Five Tech Support Horror Stories

The early years of my career were in tech support. As with any other job, there were good days and there were bad days. After the third year at the job, the bad days started to outnumber the good. It all seems hilarious in hindsight now, but there were some days where things in this list caused me to question my career choices.

Until one day it all came to a head and I decided I'd had enough, and started over in web development.

Sometimes I get together with some friends who are still in tech support, and we trade horror stories of the users we have to help. These are some of the stories that get 'em, every time.

1. Plugging in

This is actually a fairly common one, but let's start small. You get called to a user's desk because the desktop computer refused to turn on no matter how many times they pressed the On/Off button. And they even checked if the main switch was on. And judging from the light, it was.

Not plugged in.

However, upon closer examination, it turned out that the cord wasn't plugged in. Yes, you read that right - the power was on but the plug was just halfway into the socket and needed to penetrate another two inches before the computer could actually benefit from that power source.

Sound stupid? Welcome to my life at that time, buddy.

2. Opening Excel

Another alarmingly commonplace occurence was getting called into the office of some hotshot executive who was encountering an issue opening a MS PowerPoint file in his (or sometimes, her) MS Excel application.

Now, if you're still scratching your head and wondering why that's a problem, reread the preceding sentence. MS PowerPoint file. MS Excel application.

Just a bad fit.

I dunno, that was the early 2000s, and attempting stuff like that smacked of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. It was amusing the first couple times, and then it got old real fast.

3. Infinite scroll

This was was so cartoonish it was almost amusing. I got a panicked call to a user's desk because her MS Excel spreadsheet was scrolling endlessly downwards on her screen and she couldn't understand why. It conjured up images of getting hacked, a malfunctioning monitor and whatnot.

The truth was even funnier.

Held down the ENTER key.

I got there, and the first thing I did was remove the heavy binder from her keyboard, which had been pressing down on the ENTER key and causing MS Excel to react as though some user was holding down that key.

4. Email Signature

This particular incident did not happen during my years of Desktop Support, but rather during my fledgling years as a web developer. However, the incident in question made me more determined than ever to never get back to Desktop Support.

A user had asked me to help set up her email signature because she had no clue how to use MS Outlook. I obliged, because I know sometimes Microsoft software functionality can be hidden in the darnedest places. But then after I got into the interface, input the standard company email signature template, I asked her to type in her name into the box and click the SAVE button.

Yay! We're now
qualified to type
our own names!

Guess what she told me?

"You should do it. You have an IT Degree."

That level of entitlement was staggering. What was she implying now, that she needed an IT Degree to type in her own goddamn name? What foolishness was this? This wasn't a competence issue. This was an attitude issue. And the less of this I see in the workplace, the better. There's no place for this nonsense in any work environment. Hopefully this woman has since retired. At the very least, she's someone else's problem.

5. Emails

This is also a fairly common complaint among grunts, not just tech grunts - people feeling like they're entitled to your time outside of office hours.

I remember having a dinner appointment with someone, and Human Resources asking me to stay back because they needed me to, wait for it, retrieve some emails from the email server backups between three of the staff. Staff they were planning to terminate, thus they needed evidence of wrongdoing as leverage.

A whole bunch of
DVD backups.

Basically, nothing was on fire. They just needed me to help cover their asses. Hours later, as I was retrieving yet another batch (back then, it was the era where stuff like that was stored on DVDs), when HR asked me: "I'm sorry, did you have something on tonight?"

Seriously, lady, if the answer was "yes" would it have made a difference? If not, how about just shutting the fuck up? You know what's worse than people who don't care? People who don't care and try to act (badly) like they do.

Phew!

I wouldn't say any one incident turned me off of Desktop Support. Even on its own, it can be a repetitive grind that wears on the soul. But these were the war stories that I shared with the guys. And their reactions suggested that these occurrences weren't at all unheard of. Some of their stories were even more unbelievable than mine.

No, you don't need an IT Degree to read this,
T___T

Google moves to 2FA!

Around the beginning of this month, I received an email from Google services. There was a big header that said Soon you’ll sign in with 2-Step Verification, and a message.

After you enter your password, you'll complete a second step on your phone. Keep your phone nearby when you sign in.

2-Step Verification will be turned on automatically on December 8. You can turn this on sooner if you want - your account is all set.

What this basically means

Google implemented Two-factor Authentication for its users. For those who don't know what that is, I wrote an informational piece about it back in 2018. Instead of just having to key in a password to access your services, there is an extra step - the second authentication method - of having to key in a response when a notification is sent to your mobile phone.

And sure enough, on the 8th of this month, when I tried to access my GMail account, after keying in the password, this appeared on screen.

Additional
authentication step.

And this appeared on my phone.

Mobile
confirmation.

Google is by no means alone in this. Microsoft already has support for 2FA for its services such as MS Outlook and MS Teams, though that feature is, for now, largely optional.

How I feel about this

Damn, this is a pain in the ass. But oh, so necessary. Security has become a pressing concern (more so than usual, anyway) with people losing control of their accounts due to hacker intrusions and theft of passwords. Adding to the concern is a general lack of paranoia in the user base.

What Google has done, is balance necessity against convenience. Of course it would be a lot nicer to be able to access our accounts without that hassle. But things have arrived at a point where this is no longer a viable option. This ramping up of security protocol is one-way - there is no going back from this, and as intruders up their game in future as they undoubtedly will, even more stringent measures will be required.

This moves also excludes a small percentage of users - namely, those who have a Google account but not a mobile phone. Unthinkable in this day and age? Yes, very. But not entirely out of the question. Still, Google seems to have decided that it is a risk worth taking.

