iiiiiiitttttttttttt

About a decade ago I had to fly across the country to peel a piece of tape off a sensor. At least I got crab cakes

I had a site that was going down multiple days a week for a hour or two. Turns out a employee was unplugging the small rack surge strip to plug in their coffee maker. They also happened to be the person complaining the loudest about how incompetent IT was. For some reason what she did was understandable and not worthy of a write up. But me telling her not to touch anything connected to server rack was going over the line. She was gone within the year having finally made someone with more suction mad.

A coworker sent me a pic of a user trying to charge a wired mouse with a surge protector. The user is a doctor. A surgeon.

I also see health care professionals break HIPAA rules CONSTANTLY despite everyone in my office telling them they're breaking rules.

"Are you sure all the wires are connected, USB and power?" (Relating to a scanner.)

"Yes, I've checked several times."

get there, USB is firmly connected but the power connector was hanging like 2cm belown the desk, clearly visible when you looked at the back of the scanner.

At that same trip dropped in to check a complaint about a broken DVD-drive. Turns out it didn't read DVDs because it was a CD-drive.

Also because you waited until Friday at 16:53, DM'd me with no details instead of logging a ticket, lied about the business impact, and didn't ~~RTFM~~ ~~Google search~~ ask Gemini/ChatGPT beforehand.

[Updated for 2025]

I once replaced an entire power strip because the user said that it would turn off at random. So I took it back to the IT room and plugged in all the things and watched it, thinking it would short out or blow a circuit breaker or something.

Then the user called me again saying the new strip was doing the same thing and I should replace it. So I schlepped up to their office and replaced it with a third one.

Then they called me again saying it keeps happening. So finally I looked at where they had put it and it was right where they'd put it when they pushed to back their chair up from the desk.

And they didn't realize it.

I once spent 10 hours travelling from Toronto to Iowa (and back to Toronto) to flip a switch on a printer that multiple people had failed to figure out how to flip.

It's staggering how hopeless people are with basic tech, not even IT. I remember dealing with people who didn't even know which black box was their computer and tried to convince me that because the monitor power light was on their computer must be on.

If you have to drive 3 hours to push a power button then that sounds like you're way too far from the jobsite, aka a management problem where they're trying to contract IT consultants nowhere near their business or hiring too few people who know how to work a button.

Commutes should be paid work.