I had changed into scrubs, booties and hair cover to go into an operating theatre and repair a printer. I didn’t want to have to come out and do all that again if someone had forgotten to charge the electric screwdriver, so I revved it a couple of times while standing in the charge room, which was fully visible from the hallway. A passer-by glanced my way at the noise, did a double take at what might have been a surgeon testing off-the-shelf power tools before starting a procedure, and walked into a trash can. 😁

I worked for an MSP that merged with a copier company. Copiers got more and more capable, and so of course people wanted to use their “advanced” features, hence the merger with an IT company.

When they sold a copier, they would sell limited IT engagements. Things like handing information and help to customer IT, or if they lacked IT, limited help like placing it on the network, installing the drivers to use it as a printer, setting up scanning to network. This was done remotely by a level one technician, Joe this time.

Well, install day came, and after Joe helped out the customer claimed that some computers could print, some couldn’t. And some computers couldn’t access anything else on the network. They hired a local IT guy that threw Joe under the bus, and the customer yelled at my boss. As one of the level 2 techs, I was told to “fix what Joe fucked up” right in front of Joe. Shit boss, different story.

I travel out there, look at their problem, but was told I couldn’t touch anything until their IT guy showed up. So I used the time to ask questions, and tour around since I had a hunch.

Local IT guy strides in 15 minutes late, smug as hell. I talk and lead him to the basement, following the signal strength of a weirdly named wifi signal, and get a solid full strength connection in front of a locked closet. I ask them to unlock it, and ask about the router I see on the shelf, and point out that I believe it’s their issue.

Local IT guy installed a router as an access point, and did it so wrong that it was acting as a 2nd DHCP server on their network, handing out different addresses. In layman’s, their computers had 2 bosses with differing orders. Therefore local IT guy broke it, and blamed Joe cause he didn’t understand what he did.

I praised Joe from that day for being the first technician I knew capable of physically installing gear remotely. He was an excellent tech, and a good colleague.

I was on a call once where some guy initially wanted to like block channels or something. After like 2 minutes it turned into some crazy Trump-esque rant about basically nothing. Some of my favorite quotes:

• These people out here talking like they no what’s what. They don’t know shit. But big daddy… he knows.

• I see these fools running around here playing games. I don’t play games. I play real life.

I had a user ask us to solve her problems slower because it made her feel stupid when we solved them immediately.

Before I was officially in tech support but I was the unofficial helper in my office. I don’t recall the exact issue this person was having on their desktop but I went over to help and said “have you tried restarting?” This person, a millennial, probably younger or the same age as me, then pressed the power button on the monitor to “restart”. I’m still reeling.

Years ago I worked for a healthcare IT company that had its developers, IT administrators, and help desk all reporting to the CTO. The CTO was an MD with a computer science degree from a prestigious university.

I was in a different department entirely but I was invited to a presentation he was giving and came to the conference room a bit early. I walked in to him in a full panic trying to connect his laptop to the projector. I plugged in the HMDI and hit Win + P and he reacted like I had just defused a bomb. Really made it hard to take seriously his five year strategic plan for all of our IT projects.

A year later he took extended leave to travel internationally and came back to work with a full perm and added the word “tree” to his last name. He lasted about 6 more weeks before he announced he was leaving. He is now the CIO of a large university.