What's in store?

Who's next? Google has taken that step. It isn't at all far-fetched to think that the likes of Twitter and Instagram are far behind.

Yes. This is really me.
T___T

Five Bad Workplace Habits to drop in 2016

Happy New Year! It's 2016. Another year beckons, and it's time to get down to an old tradition - making resolutions and failing to keep them. In that same spirit, here are five bad workplace practices that should go the way of the dodo, at least as far as I'm concerned.

Productive, aren't we?

1. Staying back after work

Make no mistake - there will be times when you're required to stay back after work. Maybe there's too much work and too little time. Maybe it's a client requirement (these pesky time zones!). Or maybe you think it makes you look good in front of management.

If there's too much work (or bugs you can't solve), the trick here is to only stay back when necessary. And, if possible, not to make it necessary. Productivity tends to go down the longer you're at it. At 9pm, you're not going to be plugging away at the code with the same verve you exhibited at 9am. Spending more time in the office is not going to help you. Walk away. Recharge those batteries. Reboot that brain.

If it's a client requirement - sorry honey. That doesn't count as staying back after office hours. As far as the company is concerned, those are your working hours.

If it's just to show your boss that you're worth keeping, for the love of God, stop working for half-wits who think that the number of hours you show your pretty face in the office equals value for money. That may be true if you're a novice. Noobs need to pay their dues. But after you have a few years of experience under your belt, it doesn't look good anymore. In fact, it looks bad. Really bad. If a supposedly experienced developer needs to stay back after office hours to do work he should know like the back of his hand by now, something's very wrong.

Rise and shine, buttercup.

2. Sleeping late

There are 24 hours in a day, and about 6 to 8 hours of it are supposed to be spent in blissful slumber. In bed. Not in the office.

It's gotta be tempting to make the most of your day. Watch that last YouTube video. Complete that last stage on that mobile game. Read that last chapter in that crime thriller. Solve that last bug in your pet project. The list goes on.

But bear in mind your body needs sleep. And sleep deprivation is something that builds up over time. I won't even bother listing down all the negative effects on your physical and mental health, because this is about how it affects your performance at work. That's what makes sleeping late a bad workplace habit.

Even assuming you manage to make it to the office on time, you're operating at sub-optimal levels. A sleep-deprived brain makes mistakes that an experienced web developer has no business making. A sleep-deprived brain tends to produce sloppy code.

Obey your human limitations. They're there for a reason.

That ain't gonna fly.

3. Keeping long fingernails

You must be thinking, you gotta be kidding, right? What has long fingernails got to do with anything? Your fingernails are your prerogative, right?

Correct - to a point. Hygiene and image aren't the reasons behind this, though on that score, it certainly wouldn't hurt. No, the entire point is about work performance.

Let's conduct an experiment. Let your fingernails grow to about a quarter of an inch. Then flip to a random page of your favorite novel and try typing out the entire page. Any difficulty there? Now trim your fingernails and type another page. Are you feeling the difference yet?

The standard paragraph in English would cause you a certain amount of difficulty. Now think how much more difficult typing program code and HTML will be. All those curly brackets, parentheses and special characters. Sound appealing to you? I didn't think so.

Born in the Year of the Octopus.

4. Trying to do too much at once

Productivity is a catchphrase in the industry today. A much overused catchphrase. The more an employee accomplishes within x hours, the more productive he is. Hence the temptation to stick one's fingers into as many pies as possible, at the same time. While Task A is compiling, work on Task B and C. While Task B is being processed, check on Task A and resume Task C. On paper, it's certainly productive. In practice, the human brain functions best when focusing on one thing at a time.

Think about it - when you switch tracks, are you more likely to screw up? Does it take a certain amount of delay before you can fully clear your brain of the last task and concentrate on the task at hand? Therein lies the risk. Sure, there's the possibility that you could pull it all off flawlessly. But the likelihood of missing something is unacceptably high.

Remember this - doing two things right trumps doing five things half-fucked. Because five items half-fucked equals zero items accomplished to satisfaction. Do I need to pull out the tired old cliche "quality over quantity"? I shouldn't have to - because it's true.

Again, obey your human limitations.

Talk to the hand.

5. Being a yes-man

Say no more often. Especially when it's warranted. Sure, everyone likes an easygoing and obliging colleague. They're so easy to exploit.

I want to emphasize here that there's absolutely no harm being helpful - until it starts interfering with your job. Your job - you know, the one the company pays you to do? The completion of which is in your annual KPIs? Yep - that job.

Your colleagues may not realize what an interruption does to your work. You may be on a roll, coding and debugging like a boss, when someone asks you to help unjam the office copier. Or look at their MS Outlook. Don't blame them - if they were that savvy, you wouldn't be needed now, would you? No, the onus is on you to refuse - and refuse in a manner that discourages further negotiation.

One colleague recently complained that when she interrupted my programming process to ask for help screwing in a lightbulb (I kid you not), I answered with a sneer. My manager explained to her quite nicely that if she so wished, he would get me to stand by to help her screw in all the lightbulbs she wanted - as long as she was willing to take responsibility for all my project delays. I never got any such request ever again.

Phew, what a list!

Those are the bad practices I'd like to discontinue in 2016. They impede effectiveness. But this requires a mindset change too. That probably means leaving the office on the dot so I can go home and trim my fingernails and be in bed by midnight.

No sweat. Er, right?

So make like a bunch of stripper nuns, and drop those habits!
T___T