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I work in the IT Division of a major Columbus, Ohio, area non-profit organization. We have about 1,200 employees and, due to the nature of our business, most of them are computer users. Since we handle the "front lines" of tech support (i.e., taking the phone calls, desk-side repairs, new system deliveries, and the like), we end up working with almost everyone eventually. Some of the things we see are pretty amusing. Some are a bit sad. During a recent meeting we were (I guess the right word is) "inspired" to recall a few recent ones. Here they are...
We got an interesting call today from our Facilities department. It appears a woman in another division had called them asking for a radiation shield for her monitor. She said that all the radiation coming off her screen was aging her prematurely…
In another story, one of our techs was in a woman’s office replacing a keyboard when she had to move the woman’s monitor about half inch to be able to get the cable out from under it. The woman freaked out and told her she just didn’t know if she’d be able to use her system like this. The tech was there for about 10 minutes trying to get the woman to tell her everything was OK now, but she wouldn’t. She just kept muttering about how she just wasn’t sure if this was like it was before and if she’d be able to use the system “this way” (i.e., with the monitor in a place at most a half inch from where it was before…)… On another call, one of our techs climbed under a person’s desk looking for a disconnected cable. While feeling along the floor, her hand hit a glue trap used to catch mice in the offices. Her fingers covered in sticky goop, she did the first thing her instincts told her to do, which was to wipe her hand on the carpet. It came up covered with carpet fuzz and dirt. The person offered her a Kleenex, but she refused, figuring that would get stuck to her hands, too…
On yet another call, one of the techs entered a man’s office to look at a problem he was having. The first thing he noticed was that every key on the man’s keyboard was perfectly flat across the top. If that doesn’t sound unusual to you, look at your own keyboard. Notice those little dips or divots in the top of the keys? This guy’s keyboard was so covered with gunk that you could barely read the letters and could hardly find those divots in the tops of the keys…
On a different call, one of our techs went into an office on a call. Although the person had spilled a cup of coffee on the floor before he arrived, they didn’t bother to tell the tech when he kneeled down under the desk to disconnect a cable. He spent the rest of the day with coffee stains on his knees… (There were quite few repeats of this story as well. You’d think people might be nice enough to warn you about the spill when you start to kneel down under their desks, but they don’t.)
Another occasion, a tech was called to replace a keyboard that had become inoperable after the person had spilled water into it. The tech unplugged the old keyboard, picked it up off the desk, and got a chest full of water when it splashed out of that old keyboard. They spent the rest of the day covered in dirty water.
And these were just the stories that came to mind in about 10 minutes among the team members who were present in the meeting at that moment.
There are lots more stories we could tell from the computer equipment audits we’ve done in the past several years, like the guy who brought in his own desk chair from home, which he locked and chained to his desk with a chain that could easily lift a Hummer off the ground…
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