Users are stranger than fiction
Worst IT memory:
- I was on call this one week in September a few years ago. Someone called me on a particular weekday morning to ask why they couldn't contact the NY office servers. I was staring at the news the entire time he was talking, wondering, just wondering, how to make this person connect with reality.
Of course, it's not all grim darkness. For every user who puts in a ticket that just says "I need help ASAP" with no detail, there's a tech who closes a really complicated ticket by entering "Problem solved." I keep a special LART around for those technicians.
Best IT memories:
Every time someone puts their music/video/picture collection on their work computer. :D
Funniest IT memory:
Pulling a user's computer out from under her desk by sliding it across the rug, opening it while kneeling on the floor, and leaning over to pull out some memory cards when I am stopped by a gigantic crackling noise so loud even the user turned around. Did I mention this was in December, and I was wearing a sweater and had my hair in a ponytail? The look on my face was apparently enough to make her not say anything for a second (quite an achievement!) and finally I just told her I would be replacing the entire machine and I would be right back.
Most heroic IT memory:
(This was a few years ago, you'll recognize it in a bit) In a petrified whisper, user calls for help. Her machine is frozen while trying to save the document she's been working on for hours (of course, hasn't saved, of course it's due tomorrow, and of course it's vitally important). Can we help her?
She was right around the corner, so I stopped reading the latest news on El Reg (this was my daily thing, I'm in the US and I love being the first to know about IT stuff across the water) and walked over to her desk.
Her hard drive is grinding away doing something, Word is open, Outlook is open in the background, and I can see the title of the last email she opened: "I love you."
I felt panic. Genuine panic. First, I disconnected her computer from the network. Then I asked: Did you open that attachment? It didn't even occur to her to ask how I knew that an email from a friend had an attachment to it. Of course she had opened it. Before she could even finish asking about saving her document, I ran back to find the Exchange admin. My manager, sensing something bad, followed me and listened to my panicked story about this brand new virus that was now loose on our system. There was this stunned silence, the Exchange guy ran to his desk to see the El Reg article that I had just been reading for himself and my manager went to go write up a virus alert. He hadn't even finished reading the article before he turned a funny color and just shut down the network. Since we couldn't email the warnings, we instead walked around and handed out flyers and told people not to open any attachments. The face to face worked, people were less ruffled about not having any email for hours, and we escaped with minimal damage thanks to my quick assessment of the situation. I got an actual "thank you" for that and a little bonus! How often does that happen in IT?
Stupidest IT memory (well, one of many):
"Hello, is this the helpdesk?"
"Yes, how can I help you?"
"Can you call me a cab?"
(pause.... assess... consider....)
"Certainly, ma'am. You're a cab." (click)