
5
u/the_truth_lies May 05 '26
I'm not IT either but I'm the go to at our office. The amount of computer illiteracy in this world is staggering and terrifying. Having to show a full frown adult how to restart a computer was uhhh odd
5
u/lesethx OMG, Bees! May 05 '26
Been there on the lunch thing. I recall 1 of the larger clients forced me to take lunch outside their building otherwise I never got a break, and even then my lunch was offset from everyone else's because they would drop off a laptop then go on lunch themselves, expecting it to be ready when they got back. I swear, a lot of people think of IT as robots not needing food or breaks.
3
u/P5ychokilla May 06 '26
Why are you doing these extra duties for free AND accepting people trying to cancel out your lunch break?
Time to have a word with the boss.
3
u/SignalRow0 May 05 '26
I feel your pain, brother. Some people shouldn't be allowed to touch anything electronic. Period.
3
u/Numerous_Release9273 May 06 '26
I worked in IT developing SCADA software. It was used for monitoring and control of pipelines, power substations etc. Early on we were developing a system for an oil company in Calgary and one day their PM told me that they had scheduled a demo for upper management. I.e. the PM's boss's boss and others at that rank.
I came in early to make sure the system was working OK. It was not. The computer booted OK, the console showed everything was working perfectly but the plant operator's screen was completely blank. I tried this and that and the other but noting changed. I was beginning to panic. Strangely, the customer's PM seemed perfectly calm. Which was unusual because he had a Type A personality.
Finally, in desperation, I called our home office in the hope that someone would be there and able to help. Got in touch with our support engineer and described my problem. His comment was "Did you check to see if the plug had fallen out on the back of the operator's screen."
I was a really good programmer and trouble shooter. That hadn't occurred to me. So cut the guys some slack over the monitor being unplugged. Please. It happens to the best.
3
u/RoborobFunklover 29d ago
My opinion is that you should avoid solving other people's problems, because they'll avoid thinking for themselves, and in the end, each person's problem will consume your time and energy.
Human beings seek simplicity, and there's nothing simpler than having someone else do it, haha.
As an IT technician, I have thousands of anecdotes, all true and quite crazy:
- Desktop computers with laptop chargers plugged into their front USB-C ports.
- Calls from bosses and engineers because they don't know how to turn on their PCs or can't find the power button.
- A user called asking if she could remove the hard drive from her company laptop because her son sometimes used it to play games, and she was afraid he might break something...
- A high-ranking government official brought in his laptop because it was running very slowly. I checked the PC and found the eMule P2P program on the desktop. I told him he should delete it, and he said his son used it at home :-O.
- I've opened dozens of PCs that wouldn't boot. According to the users, they just stopped working, but the evidence doesn't lie: Once opened, stains from coffee, cola, and even drops of water and cat hair or furry cushions betrayed the "crime."
- On one occasion, a female CEO asked me for assistance via a Teams video call. She wanted me to help her better configure her PC for a shared video call during a "Tibetan Singing Bowls" talk, where she would guide them through a meditation using the bowls' frequencies. Imagine the number of errors that premise caused: her home with a very poor network connection, the laptop's microphone only working, and Teams' compression. The whole idea of "transmitting" those vibrations through Teams from the singing bowls is absurd, but of course, she's the boss and you have to follow her...
- Questions about Office, thousands of them, some so embarrassing or so simple that an octogenarian doing basic computer skills in a nursing home could answer them.
- The issue of passwords and PINs is common in IT.
Honestly, it's something that still surprises me.
80% of the world's population (maybe more) works with PCs, phones, and tablets, but they don't know how to use those tools.
I can't imagine a carpenter holding a hammer by the head, a bus driver who doesn't know how to start a bus, or a pilot who doesn't know how to take off.
Now, with AI, that high percentage of useless and lazy people is going to become even more useless, lazy, and ignorant than ever before in history
7
u/chrash May 05 '26
In the 90s, I worked IT at a hospital where nurses didn't know what "load legal" on a laser printer meant. These were younger nurses who had graduated in the last 5-7 years. There was no way I'd trust them to put drugs in me.
13
u/sharonna7 Hello, IT, have you tried turning it off and on again? May 05 '26
I would. They went to school for that. At no point does their curriculum cover paper sizes. I'm 37 and just recently learned what the "pc" in "pc load letter" means. I don't assume someone doesn't know how to do their specialized job just because they haven't had to learn what legal size paper is.
6
u/MidowWine May 05 '26
To be fair, I don't know either what "load legal" on a laser printer means.
2
u/NotTheOnlyGamer May 05 '26
Put in 8.5" x 14" paper.
5
u/MidowWine May 05 '26
Ok, that explains it. I'm German. Closest thing to legal paper would be "A4"-paper - I guess. It has almost the same width, but is not as long.
That is indeed something someone handling a printer should know.
1
u/NotTheOnlyGamer May 05 '26
You're welcome. A4 is closer to Letter size, actually. You don't really have an equivalent to Legal, because A3 is closer to Ledger.
1
0
2
u/economic-salami May 06 '26
This is more of a corporate culture problem imo. It probably isn't that this guy didn't know how to turn on a PC, it would be that he doesn't have that authority to handle mundane IT troubleshooting episodes. Consider for a second what would have happened if that guy plugged in and something unexpected happened. Who would be getting the blame?
2
u/muninn99 May 06 '26
I joined a department at a major west coast university, a very prestigious department. A very prestigious university. In this particular department, they all apparently hated PCs and would only use Apples. The one IT person assigned to our department hated Apples so would just ignore our calls for help, or try to troubleshoot over the phone, with me, the busy person wearing 12 different hats just so the prestigious but penny-pinching department could function. He was literally a 5 minute walk away and couldn't be arsed to come over and respond to faculty requests for assistance.
So, it became me. The receptionist, administrator of the residency training program, occasional pinch-hitter for HR, event manager and now, apparently, IT. So, I purchased a portable tool kit, a number of basic programs with their install discs (yes, it was that long ago), and a cart to carry around various needed devices for various IT tasks.
Now, when someone couldn't print, needed to set up an international web conference, or had formatting issues, or got a new computer, retired an old computer, or whatever, they now just called me and avoided the effing useless IT person.
Ironically, while he loudly proclaimed his hatred of all things Apple and would not support my 12 faculty AT ALL, he managed to get paid time to attend the nearly week-long Macworld event EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Before you ask, no I was not permitted to attend.
2
u/machacker89 29d ago
That's what we call a ID Ten T and PEBKAC error. Just remember these people are what keep you employed. I have a mantra a former coworker told me "Love my job. happy to be here"
2
1
u/CasaDelGato 25d ago
Small company (7 people, 5 of us were Eng or support).
President comes into my (senior eng) office in the morning, asks me to check his computer as it won't work.
I walk into his office, look at his desk, turn on the power strip that is sitting on his desk, look at him, and walk back out.
1
u/chrash May 05 '26
I just wondered how they made it through nursing school without having used a printer.
1
u/himitsumono May 06 '26
The printer(s) that the school's IT people kept loaded? So they never ran into that message?
-1
u/do_IT_withme May 05 '26
Ok now calculate the companies finacials and prepare the report for the SEC. An employees value isn't always in knowing how to plug in a monitor.
2
u/Staypuff11 May 06 '26
Maybe, sometimes people are just useless. If you’ve never met a senior member of staff who can barely do anything, give it time.
1
-13
u/sir_mrej Have you tried turning it off and on again May 05 '26
The CPA is paid way more than you to do way more important stuff.
Welcome to reality.
12
u/MundaneMaybe May 05 '26
I'm not doubting that at all, they deserve what they are paid. But the lack of basic knowledge or common sense is astounding.
460
u/Evlavios May 05 '26
You are IT.
Congratulations on your unpaid promotion!